Siletz news /, December 01, 2020, Page 13, Image 13

OSU researchers team up with Karuk Tribe, others on new fire planning approach
By Steve Lundeberg, 541-737-4039,
steve.lundeberg@oregonstate.edu
Sources: Skye Greenler, skye.greenler@
oregonstate.edu; Chris Dunn, 541-737-
1194, Chris.Dunn@oregonstate.edu
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Scientists from
Oregon State University are teaming up
with the Karuk Tribe and other partners
to develop strategies for managing future
wildfires in Northern California’s Klam-
ath Mountains and restoring the role of
beneficial fire in the region.
“Historically, fires were frequent and
highly useful for this landscape and the
Karuk people,” said project leader Skye
Greenler, a graduate research fellow in
the OSU College of Forestry. “For the
last 150 years, we’ve suppressed fire and
now most of the fires on this landscape
are ones we can’t suppress that are often
devastating to communities, ecosystems
and cultural resources.”
Covering more than 1 million acres
along the Klamath and Salmon rivers,
the Karuk Tribe’s ancestral territory has
suffered greatly from the decades of fire
suppression and the cessation of indig-
enous burning practices, researchers say.
A 90,000-acre part of its territory near
the town of Happy Camp was burned in
a single day by the Slater Fire in early
September as blazes tore through forests
near the California-Oregon border.
“We have created a monster,” said Will
Harling, director of the Mid-Klamath
Watershed Council and a co-leader of the
project, which is known as the Western
Klamath Restoration Partnership. “Devel-
oping models to show fire managers and
the public how cultural fire management
practices can help tame this monster and
restore the use of fire as one of our most
Courtesy photo from Oregon State University
Planning continues in the search for ways to mitigate wildfires and reintroduce
beneficial fire in Northern California
powerful management tools is a focus of
this project.”
Fire is a central part of Karuk culture,
removing accumulated fuels while ensur-
ing the quality of traditional foods and
cultural materials, Greenler said.
“Wildland systems in the region have
evolved alongside Karuk management
practices for thousands of years,” she said.
“Because our project was initiated by our
forest collaborator partners and the Karuk
Tribe, it provides an opportunity to put sci-
entific models into action via on-the-ground
decision-making in a way that is rarely done.”
The partnership revolves around what
the project team has identified as the four
primary wildfire management needs for
the mountains of the California-Oregon
border country:
1. Improve wildfire response through
collaborative workshops that integrate
analytics, local knowledge and diverse
perspectives to maximize safety and
ecological benefit.
2. Build wildfire models that blend
Indigenous and western knowledge,
values and practices.
3. Improve understanding of how cul-
tural ignitions have and could shape
vegetation dynamics, resource abun-
dance and wildfire risk.
4. Develop methods for understanding
how management decisions will shape
socioecological systems, wildfire risk
and resources as the climate changes.
The project will include the creation
of fire planning units on a map known as
PODs – short for potential operational
delineations.
PODs summarize risk to inform wild-
fire response decisions and POD boundar-
ies line up with “high probability control
features” such as roads, rivers, lakes and
canyons to help ensure that a pre-identified
response would be successful if pursued.
To assess landscape conditions under
multiple management scenarios within the
PODs, the team will develop a regionally
specific, culturally grounded wildfire model.
“Spatial fire planning and PODs,
in conjunction with modeling and cul-
tural fire regime information, will work
together to make for better wildland
management and vegetation conditions,”
said Chris Dunn, a research associate in
the OSU College of Forestry with several
years of firefighting experience.
The research group also includes
John Bailey of OSU, Susan Prichard of
the University of Washington, and Frank
Lake and Paul Hessburg of the U.S. Forest
Service. Lake is a Karuk Tribal desendant.
“Collaboratively integrating western
and Indigenous fire science and knowledge
systems in this research will help reinstate
fire on this landscape to achieve socioeco-
logical resource values with benefits both
to Tribes and the public,” Lake said.
About the OSU College of Forestry
For a century, the College of Forestry
has been a world class center of teaching,
learning and research. It offers graduate
and undergraduate degree programs in
sustaining ecosystems, managing forests
and manufacturing wood products; con-
ducts basic and applied research on the
nature and use of forests; and operates
more than 15,000 acres of college forests.
CTSI Tribal Youth
Online Academic Support
On-Demand
Tutoring
Weekly Student
Meet Ups
PLEASE NOTE:
On-line tutoring access is
funded with US CARES Act
Funds: Families MUST register
by December 1, 2020
To get started with either program contact your local education specialist:
Siletz and Out of Area-Alissa alissal@ctsi.nsn.us; PDX- Katy Katyh@ctsi.nsn.us;
Salem and Out of Area-Sonya sonyamj@ctsi.nsn.us; Eugene-Nick nickv@ctsi.nsn.us
December 2020
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