Barry Bennett

A slasher is at large in the mountains of Boulder County — and folks who live up there are happy about it.

As founder and owner of Rollinsville-based Native Ecology Inc., part of Barry Bennett’s job is to collect slash — branches, brush and other natural debris on a forest floor which could turn a spark into a conflagration. His mission is to help prevent the kind of destruction Coloradans have witnessed during recent wildland fires.

Besides hauling away and grinding slash, Bennett’s crews tackle revegetation, weed-control and other fire-mitigation projects.

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Bennett points with pride to the fact that there were no deaths in the 2010 Fourmile Canyon Fire. “We did a lot of work in Fourmile before the fire,” he said, “not only creating defensible spaces around homes but also thinning out escape routes.”

Armed with a master’s and doctorate in ecology from the University of Colorado-Boulder, Bennett started his business in 1999 because, he said, “I wanted to do something good for the area.” Many clients are homeowners who get property-tax breaks for managing their trees properly. Others are forest managers, fire departments or communities. Community Wildfire Protection Plans came with federal stimulus money, which communities have used to hire companies such as Bennett’s to work on areas identified as high wildfire risks.

Bennett knows his work can lessen fire’s negative environmental impacts — but he takes it a step further.

“We use hand tools, trucks, chippers, saws — but we don’t spray trees for beetles,” Bennett said. “It gets into the water. It kills butterflies. It’s just something I believe in. I just don’t want to do it.”