Every summer, the BIA’s complex wildland fire management program serves citizens of the 2.2 million acre Crow Indian Reservation by responding to all sorts of incidents from two stations in Crow Agency and Pryor. About half of the Crows on the 60 mile by 40 mile Reservation speak Crow language every day. Everyone appreciates lots of varied cultural traditions. The Reservation includes fuel models
1 (short grass), 2 (grass under overstory), 3 (long grass), and 8, 9, and 10 (litter and slash beneath overstory). Three mountain ranges each have their own fuel types and management considerations. Between the mountains lie many miles of prairie either in range or farm ground, cut by river valleys where most people live. Most of the Reservation is 3000’ to 3500’ elevation. Average annual rainfall ranges from 8 inches in Bighorn Canyon to 26 inches on the Wolf Mountains, with about 14 inches on the prairies.
•The Wolf Mountains (5000’) are moist ponderosa pine on rolling sandstone, mostly owned by ranchers and individual tribal members, and are managed with an extensive fuels program of prescribed burns. Much of the grass there is Fuel Model 3 in wet years. Oil wells and coal seams exist in the Wolfs.
•The Reservation's Pryor Mountains (6500’) are decadent lodgepole-fir on steep dry limestone. Only the lower elevations are ponderosa pine. They have limited road access, through Pryor Gap south of Pryor. Timber sales exist on the high level ground. The valley of Sage Creek runs along the southern border of the Reservation, south of which are the higher elevation Pryors (8500’) of the Custer National Forest.
•The Reservation’s Big Horn Mountains (9000’), held in common by the Tribe, are unsurveyed high elevation plateau, surrounded by slopes and canyons of lodgepole and subalpine fir. Promontory ridges stick out to the northeast and northwest. One ridge holds a pasture of hundreds of buffalo. The mountaintops are granites and limestones, dropping through sharp-edged limestones and sandstones to the valleys of the Little Horn River, Pass Creek, Rotten Grass Creek, and Bighorn Canyon NRA. Average high temperatures are in the windy 40’s in March, and 50’s in October, but a cold snap can bring low temperatures down below 10 degrees either month. Recent summers hit 100 degrees several days, yet it can snow any month. Weather usually blows from the southwest, or in the fall, from the northwest. As a front comes through, winds usually come from the north then the east and south, before resuming from the southwest. Warming trends can bring steady 20+ mph drying winds called chinooks that last for several days, coming downslope from mountains.
