The 2022 Cedar Creek Fire & The 1897 Organic Act (Part 2)

This is the second part of the second article in a two-part series regarding fire management by the US Forest Service near the towns of Oakridge and Westfir, Oregon. The first article focused on forest restoration and prescribed burning on Jim’s Creek, in the Willamette National Forest, and was linked and discussed here: https://forestpolicypub.com/2024/11/01/jims-creek-restoration-a-burning-opportunity/

This second article regards wildfire management and reforestation planning on the Cedar Creek Burn, also in the Willamette National Forest, is 3500 words, has eight photos, a map, and a detailed table, so I have posted in two parts. Here is Part 1: https://forestpolicypub.com/2025/01/09/the-2022-cedar-creek-fire-the-1897-organic-act-part-1/

Both articles are part of a 13-year series I have been writing for Oregon Fish & Wildlife Journal, and the complete current article can be found here:   http://nwmapsco.com/ZybachB/Articles/Magazines/Oregon_Fish_&_Wildlife_Journal/20250108_Cedar_Creek/Zybach_20250108.pdf

Fig. 5. Industrial Plantation. Following WW II, most reforestation in the Douglas Fir Region has been to industrial standards, with a focus on fiber production and future jobs. Planting seedlings in rows following logging or wildfire, or converting old meadows, prairies, and berry fields to trees, results in a significant loss of biodiversity and wildlife habitat, while creating increased opportunity for deadly crown fires. Russ Sapp and Dave Sullivan in Preacher Creek plantation in Lincoln County. Photo by author, April 5, 2024.

1897 Organic Act

 In 1897 Congress passed the “Organic Act” to manage and protect US public forestlands. The bill was signed into law by President William McKinley and has never been repealed.

The guiding principal of the Act remains fairly well-known to this time, and has been the theoretical basis to all subsequent USFS planning:

“No public forest reservation shall be established, except to improve and protect the forest within the reservation, or for the purpose of securing favorable conditions of water flows, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States.”

A lesser-recognized portion of the Act also states it was “for the purpose of preserving the living and growing timber and promoting the younger growth on forest reservations” — and, in that regard, authority was given to “designate and appraise so much of the dead, matured, or large growth of trees found upon such forest reservations” for sale at “not less” than the appraised value, under the condition it couldn’t be “exported” to another State or Territory.

In a nutshell, “living and growing timber” was intended to be “preserved,” “younger growth” was to be “promoted,” and a “continuous supply” of “dead, matured, or large” trees were to be sold at market value. “For the use and necessities of citizens of the United States.”

In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt, working closely with Yale-educated forester and close associate, Gifford Pinchot, transferred management of the Forest Reserves from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture, creating the US Forest Service.

Pinchot became the first Chief of the new agency and wrote that its mission would be: “Where conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question shall always be answered from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run.”

Theoretically, that has remained the mission of the Forest Service to the present time, and all subsequent forest planning laws and regulations are based on this vision and the 1897 Organic Act; including the “expanded purposes” of  the 1960 Multiple-Use Sustained-Yield Act (MUSY) and the 1976 National Forest Management Act (NFMA).

The 1960 Act included the considerations of range, water, recreation, and wildlife, along with timber, as renewable resources, and the 1976 Act changed forest planning by requiring the Forest Service to use an “interdisciplinary approach” to resource management — and to include “public involvement in preparing and revising forest plans.”

Fig. 6. Crevice Creek Plantation. This 60-year-old  industrial-type plantation along Crevice Creek experienced 100% mortality. Despite the relative small size of these snags, they will remain very flammable and an increasing risk of wildfire if they are not removed. Although they no longer have value for lumber production, they can likely be used to produce commercial fuel pellets for several more years. Note the two-year understory of invasive grasses and brush that have replaced the green trees and shaded ground. They will form volatile flash and potential ladder fuels for the thousands of tons of dry, pitchy firewood that has been created. Photo by author, October 28, 2024.

Local Effects: Smoke & Jobs

 Bryan Cutchen is the Mayor of Oakridge, and he says wildfire smoke for the past four years, from the Cedar Creek Fire and others, has done great damage to the town’s recreation and hospitality businesses. Others in the community point to the 2015 and 2017 fire years as a major beginning to these events.

The combination of reputation and reality, smoky air, road closures, and burned campgrounds have kept people away from Oakridge in recent years. The discomfort and poor health associated with breathing smoke and the reduced visibility and public access following the fires has caused serious economic damage to the community.

 Rob DeHarpport was the third generation of his family to live in Oakridge. His grandfather worked for the Forest Service and his father owned a store in town, and that’s where he graduated from High School in 1977 and has lived most of his life. After graduating, he spent a summer fighting fires with the Oakridge Ranger District, and from 2012 to 2015 he became Mayor of Westfir, before retiring and moving east of the Cascades.

During the years he was growing up in town, and for many years after, he can only recall a few times when Oakridge became smoky — typically for a day or two when smoke would drift into town from field burning in the Willamette Valley or from fall slash pile burning in the woods.

In 1975, when Tim Bailey began his career as a Forester for the Oakridge District Ranger Station, the town had eight gas stations, eight bars, two jewelry stores, two florist shops, a movie theatre, bowling alley, skating rink, and 400 people working at the Pope & Talbot Mill. Today there are three gas stations, up from just one a few years ago, and a one-man firewood cutting business.

