This Nov. 7, 2013, photo provided by the Deschutes Collaborative Forest Project shows an unidentified worker burning a pile of collected undergrowth in the Deschutes National Forest in central Oregon. The thinning of forests in central Oregon has saved homes amid one of the most devastating wildfire seasons in the American West.
Alexandra Steinmetz/Deschutes Collaborative Forest Project via AP
Lightning started a forest fire one August afternoon near this Oregon tourist town, and it was spreading fast. Residents in outlying areas evacuated as flames marched toward their homes.
Just a few months earlier, the U.S. Forest Service and a group of locals representing environmental, logging and recreational interests arranged to thin part of the overgrown forest, creating a buffer zone around Sisters.
Workers removed trees and brush with machines, then came through on foot to ignite prescribed burns. That effort saved homes, and perhaps the community of 2,500 on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Range, by slowing the fire's progress and allowing firefighters to corral it.
Phys.org: Project saved homes from fires, but can it be duplicated?
There's your proof that this type of forest management works. The question coming from that is whether it will also would have worked in California.
Scrutiny of the condition of the American West's forests, and of policies that curtailed logging and suppressed wildfires, has intensified amid a devastating wildfire season that has burned a combined area bigger than Maryland and caused widespread destruction in California's wine country.
Until the advent of aggressive fire suppression at the turn of the last century, forests were historically shaped by low-intensity blazes, with the flames clearing underbrush but not killing tall trees. Forests across the West are now so overgrown they've been called powder kegs.
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From the above, it seems Oregon is the only place with a project such as the Deschutes Collaborative so it's unknown to what extent fire breaks of that nature would have helped but, given the experience with Sisters, it seems likely.
It's not so simple as to say to California, do it this way and you will be right as rain.
California's situation is different because its wildfires have generally ignited in chaparral - brush that naturally grows densely packed, said Andrew Latimer, plant expert at the University of California-Davis. The temperate coniferous forests that burn in large wildfires elsewhere are historically less dense.
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Such groups understand some management is required to keep public lands healthy, said Amy Tinderholt, a Deschutes National Forest ranger.
But replicating the work across the sprawling reaches of the West poses several challenges.
"We really don't have the capacity in most places to do the work at anything like the scale needed," said John Bailey, an Oregon State University professor of silviculture and fire management.
There are no longer enough timber outlets such as mills and plants, he said. And things like equipment, trucks, drivers and infrastructure will take time and resources to ramp back up.
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These are the good, non-retail jobs people actually want and the state will pay the freight for them but that's got to be substantially less than the state pays in emergency personnel and the cost of recovery when a wildfire goes completely berserk as in the Napa Valley.
There is real Hope.
In Oregon, many locals are proud of the Deschutes Collaborative's work, and want to see more done in the state and other parts of the West.
"As it unfolded, the community has really come behind it. It's amazing," said Kevin Larkin, a senior Deschutes Forest ranger. "Scaling up, that's our hope."
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