Mesa Verde on recession rebound

After two years of declining numbers, Mesa Verde National Park is on the upswing.
According to numbers released last week by the National Park Service, the nearby attraction broke the half a million mark last year, reporting 501,563 visitors. This marks a respectable gain over 2012 and 2013, which saw 488,860 and 460,237 visitors, respectively.
Even better, it is estimated those half a million visitors spent nearly $50 million last year. That, coupled with supporting 742 jobs in the area, had a cumulative benefit to the area’s economy of $60.1 million.
“Mesa Verde National Park welcomes visitors from across the country and around the world,” Superintendent Cliff Spencer said. “We appreciate the partnership and support of the local communities in making a visit to Southwest Colorado a memorable one for so many.”
The visitor spending analysis was conducted jointly by U.S. Geological Survey and Park Service economists.
In all, visitors to Colorado’s four national parks spent close to $375 million in 2014, again about a 10 percent increase over the two years’ prior. Rocky mountain National Park, near Estes Park, saw the most visitors of any park in the state, with 3.4 million folks passing through its gates in 2014. Mesa Verde was second in visitation, followed by the Great Sand Dunes (271,774) and the state’s newest park, Black Canyon of the Gunnison (183,045).
Nationwide, 292.8 million visitors generated $15.7 billion of direct spending in communities within 60 miles of national parks. This spending supported 277,000 jobs nationally with a cumulative effect of $29.7 billion.
According to the 2014 report, park visitors spent the most on lodging (30.6 percent) followed by food and beverages (20.3 percent), gas and oil (11.9 percent), admissions and fees (10.2 percent) and souvenirs and misc. (9.9 percent).
To see the full report and more detailed information, go to www.nature.nps.gov/socialscience/economics.cfm

Study: beetles not to blame for fire

There’s some good news on the horizon for Colorado’s pine-beetle ravaged forests. A new study flies in the face of common public perception and policy, asserting that Western forests killed by the mountain pine beetle are no more at risk to burn than healthy forests.
The findings were the result of a study by the University of Colorado Boulder that superimposed maps of areas burned during the three peak years of Western wildfires since 2002 (2006, 2007 and 2012) with maps of areas infested by pine beetles. The overlapping areas equalled only 46 percent of the total area burned in the West from 2002-13, indicating beetle-decimated forests were no more prone to burning than healthy ones.
“We found that alterations in the forest infested by the mountain pine beetle are not as important in fires as overriding drivers like climate and topography,” CU-Boulder researcher Sarah Hart said.
A paper on the study was published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Wilburforce Foundation, a private, philanthropic group that funds conservation science in the Western U.S.  
The impetus for the study were the severe bark beetle outbreaks, believed to be a response to warming temperatures and drought over the past 15 years. In that time period, pine beetles have killed more than 24,700 square miles of forest from Alaska to the American Southwest.
Previous studies examining the effect of bark beetles on wildfire activity have been much smaller in scale, assessing the impact of the insects on one or only a few fires, said Hart. This is the first study to look at trends from multiple years across the entire Western U.S. While several of the small studies indicated bark beetle activity was not a significant factor, some computer models concluded the opposite.
The CU-Boulder team used ground, airplane and satellite data from the Forest Service and the U.S. Geological Survey to produce maps of both beetle infestation and the extent of wildfire burns across the West.
The two factors that appear to play the most important roles in larger fires include climate change – temperatures in the West have risen about 2 degrees since 1970 as a – and a prolonged drought, which has been ongoing since 2002.
“What we are seeing is that at broad scales, fire does not necessarily follow pine beetles,” study co-author CU researcher Tania Schoennagel said. “It’s well known, however, that fire does follow drought.”

Fire mitigation help in Vallecito

FireWise of Southwest Colorado has announced grant money is available for Vallecito area residents to use for removing hazardous fuels and reducing wildfire risk.
The grant is a 50/50 cost-share program, requiring a 50 percent match from the homeowner. However, that match can come in the form of either cash or voluntary labor. The grant can be used to hire a mitigation contractor for hand or machine thinning (using a brush hog or similar apparatus).
Applications are available at www.southwestcoloradofires.org. For more information, call Melody Walters at 903-2139 or email laplatafirewise@gmail.com

– Missy Votel