ENTERPRISE, Ore. — A team of experts charged with accelerating the pace of forest restoration and heading off big fires in the Blue Mountains of northeast Oregon is proposing a 10-year effort to thin the underbrush in a 100,000-acre area.
The proposal is a result of a decision a year ago on the part of the U.S. Forest Service’s regional forester at the time, Kent Connaughton, the East Oregonian reported.
The team he commissioned has proposed the Lower Joseph Creek Restoration Project on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest about 20 miles north of Enterprise. The area is about 156 square miles.
The agency released a draft environmental impact statement Nov. 15 for public comment.
It includes three alternatives that would affect how many acres are harvested and how many miles of road are closed. The comment period is set for 90 days. The team hopes to start the project by late summer and expects it to take a decade to complete.
“Wildfire is the primary ecological driver,” said Michael Brown, water and soils scientist with the team. “We have an abundance of volatile fuels in the forest.”
Fire suppression now has built up 100 years of overgrowth in some areas, contributing to high-intensity blazes throughout the Northwest.
Last summer, the region spent nearly $460 million fighting wildfires that scorched more than 1.2 million acres of land, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center in Portland.
Large fires on the Wallowa-Whitman included the 36,000-acre Somers Fire 30 miles northeast of Enterprise and the 4,500-acre 5 Mile Fire in the Imnaha River drainage, near the Lower Joseph Creek project area.
Connaughton appointed Pendleton’s Bill Aney as coordinator of the effort to ramp up thinning work.
Aney’s team focuses on the Umatilla, Wallowa-Whitman, Malheur and Ochoco forests, which together comprise more than 6 million acres.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
