How does fire mitigation impact biodiversity?

Over the next five years, Eagle Valley Land Trust, the town of Avon and Eagle Valley Wildland are teaming up to study the impacts of fire mitigation on biodiversity in the West Avon Preserve. The goal of the study is to determine whether mastication — essentially, reducing fuels by using specialized machinery to shred flora — has an impact on the plants, insects, birds and ungulates that inhabit the area.