Photo: Matt Howard | Unsplash
As Oregon's Bootleg Fire swept toward him, Pete Caligiuri of The Nature Conservancy wet down the area around a remote research station on the Sycan Marsh reserve and was relieved that a long-term strategy of removing fuels had worked. After the nonprofit acquired the 30,000 acres of mixed wetland and dry pine forest in the 1980s, it worked with the Klamath Tribes to cut down small trees and set fires that burned needles and branches on the forest floor. As the fire moved into the treated areas, it dropped FROM the treetops to move gently along the ground. Heeding research that western pine forests are much more resilient to fire when they are not packed with small trees, brush, and a century of dry foliage, people are organizing community `groups` to thin trees and conduct prescribed burns.
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