Watershed Restoration After the Biscuit Fire

The most glaring example of the Bush administration's total dismissal of sound science in post-fire management was the so-called Biscuit Fire Recovery Project in southern Oregon. In the summer of 2002, fires burned nearly 500,000 acres on the Siskiyou and Six Rivers National Forest. Approximately 73% of this area was either wilderness or roadless areas. In 2003, the Forest Service proposed a massive salvage logging project in the area - approximately 518 million board feet, the largest proposal of its kind ever.

PRC had numerous concerns over the proposed actions, including the Draft Environmental Impact Statement's (DEIS) lack of a true watershed restoration alternative and the dismissal of the direct and cumulative detrimental impacts of salvage logging, and its corollary road-building and increased use, on this erosive and landslide-prone landscape. While the DEIS claimed that the goal of the project was watershed "recovery" in this post-fire landscape, it is PRC's conviction that a project which includes extensive salvage harvest and little road decommissioning has no chance of truly recovering the area. PRC, along with our colleagues at Pacific Watershed Associates (PWA), submitted critical comments on the deficiencies of the DEIS and the proposed action. PRC also teamed with PWA to produce a true restoration proposal (that would also have created over 400 woods-worker jobs) for the Biscuit Fire area (see below).  We again submitted comments when the final EIS was released. 

Watershed restoration plan for the Biscuit Burn Area

A plan that would have protected the area's natural resources while boosting the local economy.

PRC worked with Pacific Watershed Associates (PWA), a consulting firm in Arcata, California, to produce a detailed post-fire restoration plan for the Biscuit Burn Area. PWA spent time on the ground surveying the landscape and analyzing Forest Service data, to determine exactly what needed to happen, particularly with the road network, to protect and restore the aquatic resources in the area. This plan provided specific steps that should have been taken to protect the landscape, steps that, if implemented, would have create roughly 400 jobs.

Managing forests after a fire is an important issue that reaches far outside the Biscuit Area. In a similar vein, the post-fire principles and actions laid out in our Biscuit restoration plan are applicable to watersheds across the West. Current post-fire management practices, though proposed as economic and ecological necessities, are actually a waste of taxpayer dollars and are ecologically unsound, often causing more, added damage to the landscape than the fire itself. Our Biscuit Restoration Plan could have demonstrated the ecological and economic benefits of such work, and served as a pilot project which could be applied across the West.

PWA's report Erosion Assessment and Erosion Prevention Planning Project for Forest Roads in the Biscuit Fire Area, Southern Oregon was released April 2005.  Click here to view the report.

Other Materials and Publications

Learn more about PRC's efforts to reduce the adverse effects of forest roads. 

Learn more about the impacts of post-fire logging on aquatic ecosystems.  

View PWA's Slide Presentation: Watershed Restoration in the Post-fire Landscape: A Case Study of the Southern Oregon Biscuit Fire Area - A Science-Based, On-the-Ground Strategy for Action.  to view.

Read a PRC Editorial published in The Oregonian, "Managing the Forests Defining clear policy for fighting forest fires." 

View the Photo Documentation and Field Monitoring Report of the Biscuit Fire Salvage Roads and Operations (draft) from a May 2006 field trip with PRC staff scientists and Pacific Watershed Associates.