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Klamath River Basin Landscape
The Klamath River Basin, located in both California and Oregon, spans the Fremont-Winema, Klamath, Modoc, Shasta-Trinity, and Six Rivers National Forests and encompasses the entire Klamath River watershed. Large wildfires have severely damaged communities and degraded ecosystems across the five national forests.
Claire Price (left), and Kyle Hitchcock permanent seasonal firefighters on the Shasta Lake Ranger District, during a pile burn to remove hazardous fuels on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest December 6, 2022. (USDA Forest Service photo by Andrew Avitt)
At the Forest Service, we manage about 55 percent of the approximately 8.5-million-acre Klamath Basin. These lands generate 80 percent of the mean annual surface water supply to the Klamath River. The area provides important habitat for fish listed under the Endangered Species Act. Fish like steelhead, salmon, and suckers are vital to the culture and well-being of Tribes in the Klamath Basin. Following the planned removal of four dams on the Klamath River, National Forest System lands will provide habitat for fish that have been excluded from the upper basin. For several decades, Federal, State, and other partners have warned that the Klamath Basin is in critical need of restoration. Catastrophic wildfires have damaged or degraded ecosystems and communities across five national forests in the Klamath Basin, a trend that is likely to continue as the climate becomes hotter and drier. The effects of a changing climate on hydrology and wildfire activity are degrading fish habitat, including contributing to habitat loss through postfire landslides. Many affected communities are in rural counties with some of the lowest median incomes in their respective States.
Confronting the Wildfire Crisis Video Series
Wildfires have been growing in size, duration, and destructivity. Growing wildfire risk is due to accumulating fuels, a warming climate, and expanding development in the wildland-urban interface. The risk has reached crisis proportions, calling for decisive action to protect people and communities while improving forest health and resilience. The Forest Service, together with tribes and partners, developed a Wildfire Crisis Strategy to focus on strategic fuels and forest health treatments at the scale of the problem, using the best available knowledge and science as the guide.
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An Unprecedented Threat
In recent years, Wild fires have had a devastating impact on communities and ecosystems across the country, challenging landscapes and changing lives. The uptick in wildfire behavior and its effects are due in part to a changing climate. Past land management practices and increased development in wild land areas.
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Factors Contributing to the Wildfire Crisis
In recent years, Wild fires have had a devastating impact on communities and ecosystems across the country, challenging landscapes and changing lives. The uptick in wildfire behavior and its effects are due in part to a changing climate. Past land management practices and increased development in wild land areas.
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Fire-Resilient Communities
This episode expands on the most important outcome and one of the biggest in owning factors guiding our work, wildland communities. From two thousand fourteen to two thousand twenty, the average of structures destroyed by wildfire arose from two thousand eight hundred seventy three to twelve thousand two hundred and fifty five.
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Water - the Quality of Resilience
Treating the force also has a number of other less obvious benefits, Many of them revolve around the very element used to put out fire. Water. The Shasta Trinity is the home of the headwaters of the Sacramento River and provides abundant and clean water for a large portion of the state of California, and a large portion of the economy of the state of California relies on the waters that come off of the Shasta Trinity.
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Partnering to Meet the Scale
In the previous four episodes, you saw some of the components that make up the wildfire crisis. You heard from experts about what the Forest Services strategy entails and who will benefit. We can't do it alone.
Expected Outcomes
In addition to reduced wildfire exposure and risk for communities within the Klamath Basin, we will improve watershed conditions and salmonid habitats in the face of climate change. These improvements will support underserved communities and local economies. At least 217,000 acres will be treated through FYs 2023–31. In addition to investments identified with announcing this landscape, our goal is to attract another $15 million in partner contributions.
Mechanism for Execution
We will invest in projects in collaboration with Tribes and other partners. We will explore opportunities for new agreements to work with our Tribal, Federal, State, and other partners. We will also use innovative stewardship contracts, such as the Blue Mile G-Z Stewardship integrated resource service contract on the Fremont-Winema National Forest.
Methods of treatment
Mechanical treatments can benefit ecosystems and people by:
- Reducing the probability of catastrophic fires
- Helping maintain and restore healthy and resilient ecosystems
- Protecting human communities.
Examples of mechanical treatment include the thinning of dense stands of trees, or other fuel treatments that make an area better able to withstand fire. Such treatments might be piling brush, pruning lower branches of trees, or creating fuel breaks to encourage the right kind of fire. Tools that are used to carry out the mechanical treatment of hazardous fuels range from hand tools such as chainsaws and rakes, to large machines like bulldozers and woodchippers.
