Region Archives: US West

As Oregon heads into another hot weekend, Oregon House Republicans are calling on the state Legislature to reform forest management and logging policies they say would prevent large fires from starting and spreading… In a letter sent Wednesday, representatives said lawmakers should roll back regulations and conservation plans to allow more logging on state forests, limit liabilities for volunteer firefighters who might cause injury or property damage while on the job and prohibit and sweep homeless encampments in fire prone areas… “Oregon’s war on the timber industry must end,” the Republicans wrote. “The logging industry plays a vital role in clearing out deadwood and decreasing the severity of fires. Seven sawmills have closed this year due to anti-business policies. Republicans support reforming burdensome regulations while treating the lumber industry as partners in conservation.”

The Oregon Department of Forestry is warning the public to remain cautious and safe as the risk of wildfire remains high across the Pacific Northwest. The Oregon Department of Forestry wants to remind Oregonians that with weather fluctuating across the state, fire is still on the landscape and fire season is still in effect,” the ODFW announced on Sept. 5. “Oregon is still experiencing one of the worst seasons we’ve seen in the past decade, and the department warns the public against complacency.”

State foresters say their project will help the land and help curb the effects of climate change. But some environmentalists, climate scientists, town officials and a growing number of residents don’t agree, and want the land largely left alone… The project involves killing invasives like barberry that are running amok, and preparation to cut dead and dying trees that are infested with pests like the emerald ash borer and spongy moth. It also involves cutting that will open up areas of the forest for new trees so there is variation in future that will help sequester carbon. The forest cutting plan says it will yield 458 Mbf, or thousand board feet, from a variety of trees including sugar maple, as well as 350 cords of wood.

Credit: Ian C. Bates

What happens if you set a region full of technology entrepreneurs and investors on fire? They start companies. Dozens of start-ups, backed by climate-minded investors with more than $200 million in capital, are developing technology designed to tackle a fundamental challenge of the warming world… For years, the response to wildfires was simple: Put them out. But this strategy has unnaturally stockpiled biomass — a catchall term for trees, brush and grass — in California forests. In recent decades, foresters and firefighters have realized that battling wildfires requires “treating” their fuel in advance: thinning forests and underbrush with mechanical tools and controlled — or prescribed — burns. There’s just one problem: “There aren’t enough hands,” said Kate Dargan, a former CalFire chief. “This is not a high-paying industry, it’s a hot, dirty, hard industry … where technology can help assist human production capability, it’s really important.” [To access the full story, you may need to create a New York Times free account]

Credit: Micah Schmidt

The coastal fog belt is a narrow environmental band that hugs Oregon’s coastline. It can extend about 20 miles inland and up to elevations of about 500 feet. In other areas, it may be only a few miles wide. Due to its proximity to the ocean, this ecoregion has a temperate climate. Winters are wet, and summers are often foggy. Despite their generally cool, moist conditions, these forests produce a lot of fuel and can burn at high intensity when weather conditions feature low relative humidity, high temperatures, sustained wind speeds and an ignition source. Most fires burn under moderate conditions and are extinguished at less than 1 acre. Historically, the coastal fog belt forests burned infrequently — every 300–1,000 years — and at high-severity (stand-replacing crown fire). Well-documented large fires occurred in the late 1800’s to mid-1900’s. In addition to wildfire, windthrow, flooding, landslides, pests and diseases can also disturb these forests.

Placerville, Calif. — The Eldorado National Forest has published the Caldor Fire Restoration Project Environmental Assessment, beginning a 30-day comment period. The project aims to reduce safety risks, restore forest features and strengthen resilience to future disturbances. “The publication of this environmental assessment is an important step in rebuilding our forest and communities from the impacts of the Caldor Fire,” said Eldorado Forest Supervisor Amy Reid. “The proposed actions will help to reduce the threat of future uncharacteristic, large-scale wildfires like the Caldor while also restoring the ecological processes, habitat conditions and access to recreation that are essential to the Eldorado National Forest.”

The Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW) has welcomed a study by a local ecologist into fuel thinning as a positive addition to discussions around wildfire mitigation. “We appreciate how lucky we are to have local research underway in the community—and the clear shared commitment to protect Whistler,” said the RMOW’s general manager of climate action, planning and development services, Dale Mikkelsen in an email to Pique. “Our main goal is to keep our community safe, and new findings and studies simply further this work.” …“Fuel thinning is one important part of our plan for wildfire mitigation, but it is just one component of a much larger picture. We have taken a holistic approach, looking at seven areas of focus, including education, community planning, development considerations, interagency cooperation, FireSmart training and cross-training, emergency planning, and vegetation management.”

