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CapitalPress.com
Friday, August 20, 2021
After the Bootleg: Ranchers add up losses from massive fi re
By CRAIG REED
For the Capital Press
BEATTY, Ore. — “It’s
going to look like hell for the
next 200 years!”
That was Michael Mas-
tagni’s assessment after a
trip over some of the black-
ened landscape on his Five
Mile Ranch/3M Livestock
property.
The Bootleg Fire had
burned 413,717 acres as of
Aug. 12, including 3,000
acres of the Five Mile Ranch’s
timber and grazing ground
and thousands of acres of
the ranch’s grazing permit
land in the Fremont Winema
National Forest.
The fi re came within 300
yards of a barn at the ranch’s
headquarters where there
are two houses and several
outbuildings and pieces of
equipment.
“We just have to stick one
foot in front of another and
keep soldiering on,” Mast-
agni said. “The scar is going
to be two to three generations
in recovery.”
Suzanne
Gallagher,
co-owner of the Whiskey
Creek Ranch, also saw that
ranch’s grazing permit land
in the national forest black-
ened. She said most ranch-
ers are resilient over time, but
at the present the situation is
devastating.
“You can’t believe how
gruesome cows and calves
are that have been burned,”
she said with sadness in her
voice. “It’s horrible.”
Gallagher and Mastagni
each had 140 cow-calf pairs
out on their respective 40,000-
acre grazing permits. Each
rancher estimated a loss of 30
Craig Reed/For the Capital Press
Michael Mastagni of Five Mile Ranch/3M Livestock near
Beatty, Ore., looks over his ranch property that was
blackened by the Bootleg Fire. Mastagni says grazing
ground, timber and cattle were lost to the fi re.
to 40 head to the fi re. Some
of the animals suff ered from
burned hooves or hides and
had to be shot and put out of
their misery by ranch employ-
ees. Since all of the cattle out
on the permit ground hav-
en’t been accounted for, there
could be additional losses.
‘Like a freight train’
Gallagher said there was
a scary unknown to the
situation.
“We were seeing boiling
smoke, but no fl ames,” she
explained. “But I asked my
husband, ‘What is that noise?’
He said, ‘That’s the fi re.’ It
sounded like a freight train.
It was way off in the distance,
but it was coming fast. I was
terrifi ed and devastated, not
knowing about our cattle.”
Eric Duarte of Duarte
Livestock said his ranch also
had to put some animals
down due to burned hooves.
He had 650 pairs out on an
80,000-acre permit.
“We spent a better part of
10 days pushing cattle out of
the fi re’s way with horses and
dogs,” Duarte said. “It’s hard
to fathom the loss until we
gather the livestock. We were
able to push cows south to the
lower end of the permit and
away from the fi re, but we
just don’t know how many
we lost.”
Several other ranch oper-
ations also lost livestock in
the fi re and are still unsure of
their losses.
Gallagher, Duarte and
Mastagni were not surprised
that a major fi re raced across
the pine forest landscape.
Duarte said fi re was “inevita-
ble,” because of years of bee-
tles killing trees and turning
them into dry fuel. Hot, dry
weather also made the land
ripe for fi re.
“It was just a matter of
when and how big a fi re was
going to get,” he said.
More management
The ranchers said
wish there would be
forest management in
to prevent or help
they
more
order
slow
Courtesy of Michael Mastagni
Five Mile Ranch/3M Live-
stock cattle are trailed
off the ranch’s grazing
permit after the Bootleg
Fire. While many cattle
escaped the catastroph-
ic fi re, some were lost or
badly burned and had to
be put out of their misery.
down fi res such as the Boot-
leg before they become
catastrophic.
Their suggestions included
more select thinning, more
prescribed burns, a quicker
and more aggressive response
to fi res before they blow up,
more salvage logging to elim-
inate future fi re fuels and
getting livestock back on
the burned ground because
they’ll eat young shoots of
some weeds before those
plants have a chance to take
over.
Gallagher and Mastagni
each said several spots in their
permit areas had been pre-
scribed burns in the past and
although the Bootleg Fire had
gone through them, it was at
a lower intensity, giving the
ground a better chance at a
quick recovery.
“There is work in prog-
ress to change some rules,
but it’s slow,” Mastagni said.
“Ranchers have competing
philosophies with some agen-
cies. We want to open up the
timber with trees 30 feet apart
so we’re better able to grow
grass.”
Duarte agreed there needs
to be more forest manage-
ment, but added he under-
stands environmental pres-
sure can prevent or slow up
some management decisions.
“The forest needs to be
logged, it needs to be cleaned
up, it needs to be grazed,” the
rancher said. “That will all
help. We’ll still have fi res, but
just not as big.
“On fi res in the past, log-
gers would jump on them and
get some of them out,” he
added. “Now they get sued
when they do that.”
Both Mastagni and Gal-
lagher have brought most of
their cattle off their permit
ground and back to their home
fi elds. But now those animals
are grazing on grass that was
intended for fall pasture or a
late summer hay crop.
One of Gallagher’s pas-
tures wasn’t available for use
because it has been used for
the past month as a helicopter
base with eight to nine chop-
pers working from there on
the Bootleg Fire.
“My grandkids do think
I’m the coolest grandmother
in the neighborhood because
I got helicopters in my yard,”
Gallagher said, injecting some
humor in the conversation.
Feed question
The ranchers explained
they’ll have to fi gure
out the feed issue later,
whether it’s feeding more
of their hay, having to buy
hay or culling their herds.
Feeding hay in the fall will
leave them with less hay
for the winter months, pos-
sibly none.
They explained buying
hay will be a problem due
to a lack of supply and a
high cost. Mastagni said he
believed hay could jump to
$240 a ton, up from $180 a
ton a year ago. He said hay
quality for the high price
would also be a concern.
Although they have
plenty of issues to deal with
in the present, the ranchers
explained there is a defi -
nite uncertainty about the
availability of their grazing
permits during the summer
months of next year. They
said there is the possibil-
ity the U.S. Forest Service
won’t allow cattle back in
the burned areas for a year
or two, or the number of
pairs allowed would be
greatly decreased.
Gallagher said any loss
of the permit ground is dev-
astating, but she was also
saddened by the burning of
“such beautiful country.”
But she expressed optimism
about the future and about
the land healing in time.
“You have to keep pos-
itive thoughts,” she said.
“Pray for rain and snow. We
need a real winter. We hav-
en’t had one for a while.”
Mastagni said there are
a couple of options for the
ranches impacted by the
fi re.
“You can wither and die,
or you can struggle through
a tough year and press on,”
he said.
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