With wildfire season still not at its peak this year, ranchers, producers and land management officials begin to assess the long-term losses to the rangeland and the cost of rehabilitating the land.
The catastrophic Cow Valley Fire scorched over 200 square miles of Malheur County, burning over private and public land essential to feed thousands of cows driving the area’s most significant, most profitable industry.
With the fire still burning on the range but completely contained, meaning a protective line surrounds it with little chance of spreading, it’s difficult to know when cattle will be able to use the land and what the costs will be to rehabilitate it.
Nicole Sullivan, a coordinator with the Owyhee Watershed Council, a group that partners with other entities, ranchers and producers in Malheur County to prioritize funding and complete restoration and invasive species work on the rangeland.
She said the group is working with the Bureau of Land Management, the National Resource Conservation Service and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, to assess the damage and find funding to help private landowners.
Sullivan said the BLM is working on a burn severity map to measure how hot the fire burned. According to Larisa Bogardus, a public relations specialist with the Vale District Bureau of Land Management, it’s unclear when the map will be complete. Bogardus said the map would be one of the tools the agency would use to assess the losses to the lands.
Sullivan said the map would examine vegetation, the likelihood of it growing back, and the time it will take to do so.
Sullivan said the group will consider reseeding the grass in burned areas. The ideal species, she said, would be native perennial grass instead of the invasive species that, among other things, was a significant fuel source for the blaze on the rangeland.
She added that native seeds, due to the dry season, are in short supply and costly.
Gauging the amount of fencing to be replaced in the rangeland could take a long time. Ranchers run cattle over private and public rangeland owned by the BLM or, in some instances, the state.
Bogardus said that while land managers have yet to walk the entire perimeter of the Cow Valley and Durkee Fire, there could be some “gray areas” where it comes down to whether it is private or public land, whether the fencing was damaged, and who installed improvements before the fire. Typical barbed-wire fencing helps officials and ranchers manage the landscape, but replacing a few miles likely will cost thousands.
The emotional costs will also take years to assess, according to Sergio Arispe, associate professor of animal and rangeland sciences at the OSU Extension Office for Malheur County. Arispe said there has been a “psychological blow” for producers who might have lost cattle. So far, he said, it’s unclear whether ranchers have lost animals.
Nonetheless, he said the ranchers have a connection to the land that has been interrupted by the wildfire.
“They’re in touch with the land,” Arispe said. “And they’re in touch with the generational history of the land.”
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