Embers from the Service Fire in Wheeler County shower down near Spray on Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. (Courtesy of Northwest Interagency Coordination Center)
As wildfires continue to threaten homes, rangeland and communities in Oregon, the federal government has announced millions in new funding to prevent the blazes that have blackened a record amount of acreage.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday it has approved $100 million to reduce the threat of wildfires in 14 states, including Oregon. The money will be used for restoring forest health, prescribed burns and other wildfire prevention strategies in 18 national forests that border homes and communities. The USDA, which oversees the Forest Service, allocated $9.4 million to forests in eastern and southern Oregon and $345,000 for a project in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area in Washington, which is also expected to benefit Oregonians.
The news comes as Oregon’s wildfire season roars on, with Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek announcing Wednesday she again invoked the Emergency Conflagration Act, this time for the Service Fire in Wheeler County, one of five blazes in the Fossil Complex northwest of Spray. The Service Fire has scorched nearly 22,000 acres and prompted the Wheeler County Sheriff’s Office to issue Level 3, or go-now, evacuation orders for local residents.
This was the 17th time this year that Kotek has invoked the conflagration act in what has turned out to be a record fire season, with more than 1.7 million acres burned. Analysts say the threat of devastating wildfires in Oregon, California and elsewhere in the West is likely to continue with warmer weather and an extended drought in the region.
The $100 million grant follows $500 million announced in February, including more than $38 million for Oregon, as part of the USDA’s wildfire prevention strategy from Oregon and Colorado to New Mexico and Tennessee.
In announcing the latest funding, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack noted that states are again confronting challenging wildfires this year, underscoring the “urgent need to continue to protect our communities and infrastructure by restoring forest health across the country.”
The biggest chunk of the Oregon grant – $4.9 million – will go toward a restoration project in the Elk Creek watershed in the Umpqua National Forest in southern Oregon. The project will build on an existing collaboration between the Forest Service and Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians and focus on prescribed burns and creating fire breaks in the watershed, which is a patchwork of private, tribal and national land.
The USDA allocated another $4.4 million for a project in a watershed in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. The money will be used for planning, hiring of staff and forest restoration in an area of conifer trees that have not been hit by wildfires for much of the past 125 years. As a result, they have high levels of live and dead vegetation that could pose a fire danger.
The third Oregon project involves an allocation of nearly $133,000 for work in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. The money will allow officials to complete an environmental analysis in the La Grande Ranger District, paving the way for forest restoration work.
The Columbia River Gorge project in Washington will cover 5,000 acres now owned by the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, with the $345,000 going directly to tribal staff and businesses to foster their traditional work against wildfires and land maintenance.
Oregon’s Democratic U.S. senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, said the region needs the funding.
“Oregonians know all too well the threat of climate chaos, which is fueling increasingly frequent and severe wildfires that threaten our homes, businesses and way of life,” said Merkley, who chairs the Senate subcommittee that funds the Forest Service.
Wyden added: “Protecting lives and property from these destructive wildfires demands an all-out approach.”
Wyden has repeatedly pushed for wildfire funding, including in June, when he and Democratic U.S. Rep. Kim Schrier of Washington state introduced the National Prescribed Fire Act of 2024. The act would direct hundreds of millions of federal dollars to the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Department of the Interior for prescribed burns. This was Wyden’s third attempt to get the legislation passed after it died in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in 2020 and 2021.
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