Southern Oregon town buys surrounding forest to manage old growth and reduce wildfires

Butte Falls is a small town in Southern Oregon, about an hour’s drive northeast of Medford. The 400 or so residents there are surrounded by a ring of what was until recently privately owned forest. But a decades-long effort by the town to buy and manage the land itself has finally come to fruition, with the help of state, federal and private funding — and too many agencies and elected officials to list.

As reported by Inside Climate News and Columbia Insight, Butte Falls will be making forest management decisions that preserve old-growth trees, clear wildfire fuel and directly encourage outdoor tourism. Trish Callahan is the mayor of Butte Falls. She joins us to talk about the effort and its implications for the future of the town.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:

Geoff Norcross: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Geoff Norcross, in for Dave Miller. The little town of Butte Falls could easily be overrun if a major wildfire breaks out nearby. The town of about 430 people sits right in the middle of an ocean of pine and fir trees in Southern Oregon. The forest has been stressed by drought and choked with wildfire fuel. The timber companies have been retreating from these forests for decades. So it was clear that if the city of Butte Falls wanted to clean up the surrounding forest, they’d have to do it themselves. The town has purchased about 400 acres of surrounding private timberland. They don’t plan to log it. Instead, they’ll work to restore it to a more natural wildfire resistant state and open it up for tourism. Here to talk more about the Butte Falls Community Forest Project is the town mayor Trish Callahan. Mayor Callahan, welcome to Think Out Loud.

Trish Callahan: Thank you very much, Geoff. I appreciate being here.

Norcross: Where did this idea to actually buy the land and manage it from the town come from?

Callahan: Actually our past Mayor, Linda Spencer, was instrumental in starting this project. She was at a meeting and it was attended by Alex Campbell, from Regional Solutions, which works out of the Governor’s Office. And she kind of brought up the idea that we would really like to purchase land around our town for fire resilience as well as purchase the falls that we have our namesake for. So Alex just stated, “You know, maybe that will happen.” So the Trust for Public Lands became part of our group and the Governor’s Office and we managed to negotiate a contract with Weyerhaeuser to purchase 430 acres. And that was back in 2019 when we started this.

Norcross: Yeah Weyerhaeuser, the timber company, owned this land before. They were first approached by you and your town to purchase the land from them and manage it in this way. What was their reaction?

Callahan: They did not want to even talk to us in the beginning. Linda was very persistent for probably almost a year. She would call and try to set an appointment to be able to come in and even talk about some of the plans that we had. And Weyerhaeuser just wouldn’t listen to us. And so finally, like I say, Alex Campbell, was also a huge help by getting us in with the Trust for Public Lands. And that’s where the negotiations came from. Kristin Kovalik was the one that contacted Weyerhaeuser and negotiations started.

Norcross: So, in other words, you had all these partners and that gave you a little more negotiating muscle with the company?

Callahan: Absolutely. And about halfway through the negotiations, we came up with the 430 acres and we were going to purchase that land for $1,150,000. And so we had to search out grants and look for donors that would participate and just with word of mouth, with all of us traveling around. We had so many people that were interested in our project that we ended up getting donors. The USDA Forest Service, Oregon Legislature, Ford Foundation, Gordon Elwood Foundation, Doris Duke Foundation, and Medford Water Commission, all donated money to be able to help us purchase this land.

Norcross: Why do you think they did that? Why were they so interested in helping you with this project?

Callahan: You know, Butte Falls is a small community. Like you said, we have about 420-425 people and we had gone through the [South] Obenchain fire in 2020. Everybody was searching for ways that we could come up with [for how to] become more resilient to fire and not have our town burned down like some of the places in California and other communities all over the country. And I think with our idea of trying to make a community where we would have an innovative approach to be able to do stewardship for our forest lands. And any remote communities that might be interested in seeing what we were doing, we would try to become, and maybe even develop, a stable forest community and try to encourage the development of forest research and knowledge. And I think people got interested in how you do that. So that’s how we got to start in that one.

Norcross: As we mentioned, the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company owned this land previously. When was the last time they actually used this land for that purpose?

Callahan: Part of the negotiations was that within 2019 to 2022 they still had the rights to be able to remove some of the wood and trees that were on the property. So they wanted to get probably 150 acres [of] wood that was on that property. So just up until our contract runs out at the end of this year. So they still have some areas that they are logging.

Norcross: At the end of the year, the contract is over and then Weyerhaeuser out of the forest?

Callahan: That is correct. In fact, they sold our contract to another company and they continued to be able to support us. It was, if I remember correctly, Chinook Forest Management Company. They honored the agreement that we had with Weyerhaeuser.

Norcross: When this idea was first proposed, what kind of reaction around town did people hear?

Callahan: We have a really good reaction. People were excited to think that we had the opportunity to be able to manage our own destinies, basically. With all the ladder fuels, undergrowth, underbrush that is under all these trees, [we] would be able to clean all of those areas out, be able to build roads or fire breaks that would stop the fires from possibly coming. Because that Obenchain fire came within about a quarter mile of our town. And our local timber workers, loggers, ranch owners were the ones that fought that fire off. They worked day and night for four or five days just trying to save the town. And we had other Forest Service people that came from all over the country that finally did come up and help us with it also. But the community was just really involved. Everybody was on board and the idea of being able to manage our own forest was very important to this community.

Norcross: Let’s get some specifics about what you’ll actually do in the forest land to reduce the wildfire risk. What’s the work that needs to happen out there?

