Last week a Associated Press article proclaimed that the rehabilitation taking place after the Soda Fire, which burned 225,953 acres along highway 95 on the Oregon/Idaho border in August, was going well. Not so fast. According to a report from Roger Rosentreter, a retired PhD botanist who worked for the BLM for 38 years, things aren’t going so well. Dr Rosentreter submitted his report to the BLM on April 25th after attending a tour of the Soda Fire recovery area sponsored by the Society for Ecological Restoration on April 12th. The tour was attended by staff from the USGS as well as the BLM. The tour consisted of stops at three areas, the Wilson meteorological/erosion station, the Blackstock drill seeding area, and the Upper Blackstock area.

At the beginning of the report, Dr. Rosentreter states:

Based on observations at these sites is possible that BLM caused more damage than good on the Soda fire rehabilitation. Many of these actions caused damaged forbs and biocrusts. These disturbances destabilized the soil and will encourage the colonization by invasive species including cheatgrass.

This is startling because much of what caused the Soda Fire to burn so hot and quickly over such a large area was the combination of extreme conditions and dry cheatgrass, an annual grass that thrives in this area due to the disturbance of soils and biologic soil crusts caused, to a large extent, by livestock grazing. Cheatgrass germinates in the fall and goes to seed in late spring and early summer and then dies and dries out to become a fine fuel source that can rapidly carry a fire. Once a fire burns through an area, there is generally a rehabilitation effort that is often politically influenced by ranchers who would rather have livestock forage planted instead of native grasses, forbs, and sagebrush. That is what appears to have happened here.

Large areas of the Soda Fire have been replanted with Siberian and crested wheatgrass, a non-native grass species that ranchers like for its livestock forage value. It has little value as wildlife habitat and is difficult to get rid of once it has been established. In one unburned area visited by Dr. Rosentreter, the BLM had used rangeland drills to disturb the soil and plant seeds. According to Rosentreter, this area did not need rehabilitation but, unfortunately, the drills overturned the soils in the unburned area and little was growing in the newly disturbed soils. These disturbed soils are now prime habitat for cheatgrass and medusahead rye, another invasive annual grass that has gained a foothold in this area and that is just as bad for fueling fires but even less palatable for wildlife than cheatgrass.

In this same area, the BLM had planted what they thought was Wyoming sagebrush (A. tridentata ssp. wyomingensis) which was found in the unburned areas nearby along with early sagebrush (Artemisia longiloba). Unfortunately, the sagebrush that had been planted was of two species that aren’t as preferred by sage grouse, mountain big sagebrush, (A. vaseyana) and basin big sagebrush, (A. tridentata ssp. tridentata).

In another area, herbicide had been applied at high concentration to an area that did not have cheatgrass or medusahead rye. It was applied much later than would have been effective had these invasive grasses been present. The result was the death of most of the native forbs preferred by sage grouse, most of the native annual plants, and some of the native grasses. However, death camas, which is toxic to livestock, remained on the site because it sprouts from deeper in the soil and later in the season. A rangeland drill was also pulled through islands of unburned sagebrush and forbs causing damage to the plants.

To summarize, Dr. Rosentreter says:

The BLM project personnel may not have consulted with a broad cross section of their own experienced resource personnel and, instead, relied on less ecologically knowledgeable fire, operations, and local range staff for planning this apparently ill-fated rehabilitation operation. An oversite review by BLM soil scientists, botanists and more experienced wildlife personnel could have provided valuable recommendations for adaptive management. Future review by non-agency scientists might help to improve future fire rehabilitation plans and actions. This rehabilitation did not utilize the knowledge gained from recent science on fire rehabilation nor on the vegetative needs of sage grouse.

You can read the entire report here: Soda Fire Report April 2016