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About Applegater. (Jacksonville, OR) 2008-current | View Entire Issue (May 1, 2021)
Applegater Spring 2021 15 Extension fire specialist seeks community partners on fire-related issues BY CHRIS ADLAM How can the Applegate Valley community move towards a more fire-adapted future? This question has motivated residents to take action for decades, and now the new Oregon State University Extension Fire Program seeks to support this grassroots momentum. Established through the Oregon legislature under the OSU College of Forestry, the Fire Program is represented by six regional fire specialists located throughout Oregon. Last October, I assumed this position in southwestern Oregon, and I look forward to working with individuals and communities throughout the area on a range of topics relating to wildfire and prescribed fire. My background is in fire ecology and collaborative landscape planning. During my PhD at the University of California, Davis, I worked with several tribal nations in California to support initiatives for revitalizing traditional burning practices. Tribes have been working for decades to reform fire management, and I believe that learning from them about what a culture of living well with fire can look like is important for solving the current wildfire crisis. I also spent time burning with Prescribed Burn Associations in California. These cooperatives of neighbors- helping-neighbors are making it possible for private landowners to access this critical tool for keeping our landscapes and communities healthy. In their own way, they also show us how we can re- imagine our relationship with fire, turning it into an ally instead of an enemy. I hope residents of the Applegate and Rogue valleys can soon get a taste of the transformative power of putting fire into the skillful hands of tribes, ranchers, and trained rural residents. The Applegate Valley is fertile ground for this sort of work, thanks to decades of mobilization around the issue of fire. Today, groups like the Applegate Partnership and Watershed Council and the Southern Oregon Forest Restoration Collaborative are engaged with agencies to spur cross-boundary forest restoration projects. With support from the Oregon Department of Forestry, community members have come together under the Firewise banner to reduce fuels in their neighborhoods and along important ingress/egress routes. Others have sought training in prescribed fire and are building partnerships to increase its use locally. As your local Extension fire specialist, I am privileged to offer my support to such projects. The Fire Program works on all aspects of fire, from preparedness and planning, to prescribed fire and fuels reduction, to recovery and adaptation. We use classic Extension tools such as education and outreach and can also support funding acquisition, legislative WANTED! An Applegater logo! Follow us on Facebook. applegater.newspaper Email your creative ideas to capture the Applegater in an image suitable for reproduction in multiple media to gater@applegater.org. Fame & fortune could be yours! Well, fame anyway. OSU Extension fire specialist Chris Adlam looks forward to partnering with the Applegate community on fire-related issues. Photo: Kiliii Yuyan. change, agency contacts, and community organization. I am particularly interested in hearing from people who are curious about the use of prescribed fire and from existing or new collaborative efforts that bring together residents, community groups, and agencies. If you have a fire- related question I can’t answer, I will direct you to someone among our many partners who can! You can learn more about the Fire Program online at extension.oregonstate. edu/fire-program. To get in touch, you can email me at chris.adlam@oregonstate.edu or call 971-318-0350. I will be moving to the Little Applegate Valley soon with my family, so to my future neighbors: I look forward to meeting you! Chris Adlam, PhD Extension Fire Specialist Oregon State University Fire Program Chris.Adlam@oregonstate.edu The OSU Fire Program seeks to partner with local communities to support the use of prescribed burning. Photo: Chris Adlam.