Bailey’s memories are similar to DeHarpport’s regarding the general lack of smoky summers and falls. At that time Oakridge considered itself  the “Tree Planting Capital of the World” and still has an annual festival to recall those years.

When the 9,000-acre Shady Beach Fire burned in 1988, the 195 million board feet of snags and surviving trees were quickly sold and harvested — creating an estimated 200 local jobs — and the land was then planted. Today, it is a healthy stand of 35-year-old trees nearing merchantable size.

Bailey wasn’t directly involved in the Shady Beach Fire but was the silviculturist for the subsequent Warner Creek Fire. The starkly different histories of the two fires characterized the dramatic change in USFS management philosophies that took place with the arrival of spotted owls in the Douglas Fir Region in 1990.

This Table with shows all Air Quality Index (AQI) numbers and PM25 measures for Oakridge, Eugene, Sisters, and Bend during the smokiest days for those communities during the Cedar Creek Fire. All days that reached an AQI of 100 are listed; those above 200 are bolded; and all above 300 are also made red.

The highest PM25 readings for those days are also given, and because Sisters was only impacted for a few days, progressive fire sizes are also listed in that column.

These data were provided by Ryan Porter, who authored the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) report on Oregon statewide air quality for 2022. DEQ AQI numbers are based on a scale of 0-50 (Good); 51-100 (Moderate); 101-150 (Unhealthy for sensitive groups); 151-200 (Unhealthy); 201-300 (Very Unhealthy); and 301-500 (Hazardous).

Compare these numbers to those given earlier for September 10 in Seattle and Portland to better understand the localized severity of this problem.

PM25 numbers represent particulate matters in the air that are 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter. Readings above 35 are considered “unhealthy for short-term exposure,” and the National Institute of Health states that “people with respiratory diseases” account for a “large proportion” of “non-accidental deaths” in the US. The stated reason is because PM25 pollution “causes asthma, respiratory inflammation, jeopardizes lung functions, and even promotes cancers.”

A recent public health study concluded that more than 10,000 people a year in the US die from wildfire smoke pollution, and recent University of California research indicated PM25 exposure from wildfire smoke likely killed 55,000 Californians alone in the 11 years from 2008 to 2018.

Fig. 7. Second-growth Douglas fir progeny competing with ancestral old-growth for sunlight, water, and soil. The original wide-spacing of the older trees is indicated by the large stobs that remain from lower limbs lost to competitive shading along their trunks. These remaining old-growth are now at increasing risk of a crown fire, in addition to direct competition from younger trees. Removing the second-growth to protect the old-growth could be accomplished at a good profit, as well as greatly reducing risk of crown fire and resulting loss of remaining old-growth. Photo by author, April 5, 2024.

Recommendations

What can be done to fix this deadly, costly mess? It took 35 years for the Willamette National Forest to transform itself from an increasingly unpopular actively-managed clearcutting marketplace to a seasonal inferno, causing massive air pollutions for weeks, killing millions of wildlife and old-growth trees, bankrupting local businesses, ruining the scenery, ending recreation, blocking our public roads with gates, and charging US taxpayers billions of dollars to make it all possible.

Even though significant fault can be found with the design of previous timber sales and reforestation projects, a course correction rather than a complete reversal would have been a more reasonable approach to spotted owl politics. Subsequent planning processes and environmental lawsuits have been allowed — and even encouraged through favorable rulings and legislation — to transform our once beautiful and productive National Forests into ugly, costly, and deadly firebombs. How to fix?

These photos, and millions of others, clearly show the problem. Passively managed conifer forestlands and plantations don’t somehow magically transform themselves into “critical habitat” for obscure animals, or into 400-year-old stands of trees teeming with “biodiversity.” No, some grow old, they die, and if nothing is done, they burn and are replaced with a new generation of plants, often the same species, but in different configurations.

The real problem began in the 1970s and the deep ecology movement, when the woods became “wildlands” and people were pathogens and the enemies of “nature.” Then the academic myth of the “healthy forest” containing “big, dead, standing trees,” large logs scattered around on the ground, and a “multi-layered canopy of diverse species” was invented.

To these “New Forestry” ecologists, life appeared to exist in a terrarium, where the ideal was a “non-declining, even-flow, naturally functioning ecosystem” teeming with endangered species and incredible biodiversity. Their computers “proved” this ideal could be achieved “again” — if only we’d eliminate people, their matches, and their wildlife-disturbing road systems.

Environmental activists, their lawyers, and politicians attempted to transform this fiction into a vision for our public lands, and it has never worked. Instead, death, fire, smoke, and poverty has resulted — as clearly predicted by actual foresters and knowledgeable residents.

If this fire had happened 40 years ago, in 1982 instead of 2022, many things would have been different. Tens of thousands of fewer acres would have burned; millions more wildlife would have lived; thousands more old-growth would have survived; there would have been only a fraction of the smoke for far fewer days; and the wood would have been immediately salvaged — and at a profit to local families and to American taxpayers. Then the land would have been reforested as well as possible, based on the best intentions at that time.

A concerted effort to return to the common sense purposes of the 1897 Organic Act, Pinchot’s fundamental mission statement, the 10:00 AM Policy, and the 1962 MUSY would be wonderful. That would be my best recommendation.