An employee of M&UM Services of Central Point manages a burn pile in Phoenix as part of the Bear Creek restoration project.

The Almeda and Table Rock wildfires of 2020 made it clear that our communities along Bear Creek cannot afford to allow flammable invasive weeds to flourish within the Bear Creek corridor.

In spring 2023, The Freshwater Trust received a grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board to help with the recovery efforts. This grant is being used to address dead and downed woody materials, access improvements, and invasive weed control at four priority locations within the Almeda Fire scar between Ashland and Phoenix.

Controlled pile burning of small diameter woody materials is one of the tools being used to remove materials that have fallen on the floodplain post fire and, if left unmanaged, pose significant fire risk in the future.

After years of summer smoke and the devastating impacts of wildfire, it is only natural that the sight and smell of smoke can trigger concerns from the public. However, prescribed and managed fire can be one of the best tools we have for preventing unwanted fires.

By conducting thinning and dead woody materials breakdown work during winter and early spring, followed by managed burning of the materials, we can remove potentially dangerous fuels and improve access for ongoing treatment and removal of invasive weeds.

This intentional work will reduce the risk of fire in summer and make it easier to control invasive weeds going forward so that Bear Creek can recover to a native plant community that is known to be more fire resistant and resilient.

If the small woody materials are not processed now, they will create a matrix for invasive weeds to hide within and will increase the flammability of the creek corridor by blocking access for weed control work and community safety activities like enforcement of camping regulations during fire season.

Furthermore, they block access and contribute to safety concerns that reduce the ability of emergency personnel to respond to fire and other community safety needs.

Large woody materials like dead standing snags and downed logs are important to maintaining floodplain and stream functions as well as providing habitat for wildlife like bats that help control insects, cavity nesting birds that are fun to watch, and future stream habitat for juvenile endangered coho salmon, steelhead and fall chinook.

Large logs do not pose a fire risk in the way small diameter branch materials do because they tend to contain more moisture and take more heat to ignite. For this reason, the thinning work underway is designed to retain logs and snags larger than one foot in diameter while targeting the removal of smaller deadwood.

Mechanical and manual methods are used to process the branch materials into burn piles. The piles are staged where they can be burned without risk to adjacent resources.

The burning takes place by permit issued by the appropriate Fire District and City/County land managers. The permits require tools, water, and staffing to manage the burn piles through the burning process and pile burning only takes place on approved burn days.

There are notification platforms the public can use to get information about planned burn activities and a hotline that can be used to see if a given day is a permitted burn day.

Jackson County Burn Day Hotline: 541-776-7007

Jackson County Fire District 5 (S. Jackson Co. including Talent and Phoenix) (541)-535-4222

The Freshwater Trust and its partners in the Bear Creek Restoration Initiative ask the public to be tolerant of these cleanup and pile-burning activities.

By doing this work deliberately, we can use fire as a restorative tool to reduce the risk of future wildfire in the Bear Creek corridor and to help move the plant community to a more fire-resilient state for enhanced ecological function and community protection.