Cougar Peak and Patton Meadow Post-Fire Recovery

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More than 100,000 acres have burned between the Cougar Peak Fire and Patton Meadow Fire in 2021, fueled by and compounding hardships caused by years of extreme drought. Landowners have lost thousands of acres, including cattle, timber, and infrastructure, putting a financial strain on entire communities as they respond and recover. These communities have experienced other hardships that come from large, high severity wildfires including a breakdown in community relations between private and federal agencies and negative impacts to water quality and wildlife habitats. Economic stability is heavily reliant on natural resources and the relationships between the timber and ranching industry, government and state agencies, non-governmental partners, and private landowners.

The immense loss to fire is a strong motivator to come together to address restoration across ownership boundaries and through partnerships. Although some resources have come in for fire recovery on federal lands, there is an underfunded need to coordinate and implement restoration for the private landowners within the burned boundaries.

As described in detail within the American Forests South-Central Oregon Integrated Post-Fire Resilience Strategy draft document (attached). The forested landscapes in Lake County evolved with wildfire—both natural and cultural—and historically most of the landscape relied on frequent low severity fires to maintain a forest structure and composition that promoted wildfire resiliency, supported landscape heterogeneity, and fostered biodiversity. These processes also facilitated ecosystem services including water provisioning and cultural values (e.g.,

(Hagmann et al. 2013). However, wildfire severity, frequency, and fire season length have increased because of the accumulation of excess fuels due to fire exclusion policies, the loss of cultural fire, and warmer, drier conditions associated with climate change (Westerling 2016, Stevens et al. 2017, Hessburg et al. 2021). Although recent fires continue to have positive ecological outcomes across some portions of the landscape, the extent and continuity of areas burned at high severity have eroded forest recovery mechanisms (Coop et al. 2020, Hessburg et al. 2021).

Without efforts to holistically restore the landscapes impacted by these fires, we risk losing forested landscapes (Coop et al. 2020), water resources, carbon storage capacity and the ability to leverage natural climate solutions to fight climate change, habitat for endangered and culturally valuable species, and sustainable economic communities reliant on forest stewardship. Integrated landscape-scale restoration also offers an opportunity to prepare the landscape for future climates and promote resiliency to future wildfires.

Project partners include Lake County Umbrella Watershed Council (LCUWC),  Fremont-Winema National Forest (USFS), Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF), Lake County Cooperative Weed Management Area (LCCWMA), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and private landowners. 

Project partners anticipate that the loss of upland vegetation will increase the rate of snowpack runoff. Flashier hydrology is expected to increase stream erosion, sediment loading, and habitat degradation. Given the anticipated hydrologic changes and channel instability, the project partners also anticipate a decline in water quality until the landscape adjusts to the hydrologic regime resulting from the catastrophic disturbance. The intensity of wildfire is known to effect stream environments for up to five years or more after a major wildfire and is considered a time of transition. It has been documented that in some regions, up to 60 percent of total landscape sediment production is fire related. Sediment loss can occur in the first few years and recovery to pre-fire conditions can take decades. The recovery of aquatic species is dependent on conditions upstream and downstream from the burned areas and their ability to access stream reaches.

Widespread restoration activities in post-fire areas are necessary to prevent forest loss and ensure that forest structure and composition are well-suited to future climate and disturbance regimes (Lynch et al. 2021). Ensuring long-term ecosystem health and fire resiliency at a landscape-scale requires integration of post fire activities including green tree management, reforestation, and management of heavy fuel loading in a coordinated fashion across public and private lands. This OWEB post-fire grant offers a unique opportunity to consider restoration as an integrated process across the many areas impacted by high severity wildfire, coupled with appropriate vegetation management in areas where forest cover was not lost in these wildfires. Together, these actions will create fire and climate resilient forests that limit negative consequences of future inevitable fires.

So far, LCUWC has been able to treat 1,182 acres with herbicide to reduce the invasion of annual grasses (cheatgrass, medusahead, and ventenata). Additional work is ongoing to save our soil by felling the burnt trees into contour lines. Also instream structures to improve water quality, support aquatic habitat, restore riparian vegetation and stream function has been completed on 11.5 miles of streams (pine, Willow, Muddy, Mesman, and Camp creeks.