LCALRI Prescribed Fire Planning
Project Background
The Lake County All Lands Restoration Initiative Prescribed Fire Planning project area will focus on the North Warner Landscape and the Thomas Creek Landscape project areas located adjacent to each other in Lake County. These two project areas will cover 175,159 acres of private land near the communities of Lakeview and Valley Falls. High concentrations of old legacy ponderosa pine forests and habitat for priority species are abundant within each project area. These landscape scale projects are tied directly to the Fremont-Winema NF's Crooked Mud Honey and Thomas Creek Integrated Landscape Restoration Projects, covering a total of 154,000 acres.
Resulting from over a century of fire suppression, the forests of this region have increased in density, lost diversity, and have altered the structure and hydrologic function of watersheds. The need is to develop a short- and long-term strategy for the location and frequency of prescribed fire that would maintain the investment in thinning treatments and re-establish the historical fire regime (frequent, low-mixed severity fire), while meeting private and USFS land management objectives.
Complete the planning for prescribed burning for private landowners including unit layout, identification of control lines, necessary agreements, burn plans, opportunities to burn with adjacent federal agencies, and other protocols associated with the analysis implementation of prescribed fire. Assist landowners with understanding permitting and liability constraints. Engage with the private landowners to increase public knowledge and understanding of dry forest restoration principles and restoration techniques, while building public support for increased use of fire as an essential restoration tool through outreach, engagement, and applied fire.
Project Partners
Lake County Umbrella Watershed Council, Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board, Oregon Department of Forestry, Fremont-Winema National Forest, Oregon State University Forestry Ext., and private landowners within the project areas.
Project Status
LCUWC has completed the LCALRI Prescribed Fire Technical Assistance grant (details below) and is now focused on implementing a cross boundary prescribed fire near the Cottonwood Rd community. Due to a relatively tricky burn window (going from too hot and dry to too wet) we were only able to broadcast burn a portion of the project. We accomplished a 175 acre understory burn in November of 2024. We hope to complete the remaining 403 acres in the fall of 2025.This grant is funded from a USFS Resource Advisory Committee (RAC) grant.
With the landscape-level coordinated efforts within the Lake County landscape, there are incredible opportunities to work together between agencies, partners, and private landowners to increase the use of fire on the landscape. Extensive thinning across public and private lands will set the stage for introducing fire as an ecological process and maintaining the thinning treatments in the short- and long-term. There is a prescribed fire strategy in place for the North Warner Project area that outlines potential prescribed fire boundaries with the recommendation of returning fire on a 10-20 year cycle; this plan primarily covers and applies to the USFS portion of the North Warner area.
Partners are working to develop landscape prescribed burn plans along with necessary agreements to apply prescribed fire across public and private lands. Once thinning treatments are underway in the Thomas Creek Project, a similar strategy, burn plans, and agreements will be completed.
Objective #1: To complete the necessary planning required to implement prescribed fire on private lands within the North Warner project area.
While much planning as gone into the prescribed fire strategy for the North Warner Project, more effort is needed to identify individual landowner objectives and interest in using prescribed fire as a restoration tool. This entails holding one on one meetings with landowners to review and/or incorporate prescribed fire into land management plans. If landowners are interested in using prescribed fire as a restoration tool, additional objectives are to create burn management plans.; to incorporate the landowners objectives and discuss where and how to utilize prescribed fire; to determine if it is feasible to conduct prescribed fire on a particular ownership and opportunities to implement with adjacent federal agencies; to define the prescribed fire boundaries and layout units and control lines; to develop the necessary agreements and burn plans. In addition, much discussion is needed to discuss legal and liability concerns as well as reducing risks to all parties involved. The goal would be to hold landowner meetings throughout the year that will produce a plan for completing prescribed fire for each interested property owner and a tentative schedule of when prescribed burning would occur in the cooler months.
Objective #2: Develop a short- and long-term strategy for the location and frequency of fire across the Thomas Creek landscape that would maintain the investment in thinning treatments and re-establish the historical range in the frequency of fire.
Hold meetings with landowners, and begin the discussion of incorporating prescribed fire into land management plans. Similar to the prescribed fire strategy developed for North Warner, landscape level potential burn blocks will be identified across public and private land including long term maintenance schedules. This is GIS analysis based upon existing potential control lines (i.e. roads), topography, and local knowledge of vegetation and fuels. With this effort, the partners can begin to identify opportunities for use of prescribed fire on private lands in association with burning on adjacent federal lands. This is a great avenue for starting the dialogue with private landowners on the opportunity for prescribed fire as a restoration tool and can be incorporated into land management planning.
Objective #3: Outreach and engagement workshop for all participating landowners within the North Warner and Thomas Creek landscape project area.
Incorporate opportunities for prescribed fire plans and protocols by building upon previous workshops with landowners in which they developed land management plans. Continue to hold prescribed burning workshops for landowners that will demonstrate and educate about the nuances and intricacies of how, where, and when to conduct a safe and effective prescribed burn with appropriate coordination and permitting for private landowners.