Oregonians have until Sunday 5PM on August 18 to submit public comment on the Oregon Wildfire Hazard Map.
Did you know that Oregon State University had a lead role in developing this infamous map?
https://hazardmap.forestry.oregonstate.edu
Your comments must be submitted in writing via email to hazardmap@odf.oregon.gov
By way of example, I want you to read comments submitted by a husband and wife, Virgil and Charlyn Witcher. Upon the request of another Eagle subscriber, they forwarded their comments with permission to reprint them.
Their comments offer two different and important perspectives.
Virgil is a retired Siviculture Forester and formerly the Josephine County Forestry Executive Director. He is able to provide the perspective of long-time forester while his wife Charlyn provides the perspective of a retired person concerned about losing their property by losing the ability to get property insurance.
You can gather ideas for your own public comment from these letters.
If you live in the city in a “low hazard” zone you will still be impacted by this map as it affects our property rights and economy over time. Here are the letters.
Virgil L. Witcher’s Letter
Oregon Department of Forestry
8/13/2024
To Whom It May Concern:
It is with great frustration and distress that it has become necessary for me to respond to the ill-conceived and misguided fire map that is being forced upon the people of Josephine County and all of Oregon! In the strongest terms possible, I condemn your intent to shift the moral, legal, and financial responsibilities required in responding to wildfires directly to the land owners identified on your proposed “fire map.”
It takes a great deal of gall to exempt from your proposal the greatest and most culpable agents of out-of-control wild-fires: the Feds, namely the U.S. Department of Forestry and the Bureau of Land Management. Via their policies, they produce and encourage the perpetual scourge of gargantuan, out-of-control fires that scorch and destroy the forest landscapes and inundate our air shed with extremely toxic smoke for weeks and months every summer and fall.
The cadre of presumably knowledgeable intellectuals who conceived this fire map and the plan behind it is apparently lacking any real wisdom. Who can even begin to realize the huge, negative impacts the people of this region will have foisted upon them if this plan is approved? Will this plan do even one thing to stop the conditions behind wild-fires? NO! But it will place a huge financial burden on private property owners…and you are attempting to make this “law” without a vote of the people! We will all very likely lose our homeowner’s insurance. This map would likely make our private property practically worthless and unsaleable! For many (my wife and I included), their property is their life-long nest egg! Is the intent to bankrupt citizens?
This plan needs to be discarded and a new one presented TO THE PEOPLE that addresses the real root of the problem: the forests that are governed by state and federal policies which have resulted in forest management plans that literally have initiated and generated the incredibly flammable conditions that now exist! The carrying capacity of our forests has far exceeded the levels that promote healthy vibrant trees and shrubs.
You are blinded by leadership that places the blame on people who live in these regions! We are NOT the problem; your forest management and fire response policies are! The reaction to the initial fire starts is WAY too little and WAY too late. We need leadership that realizes this and advocates for changes in management policies and resources in order to make a difference. Instead of throwing millions and millions of dollars and wasted efforts at huge fires that are uncontrollable, enact management policies that put skilled people to work who provide the type of on-the-ground effective practices needed to return our forests into the healthy and vibrant conditions, more able to withstand these huge conflagrations!
Do you know what “replacement fires” are? I know you do. It’s what we have now in our forests! I might be repeating, because it is THAT important…our forest environment has deliberately been allowed to grow into a condition where the carrying capacity of the available soil capital cannot provide enough water and nutrients to maintain healthy levels of stocking. Trees now use up all the available soil moisture early in the late spring and summer and become dried out. They are dying by the millions everywhere. Why is this happening? You are trying to lay the responsibility on people in the rural land/forested areas when the real blame is your own policies…many which were brought about from fanatic environmentalists chanting “save our trees”! The results, as I’ve tried to convey, have produced the incredibly explosive existing conditions that have grown increasingly worse over time!
You (ALL forest agencies in Oregon) need to return to your drawing board and produce an effective management plan ACROSS THE BOARD! It needs to be a plan that spawns real results in reducing these replacement fires instead of shifting the responsibility to land owners.
The forests didn’t get this way over-night, and it will take time to bring them back to health.
Since you are the managers, it can only come from you. You don’t have people who know how? Then fire the ones who don’t and hire some that do! I’m sure there are still some that are left. Most every Oregonian who was raised here from 1941 to today will remember when Oregon kept its forests green. KEEP OREGON GREEN was founded that year!
It’s time for Oregon’s federal and state managers to get real and get your heads out of the sand. Reject your old plans that only fail, as we have seen time and again. I may have seemed harsh or rude or redundant in this response to the pending fire map. Whatever it takes to jar you out of your complacency and cause you to DO something effective is all that matters. You MUST settle on a plan that exhibits a certain and focused attempt to bring about fewer and fewer conflagrations as the forests get healthier. You must enact effective changes that will produce effective and real results. Shifting the blame to property owners in Oregon will not do it. A “fire map” will not change a single thing; healthy forests will.