Callahan: We are already in the process of clearing out some of the ladder fuels that are surrounding some of the areas. That reduces the possibility of fires that way. It stays under control that way. Like you say again, the breaks we are trying to create in order to not allow the fires to come in. We’re thinning trees in the forest to be able to get rid of the smaller trees. That’s gonna help to try to create better canopies for our trees. And hopefully our whole destiny with this is to be carbon conscious and make sure that we could end up with an old growth forest. [That is] what we are hoping for.

Norcross: Butte Falls, the actual falls that give the town its name, is in this tract that you bought. What’s gonna happen with them?

Callahan: That is an exciting process that we’re doing. We’re working with another partner, the National Parks and Recreation. And Brie Truman is the lady that we are working with. And they are going to design a park area for us down there. We’ve been working on this for probably almost 10 months to a year now. And the falls will have a new overlook that goes over to be able to walk out on, picnic on. It’ll have trails that are going to tie into [Bureau of Land Management] property. And fences, of course, will go around it for safety.

If you want to have a wedding, then we’ll be able to have areas where that will happen. Sooner or later we want to build, for day use and maybe even overnight, camping in the future. We have plans to put in an archery course. We’ve got a design for a bike park. So that way the kids will be able to ride their bikes in these areas. We’ve got the possibility of the railroad coming in. That will be good for having our railroad enthusiasts that love to come and do recreational things there and ride the train. And that’ll take us down to our historical cemetery and trails will be built around there also. And it creates some economic growth as well as some recreation for people that would love to get out into the woods.

Norcross: Yeah, so it seems like you’re opening up this land to tourists in a way that just wasn’t possible before. But, of course you know, tourists bring dangers as well, especially when it comes to wildfires, when they bring their cigarettes or their fireworks or their campfires. So, if the idea here is to mitigate fire risk around the town, why open it up to tourists?

Callahan: Tourism is one of those things that can be very controversial. We do have a few community people that do worry about that. The whole future for Butte Falls is gonna have to be, to keep us alive, is to be able to have the recreation to bring people into town. And our community understands that we don’t really have many resources up here for that type of development. We do have our own water bottling plant that comes out of Ginger Springs. And so we have that business that’s up here. So I think that either way, our community is gonna look forward to having new people come in.

A few years ago, we had Cycle Oregon that came and spent a weekend. They parked at the baseball field. Our high school football field was used with people camping out . And that just brought so much energy and excitement into the town. The restaurants flourished and it was just great. It gave the community something to look forward to. We have our Fourth of July that we celebrate with and this brings people up to Butte Falls from Ashland and Klamath Falls. And so we do have a little bit of tourism. But this will help with the economic development of our community as well.

Norcross: Let’s talk about oversight a little bit. There’s going to be a new Forest Commission there in the city to monitor the forest and make sure all of your goals are being met. Are they gonna answer directly to you? How are they accountable?

Callahan: We developed a governance structure ourselves. We named it the Butte Falls Community Forest Commission. And what that does is that it consists of seven commissioners. And we started with a forest administrator who wrote up our complete project action plan for the community itself. He deals with the government, any kind of contracts that would come that way. He helped to look for funding for us. Then we have a forest manager. And he’s local and what he does is he manages all of the other people that are involved in this community forest.

And we’ve got seven different commissioners and we’ve broken that up into specific areas. So parks and recreation, economic development, a forest garden, education and research. And that’s in with our natural resource center, which is through our school. And that’s a development for education and learning for students that will be opened up for other communities to be able to be involved in that. Marketing and communication is another one of our commissioners. Then we have a Special Project commissioner and that’s for when the railroad comes in or any other kind of projects that we may think of, down the line.

This is [about] the whole future of what the town is. Then we’ve created ordinances and what that does is to give us power to be able to bring in our city council. And the city council is the one that will make the final decisions on everything. So it’s not only me, it’s our Community Forest Commission and the City Council will be in charge of this and this will give us our duties and the procedures that we go through.

Norcross: Ok. You’ve obviously put in a lot of work on this 400 acres that you’ve bought. But depending on how it goes, could you maybe see yourself buying more land, more forest and adding to the community forest?

Callahan: That’s a good question. I’m gonna leave that one to the next people that are in line for the second generation of community forest commissioners.

Norcross: For other communities that might be thinking about doing this too, for buying the land around them just to help out their wildfire mitigation efforts. What’s your advice to them?

Callahan: I would say, make sure that you have got the understanding of your community which is gonna have to participate in this and stand behind you. You also really need to partner with people like the Forest Service. The Oregon Department of Forestry are well trained people in the things that they do for the safety and the growth of our forest. So just partner with people that know how to do these things. And we were just lucky enough that we had so much interest in this so that we have been partnered with Governor Brown’s office, one of our biggest contributors. We had Senator Jeff Merkley and [State] Senator Jeff Golden. We had the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of the Interior, which we work very closely with, and the USDA Forest Service. We have Bill Thorndike of Medford Fabrication and Oregon Solutions, Regional Solutions, Trust for Public Lands, Representative Breese-Iverson. We’ve got just a lot of people with a lot of knowledge that help us to be able to find funding. Just find people that are knowledgeable about this and you will succeed.

Norcross: Excellent. Mayor Callahan, thank you so much.

Callahan: Thank you very much, Geoff.

Norcross: Trish Callahan is the mayor of Butte Falls, Oregon.

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