News

NEWS Cover Your Grasses

New data on fire risk and a study on fuel reductions in high desert ecosystems comes as Central Oregon approaches fire season

By Jack Harvel

About 92% of properties in Bend are at risk of being affected by wildfire over the next 30 years, according to data released by the nonprofit First Street Foundation on May 16. The data is the first nationwide property-specific model for the United States, finding that over 30 million properties have at least 1% or greater chance of experiencing wildfire in the next 30 years.

Fire risk in Bend is higher the closer a property is to the forests surrounding it on the west and south sides of town. The Awbrey Hall Fire in 1990 and the Skeleton Fire in 1996 collectively burned over 20,000 acres in and around Bend and destroyed over 50 structures.

“The lack of a property-specific, climate-adjusted wildfire risk for individual properties has severely hindered everyone from the federal government to your average American,” said Matthew Eby, founder and executive director of First Street Foundation, in a press release.

First Street Foundation’s model predicts Central Oregon will get at least 4% hotter over the next 30 years, paired with decreasing humidity. The tool gives property owners more information to protect themselves.

“There are things that people can do at the individual, community and landscape level,” said Emily Jane Davis, associate professor at Oregon State University and interim fire program director. “We’re doing a lot of emphasis on defensible space. So, what can you do to prepare the area immediately around your home so that it doesn’t have flammable material?”

To make a defensible space, tall grasses, shrubs and debris should be cleared within 10 feet of a property line. The Deschutes Forest Service does this on a larger scale, thinning hazardous fuels near adjacent communities. Late snowstorms and cool temperatures pushed Central Oregon’s fire season back a bit, but the area is still at an increased risk for fire as the region’s ongoing drought won’t end without at least two years of above average rainfall.

“For areas like Klamath, Lake, Deschutes and Crook counties, we are looking at above normal conditions starting in June. And obviously, as you move through the move through the fire season, and you get to August, larger parts of the states are incorporated in that,” Davis said. “The only areas that don’t look to be above normal by August would be northwestern Oregon and northeastern Oregon.”

Wildfires have become larger and more frequent in more recent years. Last year’s Bootleg Fire burned over 400,000 acres of southern Oregon, becoming the largest wildfire in the U.S. at the time. In 2020, thousands of people lost their homes during multiple fires on Labor Day Weekend. In Central Oregon and other sagebrush steppe ecosystems, fires are driven by climate change and invasive grass species that are more resilient to fire, increasing the likelihood of fires spreading. OSU released a study on May 16 that recommended ways to reduce fire risk in these specific ecosystems.

“It’s a pretty spectacular ecosystem, but it’s incredibly fragile,” said Lisa Ellsworth, lead author of the study and a range ecologist in OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences, in a press release. “It was named as one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America because it is so fragile and is so impacted by climate change and by invasive species and by changing fire regimes.”

Fires naturally occur in these areas every 50-100 years, and native plants tend to grow slowly and spread out. As invasive grass species move in, more land can be ignited and fires can spread, resulting in double the natural fire frequency.

“If you get a lightning strike and it hits cheatgrass, those fires can rip—I mean, at some times when you see fires across the northward part of the inner Mountain West, when you see 200,000 acres lighting up in a couple of days, that’s often fires that are in fairly dry areas where cheatgrass is playing a role,” said Erica Fleischman, director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute.

A silver lining to this year’s drought is it offers less than favorable conditions for those types of grasses. OSU’s study on reducing sagebrush steppe fires found prescribed burns are most effective at removing fuel loads, but left areas vulnerable to invasive grasses to establishing themselves in burn sites. Mechanical thinning of fuels reduced flame length, intensity and rate of spread but became less effective reducing spread and intensity after three years. Herbicide treatments tend to be the least effective management, that at best led to a shortterm reduction of fuels.

“I feel the pressure of time in these systems,” Ellsworth said. “We need to be implementing strategies that preserve our good-condition sagebrush steppe areas and get ahead of this invasive grass and fire feedback cycle that we’re in.”

courtesy unsplash

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South Canyon Survey

A group of neighborhood associations is seeking information in its effort to block the sale of a large parcel of undeveloped land the near the Deschutes

By Jack Harvel

Courtesy of Save Bend Green Space

A map of Central Oregon Irrigation District’s 140-acre parcel south of the Old Mill District.