MAKE OREGON GREEN AGAIN!
Sincerely,
Virgil L. Witcher
Retired Siviculture Forester
Retired Josephine County Forestry Executive Director
What is ‘Siviculture’?
I was wondering the same thing. Here is the U.S. Forest Service definition (emphasis added):
Silviculture is the art and science of controlling the establishment, growth, composition, health, and quality of forests and woodlands to meet the diverse needs and values of landowners and society such as wildlife habitat, timber, water resources, restoration, and recreation on a sustainable basis. This is accomplished by applying different types of silvicultural treatments such as thinning, harvesting, planting, pruning, prescribed burning and site preparation. Intermediate treatments (thinning) are designed to enhance growth, quality, vigor, and composition of the stand after establishment or regeneration and prior to final harvest. Regeneration treatments (harvesting) are applied to mature stands in order to establish a new age class of trees. Regeneration methods are grouped into four categories: coppice, even-aged, two-aged, and uneven-aged.
All vegetation activities, including prescribed fire, wildlife habitat improvement, timber harvesting and cutting trees in campgrounds for human safety must have a silvicultural prescription. A silvicultural prescription is a document which has a planned series of treatments designed to change current stand structure and composition of a stand to one that meets management goals. The prescription normally considers ecological, economic, and societal objectives and constraints. In the Forest Service, silvicultural prescriptions are prepared or reviewed by a certified silviculturist prior to implementing the project or treatment.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/forestmanagement/vegetation-management/silviculture/index.shtml
When we lived on 11 acres out in Josephine County, I used up hundreds of gallons of gasoline and elbow grease in my “thinning, harvesting, planting, pruning, prescribed burning and site preparation” efforts. The BLM did exactly nothing on the adjoining acreage over the 16 years we owned our property.
Makes me wonder if the BLM and the USDF practice siviculture any more on any federals lands within Oregon.
Now back to the opposition letter. Notice that husbands and wives can submit individual public comments in opposition to the wildfire map.
Charlyn Witcher’s Letter
To whom it may concern:
I would like to receive a NOTIFICATION that my email was received and read. Please send to the email address listed above.
I am a life-long resident of Hugo, just 10 miles north of Grants Pass. My husband and I live on part of my parents’ original property, purchased in 1945. In ALL of the years past, I can remember only TWO fires that could have been or were rather catastrophic. Of course, I don’t know what definition the state uses for “catastrophic.”
The first rather scary fire started when some lady dumped hot coals into a wooden culvert that went under her driveway somewhere around the 600 block of Three Pines. I was probably around 13 at that time. (I am 74, so over 60 years ago.) The fire climbed up the hill that borders the b500 block of Three Pines Road rather quickly, but in short order, was smothered by a borate bomber. I personally would not deem it “catastrophic.”
Fast forward 55 years, and we had another fire, now called “The Hugo Fire” started up after some power lines shorted out during a thunder-storm. This fire was very explosive due to the dry grass and winds. And yes, it was scary, but I believe only two residences were burned, no lives were lost, and the fire was brought under control by our fantastic fire-fighters.
I am not sure how an area that has had only two threatening fires in 60 some years can be considered “HIGH HAZARD” on your map, but that is what it shows. WE ARE COMPLETELY OPPOSED TO THIS PLAN FOR THE FOLLOWING REASONS:
Allowing this plan to go forward could very well bankrupt life-long citizens and any others who have invested everything into their homes and property. And yet, neither BLM nor the US Dept. of Forestry’s federal timber lands are to be restricted by SB-762 or SB-80! It is a WELL-KNOWN FACT that federal timberlands are the most volatile of all forests. MOST wildfires that become out of control happen because the federal lands are improperly managed…basically, they are not managed at all! A HEALTHY forest is a MANAGED forest. And yet you intend to “punish” private citizens rather than require BLM and the US Forest Service to clean up their fire-prone forests? What recourse do private citizens have if THEIR unmanaged forests are the cause of our home burning? NONE. This is all so very wrong.
We…the property owners who worked all their lives to own a piece of Oregon’s beauty, will not be able to get home insurance…if it is even offered, it will be unaffordable. This disastrous plan will make it impossible to either buy or sell land in Oregon. My husband and I have worked here ALL of our lives. We are now at an age where we cannot manage to keep up with our farm. YOU ARE GOING TO DESTROY our nest egg with this plan! It’s unfair, it’s unAmerican, it’s a RUINOUS plan!
Please reconsider what you are doing to the citizens of Oregon!
Sincerely,
Charlyn M. Witcher
Note: I removed her property address. Good to include it in your public comment so they can research your specific opposition to the wildfire map. That’s to you, of course.
Send your comments here: hazardmap@odf.oregon.gov