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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 25, 2017)
24 Wednesday, October 25, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon FIRE PROJECT: Scalability across landscape is needed Continued from page 1 and recreational interests arranged to thin part of the overgrown forest, creating a buffer zone around Sisters. Workers removed trees and brush with machines, then came through on foot to ignite prescribed burns. That effort saved homes, and per- haps the community of 2,500 on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Range, by slowing the fire’s progress and allow- ing firefighters to corral it. Scrutiny of the condi- tion of the American West’s forests, and of policies that curtailed logging and sup- pressed wildfires, has intensi- fied amid a devastating wild- fire season that has burned a combined area bigger than Maryland and caused widespread destruction in California’s wine country. Until the advent of aggres- sive fire suppression at the turn of the last century, for- ests were historically shaped by low-intensity blazes, with the flames clearing under- brush but not killing tall trees. Forests across the West are now so overgrown they’ve been called powder kegs. The work by the Deschutes Collaborative Forest Project in Central Oregon, where towns and subdivisions sit in a green ocean of ponderosa and lodgepole pines, shows the potential of forest thin- ning. And it shows how log- gers and environmentalists — normally bitter enemies — can join forces. But it also highlights the challenges of replicating the forest thinning across the West, where a lack of tim- ber workers and money are among the obstacles. On a recent morning, Forest Service fire manager James Osborne drove into a section of the Deschutes National Forest outside Sisters that was thinned in May. Widely spaced pon- derosas were blackened to twice the height of a per- son. But higher up, the bark retained its normal orangey color. Needle clusters shone vibrant green in the sunshine. Four deer trotted through dappled sunlight. This part of the forest looked healthy, not despite of, but due to, the pre- scribed burn. “Ponderosa pines are used to low-intensity fires,” Osborne said. “Every five to 15 years, a fire would come through. We’re trying to take it back to low-intensity fires.” California’s situation is different because its wild- fires have generally ignited in chaparral — brush that natu- rally grows densely packed, said Andrew Latimer, plant expert at the University of California-Davis. The tem- perate coniferous forests that burn in large wildfires else- where are historically less dense. It is the goal of the Deschutes Collaborative, one of 23 projects in the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration pro- gram created in 2009 by Congress, to restore central Attention MUSIC TEACHERS! Piano? Drums? Fiddle? Ukelele? Clarinet? Flute? Guitar? Saxophone? Let the Sisters community know about the lessons you offer! Place a classifi ed ad in the Nugget’s CLASSES & TRAINING category. Just $2 per line the fi rst week, $1.50 per line on repeat weeks. And it goes online at no extra charge! Placement deadline is Monday before noon at 541-549-9941 or nuggetnews.com. Oregon forests to their natural state. Overcoming suspicions and stereotypes was one of its first hurdles. Deschutes Collaborative member Marilyn Miller, an environmentalist, and for- mer member Chuck Burley, who then worked for an Oregon sawmill, used to call each other names, Miller recalled during a recent tour of Deschutes Collaborative projects. But they got to know each other in Bend, home to more microbrewer- ies per capita than anywhere else in America. “I hate to say this, but beer really is a good conver- sation starter,” Miller said. “We would sit and talk. We learned we’re real humans with real concerns, and what we care about isn’t that far apart.” B u r l e y, w h o ’s n o w employed with the Forest Service, said the Deschutes Collaborative made recom- mendations on where and how much to thin, and the Forest Service almost always adopted them. “They had a consensus, a starting point,” Burley said in a phone interview. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, applauds col- laborative efforts, including the Good Neighbor Authority under which states can orga- nize restoration of federal lands. Under the programs, a mill removes the timber after agreeing to buy it at a cer- tain rate. The proceeds stay local, helping finance more restoration. “No. 1, it allows us to put Oregonians back to work in the woods, so there are good jobs,” Brown said. “No. 2, it provides product for the local milling infrastructure. And No. 3, it creates healthier for- ests. Do I think we need more efforts like this? Absolutely.” S u c h g r o u p s u n d e r- stand some management is required to keep public lands healthy, said Amy Tinderholt, a Deschutes National Forest ranger. But replicating the work across the sprawling reaches of the West poses several challenges. “We really don’t have the capacity in most places to do the work at anything like the scale needed,” said John Bailey, an Oregon State University professor of silvi- culture and fire management. There are no longer enough timber outlets such as mills and plants, he said. And things like equipment, trucks, drivers and infrastructure will take time and resources to ramp back up. Also, smoke from con- trolled burns can surpass legal limits, though it’s much less than smoke from out-of- control wildfires. Some wil- derness areas and habitats for endangered species could be off-limits. Another challenge is money. “All of those funds will take you only so far across the landscape, and we’ve got pretty large landscapes,” Tinderholt said. Restored areas also would have to be thinned again after some years, unless fires are allowed to burn the vegeta- tion that grows back. In Oregon, many locals are proud of the Deschutes Collaborative’s work, and want to see more done in the state and other parts of the West. “As it unfolded, the com- munity has really come behind it. It’s amazing,” said Kevin Larkin, a senior Deschutes Forest ranger. “Scaling up, that’s our hope.”
