Juniper: This ‘Native’ is Getting Invasive

The notch has been cranked up — fire levels in Bend now official sit at “extreme,” and the Oregon Department of Forestry has joined in the warnings of extreme fire danger.

But when the largest fire this summer burned only 1,300 acres in Warm Springs, some people are wondering, what fire season?

“I’ve lived here my whole life and I remember a handful of big fires,” said Bend resident Matt Hester. “But as of lately, I don’t remember any of them.”

Now, hot, dry weather and a low amount of fuel moisture has Bend fire officials warning residents, the tiniest spark.could turn into a destructive wildfire.

The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for high winds in parts of Central Oregon, putting on the conclusion of a 1,500-acre prescribed burn in the Coyote Hills area near Crooked River Ranch.

The burn will help get rid of some Western juniper trees.

Native to Central Oregon, these water-sucking weeds used to be few and far between.

“Most people think these large forests of juniper have always been here, but it was mostly sagebrush and grass, and that’s what attracted a lot of the early settlers here,” said Steve Lent, a former Forest Service manager and local historian.

Those same settlers let their livestock roam — chewing away the same grass that juniper competed with.

That let the juniper trees take over.

Now, a majority of the 1.7 million acres of forest land in Deschutes County is covered with juniper.

“We have pictures from 1905 where you can see it’s only grass, and the juniper is very sparse,” said Lent. “Then we went back and took pictures of the same spot 100 years later — the juniper has taken over.”

The problem: Each juniper sucks up gallons of water, leaving the grass and brush near the trunk the perfect dry fuel for a fire to spark or spread quickly.

Extreme fire danger and acres of juniper and dry grass could be just the perfect recipe for this summer’s biggest fires.

“A lot of people always think, ‘Oh, that juniper’s always been there, we don’t want to eliminate them from the system,’ Well we don’t want to eliminate them from the system, we want to restrain them (to) where they had normally been,” Lent said.