Wildfires have burned about 12 million acres across Nevada over the past 30 years, but only about 2 million acres have been rehabilitated, according to the Coalition for Nevada’s Wildlife.
The group took an EcoFlight over four recent burn scars — the Stallion, Bug, Elephant and Hawk fires — to view the damage. The fires burned sagebrush across the Peavine, Pah Rah, Virginia and Peterson mountain ranges.
Cheatgrass, an invasive species, has spread across many of the burned hillsides. Larry Johnson, president of the Coalition for Nevada’s Wildlife, said the plant was brought to North America over 100 years ago.
“All the yellow on the hills here on the left, all cheatgrass, invasive species brought in in the late 1800s on the backs of Asian sheep,” Johnson said. “Now in North America it has very little 4-H value, particularly to wildlife. Cattle will eat some of it in the spring months and late fall months. But the worst part about cheatgrass is that it’s extremely flammable. So the sagebrush would contain fires to a few acres where we used to have lightning strikes. All of a sudden cheatgrass explodes with fire and takes the whole mountain. So it burns again and again and again. The frequency of fire regime is much shorter. So that the native vegetation never ever has a chance to reestablish itself.”
KOLO-TV ABC/CW+ 8 Reno
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