Heading into the New Year, phase two for oak habitat restoration through Upper Rogue Oak Initiative

Published December 31, 2024

A 14-member Lomakatsi restoration crew based out of Jackson County accomplished approximately 25 acres of controlled pile burning today on private lands west of Eagle Point in the Lake Creek area as part of the Upper Rogue Oak Initiative (UROI). The crew was supported by the Lomakatsi Technical Team, who focused on flagging piles to avoid burning that are in close proximity to larger oak trees, in an effort to prevent any negative impacts to the favored legacy oaks during firing operations.

Following ecological thinning and piling, today’s carefully applied hand pile burning is part of the second phase of restoration to reduce forest biomass generated from previous ecological thinning of dense conifers surrounding oak trees to protect and promote connectivity for oak-associated wildlife.

UROI is funded through Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board Focused Investment Partnerships and coordinated through the Klamath Siskiyou Oak Network. The project focuses on reducing the risk of unnaturally severe wildfire in oak habitats—one of seven ecological priorities identified by OWEB—retaining large oak trees, enhancing, sustaining, and providing access to ecoculturally important species, and increasing the potential for this oak ecosystem to withstand the likely effects of climate change.

Restoration treatments will continue over the next year across private non-industrial and Bureau of Land Management lands as part of this landscape-scale initiative in the ecologically rich and culturally important oak woodlands of the Upper Rogue Watershed. Pile burning operations will continue in the Lake Creek area Thursday and into the winter of 2025 depending on weather and atmospheric conditions, while our crews work to complete all 240 acres of pile burning in this unit.

UROI is a collaboration between federal and state agencies, tribes, and nonprofits, which is working to restore over 3,000 acres of oak habitat within three watersheds east and northeast of White City and Medford, Oregon. Learn more at https://klamathbird.org/…/upper-rogue-oak-initiative/.