Experts: Managing tribal forest helped stop Wallow Fire at reservation

WHITERIVER – Blackened, rusted and bent, a barbed wire fence snakes along the boundary of the Fort Apache Indian Reservation and the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests in eastern Arizona’s White Mountains.

To the east, a sea of black rolls with the land as trees resemble burnt matchsticks. The national forest stand is dense with young trees. Most won’t survive.

To the west, on tribal land, the trees are spread farther apart, with blackened dirt hidden by growth of wild strawberries and forest grasses. The trees on this side of the fence, for the most part, will live.

It was along this line that fire ecologists and forest managers say the westward expansion of the Wallow Fire, the largest in Arizona’s history, slowed and eventually stopped.

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