April 2023 - Parks & Recreation - 45

parks and recreation make in a community
and offering to give them
a tour of your properties. Public
communications can be vital in educating
community members on fire
prevention and safety and media can
amplify the local park and recreation
story on a county, state and national
level. Weigandt also has learned not
to be shy in being proactive and asking
for help.
Making Plans in Colorado
As an area prone to wildfire, Pitkin
County,
Colorado, actively
employs wildfire risk management
projects. Carly O'Connell, senior
planner for Pitkin County Open
Space and Trails (OST), is very
familiar with wildfires, previously
combating them as a wildland firefighter
and studying planning and
design for wildfire.
Since her department maintains
vast areas of land, conserving
more than 20,000 acres of open
space through conservation
easements and maintaining about
84 miles of trails and 60 miles of
Nordic trails, the OST department
regularly collaborates with local fire
departments and land management
partners, participates in the Roaring
Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative
and teams up with the Aspen Fire
District. Together these partners
work " to integrate shared priorities
into management plans for countyowned
parks and open spaces and
pursue grant funding to implement
projects, " she says. " Strong
partnerships are a good vehicle for
supporting long-term maintenance
and
other
operational
costs
associated with fuels management. "
" Nationwide, wildfire occurrences
are increasing and becoming
uncharacteristically large, severe
and costly, " O'Connell says. " The
problem of wildfire is magnified by
droughts, heat and decades of fire
suppression; rising temperatures
and decreasing snowpack in
the
West suggest increases in total acres
burned and longer wildfire seasons
ahead. " Especially since much of
Pitkin County's population lives
near and enjoys recreational activities
in wildland areas, wildfire poses
a serious risk to residents, visitors,
property and wildlife,
she
adds.
Achieving resilient communities requires
a joint effort across all social
systems in a community.
Parks and recreation can integrate
wildfire best practices into plans prepared,
projects completed and landscapes
managed. These practices
can inform local policies and codes
and be integrated into master plans,
open space management plans, site
plans and site designs.
OST addresses wildfire through
various area-specific management
plans that focus on the preservation,
improvement and use of land,
water, wildlife,
cultural,
educational
and agricultural resources.
Plans, developed with broad public
outreach and adopted by the OST
Board, inform annual work plans
and operating budgets for OST. Examples
of these plans include the
Pitkin County Hazard Mitigation Plan
(tinyurl.com/4ax5ym6x) and the
Prescribed burns in Hunter Creek located
in Aspen, Colorado, help improve
wildlife habitat and thin dense brush
that could fuel a potentially catastrophic,
future wildfire.
Sky Mountain Park Management Plan
(tinyurl.com/2p86wne4).
OST also performs vegetation
and fuel-thinning projects in countyowned
open spaces and parks that are
high wildfire-risk areas. " In all treatments,
the goal is to match the intensity
of fuel treatment with on-theground
conditions that correlate with
increasing age, density and decadence
of target species, " O'Connell says.
" Parks and recreation professionals
must join the call to make decisions
differently to plan for a changing and
uncertain future. We are integral to
solutions, " O'Connell says. " We as
staff, managers, designers, planners
and so forth of meaningful acres of
parks, open spaces and public spaces
can learn from land-use planning's
inclusion of wildfire in community
development. "
To learn more about park and recreation
agencies' work in wildfire prevention,
read the article, " Parks and Recreation
Fend Off Wildfires, " in the April
2021 issue of Parks & Recreation magazine
(tinyurl.com/2s47uv5r).
Jennifer Fulcher is former Online Content
Manager at NRPA.
PARK S ANDRECRE AT ION . OR G | APRIL 2 0 2 3
| Parks & Recreation
45
PHOTO COURTESY OF PITKIN COUNTY OPEN SPACE AND TRAILS
https://tinyurl.com/2p86wne4 http://tinyurl.com/2s47uv5r http://tinyurl.com/4ax5ym6x
April 2023 - Parks & Recreation

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