Groups Look To Improve Forest Health In NE Oregon

The Northern Blues Restoration Partnership is now five years into a 10-year project working to protect communities from wildfire, restore biodiversity, and reintroduce healthy fire to the landscape in Northeast Oregon.  Fire ecologists say over 100 years of aggressive logging paired with fire suppression in the West has set the stage for catastrophic wildfires.

But now, says Kaci Radcliffe of The Nature Conservancy, with guidance from indigenous burning practices along with decades of research, the relationship to fire is shifting.

"Land managers now are saying, “Well, we were trying to stop this thing - control it." We actually need to welcome it back in a way that feels like it's safe for our communities, but really results in much better outcomes than we could do without it."

Training More Individuals

Micah Schmidt, with Oregon State University Extension Fire Program, another member of the partnership, said his aim is to equip more people with the skills and resources to conduct prescribed burns on non-federal lands.  This he said is being done through job training with the Northwest Youth Corps and public weekend trainings.

"No matter how much funding we throw at any agency to fund this work and do that - it all helps a ton, but we need individuals to take things into their own hands because we have a huge landscape and landowners and individuals that want to do some work are going to be a big piece of that."

Made up of a coalition of tribes, state agencies, landowners, and N-G-Os, the Northern Blues Restoration Partnership is working on 10 million acres across 13 counties in Northeast Oregon and Southeast Washington.

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