Pleasant Valley Tulip in the Cleveland Fire Area: There's Gold in Them That Hills!
by Mike Foster
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This is the third in a series of articles about sensitive plant species found on the Eldorado National Forest. Mike Foster is the Forest Botanist and is assisted by Patti Lesky. Ms. Lesky is the botanist on the Cleveland Fire Recovery Team and has been instrumental in the collection of the information contained in this article.
This is the second of a two part series on Pleasant Valley tulip, one of the sensitive plant species found on the Eldorado National Forest. In the last issue of the Interpreter, I discussed the general biology and habitat preferences of the Pleasant Valley tulip and asked the reader to remember several items about this species, including: 1) in any given year, most of the plants that constitute an occurrence are difficult to find due to the lack of distinctive vegetative features. 2) Pleasant Valley tulip possesses a bulb that is usually 3 to 4 inches below the surface, nested away under rocks and cobbles. 3) most locations where this plant is found show evidence of recent and repeated low intensity fires. Now I would like to relate these three characteristics of the Pleasant Valley tulip to the Cleveland Fire.
Prior to 1993, there were nine documented occurrences of the Pleasant Valley tulip within what is now referred to as the Cleveland Fire Area. The total number of plants estimated to occur at these locations was 1,724. However, with one exception, none of these locations had been inventoried in the early spring. As discussed previously, only about 15 percent of the plants within an occurrence produce flowers in a given year. When the inventories were conducted in midsummer, only about 15 percent of the population was being counted. Surveys conducted this spring, in preparation of possible fire salvage operations, proved this point dramatically as we now know that these nine occurrences consist of an estimated 14,000 plants!
Referring back to items 2 and 3 above, our surveys have now conclusively shown that the Pleasant Valley tulip is well adapted to fire. When the Cleveland Fire erupted in late September of last year (1992), the flowers of Pleasant Valley tulip were long gone and the plant had died back to the security of its underground bulb -- safe from the ravages of wildfire. This was the second time in 33 years that much of this habitat was exposed to catastrophic wildfire (Ice House Fire of 1959). Remarkably, surveyors in the fire area continue to find new locations (8 at last count) of this sensitive plant species. Some occurrences number over 2,000 plants. We currently estimate that there are well over 20,000 plants in the fire area!
Now, what shall we do about conserving these sensitive plants? Should salvage logging be allowed to occur? Or, should we flag off these sites and let "natural processes" proceed? We now know that one of the reasons the Cleveland Fire burned so intensively was the lack of low intensity fires in the interval of time after the Ice House burn. We also know that occasional fires benefit the Pleasant Valley tulip by reducing shade and competition from other plants. With this knowledge we are hoping to use the following management techniques to maintain habitat quality over time.
We believe that allowing "natural processes" to occur would allow excessive amounts of large woody fuels to accumulate on site. This would deter the Forest Service from using prescribed under burning as a management tool due to the possibility that these high fuel loads would increase the risk that the prescribed fire would escape control. Salvage logging provides a means of removing most of this fuel. However, tractor logging can disturb the soil to depths greater than the 3-4 inches that the bulbs of Pleasant Valley tulip are found. Even cable logging can result in the physical destruction of flowering plants. To avoid these impacts, the Cleveland Fire Team has proposed that salvage logging be allowed to occur with the following restrictions: use only helicopter and cable logging systems to reduce ground disturbance and then only after August 15. By delaying logging operations, the affected plants would have set seed and no longer be susceptible to physical damage. Since there is so much ground to be logged within the fire area, delaying logging will not impact the recovery of fire-killed trees to any great extent -- a win, win situation for all involved.
On July 17, 1993, a field trip was held to view the Pleasant Valley tulip. Those in attendance saw this marvelous flower in abundance. One plant had twenty-six blossoms and was about 3 feet tall. The Cleveland Fire did contribute to the quantity of flowers we see this year. Due to the fire, the forest canopy is open, allowing more sunlight through and we received plenty of rainfall last winter. Although the fire destroyed the seed from last year's flowers we expect to see an abundance of seed this year (1993) allowing the population to grow. There certainly is "gold in them thar hills"!
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