Eastern Oregon watershed council helps landowners impacted by wildfires

For the past two weeks, North Fork John Day Watershed Council has been helping people in and around Long Creek fight fires on their property and deal with the damage done by the flames. The Battle Mountain Complex and Courtrock fires have impacted residents living in rural parts of the state, which have not been serviced by firefighting teams as quickly as other areas, leaving landowners to fight fires by themselves. Kristen Walz, the executive director of North Fork John Day Watershed Council, joins us to share more about her group’s efforts during this particularly harsh and early wildfire season.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We start today in Long Creek in Grant County. It’s not far from both the Battle Mountain Complex and Courtrock fires. With so many large fires burning in Oregon right now and with resources spread thin, local groups have had to step up to help their own communities. That includes the North Fork John Day Watershed Council. Kristen Walz is the executive director of the Council. She joins us now to talk about how they’ve been responding to this early and intense wildfire season. Kristen, welcome to the show.

Kristen Walz: Thank you.

Miller: So we’re going to talk about the kind of emergency pivot that you and your team have been doing in recent weeks. But what does the Watershed Council normally do? It’s one of those phrases, sort of like soil and water conservation commissions or groups, where sometimes we see them on ballots but a lot of folks don’t know what you do.

Walz: Yeah, soil and water conservation districts, we function similarly to them in how we work. But we’re very different organization types. Watershed councils are locally organized. We’re nonprofit organizations. We’re non-regulatory which is a big part of what we do. We implement voluntary restoration and stewardship on the landscape.

Miller: What do you normally do during a wildfire season?

Walz: Well, it’s the first wildfire season that we – there have been fires in the area in past summers or past fire seasons, but they generally have not been this close to us. We have not normally had a response to the wildfires. We may have to pivot sometimes and our projects get delayed or we are keeping our eye on [the fires] because we do live on the dry side of the state. We’re keeping our eye on fire closures, and what our limitations and restrictions may be. But we have never had this large of an impact since I’ve lived in Eastern Oregon.

Miller: Can you give us a sense of the scale of the fires just in your area this year or, I should say, basically right now?

Walz: I think it’s a few days old, this estimate, but our operating area or service area is about 1.6 million acres. So that’s around 2,500 square miles. We do have a very large operating area. A lot of watershed councils do not have as big of an area – it varies. Some do, but some may have a smaller watershed.

Fires in our watershed have impacted over 270,000 acres of the North Fork John Day. And what was sort of significant about these fires was that a lot of it was on private land so a lot of our private lands were impacted. And it wasn’t over half, but it was a significant portion relative to other fires.

Miller: I can’t do the math on the fly, but 270,000 acres out of 1.6 million acres – I mean,

it’s a sizable percentage just in your area.

Walz: Yeah, I think that was around 16% of our operating area.

Miller: Wow.

Walz: And we also have a lot of wilderness in our area. So this is the area that we don’t necessarily do a lot of work in. We might be surveying or monitoring. And so you remove that big wilderness chunk from our watershed too. It is significant, there were a lot of our communities, our smaller communities that were impacted and landowners that we work with.

Miller: How did you decide, though … even with that sizable percentage of the land that you serve being affected directly by fire, you still, I imagine, had to make a decision that you were going to somehow respond to that, as opposed to just wait and then provide the kind of services that you always do. So what went into that decision?

Walz: Well, living out in a small area, it’s hard to not to really feel the impact. So there was definitely a feeling of helplessness or wanting to pitch in. It’s not as big of a jump as you may think. The fires became our primary resource concern and we work across the landscape. Our forests and our streams and our landowners’ operations were all being impacted and were in jeopardy. So, like I said, that became our primary resource concern. And so projects that we’ve implemented were burned, projects that we were planning to implement were being burned. We were not really able to turn our heads from it. We had to dive in.

Miller: One of the things you did is help organize a community meeting. Can you describe what that was like?

Walz: Yeah. And I think [we felt like] what can we do? One of the things that we do at the Watershed Council is we coordinate and facilitate large-scale restoration projects. So we’re working with multiple partners and funders, and land managers, landowners, with different federal funders, and with state funders, and private foundations. We’re often herding cats. We’re trying to figure out the most strategic way to implement something. So this really felt like it was within our skill set and it aligns with our mission to support our local rural communities.

What started with a phone call to our local community counseling center resulted in them making a few phone calls. Those few phone calls made a few phone calls. And kind of before you knew it, there were over 20 agencies, organizations and providers who were just looking for an opportunity to connect with the folks who were impacted by the fires. The event really allowed us to support and share what resources were currently available, a place where we could all get together and say this is what we have. And then it also gave us the opportunity to hear what the community needed and what needs existed on the ground. I wanted it to be this very streamlined event where we had an agenda, but it really went well and it was organized.

It really ended up being sort of a community or a resource needs assessment where we got to talk to people. We got to find out what was really impacting them and how these various agencies or organizations may be able to step in and help. And that’s been really positive. We’ve seen some issues with communication, folks not being able to get calls out when there were fires on their properties. We got to talk about some of that, elevate that a little bit and make a plan for how can we help you advocate for that once the fires are over?

I think that was really big. We wanted our landowners to know that once the firefighters leave, once the fires are contained, we’re still going to be here. We will be poised to help you rebuild your operation, whether it’s a ranching operation or your land is managed for fish and wildlife. We’re gonna be here to help you navigate this because it’s confusing. It’s confusing for those of us who are in it all the time.

Miller: What did you find that people said that they most are in need of it? And it’s worth saying that it seems like we’re not here talking about firefighting itself. We’re talking more about prep, for example, post-fire resources. But what came up most often that people said this is what I’m going to want help with in the weeks or months that follow?

Walz: Well, right now we’re sort of wrapping our heads around the scale of the impacts. So fencing, things that would help them run their business. Fencing, water developments to feed their animals or water wildlife. A lot of people lost crops. And I don’t know what the count is but people have lost animals. So there were sort of these no-brainer, what are the programs that can help us rebuild these things?

Communication and connectivity came up a lot. When all of the firefighters were [there], and everyone’s on the very limited cell bandwidth and satellite internet that we have, in the future, how are we going to make sure that everyone’s being notified, everyone’s getting evacuation notices? Another thing that we did was, because we have limited connectivity and limited cell service out here, the Watershed Council sort of checked in on all of the vulnerable or elderly folks in our small community and said, “are you getting the notifications?” So in this meeting we had some people say we weren’t. We will be able to help them get signed up for emergency notifications in the future.

I think those were the big ones, rebuilding the business, the operation. And then also that we’re in a really remote area. So I think, during the fires, people felt scared and we’re really tucked away in the corner of the county. I think that’s gonna be huge moving forward.

Miller: How significant is it that you are convening this and having these conversations, not as somebody from, say, the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management – a  federal agency – but instead a locally connected nonprofit?

Walz: I think it’s very important and it’s one of the roles that watershed councils can play. We are a very nimble organization type. We’re flexible. We can sort of fill gaps or  fill in where there are needs. When we’re talking to landowners, one thing that we hear a lot of is that they appreciate that we can be a liaison to the government, or some of the other funding sources, or land managers. So we do like to be that, to be a good liaison for our landowners, and from our other land managers to our landowners.

Miller: Kristen Walz, thanks very much.

Walz: Thank you.

Miller: Kristen Walz is the executive director of the North Fork John Day Watershed Council.

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