Save Bend Green Space, a group of four Bend neighborhood associations, released a survey on May 11 that asks how people use the area and gauges interest in converting a portion of Deschutes South Canyon into a park. Pahlisch Homes is seeking to purchase the property from Central Oregon Irrigation District to eventually develop.

The survey lays out two paths to maintain the area as a park: a ballot measure from Bend Park and Recreation Department that would raise the $10 million asking price or raising the money themselves and ceding the property to BPRD.

“I was pleasantly surprised to see how many people had taken this survey. So far, I would say maybe 90% of the people are enthusiastic about trying to save it as a natural open space park,” said Judy Clinton, a member of the Save Bend Green Space steering committee. “At some point, we will probably present this to the City Council and to the Bend Parks and Rec board.”

COID and Pahlisch have negotiated the terms of the sale of the 80-acre parcel for years. COID will keep about 60 adjacent acres where it operates a power station and piped canal. SBGS’ concern is that development would diminish the town’s largest remaining piece of undeveloped land.

“We’ve got to preserve some of our best open spaces, and that’s why we want to try to save this,” Clinton said. “We were thinking of it as another Shevlin Park, in the center of town with access for all of Bend.”

Most of the 80 acres can’t be developed as housing until 2034, or if COID stops operating its hydro facility, under a view easement held by the Mount Bachelor Village Homeowners Association. Just a 9-acre parcel, dubbed “the tongue,” in the northern edge of the property bordering Brookswood Boulevard, can be developed before then.

“If they want to put dense housing up on the tongue, that’s perfectly acceptable, but there are constraints there. There are lots of other places in Bend that I think are more suitable for affordable housing. This area is so unique. It is one of the last largest open spaces available in Bend along the river,” Clinton said.

COID started negotiations to sell the property five years ago, saying it became too expensive to manage the area after encampments started popping up. It’s in the process of drawing property lines to create a sellable parcel.

“We need to have a lot line adjustment that has a parcel that equals 80 acres that is encompassed by these new lot lines,” said Craig Horrell, managing director of COID. “We don’t have a sellable lot, per se, for our agreement with Pahlisch, so we are moving the lot line to accommodate the sale.”

BPRD Executive Director Don Horton said a bond measure could only happen if talks between COID and Pahlisch fall through. The park district operates three trails on the property, and Horton doubts that those trails will go away if a sale is finalized.

“There are other smaller trails that are scattered throughout the site that we don’t have legal rights to, but those three primary trials that are in there, we already have the legal right to use those, and we don’t see that going away,” Horton said. “Regardless of what happens here it’s going to end up with long-term use of that property very much similar to how it’s being used today.”

COID is a quasi-municipal organization and can pursue the sale of private land, Horrell said. The land itself has restrictions that could deter overdevelopment.

“There’s lots of restrictions. You have the water overlay zone, you have significant rock outcroppings that the City protects. All of the land from the top of the bluff down to the river will remain open down to the trails; the trails will all remain, the easements that COID has with the parks district will remain,” Horrell said. “When we interviewed Pahlisch Homes we made it very clear that that needed to be a component of their master plan.”

The survey closes on May 31. Horrell said lot lines need to be finalized before the sale can be finalized.

“We’ve got to preserve some of our best open spaces, and that’s why we want to try to save this.”

—JUDY CLINTON

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Schenkelberg Resigns

Bend will lose two elected officials at its City Council meeting on May 18

By Jack Harvel

Bend City Councilor Rita Schenkelberg (they/them) announced they’re resigning from the Bend City Council at its next regular meeting on May 18, just a week after Bend Mayor Sally Russell announced she’ll resign on the same date.

Voters elected Schenkelberg to office in 2020 to a term that expires in December 2024. Schenkelberg told The Bulletin they’re leaving because it’s become too difficult to balance the responsibilities of the council with work as a mental health counselor, and the intense harassment they’re subject to. Schenkelberg is the first openly nonbinary member of the City Council and said they’ve been misgendered by members of the public since coming out as nonbinary months ago.

City Council will have 30 days to fill Schenkelberg’s seat, and likely another after it appoints a new mayor. All of Bend’s City Councilors must decline the mayorship before a member of the public is eligible, while any resident of Bend can apply to fill vacant City Council seats.

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