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The Nugget Newspaper
Sisters, Oregon
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The contents of the on-line edition of The Nugget represent a selection among the stories that appear in the weekly print edition.

Local residents tour fire area
By Torri Barco

Four deer passed across the path of a bus carrying 30 people Sunday, lightly skipping over charred stumps and burnt foliage in the forest area burned by the B&B Complex Fire. Eager eyes peered out of the windows and greeted the deer as if they were old friends.

The animals, some said, are a sign of a new beginning.

Sisters District Ranger Bill Anthony and other Forest Service personnel gave a six-hour tour of miles of damaged forest area to Camp Sherman residents, members of Friends of the Metolius and Forest Service representatives on Sunday, October 26.

They toured winding dirt roads north of Camp Sherman, traveling up Highway 20, down into Suttle Lake and Scout Lake, across Brush Creek River, down the 12 Road and the 1280 and 1210 Roads near Abbott Butte.

The tour covered some areas still closed to the public.

"This fire was really hard for me," said Lauri Turner, Sister Ranger District Wildlife Biologist. "The only way I can deal with it is to say this isn't a total destruction; it is a new beginning. This is going to be a boom for many upland game birds, like ruffed grouse.

"It's just going to take a little bit longer for the closed-canopy species to re-inhabit the forest. You have to look at it in that sort of light also," she said.

Turner said she has already seen chipmunks, squirrels and smaller animals that survived because they were able to burrow into the ground in areas where the fire was less severe.

Turner said the burnt forest areas will also attract more elk, deer and especially woodpeckers.

"There has been an influx of woodpeckers," Turner said. "They arrive before the fire is even out. They smell the smoke and hear the bark beetles. They are taking advantage of the food."

Many Camp Sherman residents asked the guides about the safety of the spotted owl -- a nocturnal, woodland owl that inhabits the local forest.

Turner said 15 owl sites were destroyed in the 91,000-acre fire, which burned from August 19 to September 26. She said 12 to 13 of those owl sites no longer exist. Turner lamented that in the last three years, area fires have destroyed 18 of 24 owl sites and some eagle's nests, including one above Suttle Lake and one at the base of Cache Mountain.

"I don't know but I assume they're not killed," Turner said about the lost animals. "Most of the animals in these conditions are able to escape, but I don't know if they'll come back. My instinct with working with them for 10 years is that they won't re-inhabit that area."

The spotted owl was the focus of controversy over logging in sensitive habitat during much of the 1990s. The Sisters Ranger District had to work around that controversy.

"We've always known our spotted owl habitat was weak," Anthony said. "We've known that some day we would lose it to insects or fire and now that has happened. In the mid '90s, our strategy was to hold onto it as long as we could and build up its defense areas, but now we have a different slate to play with."

Some on the tour took the long view of the fire's impact, seeing it in the context of the evolution of the forest.

Part of the beauty of the forest is that it is always changing, said Gregory McClarren, Vice Chairman of the Friends of the Metolius Board. McClarren sat at the Scout Lake picnic area eating lunch with the tour members and considering the still-standing picnic tables and healthy-looking old growth trees.

"Lots of people who come here to see the forest see how it has evolved," McClarren said.

"That's how the forest works. It is not static, it evolves," he said. "Maybe some of it is burnt and some green, but that's okay.

"There is never all of one species, or all of one size or all of one color; there is always a mix."

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