The coastal marten is a subspecies of the Pacific marten, which is found west of the Rocky Mountains. Trapping and destruction of its coastal forest habitat shrunk its numbers, and it was thought to be extinct until the late 1990s. Now, Moriarty suspects that there are fewer than 700 individuals, confined to several small and isolated populations in southwest Oregon and northwest California. Until recently, it was also assumed that coastal martens, like their cousins, dwell primarily in old-growth forests, where abundant mossy limbs and rotting logs provide safe places to rest. …In 2020, coastal martens were listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act….Because there are so few individuals, a single disease outbreak could devastate a population. Wildfire is another growing concern.

The loss of wood manufacturing compromises our ability to protect old growth, watersheds, and biological diversity in addition to hampering strategies to address large, severe wildfires. It complicates maintaining our forests as natural carbon capture and storage systems, while providing renewable, sustainably grown wood to provide materials for our buildings, bridges, packaging, jet fuel and more.  …So, what is the crisis? The aftershocks of the Pyramid and Roseburg mill closures are still playing out on a large and small scale. …Wood manufacturers are the economic engine of forest restoration work. Without them we can’t afford to do the work at the scale needed. This vital infrastructure provides climate friendly, renewable products while covering much of the cost of restoring resilient forests, simultaneously providing an important property tax base and jobs in our communities that keep the economy running.

…Flat Country (in the Willamette National Forest) is one of the featured forests in a newly released film titled “Crown Jewels,” which documents a year-long journey through some of the last ancient forests left in the US–including stops in West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Oregon. The film is directed by Alex Haraus, a renowned environmental activist and impact producer. Haraus is involved with a national campaign to protect mature and old-growth forests across the U.S. Through his activism on social media, over half a million comment letters were submitted by the public to the Forest Service last summer in support of protecting these forests. …As a draft old-growth forest plan amendment is currently being rolled out by the Forest Service, “Crown Jewels” explores what may be gained, or lost, as a result of the final decision. The film is available to watch for free on YouTube. 

Our nation’s leading forestry school came under heavy fire on June 5th, as dozens of upset citizens and even their own experts harshly criticized their forest planning process. Oregon State University is roughly two years into their update of the 2005 management plan for the (~11,250-acre) McDonald-Dunn Research Forests, located near Corvallis. OSU’s “community input session” was intended to be an opportunity for citizens to vote on the “5 new forest management strategies” that OSU’s College of Forestry intends to implement across the forests. However, things did not go according to plan. Angry citizens criticized a wide range of problems, from flaws in OSU’s modeling, to its non-collaborative approach to forest planning, and its failure to steward these public forests. ….Generations of College deans have used these public forests as a “cash cow” to fund pet projects and pay the salaries of the guys who manage them mostly for timber production.

One of the most destructive invasive insects in the United States has been detected in three more Oregon counties this summer. Federal and state officials said Monday the emerald ash borer, known for killing 99% of Michigan’s ash trees and killing thousands more across the East Coast, has been detected in Yamhill, Clackamas and Marion counties. The small metallic-green beetle, native to eastern Asia, was first found in Oregon in Forest Grove in June 2022. Since then, extensive testing has taken place to attempt to limit the species damage in Oregon. …Once detected, officials quarantine the area. Officials are working out the details of a quarantine to limit the movement of ash, olive and white fringe tree wood, and other materials similar to the one in Washington County. 

CALIFORNIA — Not all forest fires have devastating effects. Low- and moderate-severity forest wildfires can reduce the intensity of future conflagrations for as long as 20 years in certain climates, according to new research by the University of California, Davis. The extent of reduced severity of these second fires, or reburns, and the duration of the moderating effect, varies by climate, forest type and other factors. But initial fires continue to mitigate future severity even during extreme weather, such as wind, high temperatures and drought, research published in the journal Ecological Applications finds. The researchers used satellite remote sensing to study more than 700 reburn fires over the past 50 years throughout the western United States. The findings shed light on the positive effect some of these blazes can have on forest resilience and could play a key role in helping land managers decide where to focus risk reduction efforts while adapting to a changing climate.