Spreading mountain-sides of beetle-killed trees, fire danger, and juggling multiple uses were among the topics Columbine District Ranger Matt Janowiak discussed at the Pine River Centennial Rotary Club meeting on April 22.

"The forest must be managed for multiple use. That doesn't mean multiple use on every block of land," he said. "There are a lot of conflicts with what people want. Motorized trails make sense in some places and not in others."

He continued, "We need to hear from the public, the people who will be impacted, so we can make the best decision. Any decision will make some people unhappy and others happy."

A public comment meeting will be held on May 6 in Durango (see related story). "Our budgets have been cut. When I started as district ranger six and a half years ago, we had seven FTE (full-time equivalent) staff. We're down to three and a half. That's what we can barely afford. I still need a seasonal trail crew," Janowiak said.

"We have a concessionaire that runs the campgrounds for a fee. On the Columbine, I have a lot of non-fee recreation sites that I have to pay for out of our budget. It's getting to the point where we can't do that. We're talking to concessionaires to manage them and charge a fee."

Janowiak said they are considering ideas like letting a concessionaire put in a food stand on Molas Pass to pay for upkeep on the toilets. "We're kind of hitting a brick wall. The solution isn't just more volunteers. We still have to pay a contractor to pump the toilets."

Asked about prospects for wildfires this year, Janowiak said, "It's getting to be pretty troubling. We had good fall rains, good soil moisture, but we're at a tipping point if we don't get rain in the next couple weeks. The forecast is for wetter than normal."

This was before rains on the weekend of April 25-26.

"If it stays dry, we'll bring in fire crews and engines from places where the fire danger is low. We give them a map and send them out on patrol," he said.

Asked about lightning strikes within a wilderness area, he said, "Under the right conditions (such as high elevation and a wet spring) we'd like to let it burn."

An incident management team would be brought in to look at the location, the fire weather forecast, and resources to be protected, such as cabins or power lines, he said. The team would protect assets with a fire line and let the fire burn.

He cited the Little Sand Fire a couple years ago northwest of Pagosa Springs that burned around 25,000 acres. "We burned out from private land and let it burn into the wilderness. The forest is much healthier as a result."

Then there are the mountainsides covered with beetle-killed spruce trees. Janowiak showed a map of spruce tree concentrations on the Columbine Ranger District, and areas where the trees had died as of 2012, including a large area northeast of Vallecito. He didn't hold out much hope to stop the devastation.

The beetles are always in the forest, Janowiak said. They have a two-year life cycle and are spread on the wind, even against the prevailing wind. Lack of cold winters has allowed the major tree kills, which have moved from east to west. "We anticipate in the next few years it will get into the (Highway) 550 corridor.

"What will stop them? They either eat themselves out of house and home, or an extremely cold winter," he said, meaning sustained below zero temperatures for at least 10 days.

"It's the big mature trees that they're killing. Little trees don't have the bark insulation, so they are frozen out. They prefer big trees. ... What people don't really understand is we would have a lot different landscape if we hadn't spent 120 years putting fires out," he said.

"This is a 600-plus year cycle, Mother Nature's time scale. Without fire suppression, there would have been more lower elevation fires and different age stands of trees, instead of total stand replacement" in a huge fire.

"The Little Sand is the kind of fire we want," he added.

One idea is to clear-cut the spruce from a couple of drainages on Wolf Creek so the seeds and young trees can start revegetation, Janowiak said. "That's one of the options we're looking at."