MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Colorado had some major wildfires this summer. The danger is mostly over now, but for ranchers, recovering from the fires may prove more challenging than surviving them, as Colorado Public Radio's Dan Boyce reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF ENGINE STARTING)
DAN BOYCE, BYLINE: It takes an all-terrain vehicle to trundle up the rocky trails and access the country 64-year-old cattle rancher Janie VanWinkle works on the Uncompahgre Plateau.
JANIE VANWINKLE: We were seeing 70- to 100-foot flames coming up over that ridge.
BOYCE: Five major Colorado wildfires burned an area nearly the size of Atlanta this summer, including large swaths of public and private lands farmers and ranchers like VanWinkle need to make a living.
VANWINKLE: There is absolutely nothing but rocks and these skeletons of trees. It's an eerie landscape.
BOYCE: About 60% of the U.S. Forest Service land her family leases for cattle grazing burned. In her pickup, VanWinkle says they were able to haul out their 1,500 cows and calves down narrow, twisting roads to safety 10 miles south.
VANWINKLE: Without a doubt, it's the hardest thing we've ever done. And the hardest part is we're not done.
REECE MELTON: A lot of these landowners, they just got out of the thick of it.
BOYCE: Reece Melton works for Rio Blanco County. A couple dozen ranchers have reached out to his office for aid so far. It's hard to gauge how many were affected.
MELTON: That was a heavy lift for these folks to protect their property, protect their livestock and get them out of harm's way. So they have a lot of work ahead of them to assess the damages.
BOYCE: Monsoon rains that did help drench the flames soon led to widespread flash flooding.
MELTON: You don't have this level of ecological disturbance without some things being changed on the landscape long-term.
BOYCE: The state estimates more than $27 million in losses in Rio Blanco County - power line infrastructure critical to local oil and gas operations, washed-out roads and burn scars that may take years to heal and provide adequate grazing for ranchers again. FEMA did cover 75% of the state's cost to put the fires out, but more federal aid is needed for the recovery, Melton says, and that will take time.
MELTON: One of the biggest lifts of this situation is putting all the puzzle pieces together.
BOYCE: Depending on the property's ownership and its use, a rancher might apply to the Bureau of Land Management, the Natural Resource Conservation Service, the Farm Service Agency and other state and federal agencies.
MELTON: They all operate within their own different boxes. And they have different programs and they have different assessments and they have different funding sources.
BOYCE: And that's when those agencies are operating at all. Many aid programs are on pause during the federal government's shutdown.
(SOUNDBITE OF CRUNCHING GRAVEL)
BOYCE: Back on the Uncompahgre Plateau, long strands of barbed wire lay limp and discolored in the ash. Janie VanWinkle pulls up a handful of thick metal staples, the only remaining evidence of a wooden fence post.
VANWINKLE: That wire won't ever work again.
BOYCE: Lost fencing is often one of the biggest wildfire costs for ranchers.
VANWINKLE: In normal circumstances, a mile of four-strand barb wire fence will cost about $20,000.
BOYCE: VanWinkle estimates they lost about seven miles. She expects the U.S. Department of Agriculture to pay for new fencing materials and maybe help out with labor, but there's still a lot of arduous physical work ahead for her family, stretching new wires across steep and blackened mountainsides. For NPR News, I'm Dan Boyce from Colorado's Western Slope.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.