A Virtual Tour of the Project Site from 2020

Stinkingwater Mountains Photos

This is an area that has frequent lightning strikes and so frequent fires. Because the area has burned before, invasive annual grasses such as cheatgrass and medusahead have replaced the native annual bunch grasses. On this vast landscape HCWC is working to coordinate actions among the Bureau of Land Management, Natural Resource Conservation Service and private landowners.

Some of these actions include:
• controlling the invasive annual grass population;
• decreasing the number of Juniper trees;
• increasing the volume of large perennial bunchgrasses;
• creating fuel breaks; and
• making every effort to participate with private landowners, the Crane RFPA and the Burns Paiute Tribe.

Through these actions and others, over the long term the collaborative is working toward:
• a landscape that is resilient to wildfire;
• a landscape that contains fuel load amounts, types and patterns that help suppression efforts
• and result in smaller, more frequent fires that help create a healthy fire tolerant landscape;
• a landscape that provides both livestock forage and wildlife habitat; and
• strong relationships that make this and future projects possible.

Purpose of Stinkingwater Mountains Restoration and Fire Resilience Project
About the Project AND More About the Project
Stinkingwater Subcommittee Agendas and Meeting Notes

About Potential Operational Delineations (PODs) and the role they play in the Stinkingwater Mountains as a wildfire resilience tool. 

Potential Operational Delineations are a tool that delineates areas within a landscape by integrating:

1. Fire professionals’ expertise on potential control locations *(PCLs), AND
2. Stakeholders’ values (e.g., heritage sites, wildlife habitat, recreation, livestock grazing, and much more) for the associated areas.

Why might the Harney County Wildfire Collaborative use a PODs approach in the Stinkingwater? Given the realities of our fire-prone landscape, by identifying PCLs for a given fire incident, PODs can be useful before, during, and after fires to promote rangeland values at risk. 

*(What are PCLs? Features such as roads, fuel breaks or other topographic features that can potentially serve as locations from which fire managers could control a fire.)

What are PODs?

How are PODs developed?

Timeline of achievements through 2022
Acronym list: BLM/Bureau of Land Management;, SWCD/Soil Water Conservation District; NRCS/Natural Resource Conservation Service; ODFW/Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife; HDP/High Desert Partnership; RFPA/Rangeland Fire Protection Association; PCL/Potential Control Line; POD/Potential Operational Delineation