The Front Range Rountable
The 200-mile long Front Range of Colorado is the area where the eastern plains abut the Colorado Rocky Mountains. The area contains dozens of towns and cities, many within the path of inevitable forest fires.
In 2004, a group of people sat down to create a vision for managing wildfire along the Front Range. The group called itself the Front Range Roundtable and included local governments, federal and state agencies, universities and emergency managers, business interests and conservation groups.
During the next two years, with The Wilderness Society playing a leadership role, the Roundtable met regularly and developed a series of findings and recommendations that will serve as a road-map to achieve our collective goal of protecting communities and restoring the ecological integrity of our forests over the coming decades. That road-map is the report Living with Fire: Protecting Communities and Restoring Forests.
Our guiding principle has been the premise that fire management can be used in a positive way to bring communities of interest together to find solutions to land and resource challenges.
Arguably, the hard work has yet to begin. We look forward to continuing to work with the Roundtable in implementing our shared, long-term vision.
Finding and building common ground with diverse interests is the key to defining success on the ground, a model for fire management across the West that is rooted in the ecological prerequisites of the landscape while incorporating social needs and economic realities.
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