The Bend Park & Recreation District is working on clearing bushes and tree limbs from parks to reduce the risk of a wildfire spreading to nearby neighborhoods. New plans to create vegetation buffers comes amid a heightened awareness about the potential for catastrophic wildfire and a community-wide push to become more resilient.
The park district has been clearing overgrown brush from wildfire-prone parks for two decades, said Zara Hickman, natural resources and trails manager with the district. But the district is placing a new focus on meeting standards of local and national standards for wildfire resiliency.
That entails creating a 20-foot zone free of low-lying tree branches and brush — known as “ladder fuels” where park property abuts private homes.
“The whole point is to try to keep fire predictable and keep it on the ground,” Hickman said.
Removing vegetation is meant to decrease wildfire risk but also promote forest health, Hickman said.
This year, district staff completed nine projects, treating 39 acres in total, according to a press release. Three other projects are under contract and either completed or in process, including pile burning and mowing at Shevlin Park and mowing at Alpine Park.
The focus for fuel treatments is generally on larger, natural parks near the edge of Bend, Hickman said.
The park district’s efforts fall in line with Bend’s Flammable Vegetation Code, which has been around since the early 2000s. It requires landowners to remove flammable plants, and requires larger properties to create 20-foot fire breaks.
But the focus has mostly been on private landowners, not public ones like the park district, said Melissa Steele, deputy fire marshal of wildfire preparedness for Bend Fire & Rescue.
“We are trying to eliminate the spread on a community-large scale,” Steele told the Source. “Everybody needs to do their part.”
According to Steele, BPRD and the City came up with a new wildfire resilience plan after hearing concerns from communities in the Firewise program, which encourages neighborhood-wide home hardening and defensible space efforts.
“It is encouraging to see homeowners aware of Firewise requirements and doing their part to increase wildfire resistance,” Hickman said in a press release. “It is important for community members to know that our natural areas are managed for resilience and are not subject to Firewise, which focuses on structural hardening defense.”
According to the release, the district’s proposed budget earmarks 60% more funding for fire fuel removal. That will help fund three projects in the next year, totaling 140 acres, including in the Archie Briggs Canyon Natural Area, the Eastgate property and the Rose property in southeast Bend.
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