Dixie National Forest officials have been so good at managing and preventing fires that now they may have to light a few matches to save some aspen trees.
Years of fighting fires have changed the whole make-up of the southern Utah forest by allowing dense vegetation such as fir and pine trees to build up and eventually replace many of the aspens."This situation has been permitted to continue over the decades because of the removal of fire," said forest spokeswoman Fran Rey-nolds.
Forest officials want to restore the aspen trees because they provide much better habitat for wildlife and paint the forest with color. Also, many of the pines and firs are infected with bark beetles.
So Dixie officials are conducting some controlled burns to allow aspens to resprout where some of the Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir now stand.
"We just know the forest isn't as healthy right now, and we want to put some fire back in to modify it," silviculturist Brian Ferguson said.
At the same time, fire restrictions for campers and other recreationists were put in place weeks earlier than previous years in an attempt to prevent wildfires like those that burned hundreds of thousands of acres in Arizona and New Mexico.
Ferguson said it's important to remember that while fire is a necessary part of a forest's ecosystem, it must be managed.
"We're using fire as a tool," he said. "We have to look at what the specific conditions are and we build windows of opportunity to work in."
Forest officials burned 600 acres last year and 500 acres this spring. They plan to burn about another 100 acres this summer.
They also are cutting down fewer of the old aspen trees.
"It used to be when a tree got to be 100 to 120 years old we wanted to cut it down," Ferguson said. "Now we're thinking maybe we should leave the 300-year-old tree and cut down a younger tree."
He acknowledges that the strategy is drastically different from years past when preventing forest fires was a top priority.
"We built a pretty good standard with Smoky Bear," he said. "We've kind of created an attitude of all fire is bad. So we have to re-educate."
And that could take some time, especially among nearby cabin owners.
"They see a little puff and they get really nervous."