Who We Are

Agency Profile . Strategic Priorities . Critical Issues

Agency Profile

The Colorado General Assembly officially established the Colorado State Forest Service in 1955 as a division of the Colorado Agriculture and Mining College, the precursor to Colorado State University. A decade later, legislators expanded the agency’s responsibilities and designated CSFS as the state entity to “provide for the protection of forest resources of the state from fire, insects and disease” and to educate private forest landowners in management techniques.

At the time of this expansion, the CSFS ran on a budget of $392,000 and included only 29 employees divided among six field districts and a state office. Primary program areas were forest management; rural fire assistance; insect and disease management; marketing and utilization and timber resource inventory. The agency also operated a seedling tree nursery and a shop for repairing and refurbishing fire equipment.

Insect and disease concerns dominated the agency’s attention during the 1970s and led to significant increases in both personnel and funding. High profile incidents included the spread of Dutch elm disease (DED) in many of the state’s urban areas, particularly the hard-hit city of Denver, and the tremendous expansion of mountain pine beetle populations along the Front Range and I-70 Corridor. By 1975, the agency’s budget had reached $1.6 million and was almost evenly split between state and federal dollars.

The passage of the federal Cooperative Forestry Assistance Act of 1978 brought new program opportunities to all state forestry agencies by authorizing the suite of programs that continues to be the basis for cooperative forestry delivery today. In Colorado, the Act helped CSFS roll its continuing Dutch elm disease activities into a new Community Forestry program and launched the agency into the development of an Agency Master Plan, the precursor to current Strategic Planning efforts.

The late 1970s and early 1980s also brought a solidification of the relationship between CSFS and the State Board of Land Commissioners. By 1980, the CSFS was working on state lands under ten-year “silvicultural leases” that covered CSFS’s costs and provided funding for additional forest land improvement projects. [Size and budget 1985]

Although the agency had been involved in rural fire assistance for many years, it was not until 1989 that wildland fire began to take on the pervasive role it plays today. As early as 1966, the agency launched the Emergency Fire Fund (EFF) with 16 county contracts and contributions of $16,000. The 1978 Murphy Gulch Fire west of Denver marked the fund’s first use. CSFS did not begin active participation in interagency incident management teams or in the national red card qualification system until 1976.

A statewide Incident Command System came to Colorado in 1981, followed by the first initial attack aircraft and interagency fire response agreements in 1986. But it was the 1989 Black Tiger Fire in Boulder County that signaled of things to come. The event was the worst in 30 years and resulted in the destruction of 60 structures. The Black Tiger Fire received both EFF assistance and a FEMA disaster designation, only the second time such a designation was given in Colorado’s history.

Legislative activity at both the state and national level resulted in significant program changes for the CSFS as the agency entered the decade of the 1990s. The Colorado General Assembly passed [Forest Ag-Tax] legislation during the Spring of 1990 [responsibility]. During the same year, Congress finalized the 1990 Farm Bill, which included programs such as Forest Stewardship, Forest Legacy and Urban and Community Forestry and resulted in a subsequent influx of new dollars for state forestry agencies.

By 1995, the State Forest Service included 95 employees, 15 District Offices and a total budget of $4.5 million. The trend toward wildland fire that began in 1989 continued throughout the 1990s fueled by events such as the 1994 Storm King Fire, the 1996 Buffalo Creek Fire and the onset of record drought conditions that increased forest susceptibility across the state.

The dramatic 2000 fire season launched CSFS into a scale and pace of activity previously unknown to the agency. Approximately 123,000 fires burned more than 8.4 million acres nationwide and sparked an outcry of public concern. Then-President Clinton responded to this concern by directing the development of a National Fire Plan, which Congress later supported with substantial funding fore fire preparedness and suppression and hazardous fuels reduction. The CSFS annual budget increased from $6.8 million to $12.1 million in a single year.

With an estimated one million Coloradans living in areas at high risk from wildland fire, the CSFS began focusing heightened attention on the wildland-urban interface and on projects designed to reduce hazardous fuels through cross-boundary landscape-scale management. The 2002 fire season, the worst in the state’s recorded history, underscored the need for this approach. More than 2,000 fires burned 502,000 acres, forced the evacuation of 81,000 residents and destroyed hundreds of homes and other structures.

As of 2004, the Colorado State Forest Service consists of 135 permanent employees, 17 District Offices and a budget of more than $13 million, at least 75 percent of which is federal. The agency delivers a range of programs, including Forest Management, Wildland Fire, Urban and Community Forestry and Conservation Education. It also provides staff support to the Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry per legislation passed in 2000.

Substantial agency emphasis is placed on wildfire preparedness, mitigation and response with the objective of meaningfully reducing risks to people and communities while simultaneously improving forest condition. Large-scale cooperative efforts such as the Front Range Fuels Treatment Partnership reflect this interagency approach.

The operating environment and issues faced by the Colorado State Forest Service have changed tremendously during the past decade. These changes have caused internal struggles and called into question many of the agency’s traditional operating principles, organizational values and program priorities. It is essential that the State Forest Service address these challenges and determine for itself where the agency should be in five years and how to prioritize scarce resources in order to get there.

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Strategic Priorities

Fire Preparedness and Response
Provide leadership in wildland fire protection for state and private lands in Colorado and reduce wildfire-related loss of life, property and critical resources.

Healthy, Diverse and Sustainable Forest Conditions
Ensure healthy, diverse and sustainable forest conditions on a meaningful scale throughout Colorado.

