By Rick Cables

Colorado is once again being reminded of how significantly wildfires can affect the people and places we love.

In southern Colorado, the Aspen Acres fire has burned through the Wet Mountains near Beulah and Rye, quickly becoming one of the 10 largest fires in Colorado history. For me, this fire is personal. As a Colorado native, born in Pueblo, the Wet Mountains hold some of my earliest and most cherished memories. With my grandmother as my guide, I caught my first fish in a cold, tumbling creek there as a boy. I learned to hunt turkey in those oak brush draws and chased elk through the timber as the aspens turned gold. To me, that country was the last best place of my youth, a landscape that shaped who I became.

What makes it even more meaningful is in recent years, I have watched my own children fall in love with those same mountains. I have stood with them in the early morning quiet, watched them learn the patience a good hunt demands, and seen the same wonder in their eyes I felt decades ago. Knowing that fire is now moving through that country brings home, in the most personal way, exactly what is at stake.

On the Western Slope, we are mourning Emily Barker, Nick Hutcherson, and Sydney Watson, three firefighters from the Rifle Helitack crew who lost their lives in service to others.

There is no way to talk about this wildfire season without honoring their courage. We owe recognition and thanks year-round to our wildland firefighters and countless other local agencies and individuals.

The passionate professionals who protect Colorado do not just respond to fire. Many work all year round in preparing for fire. Long before smoke is in the air, firefighters, foresters, landowners and local leaders prepare our forests and communities for when fire arrives.

Every one of these firefighters and forest professionals learns the fire triangle. Fire needs three things: oxygen, heat and fuel. In Colorado, we cannot control the wind. We cannot control every lightning strike. We cannot stop every careless or accidental ignition.

We can do something about the fuel.

Fuel for Colorado wildfires means unmanaged, unhealthy forests. Places that have not benefited from the natural cycles and processes that shaped and created our beautiful outdoor landscapes.

A forest choked with excess fuel is not protected. A watershed waiting for a high-severity fire is not protected. A mountain community surrounded by unmanaged vegetation is not protected. And firefighters asked to defend homes in those conditions have fewer tools available to them and are put at greater risk.

The encouraging news is Coloradans are not powerless. We know how to prepare landscapes and neighborhoods before fire arrives. I spent my career with the U.S. Forest Service, including as regional forester here in the Rocky Mountain Region. I have seen that preparation up close.

Proactive forest care is about choosing care over neglect. It is a decision to commit to action that protects what Coloradans care about most: our homes, our water, our wildlife habitat, our recreation, our rural economies and the future of our forests.

This work has to be collaborative. Federal agencies, state foresters, local fire districts, counties, utilities, water providers, ranchers, landowners and homeowners all have a role. No single forest management project or agency can solve the challenge alone. But when people work together across property lines and jurisdictions, the landscape becomes healthier, and communities become safer.

This quiet collaboration rarely makes headlines. A shaded fuel break outside a subdivision is not as dramatic as a wall of flames on the evening news. A successful prescribed fire does not draw the same attention as an evacuation order. Your local power utility, partnering with foresters and landowners to clear defensible space, will never know which ember they stopped from becoming a disaster.

The best wildfire success stories are the ones most people never hear about because preparation worked and communities were ready.

We cannot eliminate wildfire. Fire is part of the western U.S. We can only choose whether we are going to react after smoke is in the air, or whether we will invest in the hard work that protects the things that matter to us.

Protecting what matters means supporting the foresters, firefighters and local leaders doing this work. It means giving communities the tools and funding they need. It means giving land managers the ability to act at the scale and pace this challenge requires. It means being honest trees will need to be cut, brush will need to be cleared, and some fire will need to be carefully reintroduced under controlled conditions.

Ultimately, our choice is not between a managed forest and a natural forest. Our choice is between a forest we help prepare for fire and a forest we leave to burn under the worst possible conditions.

The best choice is a cared-for forest: one prepared for fire, capable of renewing itself, and able to continue providing the water, wildlife, scenery, recreation, and sense of home Coloradans cherish. It is the choice that ensures the creek where I caught my first fish, the draws where I hunted turkey, and the timber where my children and I have made new memories will still be there for the generations that follow.

For the families evacuating near Beulah, for the communities watching the sky turn orange, and for the firefighters who put themselves in harm’s way, prevention cannot be an afterthought.

It has to be the work we do now.

Rick Cables is a former forest supervisor on the Pike-San Isabel Forest.