With the increased need for wildfire mitigation initiatives, vegetation management projects at Western resorts have become a core component for reducing risk, protecting infrastructure, and ensuring public safety. 

The scope of project work—and available funding—varies drastically between ski areas, with projects ranging from hundreds to thousands of acres in size, and from thousands of dollars to tens of millions in cost. Common treatment prescriptions at ski areas consist of implementing fuel breaks, patch cuts, thinning, mastication, chipping, salvaging merchantable timber where possible, and lopping, piling, and burning fuel wood in locations from which it cannot be extracted. 

Improving forest health through fuels treatments helps a resort in a variety of ways. It reduces the impacts caused by forest pests and drought and minimizes the risks that catastrophic wildfires pose to forest ecosystems, associated habitat, and water quality. Well-managed forests can hold snow for longer periods of time, which is beneficial for both environmental health and snowsports operations. The recreational and scenic qualities that often define a resort experience can also benefit from the removal of unaesthetic dead timber and jackstraw conditions. The benefits of fuels treatments extend beyond ski area permit boundaries to the unoccupied wildland-urban interface (WUI) “zone of transition” land adjacent to a ski area as well.

Though vegetation management projects have been picking up traction at Western ski areas in recent years, funding constraints remain common, given the time- and labor-intensive nature of forestry work and the scale of projects seeking funding. 

 OPTIONS FOR FUNDING 

Why do some ski areas receive funding for large-scale landscape management projects, while others must pay out of pocket to mitigate the threat of wildfire? An understanding of the partnerships that exist between ski areas, nonprofits, environmental organizations, and federal and state agencies helps shed light on the barriers that can limit ski area wildfire mitigation projects. To achieve adequate support, resorts can explore the types of funding that support these projects, the types of projects that receive funding, and the challenges and success stories. This will provide a concrete framework for creating partnerships and finding needed funding.

Internal funding. From 2018 to 2023, Taos Ski Valley, N.M., funded fuels treatments on more than 600 acres of private and public land within its operational boundary from its own operating budget. 

Though Taos independently finances its fuels projects, the work is still collaborative. The Carson National Forest and the Village of Taos have contributed personnel and resources to carry out mastication, chipping, lop/pile/burn, and harvests. The fuels treatments are also undertaken with professional oversight from the U.S. Forest Service.

Funding the projects internally has allowed Taos the freedom to implement its proactive measures to reduce the devastating losses caused by tree mortality and post-fire topsoil loss. However, the process is often time-consuming and costly, and the federal approval process can be complicated.

“Recouping costs is extremely unlikely,” says Taos Ski Valley senior director of mountain operations Steve Hoxie. “The benefit of these projects has to be measured in forest and watershed health. Doing the right thing isn’t always the easiest thing.”

Grant opportunities. Such internal funding, however, isn’t available to every resort. Grant opportunities, when available, can be a successful way to abate the expensive startup costs required to pursue wildfire mitigation work. 

Colorado’s Winter Park Resort is a good example. For five consecutive years, the ski area benefited from a State of Colorado Community Forest and Watershed Restoration Grant funded by House Bill 1199 and won through a Colorado State Forest Service application process. This funding, which began in 2008 and required a 60:40 match from the resort, has enabled Winter Park to implement a consistent vegetation management plan that has spanned 16 years. 

The grant, along with funds through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which allocated $1.15 billion to the U.S. Forest Service for forest management and infrastructure projects, has enabled Winter Park to treat more acres and increase the pace of treatments. The grant dollars and outside funding have significantly offset the resort’s capital outlay. “Depending on the year, Winter Park Resort’s cost for the [vegetation management] project varied between 25–70 percent of the total cost,” says planning director Doug Laraby. 

Similarly, in 2022, Sugar Bowl Ski Resort, Calif., was able to benefit from grant funding. The resort had just begun independently-funded fuels treatments on a 64-acre forest management project when the local Truckee Fire Protection District announced its Community Wildfire Prevention Grant (a product of Placer County’s Measure T Tax). Sugar Bowl applied for and was awarded the grant, allowing the resort to expand its initial project by 50 percent to a total of 96 acres. 

With this momentum, the ski area was able to partner with the Sugar Bowl Ski Team and Academy to split additional project costs on the 12 acres of land immediately adjacent to Sugar Bowl Academy and the Sugar Rush tubing area. Furthermore, in 2023, Sugar Bowl was awarded additional grant funding from the Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation’s Truckee North Tahoe Forest Management Program for a 183-acre project beginning in 2024. 

Beyond grant funding, local agencies, such as Denver Water, have invested in landscape-scale fuels treatment projects by supplementing wildfire mitigation projects at ski areas located in priority watersheds. Colorado resorts receiving Denver Water investments include Arapahoe Basin, Keystone Resort, Breckenridge Resort, Copper Mountain, and Winter Park. Projects at these ski areas have largely benefited from partnerships such as Forests to Faucets, which has successfully procured $96 million in investments from organizations and agencies including Denver Water, the Colorado Restoration Institute, the Colorado State Forest Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and the National Resource Conservation Service. 

In other cases, funding has been secured through local contributions, such as the National Forest Foundation’s 1,080-acre project directly adjacent to/overlapping Palisades Tahoe in Olympic Valley, Calif. This project received additional support from the Middle Truckee River Watershed Forest Partnership and funding through a combination of local stakeholders including the Sierra Nevada Conservancy and the Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation, as well as community members, homeowners’ associations, and businesses. 

