The Ashland Forest Resiliency Stewardship Project (AFR) partners wrapped up the controlled burn season at the end of May. This spring, with the leadership of the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, AFR safely completed 244 acres of underburning to restore the long-absent role of “good fire”. This work follows 14 years of ecological forest thinning and pile burning under AFR, including an additional 198 acres of burn piles completed during fall and winter of 2023 and 2024.
Lomakatsi Inter-Tribal Crew Member Dakota Burgdorf, an enrolled member of The Klamath Tribes, applies fire in AFR through the Rogue Basin Prescribed Fire Training Exchange. Photo by Lomakatsi Restoration Project.
Increased Need for Controlled Burning to Reduce Community Risk: Over the past 14 years, AFR partners have completed ecological thinning and prescribed burning on nearly 14,000 acres within and adjacent to the Ashland Municipal Watershed and the community itself, turning back the clock on the lack of “good fire” over the past 150 years. Indigenous peoples have used fire as a stewardship tool for many thousands of years and continue to elevate cultural burning as part of the AFR Project and across the region.
Prescribed burning is the most cost effective and ecologically beneficial tool for maintaining forest restoration treatments and is proven to reduce wildfire intensity and support safe and effective wildfire response. Despite the 2,220 acres of underburning accomplished over the past decade under AFR, a significant increase in underburning is needed to maintain mild fire’s protective and restorative benefits into the future. The challenge of a needed five-fold increase in underburn acres moving forward depends in part on the community’s smoke tolerance.
Conducive Weather for Mild Fire with Little Smoke in the Valley: “The weather patterns this spring gave AFR and fire managers across southern Oregon great opportunities to apply prescribed underburning this season. In total, trained crew members accomplished over 3,000 acres of burning around the Rogue Valley,” said Kit Colbenson, Assistant Fire Management Officer with the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.
AFR partners are concerned and vigilant about air quality. Burn bosses carefully manage burning to minimize smoke impacts on the community. Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest (RRSNF) fire managers reduce burning when winds will not disperse the smoke adequately. Excellent conditions prevailed this spring and smoke dispersed well, with no reported smoke incidents. While smoke could be seen in the distance or the scent of smoke detected in the air, air quality data showed that burn days during the season were “at the green level,” meaning good air quality.
The City and AFR partners use a notification system for sharing information and updates with the community and vulnerable populations in advance of air quality impacts. Visit Smokewise Ashland to learn what measures to take when there is smoke in the air…at any time of year.
A US Forest Service crew member applied fire to burn out an area around a legacy pine tree. Photo by Lomakatsi Restoration Project
Prescribed Fire Training: This spring, AFR and the fire management leadership of the RRSNF hosted participants of the Rogue Basin Prescribed Fire Training Exchange, delivering 44 person-days of training. Trainees included inter-tribal and multicultural participants in Lomakatsi’s Youth Ecological Forestry Training Program—a part of Oregon Conservation Corps—as well as the Rogue Valley Prescribed Burn Association. Many were applying fire for the first time in training assignments supervised by qualified U.S. Forest Service staff. Lomakatsi’s Rogue Valley workforce, many from the Latine community who were involved in the ecological thinning and hand pile burning in AFR over many years, also supported prescribed fire operations through a partnership with the U.S. Forest Service.
Multiple Lomakatsi crews supported a May 2024 prescribed burn in the Ashland Watershed. Photo by Lomakatsi Restoration Project
The City of Ashland, The Nature Conservancy, Rogue-River Siskiyou National Forest, and Lomakatsi Restoration Project thank the prescribed fire professionals, forest workers, and community who helped make this controlled burn season a success. Our burning implements proactive fire planning to maximize firefighter safety and wildfire suppression opportunities. Learn more about AFR, our history, and the work we do in articles by the Christian Science Monitor and Grist, and more about proactive fire management on the AFR website. See more in-depth coverage on AFR’s proactive fire management work in the Rogue Valley Times and KDRV Newswatch 12.
To stay informed of controlled burning, AFR events and tours – text the word WATERSHED to recipient 888777. Now that burn season has ended, please call 911 and report any visible smoke.
