Good News! Oregon's Eagle Creek Fire Wasn't That Bad After All

But if an Oregon lawmaker gets his way, 10,000 acres of the forest will be clear-cut with no community input. Trip Jennings/Balance Media

The nearly 50,000-acre Eagle Creek wildfire, which began September 2 after some idiot kids tossed firecrackers into the woods near Punch Bowl Falls in the Columbia River Gorge, burned the shit out of one of the Pacific Northwest's greatest natural treasures, forced hundreds of people to evacuate, and rained ash on Portland for weeks. But just how bad was it, really?

Portland filmmaker Trip Jennings (full disclosure: Trip is an old kayaking friend of mine) took a helicopter over the Gorge with John Bailey of Oregon State University's Department of Forestry, and Bailey's assessment from above was surprisingly optimistic. While the Eagle Creek fire was certainly large, only about 7,300 acres of the burn area were "highly burned," and nearly 27,000 acres (or 55 percent of the total fire area) were barely burned at all.

"It's just not that big of an impact," Bailey said. "We need to get beyond our fear of fire and the sense that fire, when it's out in the forest, is unnatural and it destroys the forest. Yeah, it destroys trees and behaves in ways we don't like but ... most of this was actually good fire."

"Good fire" may sound like a contradiction to humans, but fire is a vital to maintaining healthy, diverse ecosystems. Fire breaks down organic matter that then creates fertile habits for other plants. It rarely harms animals, who are way better than us at getting out the way, and periodic naturally occuring or even perscribed burns clear out fuel like grasses, needles, brush, and fallen trees. Without these fires, fuel builds and then, when fire does inevitably strike (be it through lightning or idiot kids), the fires can be so huge and intense that they destroy the soil, which hinders future growth.

That's exactly what we don't want, and so some fires—including, it seems Eagle Creek—can prevent bigger, more damaging fires later on. Not that those #teens who started the Eagle Creek fire aren't super fucking dumb and deserve to have their Snapchats taken away for good. But it looks like there's a silver lining to this afterall.

Still, that doesn't mean the Gorge is safe. Right now, Oregon Representive Greg Walden is attempting to pass a bill that would expedite salvage logging (aka clear-cutting) on 10,000 acres of the burn area with no community input or environmental impact assessment. If Walden's bill passes, it could do more damage than the fire itself, according to Michael Lang, conservation director of Friends of the Columbia River Gorge, a group that works to protect and preserve the area.

"Salvage logging is completely inappropriate for the Columbia River Gorge," said Lang in a statement. "If passed, Congressman Walden's bill (H.R. 3715) would mandate commercial logging in areas impacted by the Eagle Creek wildfire and require the Forest Service to develop plans to log the Gorge without environmental review, short-circuiting public involvement and limiting legal challenges. This is unacceptable."

Trip Jennings, himself a conservationist, agrees. "When I was flying over the burn I was surprised by how many acres of trees looked totally green and unburned, " he said. "I couldn't stop thinking of how many perfectly healthy, live trees would be cut if Walden's clear-cut bill gets passed by convincing folks that the Gorge is ruined."

As you can see from the video above, the Columbia River Gorge is not ruined. But if Rep. Walden—who has taken over $80,000 from logging giant Weyerhaeuser—gets his way, a hell of a lot more of it will be.