The BulleTin • Wednesday, June 23, 2021 A3
TODAY
Today is Wednesday, June 23, the
174th day of 2021. There are 191 days
left in the year.
Today’s Highlights in History:
In 1972, President Richard Nixon
signed Title IX barring discrimination
on the basis of sex for “any education
program or activity receiving federal
financial assistance.”
In 1904, President Theodore Roo-
sevelt was nominated for a second
term of office at the Republican Na-
tional Convention in Chicago.
In 1947, the Senate joined the House
in overriding President Harry S.
Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley
Act, designed to limit the power of
organized labor.
In 1969, Warren E. Burger was sworn
in as chief justice of the United States
by the man he was succeeding, Earl
Warren.
In 1985, all 329 people aboard an Air
India Boeing 747 were killed when
the plane crashed into the Atlantic
Ocean near Ireland because of a
bomb authorities believe was plant-
ed by Sikh separatists.
In 1988, James E. Hansen, a clima-
tologist at the Goddard Institute for
Space Studies, told a Senate panel
that global warming of the earth
caused by the “greenhouse effect”
was a reality.
In 1993, in a case that drew wide-
spread attention, Lorena Bobbitt of
Prince William County, Virginia, sex-
ually mutilated her husband, John,
after he’d allegedly raped her. (John
Bobbitt was later acquitted of marital
sexual assault; Lorena Bobbitt was
later acquitted of malicious wound-
ing by reason of insanity.)
In 1995, Dr. Jonas Salk, the medical
pioneer who developed the first
vaccine to halt the crippling rampage
of polio, died in La Jolla, California,
at age 80.
In 2009, “Tonight Show” sidekick Ed
McMahon died in Los Angeles at 86.
Ten years ago: Republicans pulled
out of debt-reduction talks led by
Vice President Joe Biden, blaming
Democrats for demanding tax in-
creases as part of a deal rather than
accepting more than $1 trillion in
cuts to Medicare and other govern-
ment programs.
Five years ago: Britain voted to
leave the European Union after a
bitterly divisive referendum cam-
paign, toppling Prime Minister David
Cameron, who had led the campaign
to keep Britain in the EU. In a narrow
victory for affirmative action, the
Supreme Court upheld, 4-3, a Uni-
versity of Texas program that took
account of race in deciding whom
to admit.
One year ago: The Louisville police
department fired an officer involved
in the fatal shooting of Breonna Tay-
lor more than three months earlier,
saying Brett Hankison had shown
“extreme indifference to the value of
human life” when he fired ten rounds
into Taylor’s apartment. Tennis player
Novak Djokovic said he and his wife
tested positive for the coronavirus
after he played in exhibition matches
he organized in Serbia and Croatia
without social distancing; he was the
fourth player to come down with
COVID-19 after taking part.
Today’s Birthdays: Supreme Court
Justice Clarence Thomas is 73. Actor
Jim Metzler is 70. “American Idol”
ex-judge Randy Jackson is 65. Actor
Frances McDormand is 64. Rock
musician Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth)
is 59. Writer-director Joss Whedon
is 57. Rock singer KT Tunstall is 46.
Singer-songwriter Jason Mraz is 44.
Football Hall of Famer LaDainian
Tomlinson is 42. Rock singer Duffy
is 37. Country singer Katie Armiger
is 30.
— Associated Press
patio
world
LOCAL, STATE & REGION
Wildfire resilience
Smaller-scale landowners play big role
ronmental Quality Incentives
Program, which shares costs to
do precommercial forest thin-
nings.
BY MAX EGENER
Pamplin Media Group
Bob and Bonnie
Shumaker know full well
a wildfire could be at their
doorstep any year.
It’s a risk they’re willing
to take in order to live in
a picturesque forest of firs
and cedars about 12 miles
northwest of Forest Grove.
“We love the forest,” said
Bonnie Shumaker, who
planted the first 5 acres of
what is now the 160-acre
Shumaker Tree Farm with
her husband in 1980.
When it comes to mit-
igating wildfire risks, for-
esters say small woodland
owners like the Shumakers
play a crucial role in the
patchwork of forestland
ownership.
There are more than
40,000 nonindustrial
small-woodland owners in
Oregon who each maintain
between 10 and 5,000 acres
of forestland.
In the three Portland
metro-area counties,
small-woodland owners
account for 22.5% of all
forested lands, according
to data from the Oregon
Forest Resources Institute.
In Washington County, the
proportion is the highest of
the three at 30.9%.
Problem: The costs for
small woodland owners
Large timber companies
have relatively predictable
revenues that allow them to
invest in wildfire fuel mit-
igation techniques such as
thinning and pruning trees,
which reduce the risk of
major wildfires destroying
their forests.
But the cost of manag-
ing forests in a fire-resilient
way and the labor required
to do it can be barriers for
small-woodland owners
who typically don’t receive
regular income from their
trees.
