Return from the Potato Mountain Fire

August 30, 2006

In August I was assigned to the Potato Mountain Fire on the Yankee Fork of the Salmon River, in Idaho. It turned out to be a two week assignment as the fire was extremely active. I spend most of my time on the south end above the West Fork of the Yankee Fork. It is beautiful steep and rugged country with clear running mountain streams, and high peaks.

There have been some large fires that burned just to the south of the Potato Mountain Fire in 2000 and 1985, and parts of the fire burned into those areas. The fire spread was blunted once it reached the old burns due to the lack of fuel but there was some spread in the logs. The old fire areas are healed over and covered with a dense matt of grass and forbs. In the 1985 burn the trees are starting to come back and I saw quite a few lodgepole pine and subalpine fir saplings about 3 to 6 feet tall. There are scattered stands of mature trees that did survive the 1985 and 2000 burns.

I am not sure what the impact will be, having some many fires, the last 20 years in this country. I saw an abundance of mule deer in the burned areas and a plethoria of blue birds and grouse. There are many snags still standing in some areas which surely will benifit cavity nesting birds.

The Potato Mtn. fire burned with high intensity in some areas killing most of the mature trees but other areas burned with low intensity, and many of the mature trees, especially Douglas Fir, survivied in those areas. I saw mule deer every day and most of the does had fawns and I saw twins on several occasions. One doe in particular had three fawns! The firelines that were constructed by the fire crews became instant game trails and I was seeing fresh tracks overnight and sometimes in just a few hours.

I ran into a biologist from the Idaho Fish and Game Department one afternoon and he had a Chinook Salmon he wanted to turn loose in one of the creeks. It was a female and she had mistakenly run up the East Fork of the Salmon River instead of the Yankee Fork and she was captured in one of their traps. The biologist had the Chinook Salmon in a large cooler filled with water. He took a large vinyl sleeve or sock and scooted her into that then we carried her up one of the streams and I helped turn her loose. It was a great feeling to see that Chinook set free and return to the wild to spawn. The Fish and Game Biologist told me that the salmon returns have been quite minimal and its a struggal for them to survive even once they enter their "home" streams.

There are wolf packs in this area but I saw no sign of them. I checked the fresh dirt on the firelines I walked every day but never saw any of their tracks. Perhaps all the activity on the fire from aircraft flying scared them off; a habit I hope they keep up for their own good. I saw one large herd of elk along one of the creeks but it was hard to get an accurate count because they were in the thick timber and I was a a few hundred yards away. There was at least 40 of them. The deer seem to be very abundant in this region and doing quite well. The wolves will continue to cull the deer and elk herds increasing the overall health of these animals; nature working at its best.