32 results for author: Susan Jane Brown

In Oregon, a mysterious tree grove conjures a colder time

Yellow cedars are suited to damp coastal Alaska. So what are they doing in the desert?

2018 Natural Resources Camp a Success!

In the summer of 2018, Blue Mountains Forest partners and OSU 4-H Association hosted Natural Resources Camp in Grant County.  Click here for pictures from this year's fun!

Living with Fire

Oregon State University, a close science partner of the Blue Mountains Forest Partners, has created a new research center that focuses on fire-prone landscapes, their restoration, and their management.  The inaugural post from Living With Fire focuses on 2015's Canyon Creek Fire and why the fire burned the way that it did, and offers insights for how to manage fire-prone landscapes in the future.  Click here to learn more.

Restoration Renaissance: A New Paradigm in John Day

The remote rural community of John Day, Oregon, is enjoying a restoration renaissance. The only mill left in the county, Malheur Lumber Co., is humming along with 104 employees working extended hours processing a steady supply of logs from federal forest restoration projects. Restoration work has become an economic engine for the community: Careful thinning of smaller trees increases forest resilience while providing additional material for local industry. And the results are real: Local school enrollment has grown from 570 to 615 students, the highest it’s been in fifteen years. Unemployment has fallen from a high of 14 percent in 2012 to 8.9 ...

Prescribed Fire & Smoke Management

For a millennium, surface fires burned thousands of acres of ponderosa pine and dry mixed conifer forests in the southern Blue Mountains every year. Today, the nature of fire has changed. In 2015, 110,000 acres burned, much of it a high severity fire that killed thousands of acres of old growth pine and destroyed more than 40 homes. The behavior of fires like the Canyon Creek Complex is driven by dense forests and the build-up of surface fuels over more than 100 years since fire was excluded from the landscape. Thinning forests captures the economic value of timber, reduces forest drought stress, and paves the way for the Forest Service to reintr...

Seeking consensus in post fire management: The Canyon Creek example

Our partners at the Northwest Fire Science Consortium, which works to accelerate the awareness, understanding, and adoption of wildland fire science, recently prepared this video about the Canyon Creek wildfire that burned on the Malheur National Forest in 2015.  The video discusses the wildfire, the effect on local communities, and the aftermath of the fire, including the restoration activities proposed for the Canyon Creek watershed.  As the video explains, the Blue Mountains Forest Partners is working with the Forest Service to develop a science-based research proposal that will investigate the best way to balance local economic needs from ...

Local collaborative awarded $4 million in federal forest restoration funding: Collaborative almost doubles coverage area, triples timber target and increases annual funding by $1.5 million

Efforts by diverse stakeholders to reach consensus on contentious forest management issues have paid off — again. Instead of the $2.5 million in annual funding it has received for several years, the collaborative coalition working to implement restoration projects on the Malheur National Forest recently learned it will be awarded $4 million this year, the maximum allowed in the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration program. As long as Congress continues to fund the CFLR program, the collaborative could continue to receive the full $4 million each year for the remainder of its 10-year project, which began in 2012. The funding, intended to ...

Making the logging industry more sustainable

JOHN DAY - The logging industry in Oregon has been working with environmentalists for years to positive results. To learn more about BMFP's efforts, please view the following news story by clicking here and embedded below.

Workshop, tour focus on post-fire management

MT. VERNON – Three visiting researchers will speak at a workshop and field tour on post-fire management, sponsored by the Blue Mountains Forest Partners and the Northwest Fire Science Consortium. The workshop will be from 1 to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 16, at the Mt. Vernon Community Center, and will be followed by a field tour to the South Fork Fire area from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday, June 17. The events will review the current science surrounding snags on the landscape, post-fire habitat and woodpeckers, soil impacts, and management actions to enhance forest health after fires. The workshop schedule includes: 1 p.m. – Chris Dunn, a ...

Restoration gets boost from FS

JOHN DAY – Restoration efforts on the Malheur National Forest are getting a vote of confidence from the top. Leslie Weldon, deputy chief of national forest systems for the Forest Service, recently approved an expansion of the Southern Blues Restoration Coalition’s Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration (CFLR) boundaries. The revision was requested last September by the Malheur Forest staff and the forest’s two collaborative groups, the Blue Mountains Forest Partners and the Harney County Restoration Collaborative. The slate of CFLR work currently receives $2.5 million, per year, above normal funding to help pay up to 50 percent of ...