People living in rural,
forested areas generally
belong to an aging demo-
graphic, said Matt Mackey,
wildland fire supervisor
with the Oregon Depart-
ment of Forestry’s Forest
Grove District.
It becomes increasingly
difficult for older residents
to maintain defensible
space around their homes,
to prune trees and clear
woody debris from the
forest floor on their own,
Mackey said.
“The physical labor can
be too much for them at
times,” he said. “And then
on top of it, it is expensive
work to do if you are going
to contract it out.”
Costs vary depending on
the type of forest, but rou-
Max Egener/Pamplin Media Group
An example shows thinning on Cedar Canyon Tree Farm, owned by
Bonnie and Bob Shumaker, right, since 1977.
tine fuel mitigation can be as
much as $1,000 per acre annu-
ally, according to the U.S. For-
est Service.
Building water sources or
roads that allow firefighters to
better access properties and
fight fires — actions that are
considered best practices — is
even more costly.
“Folks who are living on a
fixed or limited income, they’re
not gonna spend the money on
that, and I don’t blame them,”
Mackey said.
After the devastating 2020
Labor Day fires, Mackey says
he saw a substantial increase in
the number of people asking
the Forest Grove District of-
fice for advice and help to find
financial support for wildfire
mitigation.
The fires drove home that
even forested areas surround-
ing Portland, which have his-
torically been less prone to
frequent major fires, are vul-
nerable, Mackey said.
He says small woodland
owners should be looking to
do more fire fuel mitigation as
the wildland-urban interface
— where forested lands meet
developed areas — becomes
more populated and as climate
changes drive increased fire
danger.
Every year, the Forest Grove
District office applies to a com-
petitive grant program for
federal wildfire fuels mitiga-
tion grants, Mackey said. The
grants make funds available to
forestland owners on the land-
scape scale, but they typically
go to higher priority areas out-
side of the Portland area. In
2020, Yamhill County received
one of the grants.
Solution: Elbow grease and
asking for help
Bob Shumaker knows in-
tense wildfires are getting more
frequent in Western Oregon
forests.
Where Quality Matters
“It’s just a fact of life,” Shu-
maker said. “We’re getting
drier, and so we have more
chance of a devastating fire.”
He says the more than 200
hours per year he and his wife
each put into managing his
forests is recreation — much of
it with an eye toward fire mit-
igation.
It’s worth it to be able to sit
with their dog Bailey on the
floating dock they built on
their pond, which creates the
headwaters of Cedar Canyon
Creek.
“Our job is to be stewards,”
said Shumaker, 76.
Although he admits he’s get-
ting older, and the work is get-
ting harder, they’re able to save
costs by doing almost all of the
labor themselves, he said.
The Shumakers invested in
equipment, including a bull-
dozer and tractor. That’s al-
lowed them to prune about 80
acres of their trees, maintain
a road system that can han-
dle firetrucks, remove invasive
plants and plant native ones
to try to create the healthiest,
most fire-prepared ecosystem
possible, Bob Shumaker said.
Even though they’ve been
able to spend the time and
money to take such actions,
they say there’s always more fuel
mitigation that can be done.
They’ve turned to grants
from the Natural Resources
Conservation Service’s Envi-
All in, or not
In 2019, the state Legislature
provided funding to create a
fire program through the OSU
extension service to, in part,
help create fire-resilient com-
munities across the state.
Aaron Groth is a regional
fire specialist with the fire pro-
gram.
He works with small-wood-
land owners to prepare for fire
by helping them to meet their
individual management goals.
Management goals across
a landscape often are diverse,
Groth said. Some small wood-
land owners want to maximize
their ability to profit from tim-
ber harvests; others want to
create ideal wildlife habitat or
to support fisheries, or both.
The hope is that enough
small-woodland owners create
such plans to create fire-resil-
iency on the landscape scale.
If only one person in an area
is taking steps to be fire-resil-
ient, “we’re not really making
an impact on the landscape
scale,” Groth said.
But he says the OSU exten-
sion fire program is uniquely
positioned to help foster agree-
ment between landowners who
often have differing, potentially
conflicting management goals.
That’s mostly because the
service isn’t coming from a
government agency with regu-
latory power, Groth said.
He and other program spe-
cialists plan to convene more
fire-resiliency workshops with
organizations like the Wash-
ington County Small Wood-
land Association going for-
ward, he said.
LAST CALL FOR PHOTOS!
We want your historic
photos for our upcoming
Hello Bend! pictorial history book.
We’re looking for group photos from the 1950s
to 2000s such as class reunions or work crews
in Central Oregon. We will scan your photos and
hand them back to you at the event.
For details, email: gobrien@bendbulletin.com
Bring in your photos for a chance to win a FREE
copy of the Hello Bend! pictorial history book!
SCANNING SESSIONS
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June 24-25 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m
live life with friends
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222 SE Reed Market Road - Bend
541-388-0022
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