{"id":21625,"date":"2025-06-30T17:50:24","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T23:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/update-san-juan-national-forest-to-enter-stage-1-fire-restrictions-july-1\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:08:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:08:09","slug":"update-san-juan-national-forest-to-enter-stage-1-fire-restrictions-july-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/update-san-juan-national-forest-to-enter-stage-1-fire-restrictions-july-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Update: San Juan National Forest to enter Stage 1 fire restrictions July 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"An
An employee of the Albuquerque Interagency Dispatch Center stands at her desk to monitor wildfire starts, pictured May 2022. The dispatch centers in Albuquerque and Silver City are no longer at risk of closing amid DOGE\u2019s cost-cutting efforts, according to U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM). Courtesy Cibola National Forest<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

On Monday, the Forest Service announced Stage 1 fire restrictions that will go into effect on July 1 for lower elevation areas within the San Juan National Forest.<\/p>\n

The lower elevation areas, reffered to as \u201cZone 1\u201d include portions of the national forest that border Dolores, Mancos, Durango and Pagosa Springs. Higher elevations portions of the national forest, which retain more moisture and active greenery, are excluded from the restrictions.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough Southwest Colorado experienced several rain events late this spring, vegetation is now drying out due to hot, dry weather, leading to wildfire conditions in the lower country that dictate the need for Stage I Fire Restrictions,\u201c the forest service said in their announcement.<\/p>\n

\"Current
Current fire restrictions mapped out by San Juan National Forest (Courtesy of San Juan National Forest)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Stage 1 fire restrictions put limitations on igniting flames, smoking, using explosives or engaging in welding or other open flame-adjacent labor.<\/p>\n

More specific information on restrictions are available at the National Forest Service\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday afternoon, a small brush fire broke out east of Colorado Highway 145 on the northern edge of Cortez. With the Southwest well into summer\u2019s dry heat, the brush fire is no surprise, but instead serves as a reminder that the season for wildfire risk is upon us.<\/p>\n

With no rainfall since earlier in June and dry conditions expected to continue, Montezuma County residents are reminded of wildfire risk.<\/p>\n

Wednesday afternoon\u2019s small brush fire started about noon east of Colorado Highway 145 on County Road P and spread to no more than a third of an acre before being extinguished by about 1:30 p.m., said Cortez Fire Protection District Battalion Chief Cory Elliot.<\/p>\n

Both the Cortez and Dolores Fire Protection Districts responded to the scene, Elliot said. The believed cause of the fire was a bird that flew into a power line, setting off a spark, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fuels, the grasses, the trees are drying out,\u201d Elliot said. \u201cWe\u2019re not getting much rain, and we\u2019re getting more winds.\u201d<\/p>\n

A ban on open flames has been in effect in Dolores since Monday, and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe entered into Stage 1 fire restrictions May 2. However, neither Cortez, Mancos, the San Juan National Forest nor the Tres Rios Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management have such ongoing orders.<\/p>\n

Although winds have reached 35 mph in recent days, winds are expected to remain below 25 mph, said Jim Andrus, a weather watcher in Cortez for the National Weather Service. Thursday evening, the humidity level in Cortez was 7%, according to the National Weather Service<\/p>\n

Although the typically dry month of June surpassed its average rate of rainfall this year, the remainder of the month has been markedly dry.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody upstairs turned off the spigot again,\u201d Andrus said.<\/p>\n

Next week\u2019s forecast doesn\u2019t have any rain, Andrus said, putting off the anticipated monsoon season of July through September for a little longer.<\/p>\n

\u201cFire weather conditions are very prominent right now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

comes after a small brush fire in northern Cortez Wednesday was put out, while dry weather conditions are expected ahead<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[350,28,29,88],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-21625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-fire","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-weather-news"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77389,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21625\/revisions\/77389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21625"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=21625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}