32 results for author: Susan Jane Brown
Film screening highlights fire danger
Screening of documentary "The West is Burning" highlights fire danger and community problem-solving in Sisters Country
To help dry forests, fire needs to be just the right intensity, and happen more than once
New research from Oregon State University: "Too hot, too cold, or just right: Can wildfire restore dry forests of the interior Pacific Northwest?"
Two Oregon landscapes selected for FY23 Joint Chief’s Landscape Restoration Partnership funding
Two projects in Oregon will receive funding as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Join Chiefs' Landscape Restoration Partnership initiative, including the North Wasco All Lands project and the Southern Blues Restoration project. The projects aim to mitigate wildfire risk, improve water quality, restore forest ecosystems, combat climate change, and create job opportunities for local contractors while supporting the economies of surrounding areas. Both projects align with broader efforts to reduce wildfire threats to communities and landowners, protect water quality and supply, and improve wildlife habitat for at-risk species.
Southern Blues Restoration project awarded funding from Joint Chiefs’ Landscape Restoration Partnership
BMFP participated with other partners to develop this Joint Chiefs proposal for the Southern Blues Restoration project on the Malheur National Forest, and we're excited for the opportunities it will provide to perform restoration work on public and private lands in Grant County.
Press release: MERKLEY, CRAPO TEAM UP TO EXPAND COLLABORATIVE FOREST WORK
“Since its enactment, the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program has demonstrated resounding success in building partnerships, restoring large landscapes, and providing rural community socioeconomic well-being. WELC is pleased to support reauthorization and expansion of this incredible program, and Senators Merkley and Crapo are to be commended for their steadfast advocacy for the Program,” said Susan Brown, Wildlands Program Director & Senior Staff Attorney of Western Environmental Law Center.
Collaborative Restoration on the Malheur National Forest
We’re working collaboratively to restore the southern Blue Mountains in Eastern Oregon. This area has suffered from 100 years of fire suppression, logging, and unregulated grazing, causing a landscape of dense forests and heavy fuel loading. Our restoration work aims to remove young trees and promote the survival of old trees, while re-introducing low intensity surface fire to reduce fuels and protect communities. Explore the benefits of our work on the Malheur National Forest in this interactive story map created by our partners at the Oregon State University:
From the Institute for Conservation Leadership: Collaboration is Like Regenerative Agriculture
We’ve heard the voices of frustration and challenges about how long it takes to create a productive network, alliance, or partnership. And the questions come – How long will this take? Why can’t we move faster? Is this worth it? Will this actually work?
Of Woodpeckers and Harvests: Finding Compatibility Between Habitat and Salvage Logging
Vicki Saab, a research wildlife biologist with the Rocky Mountain Station, has spent over two decades studying the habitat niches of disturbance-associated woodpecker species in post-wildfire landscapes. These data form the basis of FIRE-BIRD, a new habitat mapping tool that managers can use to locate probable woodpecker habitat within the area. To demonstrate how FIRE-BIRD can be used to inform management decisions, Saab collaborated with the Malheur National Forest and the Blue Mountains Forest Partners on an experimental salvage logging study called the Canyon Creek Experimental Salvage Study. This 4-year project seeks to determine how 3 woodpecker ...
How to prevent an anti-government revolution
Thanks in large part to a land-management strategy that local ranchers, conservationists and federal employees developed 15 years before the Bundys arrived, the community was largely inoculated against their simplistic solutions and fiery but empty rhetoric. Through years of homegrown collaboration led in part by the nonprofit High Desert Partnership, the community was already tackling many of the issues that inspired the Bundys to take up arms: fences, water access, poverty. To many locals, these were not ideological struggles, but tangible problems they were solving together.
21st century planning techniques for creating fire-resilient forests in the American west
Novel approaches to framing wildfire protection (e.g., potential operational delineations, or PODs) and advancements in modeling tools have been critical to improving our understanding of fire and its potential impacts. The successful use of those tools requires data that are accurate at fine resolution, spatially explicit, and current. However, such data often do not exist or are extremely time intensive and costly to develop. Moreover, much of the information generated from various existing fire models can be difficult to translate to other metrics related to managing natural resources. In large part, these two limitations – fine-resolution, ...