Firefighters clear a containment line around a burning log while working a prescribed burn along Forest Road 21 near La Pine in 2021.

The U.S. Forest Service says it expects to increase the number of prescribed burns and other actions to reduce material that fuels wildfires in Central Oregon over the next 10 years as new funding opportunities are available.

The additional work will be mostly funded by the bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed in November, said Jean Nelson-Dean, a spokesperson for the Deschutes National Forest. Central Oregon residents will notice the work in the coming weeks.

“Fuels reduction work, primarily prescribed burning, will be noticeable to the forest visitor and the greater community of Central Oregon through this spring,” she said.

Hotter and longer summers, coupled with low snowpack and disappearing glaciers in the Cascades, have made Oregon more susceptible to out-of-control wildfires. The growing number of large fires across the West has prompted the federal government to spend more time and resources on reducing combustible fuels around communities to avoid wildfire disasters like the one experienced in 2018 near Paradise, California, that killed 85 people and displaced thousands.

Reducing the hazardous fuel load in a forest is usually a three-step process, said Nelson-Dean. Step one is thinning the stands of forest, next is mowing, or masticating, the smaller trees and woody products on the ground, then comes the prescribed burn. Forest management is one term used to describe this process.

Nelson-Dean said Central Oregon firefighting crews will also benefit from the Biden administration’s 10-year strategy on preventing wildfires, announced last month.

The strategy, funded with $3 billion from the infrastructure bill, seeks to conduct forest management activities on an additional 20 million acres on national forestlands and up to 30 million acres on federal, state, tribal and private lands.

Deschutes County Forester Ed Keith said details are still emerging on how the infrastructure bill will fund local fuels-reduction efforts, but he does expect the amount to be “very significant.”

“Central Oregon will be a priority area for treatment due to risk,” said Keith. “I expect activity to be increasing over the next 10 years.”

The infrastructure bill contains $500 million for forest thinning projects and another $500 million for conducting prescribed burns.

Last year the Deschutes National Forest conducted thinning, mowing and prescribed burns on 38,501 acres. In 2020, the Forest Service treated 30,504 acres, a down year because COVID-19 restrictions limited the number of burns and other work that could be done while quarantines and social distancing were in place.

The prescribed burns and pile burning that occur on a regular basis to reduce fuel loads also create considerable smoke that can cause poor air quality. In Bend, the elevated smoke levels are most noticeable along the western edge of the city, in neighborhoods near Century Drive, Mt. Washington Drive, and Shevlin Park Road.

The Deschutes National Forest announces the location of the burns ahead of time to alert residents to the possibility of smoke in their areas.

“Anyone living in Central Oregon needs to be aware that they are living next to forests that require some thinning and understory burning to be maintained and to provide a diversity of wildlife and plant habitats,” said Nelson-Dean.

Nelson-Dean said local wildfire crews are almost fully staffed for the season, with just a handful of seasonal hires still needed. It’s becoming more of a challenge to fill positions due to the rising cost of living in Central Oregon, she said.

“It does make it harder to fill those positions every year.”

How is the fire season shaping up? Nelson-Dean said the recent dry spell could result in another tenuous year of wildfire and smoke.

“We can expect fire seasons to look similar to recent years.”

Announcements on prescribed burns are made on the Deschutes National Forest Twitter feed @DesNatlForest and on the website centraloregonfireinfo.org. Residents can also text “COFIRE” to 888-777 to get alerts.