There was a general sense of relief at the Basalt Town Council meeting Tuesday evening when Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s Matt Yamashita said that in light of the newly enacted Stage 2 fire restrictions for Pitkin County, the Basalt Public Shooting Range would be closed beginning Thursday.
The shooting range — on the Lake Christine State Wildlife Area — was the site of the initial spark from an illegal tracer round that ignited the Lake Christine Fire in 2018, which burned more than 12,500 acres and destroyed three homes. Nearly three years later, the scar area is still recovering.
And now, just over the ridge just 16 miles south of neighboring Eagle, the Sylvan Fire is raging. As of 7:28 p.m. Tuesday, it had grown to 3,359 acres, causing visible haze in the Roaring Fork Valley and pre-evacuation notices for the upper Frying Pan Valley. Officials on Tuesday encouraged anyone living in the area with livestock to relocate them.
Effective at 12:01 a.m. today, Pitkin County implemented Stage 2 fire restrictions. Previously, on Tuesday, a red flag warning for high winds and extreme fire conditions was issued for Eagle County between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.
“We’re moving forward, eyes wide open,” Yamashita, the area wildlife manager for CPW, told Basalt council members during Tuesday’s meeting. “It’s something I wanted to make pretty clear, this decision was made by local staff with recommendation by us to our regional director … based on discussions we’d had with the sheriff, the U.S. Forest Service … and the local fire chiefs, trying to make the best-informed decision.”
Logistically, too, the timing of the announcement was advantageous, Yamashita noted. The range is typically closed on Wednesdays, per its regular hours of operation.
“That will give us a day to get signage in place, get information on what the plan is,” he said. “[Starting] Thursday, it’s closed until conditions improve.”
That was welcome news to Basalt Mayor Bill Kane, several councilmembers and Pitkin County Open Space and Trails Director Gary Tennenbaum, who also was in attendance at Tuesday’s meeting.
“I think it’s going to calm a lot of people down that you’re going to close it. It’s just reminding us all of two years ago, so thank you,” Tennenbaum said.
But Yamashita cautioned that closing the shooting range doesn’t guarantee safer levels of activity in the area — in fact, proponents of keeping the range open maintained that the grassy lands in the immediate area are more easily contained in the case of a fire than the surrounding junipers, should they become kindle for a wildfire.
“The one comment that was made to me from some of the fire folks is they were trying to get us to keep this range open because we’ve got grass that can burn and not a lot else. Grass fire is something they can fight,” Yamashita said.
To that end, he strongly recommended that people acknowledge that a shooting range closure should really apply to all surrounding areas.
“This closure, while it’s in place here specific to this range, we’re aware that recreational shooting will most likely occur. We would strongly strongly recommend that people not take recreational shooting practices where there’s immense risk for fire,” he said.
Officials also praised Yamashita for what they perceived as improved relations between local entities and CPW.
“It is a courageous move but also a community-minded move. We all will be very much relieved, and thank you for listening to the voices that have called for greater prudence and I guess greater transparency, which you have brought over the last three years,” Councilmember Bill Infante told Yamashita.
Tennenbaum echoed the sentiment.
“Lake Christine and what we can do with Lake Christine … the lake itself but how the whole CPW state land interacts with the town of Basalt, I think we can have a really good, fruitful conversation with them on a lot of things,” he said. “This is a very cool relationship that’s been developed, so good things are coming.”
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