A key problem reported by the fuels treatment planning community is the difficulty and inefficiency of evaluating and then applying many planning tools and applications.
Describing the 2013 summer fire season, the Oregon Department of Forestry called it “epic.” On those lands protected by the state, it was the costliest ever, and the first time in over 60 years that more than 100,000 acres burned. Oregon’s forests are changing. The management objectives and priorities of federal and private landowners are evolving.
During the past two decades, land managers and community leaders in the West have adopted sustainable land management methods to make forests healthier, and to maintain profitable local businesses that are beneficial to their communities.
To better understand NIPF owners, and subsequently the types of policies that are most likely to engage them in fuel mitigation strategies, researchers at the USFS Pacific Northwest Research Station and Oregon State University surveyed and interviewed private forest landowners living in fire-prone forests in eastern and central Oregon. Over 500 survey responses and 60 one-on-one interviews with NIPF owners helped the research team better understand different types of landowners, their distinct motivations, and policy suitabilities for hazardous fuels reduction.
The Ashland Forest Resiliency Stewardship Project has released “Fire for Water,” a 10-minute video (produced by Jon Schwedler, Darren Borgias and Chris Chambers) on the treatment work being done to protect the city of Ashland’s watershed. Some of the work in this multi-partner collaborative project is being supported by SPER funding, and the NW FLN is one of the co-sponsors of the video.
This sourcebook provides answers from the field— strategies and tools that some collaborative resource management groups have used to systematically evaluate their work and adapt plans and management actions based on what they have learned.
The Waldo Canyon fire presented the first opportunity for partners in the national Fire Adapted Communities (FAC) Coalition to collectively assess the performance of mitigation practices in Colorado Springs in a post-fire environment and to compare the results to the mitigation strategy recommended by the Fire Adapted Communities program.