Of Woodpeckers and Harvests: Finding Compatibility Between Habitat and Salvage Logging
The western United States is home to many woodpecker species that are strongly associated with recently disturbed forests, including post wildfire and post-beetle outbreaks. These types of landscapes are favored habitat because the dead and dying trees provide nesting and foraging substrates. When managing these landscapes, managers must balance providing habitat for woodpeckers considered species of conservation concern with conducting salvage logging sales that generate economic revenue for the surrounding communities. Until recently, managers couldn’t be certain where ...
Landscape Pattern Monitoring Portal Now Active!
The Forest Service, the Southern Blues Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Project, and the Blue Mountains Forest Partners worked together to build a web application that would help map and monitor changes in land cover and landscape pattern as a result of management activities and disturbances. One of the most important considerations for this work was that it should be inclusive of all agencies and organizations that collaboratively manage the landscape; as such, the workflow needed to be developed in an accessible location, without the use of proprietary data, ...
Restoration in a Fire Forest: The Benefits of Burning
Wildfire has historically played an important role in the health and structure of Oregon's dry forests. Prescribed fire is a valuable tool used to restore forest health, increase firefighter safety, and better protect nearby human resources in these fire-adapted landscapes. (more…)
To prevent devastating wildfires, old adversaries are finding ways to work together
Nothing is simple when it comes to federal lands management. But in order to thin fire-prone forests — and to break legal and ideological gridlock — national forests in the Pacific Northwest are supporting collaborations with formerly adversarial interests.
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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 ...
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, ...
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 ...