Post-fire opportunities. Opportunities also exist for ski areas that have been affected by wildfire. Denver Water, for example, has supported post-fire recovery efforts in priority watersheds with critical infrastructure, and Blue Forest Conservation’s Forest Resilience Bond has focused on identifying investors to cover up-front costs and connecting stakeholders to split the costs of mutually beneficial projects. Although these post-fire initiatives have not been applied to their fullest potential at ski areas, they emphasize the importance of establishing partnerships at state, regional, and local levels. 

Pre-fire considerations. To the same degree, pre-fire projects at ski areas have demonstrated the value of engaging local communities and connecting project organizers with the right opportunities, increasing a ski area’s ability to fund vegetation management projects.

“There has been an uptick in local forest management grant programs, particularly ones accessible to all landowner types and sizes,” says Sugar Bowl sustainability manager Katya Christian. “This is a testament to how mountain communities are prioritizing forest health and wildfire preparedness as a regional issue that requires regionwide collaboration.”

Before (left) and after (right) photos of vegetation management at Sugar Bowl, Calif.

CHALLENGES

While there is optimism among mountain resorts that their communities recognize the issue at hand, challenges in allocating funds for fuels projects at ski areas are persistent and oftentimes debilitating. 

Public perception. In situations where public support comes up short, objections to proposed projects can delay timelines and cause bad press. Although objections will not necessarily put an end to a project, interruptions in momentum and the dissemination of misinformation can have lasting negative effects on community support, a key component to successful wildfire mitigation projects at ski areas. The solution: work with your community from the get-go.

Staffing employees to find and write grants, and carry out environmental permitting processes (NEPA, CEQA, and other state, county, and local requirements), can also create complications for ski area projects with various ownership agreements. Applying for grant funding and following through with environmental permitting can be time-consuming and take place over a lengthy jurisdictional timeline. A drawn-out process can cause folks to lose sight of the goal and even give up, says Taos’s Hoxie, sometimes making it difficult for ski areas to see projects to the end and manage projects on their own accord.

ROI? Lack of clarity in return on investment has also been a challenge for ski areas when justifying their financial commitment to forest health projects. “From a wildfire preparedness standpoint, it is difficult to quantify how our investments now will improve future outcomes and save us money in forest restoration work and in property damage down the line, much less the immeasurable loss of community and life that we will face in the event of a wildfire,” says Sugar Bowl’s Christian. 

Nor are there more tangible immediate returns. Tax incentive programs do not yet exist for ski areas seeking to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. Furthermore, reductions in insurance rates are not guaranteed—and seldom achieved by resorts that effectively carry out wildfire mitigation work.

SUCCESSES

Although few ski areas in the West have seen reductions in insurance rates, Hoxie believes Taos’s fuels treatments will help maintain its existing policy. “The work we have done helps ensure our insurability in an environment where companies are reevaluating whether insuring properties in the WUI environment is a sound business proposition,” he says. 

Interestingly, private residences in Sugar Bowl Village have been able to reduce their insurance rates by describing the forest management work implemented at the ski area, says Christian. While this response has varied by provider and has not been widespread, she adds, “Our hope is that forest management work can be more widely understood and quantified by insurance providers as a direct wildfire risk mitigator.”

Stronger partnerships. Sugar Bowl has seen advantages in its partnerships with local funders, such as the Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation, the Sugar Bowl Academy, and the Truckee Fire Protection District, who have been able to work dynamically in ways that may be difficult for state and federal partners. Local partnerships have been essential for keeping projects on track when faced with unexpected timeline delays due to budgeting, permitting, and environmental factors (i.e., lasting snowpacks). The resort’s ability to engage with partners to plan projects and secure grant funding has built camaraderie around forest health as a regional priority. 

“Our forest is only as healthy and resilient as our neighbor’s,” says Christian, “and we are all better served by looking at this work through a region-wide lens.” This mindset has contributed to an approach that has increased the pace and scale of vegetation management work across the West. 

Management buy-in. Though partners play an essential role in seeing efforts through to implementation, project involvement from ski area management is of utmost importance. Beyond financial contributions, a ski area’s willingness to participate in environmental planning and public outreach can go a long way for building community support and locating the right project partners. 

“The biggest benefit of working with a ski area on a vegetation management project is their help in convening the right local stakeholders and increasing the visibility of the project within the surrounding community,” says Dan Alvey, California program manager of the National Forest Foundation.

LOOKING AHEAD

With hundreds of thousands of forested acres treated to minimize wildfire hazard at ski areas, it is evident that successful funding partnerships can be achieved to increase the pace and scale of these treatments. Establishing a line of communication between ski areas, the community, and interested professionals may be the best place to start to decrease the threat that wildfires inflict on forest health, water quality, infrastructure, and public safety. 

GRANT OPPORTUNITIES

For ski areas, engaging with neighboring landowners and regional Forest Service professionals can be a good way to learn about available grant opportunities—not to mention that initiatives aimed at continuing regional efforts and expanding fuels work on adjacent lands are often a priority for federal funding.

Although many grants are siloed regionally, here are a handful of reoccurring national-level grants that ski areas should be aware of:

NSAA: Sustainable Slopes Grant Program: https://www.nsaa.org/NSAA/Sustainability/Sustainable_Slopes/Grant_Program/NSAA/Sustainability/Sustainable_Slopes_Grant_Program.aspx.

NFF: Ski Conservation Fund & Forest Stewardship Fund: https://www.nationalforests.org/grant-programs/stewardship-funds.

USFS: The Community Wild Defense Grant Program: https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/fire/grants/cwdg.

— JVD