Communication, Outreach, Education and Policy
Address the growing public demand for information and promote informed decision-making on natural resource issues by positioning CSFS as a recognized point-of-contact for Colorado on credible forestry and wildland fire information, expertise and technical assistance.

Critical Agency Relationships
Enable CSFS to foster and/or maintain credibility and thrive in a changing administrative and political environment through increased emphasis on building and maintaining relationships with the Governor’s Office, Colorado State University, the Colorado Department of Natural Resources and other key local, state and federal partners, and by meeting the needs of those partners through quality service.

Foundations for Effective Program Delivery
Maintain an effective foundation of administrative, planning and development functions that provides the agency with the resources, direction and support needed to remain focused on strategic priorities and to deliver the services and programs essential to Colorado.

Organizational Environment
Cultivate and sustain an organizational environment that promotes the development and retention of core skills needed to achieve strategic priorities and delivery of programs; that recognizes and values employees’ critical role in agency accomplishment; and that allows employees to meet their full potential in providing excellent public service.

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Critical Issues

Forest Condition
Forests throughout Colorado are ready to regenerate through large-scale disturbance, primarily insects, disease and wildfire. The proximity of people, homes and communities to many of these forests makes this size of an event unacceptable in terms of public protection and values. The challenge for land managers and other public officials is to prioritize where, when and how to treat these landscapes in order to reduce risks to communities and/or promote ecological resiliency. Cross-boundary coordination at a landscape scale is often needed to ensure treatments are effective.

Land management success also depends on local citizens that are well-informed regarding current forest conditions, that understand treatment options, and are supportive of prescribed actions. Several years of severe drought across Colorado, accompanied by record setting wildfires and fast-moving insect infestations, have raised the profile of these issues in many communities. The interest in and demand for credible forestry information and technical assistance is high. The Colorado State Forest Service is well suited to address these citizen needs and to maximize this opportunity to implement effective land management on the ground.

Wildland Fire and the Wildland-Urban Interface
The dramatic increase in Colorado’s wildland fire activity over the past decade has precipitated an equally dramatic rise in the fire-related responsibilities and program emphases of the Colorado State Forest Service. The agency’s traditional role has been to work with local governments and rural and volunteer fire departments to strengthen local preparedness and suppression capability. In recent years, CSFS personnel have also become heavily engaged in active wildfire suppression, both locally and with interagency incident management teams; in state level coordination of preparedness resources and cross-boundary mitigation activities; in facilitation of emergency funding and reimbursement through the Governor’s Office and FEMA; in fire prevention and related fire education efforts; and in the expanding administrative workload that accompanies each of these activities.

Urban development in previously wildland areas of the state presents CSFS with additional fire-related challenges in terms of public protection and land management. At least one million people currently reside in Colorado’s high-risk Red Zone. Protecting these people from wildfire requires individual responsibility as well as interagency mitigation, preparedness and suppression. Community wildfire protection planning offers the most promising opportunity to address the WUI challenge because it brings together diverse local interests to discuss their mutual concerns for public safety, community sustainability and natural resources

With forest conditions that will continue to support large-scale wildland fire into the future, population trends that show increasing numbers of people moving into wildland settings, and a shift at the national level toward all-hazard incident response, the CSFS is likely to face continued demand for leadership and coordination in the area of wildland fire.

Political and Administrative Change
The Colorado State Forest Service is accountable to and influenced by a number of institutions where political and administrative change is frequent. Solid external relationships, backed up by agency credibility and consistent, quality service, are essential to operating successfully in this environment.

As an agency within Colorado State University, the CSFS must comply with university business practices, maintain positive relationships with university administrators, and ensure that university officials understand the important role that CSFS plays despite its non-traditional position within the academic system. With the establishment of the Division of Forestry in 2000, the CSFS also became more closely linked to the Department of Natural Resources. This new relationship, combined with increasing wildfire needs, has resulted in closer and more critical ties between the CSFS and the Governor’s office and staff.

Other key relationships include federal land management agencies (many of whom have oversight for CSFS grant programs), state legislators, county sheriffs, and local fire cheifs as well as other local, state and national partners. The term limits that effect many of these positions mean that maintaining strong relationships requires consistent attention over the long-term.

Funding
The Colorado State Forest Service delivers a diverse range of programs and services using a mix of federal and state dollars. State funds are either self-generated or appropriated from the state general fund. Federal funds are tied to specific requirements outlined by Congress and many involve cost-sharing and other grant programs that pass money on to private landowners and other non-federal entities. All dollars are received and distributed through the business and administrative systems of Colorado State University.

The agency’s particular combination of funding sources means that annual changes in budgets and appropriations priorities at the state and federal levels have a direct affect on the CSFS’s ability to implement programs. Currently, the greatest challenge in Colorado revolves around the limitations imposed by mandatory spending programs and the Tax Payer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR). All discretionary State programs are subject to elimination as TABOR spending limits are reached and available dollars are directed to programs with statutorily mandated funding. Higher education is poised to absorb a disproportionate share of these cuts.

At the Federal level, challenges include increased scrutiny and oversight from both Congress and the Office of Management and Budget; large fire costs that threaten all federal program dollars and currently dominate funding priorities; and changing federal program approaches that result in regional allocation shifts.

Given this operating environment, the CSFS must maintain the relationships and business practices necessary to sustain a mix and level of funding that enables the agency to provide meaningful public service and deliver on strategic priorities. The CSFS must also remain flexible in responding to changing financial situations and public demands.

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