Nearly 4,000 acres of controlled burns are scheduled for this spring on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Medford District and the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest in southern Oregon. Some 2,450 acres will be burned on the Medford District while about 1,376 acres will be burned on the national forest.
The agencies largely will employ understory burning intended to mimic a low-intensity wildfire by burning the ground fuels without harming most mature trees. The burning improves forest health by reducing crowding of trees and therefore the risk of insect and disease outbreaks. It also reduces the severity and sometimes the spread rate of wildfires near the urban-wildland interface.
"We are actively committed to reducing fuels across the landscape to protect lives, property and resources," Tom Murphy, fire management officer for the BLM's Medford District, told the Mail Tribune. "It is essential that we manage our forests to reduce the potential for a large uncontrolled wildfire."
The controlled burns are allowed only on days when conditions will let the fire burn safely while blowing smoke away from populated areas. The land resource agencies work with the Oregon Smoke Management Office, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, the Oregon Department of Forestry and the National Weather Service.
It is especially gratifying to see underburning in the Siskiyous. In parts of these mountains the dry mixed conifer forests have responded to logging and fire control by producing the infamous "doghair" stand conditions where thousands of small trees slowly choke the mature conifers. "Too many straws in the coconut", as one silviculturist put it.
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