While driving south through Jackson County Oregon on the I-5 corridor, you’ll come across the Siskiyou Mountain Range. The Siskiyou Mountains form a clear delineation between the Rogue River and Klamath River Watersheds. Instead of running north to south as do most major mountain ranges in the world, the Siskiyou Mountains run east to west. The east-west orientation of these mountains acts as a land bridge connecting the Coast Range and the Cascades creating great habitat and wildlife connectivity in the region.
While hard to tell from looking at the mountains from the highway, thousands of homes are located in the Wilderness Urban Interface (WUI). Jackson and Josephine counties have more homes located in the WUI areas than any other counties in the western US. The abundance of homes located in the WUI combined with the limited, often exclusive access of ingress & egress of these areas led to the West Bear area being determined as the #1 highest priority for community safety in the entire Rogue Basin Cohesive Wildfire Strategy. The strategy covers approximately 4.5 million acres of the Rogue Basin and prescribes prioritized treatments for approximately 1.2 million acres over the next 20 years.
The Almeda Fire of 2020 destroyed much of the cities of Talent and Phoenix Oregon. Thousands of homes, structures, and business were lost. Fortunately, major loss of life was avoided. The Alameda fire along with the Labor Day fires of 2022 served as a sobering reminder of the future potential for uncharacteristically severe wildfires and their effects on life, property, communities, wildlife habitat, water, and other resources.
In response to the need, multiple Federal and state agencies and NGOs came together to develop the Lomakatsi West Bear All Lands Forest Restoration Project and received funding through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP). This project sponsored by Lomakasti Restoration Project received approximately $2.5 in funding for fuels reduction work and was leveraged by another $2.5 Million in funding from FEMA and Sustainable Northwest, a local nonprofit. Since the original funding was received, other funding sources, both public and private, have been added to the project area (including for the City of Jacksonville). The total funding for this project stands at approximately $11 Million making this one of the highest leveraged RCPP projects in the country.
This project allows NRCS, Oregon Department of Forestry, BLM, NGOs, and municipalities to coordinate efforts to implement strategic landscape level fuels reduction treatments on approximately 40-50% of the roughly 27,000 acre designated landscape. The overall goals of the project include reducing risk of uncharacteristically severe wildfire, improve community safety and emergency response, improve and protect wildlife habitat (including for threatened and endangered species), and supporting healthier and more resilient forest conditions. Individual projects are ranked and prioritized for funding-based adjacency to public roads, strategic ridgetops, adjacency to other previous/planned fuels reduction treatments, and other factors that help determine the highest value projects bringing the most public benefit. Additionally, project partners have implemented pre and post treatment monitoring to help determine treatment efficacy and help guide the implementation of future treatments.
Local NRCS staff in the Central Point Field Office (Peter Winnick, District Conservationist and Callum Knights, Soil Conservationist) work directly with local private, non-industrial forest landowners to plan and implement strategic fuels reduction projects. Forest Management planning and practice implementation, like the ones Tucker Teutsch, private forest landowner, has created on his family property use conservation practices including tree thinning, slash treatment, and the creation of patch openings
Another tangible benefit of the project and working at the landscape level is the connection between neighbors and communities that it helps to create. Multiple Firewise and other community-based groups exist and have expanded through the entire project area. These groups help raise awareness of the issues and risks associated with wildfire, help to create plans for future collaborative work, and increase preparedness in the case of a wildfire. Teutsch hopes his neighbors and community will also participate in similar planning and strategic fuels reduction work. He is a passionate about sharing his knowledge and advocacy for creating more fire safe landscapes and communities.
West Bear RCPP project partners include Lomakatsi Restoration Project, Sustainable Northwest, Oregon Department of Forestry, Rogue Forest Partners, OSU (Southern Oregon Research and Extension), US Fish and Wildlife Partners Program, the Bureau of Land Management, and The Nature Conservancy.
