The Natural Resources Conservation Services — an office under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Agriculture — will offer $2 million in emergency funding to ranchers and farmers affected by wildfires in Eastern Oregon.
Wildfires in Eastern and Central Oregon have scorched hundreds of thousands of rangelands this summer. Roughly 1.4 million acres have burned overall in Oregon this year, more than any other year since reliable records began — much of it federal and private grounds used for grazing cattle.
Cattle in the Wright family feedlot graze in front of a hill burned in the Durkee fire near Vale, Ore., July 31, 2024. Lee Wright lost nearly twenty thousand acres of grazing land to the fire, meaning he will likely have to lease other pastures for his herd, or sell those he can't afford to feed.
Anna Lueck / OPB
Because of the scale of the fires, many cattle have either been displaced, injured or killed, although there’s still no clear number of livestock casualties, according to officials. The widespread damage has prompted lawmakers, including Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, to reach out to the USDA and other federal agencies for aid.
Will Fett, an outreach coordinator for the Oregon Natural Resources Conservation Services office, said this emergency aid is partly in response to those requests.
“Usually much of our work happens before fires,” Fett said. “But this would be in response to trying to recover the range and prevent soil erosion or bring back the desired plant community.”
The funds will be funneled through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP — an agriculture conservation program within the USDA. Ranchers will not receive direct payments for loss of their cattle, rather they’ll be reimbursed after they establish a conservation practice that rehabilitates and mitigates future wildfires by making range grounds more resilient against fire.
“Our staff will work one-on-one with landowners to make assessments of the damages and develop approaches that focus on effective recovery and conservation of the land,” said Greg Becker, NRCS state conservationist in Oregon.
Those practices could include mitigating invasive grasses like cheatgrass, which can make it easier for wildfires to spread to a larger scale, minimizing cattle grazing in certain areas to allow degraded soils and bunch grasses to recover, or re-seeding grasses that will reduce soil erosion.
Ranchers in Baker, Crook, Gilliam, Grant, Harney, Lake, Malheur, Morrow, Umatilla, and Wheeler counties will have until Sept. 9 to apply for the funds. Fett said his office is working under the assumption that additional funds will be needed, so more will likely be allocated depending on the need.