Mechanical treatment can be used on its own or together with prescribed burning to change how wildfire behaves, so that when a fire does burn through a treated area, it is less destructive, less costly, and easier to control. Often, mechanical fuels treatments are followed by prescribed fire to create effective hazard reduction.
Mechanical treatment can also provide opportunities for woody biomass utilization by providing a renewable source of energy and wood products for local communities.
Prescribed fire is a planned fire used to meet management objectives.
Did you know fire can be good for people and the land? After many years of fire exclusion, an ecosystem that needs periodic fire becomes unhealthy. Trees are stressed by overcrowding; fire-dependent species disappear; and flammable fuels build up and become hazardous. The right fire at the right place at the right time:
- Reduces hazardous fuels, protecting human communities from extreme fires
- Minimizes the spread of pest insects and disease
- Removes unwanted species that threaten species native to an ecosystem
- Provides forage for game
- Improves habitat for threatened and endangered species
- Recycles nutrients back to the soil; and
- Promotes the growth of trees, wildflowers, and other plants
The Forest Service manages prescribed fires and even some wildfires to benefit natural resources and reduce the risk of unwanted wildfires in the future. The agency also uses hand tools and machines to thin overgrown sites in preparation for the eventual return of fire.
Tribal Connections
Klamath Tribes; Karuk Tribe; Yurok Tribe; Hoopa Valley Tribe; Quartz Valley Indian Reservation; Resighini Rancheria; Pit River Tribe; Shasta Indian Nation; Modoc Nation
Partners
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; National Park Service; USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service; National Marine Fisheries Service; Bureau of Indian Affairs; Oregon Department of Forestry; California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection; California Climate Investment Program; Western Klamath Restoration Partnership; Mid-Klamath Watershed Council; Klamath Lake Forest Health Partnership; community of Chiloquin; National Wild Turkey Federation; California Deer Association; Patriot Restoration Operations; National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
Additional Links
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Confronting the Wildfire Crisis: A Historic Year
As the agency's Wildfire Crisis Strategy enters its third year, this publication looks back at what was accomplished on the 21 landscapes during fiscal year 2023. It highlights the successful partnerships, new management practices, and on-the-ground efforts that have reduced wildfire risk for communities, infrastructure, and natural resources. The document also looks forward to how work will continue to be funded and implemented, through both new and existing sources and programs.
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Confronting the Wildfire Crisis: Second Landscapes
The start of fiscal year 2023 saw the selection of 11 new landscapes targeted for treatments under the Wildfire Crisis Strategy. This sixth installment of "Confronting the Wildfire Crisis" details those landscapes and discusses the funding sources that are being used to protect our communities, infrastructure, and natural resources.
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Confronting the Wildfire Crisis: Initial Landscapes
Confronting the Wildfire Crisis: Initial Landscapes In 2022, the Forest Service and our partners identified 10 initial landscapes to receive funding as part of the new Wildfire Crisis Strategy. This fourth installment of "Confronting the Wildfire Crisis" offers profiles on each landscape and outlines the decision process that led to choosing these areas.
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Confronting the Wildfire Crisis: A Chronicle
The Forest Service and other land management agencies have long worked together to manage a growing wildfire crisis. This document, the third installment of "Confronting the Wildfire Crisis," details how those efforts have evolved from the 1990s towards the National Cohesive Strategy in the 2010s and into the present strategy of the 2020s.
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Confronting the Wildfire Crisis: Implementation Plan
The implementation of the Wildfire Crisis Strategy details how the Forest Service will work with our partners to identify projects and begin work to mitigate the wildfire crisis. It is the second installment of "Confronting the Wildfire Crisis."
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Confronting the Wildfire Crisis: Update
This update to the January 2022 strategy document, "Confronting the Wildfire Crisis," examines the progress made during the first year of the strategy. It reports on work accomplished across the 10 initial landscape-scale projects through the funding provided by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021.
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Confronting the Wildfire Crisis
The Nation faces a wildfire crisis that is increasing in severity due to accumulating fuels, changing climate, and expanding development in wildfire-prone landscapes. As one of the largest stewards of forested land in the United States, the Forest Service has launched a 10-year strategy to confront this crisis and reduce wildfire risk to our country's communities and critical infrastructure.