Wilderness to wasteland and back

A walk in the the forest has become a strange experience for those who have enjoyed visiting the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness Area in the past. The 2003 B&B complex fire burned with varying intensity through 91,000 acres of Cascade crest forest, which amounts to most of the 107,000 acre wilderness area south of Mt. Jefferson. It's an area that has gone from wilderness to wasteland and is now, six years later, slowly coming back.
September was National Wilderness Month and it begged the questions of how the wilderness is recovering and how does the forest service manage a wilderness area scared by wildfire? While non-wilderness and private lands are usually replanted, wilderness areas are left to the natural cycle.Walking through the burned off landscape shortly after the fire reminded Forest Service silviculturist Brian Tandy of a moonscape. There was nothing left but ash and rock and snags in the area he walked between Jack Lake and Square Lake. He could count the live trees on one hand. Areas where previous a hiker could barely see the sky were suddenly open. "It's just sort of an eerie feeling when you're out there and nothing's left," he said. The conflagration was in part the result of years of Forest Service success fighting fire. Wilderness areas are generally left alone today, but much of the 100-year history of forest fire suppression was before the advent of designated Wilderness Areas in the 1964 Wilderness Act. Wildfire is a natural part of the forest cycle, with stand-replacement fires occurring an average of every 300 years, Forest Service experts say. Lodge pole pine weakens and becomes susceptible to pine beetle infestations at an age of about 125 years, also setting up conditions for fire."Fire management is the way we've altered it (the forest) the most," said Sisters District Ranger Bill Anthony. "We broke up Mother Nature's basis to do stand replacement in smaller patches." Anthony said the Forest Service is looking at the possibility of planned ignitions in wilderness areas but there are no decisions in place yet. Evidence shows vegetation in the Mt. Jefferson area is coming back, though altitude and which way the land slopes often dictates how. A hike up the Jefferson Creek drainage reveals acres of snow bush overgrowing the trail in the east-facing drainage. Other areas show the return of manzanita and other plants including lodge pole pine, fir and ponderosa. The new trees vary in height from mere inches to several feet. The lakes – Square, Mowich, Duffy, Wasco – all have lines of unburned trees on their shores. but in some places the fire burned all the way to the water's edge. The pattern of fire in the wilderness reveals patches of green trees where the fire perhaps cooled and burned on the ground during the night. The trees on downwind sides of lakes were often spared and the burn pattern was affected by variables ranging from humidity, to wind, to topographical features. "Fire itself is a random beast," said one fire expert. There were winners and losers in the fire. Woodpeckers found good going in the fire aftermath. Spotted owls lost habitat. Game animals have more browse. People largely went elsewhere, putting more pressure on other areas of the forest for recreational uses. Maintaining trails in fast-growing areas of snow bush shrubbery is particularly difficult, according to Deschutes National Forest Trail Program Manager Marv Lang. In some cases they have had to concentrate their efforts on one trail and let another go. Adding to the difficulty, trails in wilderness areas are maintained by non-mechanized means and overall there are about 2,200 miles of trial in the Deschutes National Forest. The fire also added a dimension of danger for visitors – burned trees will eventually fall. The Forest Service fells dangerous trees in areas frequented by the public, but not inside wilderness areas. "In the wilderness, it's meant to be wild and natural," said Anthony.What's certain is the forest will come back in its own way. Trees will eventually push up through the snow bush. The charred snags will fall. Equilibrium between plants will change. But that's what people like Aldo Leopold and Bob Marshall had in mind when, early in the 20th century, they urged that some public lands remain wilderness. Wilderness is almost poetically defined in the Wilderness Act: "A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life is untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." It's important to note that untrammeled doesn't mean untrampled, but means simply to be unconfined or free of interference. Watching the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness Area restore itself will be the reward of visitors for many years to come. "It will go through a couple of hundred years," said Anthony. "You just have to look for a different beauty in it. We've learned to step back and watch it transform itself into another forest."
-- photo and story by Gary G. Newman