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
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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.”