El Malpais prescribed fire program treats park lands while providing suppression benefits

El Malpais National Monument successfully completed two prescribed fires spring 2024 to reduce hazardous fuels and improve conditions for native plants, animals, and habitats on over 1,700 acres of park lands. Both fires reintroduced low-to-moderate intensity fire to the park’s fire dependent pinyon-juniper and Ponderosa pine woodlands.

The 369-acre East Encerrito prescribed fire, completed in late April, was successful in maintaining and encouraging growth of native grasses while limiting new growth of pinyon-juniper in the area.

The 1400-acre Agua Fria prescribed fire, completed in late May, maintained the park’s iconic Ponderosa pine forest by removing grasses from the understory as well as brush remaining from past fuels treatments. The reduction in ground fuels reduces the risk of future catastrophic fire when conditions are hotter, drier, and less favorable for firefighters.

On June 15, shortly after the conclusion of these critical fuels management projects at El Malpais, the park discovered a lightning-caused fire. During a frontal passage days after the Encerrita fire started, strong winds from the south rapidly pushed the fire north towards Highway 53, a major thoroughfare in the area that served as a control feature to protect BLM, U.S. Forest Service, and private lands north of the highway. Fuels reduction resulting from the East Encerrito prescribed fire provided a buffer that greatly assisted firefighters in holding the fire south and east of the highway and increasing protection to the nearby residents.

This was not the first time recently that prescribed fire and fuels reduction efforts had aided firefighters and protected park resources by reducing the intensity a wildfire burning onto park lands. In summer 2022, the Cerro Bandera fire started west of the park’s boundary and spread rapidly towards the park. When the fire encountered areas that had been treated with prescribed fire in 2018, the fire dropped from the crowns of trees to the ground, allowing firefighters to manage the fire more easily and eventually contain it near the monument boundary.

El Malpais National Monument has a long history of prescribed fire. As a fire-dependent landscape, prescribed fire is essential for maintaining park ecosystems and reducing fuels to protect park and nearby resources.