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Ashland seeks input on updated forest plan By Morgan Rothborne Updated: Oct 04, 2022 02:28 PM A A Draft plan contains climate change data that didn’t exist when plan was written in 1994, updated in 2016 Chris Chambers, forestry division chief for Ashland Fire & Rescue, walks through a controlled burn in the Ashland Watershed. Chambers will lead a field trip Thursday as part of efforts to educate residents about an ongoing update to the Ashland Forest Plan. [Mail Tribune / file photo] After a year and a half of work, Ashland’s nearly 30-year-old forest plan has been enhanced with the most up-to-date climate data, but before the draft is adopted, its authors want to hear from Ashland residents. As part of efforts to facilitate public comment on the plan, which can be seen at ashland.or.us/news.asp?newsid=5399 , Ashland Wildfire Division Chief Chris Chambers is leading field trips through Ashland forestlands. One field trip was last Sunday. The next will run from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 6. The trip will start at the Ashland Parks Office in upper Lithia Park, 340 S. Pioneer St., just above the upper duck pond. “Please be ready to hike, so wear sturdy shoes, dress for the weather of the day and bring water and a snack as needed,” the city website says. “We will drive between two locations close together, walking from each spot to nearby forests.” The outing is intended to help Ashland residents see the ever-present changes impacting Ashland’s forests. Drought and wildfire are remaking the entire American West at a rapid clip, Chambers said. In some places, trees are dying over millions of acres, and species are struggling to survive. If extreme heat and lack of water aren’t enough, wildfire has damaged habitat for animals and recreation for people while threatening vital resources such as water. The updated plan, referred to as the draft Ashland Forest Plan Addendum, attempts to protect Ashland’s forests from the consequences of climate change. By creating pockets of refuge for plants and animals within the forests, the plan hopes to help species survive rising heat and lengthening droughts. “There’s no projected end date for climate change, but the hope is, we can give those species an area to persist, and maybe if the climate cools again they can repopulate the landscape,” Chambers said. The plan calls for anticipating a continued rise in tree mortality and an increasing number of extreme rainstorms following parching droughts, potentially creating landslides or at least intensified erosion. Increased coordination and partnerships between various agencies, from the U.S. Forest Service to volunteer agencies, is intended to increase the efficacy of the plan. But the updated plan also is pragmatic about the looming threat of catastrophic wildfire. It’s a certainty, Chambers explained, that wildfire will come. When it does, Ashland’s forests should be ready with less fuels to keep the fire from burning too hot and too fast, and thereby ruining other forest stewardship goals. The original Ashland Forest Plan for the 1,100 acres of public land under the city of Ashland’s care was created in 1994. The plan was updated in 2016. But that plan contained just a chapter on climate change, general in nature and limited by uncertainty as to the impact climate change would have on local forestlands, the draft update says. Climate science has advanced over the past six years, adding considerably to the understanding of the urgent need to address climate change, the draft states. A year and a half ago, Chambers said, he went before the Forest Lands Committee (then a commission) and made the argument that it was time for another update to the forest plan, based on what he was seeing on the land. One of the hardest parts of the plan is attempting to predict the future for a landscape that has no real past. Fire suppression — used on the land from the 1850s up to the modern period — changed the forests radically and, recent science suggests, for the worse. Relying on traditional historical data and Indigenous knowledge of the frequency of fire, it’s possible to see the thinner stands of trees more frequently broken by savannas that were here before fire suppression forestry. “Fire would have moved through so often, none of the brush or anything would have had the chance to grow into fuel for a big fire,” Chambers explained. The updated plan calls for attempting to return to something like the forest of the past, opening up the forest canopy to reduce available fuel and to “create a variable mosaic of forest structure,” the draft plan says. The window for public comment will remain open for several more weeks, Chambers said, likely closing around Thanksgiving. Reach Mail Tribune reporter Morgan Rothborne at [email protected] or 541-776-4487. Follow her on Twitter @MRothborne.