Racing through tinder-dry pine forests and scrub land northeast of Klamath Falls in south central Oregon, the Bootleg fire is one of the nation’s largest at more than 350,000 acres and is about 80% contained currently. Early evidence is showing that managed and thinned forests around the Sycan Marsh Reserve led the fire to drop out of the canopy and move to the ground as it burned from untreated areas and encountered thinned forest areas.
The 30,000 acre reserve was acquired by The Nature Conservancy in the 1980s and over the years the organization has worked with the local Klamath Native American tribe to thin areas around the marsh and introduce prescribed burns to mimic pre-settlement conditions. According to news reports, The Nature Conservancy officials say it’s still early and more research will need to be done, but reports are the fire moved “gently” along the ground and didn’t harm a research station in the reserve.
Similar effects have been noted in other fires, notably the Wallow Fire in Arizona in 2011 and last year’s North Complex Fire near Quincy, Calif. In both cases communities had thinned and treated areas surrounding small towns—and those areas weren’t as damaged when fires swept through their respective regions.