As wildfires scorch the West, Eastern Oregon ranchers deal with major losses
Jared Smull is a fifth-generation rancher. He’s driving down a winding road that loops around the Rye Valley in Eastern Oregon, along with his wife, Amanda.
Jared knows this country and the ranchers and cattle who live there. Usually, the landscape is full with tall, dry grasses, miles of sagebrush and is dotted with juniper.
But now the fires have left the range scorched. Amanda points to the blackened mountains. “There’s just not a blade of grass left out there,” she said.
About halfway through, they hop off the truck near where they usually graze their cattle. It’s also where a lightning strike sparked the Durkee Fire on July 17.
Strong winds and lots of dry grass carried the fire through nearly 300,000 acres of range, at one point becoming the largest active wildfire in the nation this season. It eventually merged with another fire in the Cow Valley, burning an area half the size of Rhode Island.
Jared Smull, who grew up in Eastern Oregon, said they’re used to fire. But nothing like this.
“This scale, we’ve never seen around here,” he said. “It’s nuts.”
They lost at least five cows and nine calves. They burned in the blaze. Some are still missing.
On top of that, the Smull’s have another challenge to deal with: The fires burned through the grass their cattle eat. They — and now the Smulls and many other ranchers who lost their grazing lands — now have to figure out how to feed their cows.
“I mean you can just look around,” Amanda said. “There’s nothing left, and we don’t even know what next spring will look like. It probably depends on the severity of the burns.”
The herd would normally be grazing on those lands through the fall, which is inexpensive for ranchers. But with current hay prices, buying feed could cost the Smulls roughly $60,000 for the winter months alone, according to Jared. And that’s not sustainable, he said.
“Can you afford two years of losses before your banker says ‘No, you’re done. You’re selling your cows and getting flush’ and then you don’t have anything, and it takes a long time to rebuild?”
That uncertainty and expense means some ranchers may need to sell off more cattle than they would normally. That’s because it might take up to a year or longer for most of the rangeland to recover.
“It’s too early to tell just exactly what the range of land loss is right now,” said Whitney Rohner, a manager for a handful of Soil and Water Conservation Districts in Eastern Oregon.
“I mean, it’s black, and that takes quite a bit of time depending on what the seed bank was and how much moisture we get over winter,” Rohner said.
Many areas will likely need to be re-seeded before invasive grasses take root, she said.
Overall financial damages are still unknown, but these fires will leave long-lasting scars. And Rohner noted that fire season isn’t over yet.
“We are all on pins and needles, hoping that the next, let’s call it 45 to 60 days just stays very, very calm,” she said.
The hot forecast is not promising. But she said some rain would be nice.