SAPPHIRE MOUNTAINS — The Bitterroot National Forest is conducting a large prescribed fire operation with resources ranging from helicopters to hand crews.
The Sapphire Mountains have seen many large wildfires in recent years like the Bowles Creek and Railroad Daly.
Those blazes raged in intensity.
Yet, some drainages near those burn scars have missed out on fire on the landscape.
Darby/Sula District Ranger Steve Brown said low intensity burns can actually improve wildlife foraging and help protect the area from being consumed in an actual wildfire.
"The project we're working on is a wildlife habitat improvement project overall," Brown said.
"We've partnered with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the goal is to restore fire into these ecosystems that typically experienced high frequency, low intensity fire through the years," Brown said. "And so they've missed a lot of what we term fire return intervals where normally we would have had fire every five to 15 years in these ecosystems. And now we're, multiple fire return intervals missed."
That's why the Bitterroot National Forest has been active this week.
They have torches on the ground and have been dropping ping pong ball's called delayed aerial ignition devices from the sky.
"From a wildfire defense standpoint, we're burning up into those fire scars and taking away the fire risk, you know, that is remaining in that area. It's an area that sees a lot of lightning," Brown said.
The prescribed burn will continue through Friday and may send smoke to areas surrounding Skalkaho Pass.
