When it comes to fighting wildfires, the best methods are proactive, not reactive.

For officials in Clear Creek and Jefferson counties, it’s not a matter of if a wildfire happens, but when. With a large number of wildfires devastating parts of the country and Colorado in recent years, officials gave an inside look Tuesday on what goes into prepping an area so that when fire comes through, it’s nowhere near as devastating as it could be.

Tony Auciello is a Natural Resources Supervisor with Jefferson County Parks and Open Space. Up on Lookout Mountain, near the Boettcher Mansion, he explained that prepping a forest to mitigate wildfires generally starts with culling trees to make sure there is more space between remaining trees.

While it may make the forest look less beautiful, he said this returns the area to its natural state. With fewer trees, Auciello said, it is harder for a wildfire to spread from tree to tree.

Additionally, fewer trees on fire mean the fire will burn with less intensity, further curbing the spread, he said.

Many forests in Colorado are currently in an unhealthy state, and tree culling is a form of “surgery,” Auciello said, that maintains the forest’s long-term health. He said the natural state of a Colorado forest is to have fewer trees, but when the area was settled, many trees were planted in order to be logged for building.

That led to an overabundance of trees, which in turn meant more trees and more plants were competing for a limited amount of water. That resulted in direr vegetation, which meant when fires happened, they were much more devastating than they should be.

Additionally, the dried-out trees also attract mountain pine beetles, which feed on stressed-out trees.

“Allowing these trees to have those resources increases their vigor and resilience and their ability to deal with change and with attacks,” Auciello said. “After our treatment, when these trees are back to their natural competition level, they’re much less likely to emit those stress hormones and much less likely to be attacked by mountain pine beetle.”

The effort to preemptively combat wildfires is a collaborative one, given that the Clear Creek Watershed provides drinking water for much of the metro Denver area and wildfires can threaten that water supply. Kelby Woodward, forest and mitigation program manager with the Clear Creek Watershed and Forest Partnership, said much of his work is tied to securing funding for mitigation efforts.

Woodward also said surveys are done of the land to find areas especially susceptible to wildfire, which is included in grant applications submitted to the state. Altogether, the state will award just over $7 million in grant money to help wildfire mitigation across Colorado.

Woodward estimated the surveying and grant application process for Clear Creek took roughly a year and a half.

Prepping for wildfires can be an expensive task, especially for those on private land. Some neighborhoods in Jefferson County, such as Rainbow Hill, are nestled up in the mountains, overgrown with trees and hard to readily reach. And they are underprepared for wildfires.

Erin Pyne, a landowner in Jeffco and co-founder of the Wild Ones Forest School, said the cost of removing dead trees lost to mountain pine beetle and general culling of trees can run upward of $50,000, a hefty price for private landowners. General quotes vary between $5,000 and $15,000 an acre.

Woodward said the grants are often used to help private landowners, but with so much land and so many different people who own land, there often isn’t enough to go around. Eric Eisenhart, coordinator for the Clear Creek Watershed and Forest Health Partnership, said Jeffco was able to secure $7,000 grants for homeowners, which while it helped, wasn’t enough to cover entire properties.

He said leaders in Jeffco and Clear Creek counties are currently exploring other options for funding mechanisms.

Jefferson County Commissioner Lesley Dahlkemper said prepping the county to be proactive against wildfires is a top priority. She said county officials have been working with homeowners to ensure their properties are in line with the county’s new wildfire resiliency codes, which went into effect in July.

“Wildfires know no bounds,” she said. “It’s all about public-private partnerships and working together to keep our community safe.”