Those who follow such things know that I’ve been involved in the preservation and enhancement of Redmond’s Dry Canyon, joining with others to form the Friends of North Dry Canyon Natural Area as an advocacy group, working to educate the public about its qualities and fragility, while also providing ‘boots on the ground’ with clean up projects and the control of threatening Invasive plants. Most recently we’ve been supporting other groups in supporting and participating a guided naturalist walk, a bat walk and a recent Botany and Birds walk with the High Desert Chapter of the Oregon Native Plant Society and Queer as Flock, a bird watcher’s group. We’ve been advocating for better signage, a trails management plan and for increased efforts to control the illegal use of electric and gas powered motorcycles in the Canyon. Additionally we have be doing the Juniper survey work for the City working toward the creation of a plant data base linked with the City’s GIS program to aid them/us in the creation of an effective management plan for Dry Canyon. We’ve only been recently notified, along with the rest of the public, that the City has a new Dry Canyon Firewise Management Plan (a PDF is linked below), which we were assured included participation by foresters, local natural resource and conservation groups…yet, somehow, they’ve produced a one dimensional plan with the singular priority of eliminating the chances of a catastrophic fire, while ignoring virtually all other priorities!!!!

Below are my responses, in short and long form, short, because many managers and those whose expertise is not in natural resource management, conservation or restoration fields, have a decidedly short attention span for that outside their expertise, which they too often dismiss out of hand.

SHORT VERSION

The Dry Canyon Firewise Maintenance plan, as written, has a singular priority, the suppression of fires which could escape the canyon and damage adjacent private property, no other. No one is going to argue with that as a priority, but there are others, others that in the City’s Master Plan for Parks and in the City’s communications with us, the public, you appear to recognize, but when it comes to actionable items, you set aside, delay or reject for reasons not made clear to us. Friends of North Dry Canyon Natural Area, FNDCNA, has been trying to work with the City on the maintenance and management of Dry Canyon, which would be the singular, defining, geological feature for any City in the arid West, and one that still retains some portion of the locale’s biodiversity. 

Part of the problem appears to be one of definitions. We have been lead to believe that the North Dry Canyon was to be protected as a ‘natural’ area, a compromised ‘native’ landscape, but still one that possesses value, from those active uses that could damage it. Work on the ‘fire plan’ was underway before we were informed. At the time we were assured that many stakeholders were invited to participate, including professional naturalists and that we too could play a role in addition to our producing the Juniper tree inventory, which we were told was demanded by City Council, in order to make management decisions. Yet, here we are, an apparently completed fire plan, before the overall management plan has even been begun and before the Juniper inventory is completed….

Planning for a single priority will ALWAYS result in compromising all other priorities and that is the case here. The Plan entirely ignores the demands of resident wildlife and even the possibility of any kind of a native plant community, throwing open the door to invasion by invasive plants and weeds, by: 

• Removing all organic, flammable materials, from the ground around Junipers. It removes, destroys, most of the shrub layer, and other materials that provide essential cover and food sources. Mowing, limbing up Junipers, removing 80%(!!!) of the shrub growth, masticating remaining fuels on the ground, exposing mineral soil, is game over for any chance at all of a native plant community with any chance of survival.
• Thinning of Junipers through the removal of all Junipers of 8” dbh and smaller, isn’t a problem as these have been recruited in years since our disturbance began. The blanket stand density rule of 10’, however, ignores essential conditions on the ground and leads to other problems.
• Limbing the trees up isn’t a good or healthy solution. It is a ‘solution’ only when Junipers are allowed to grow in overly dense stands.
• The shrub layer isn’t the problem. While it may be flammable and subject to more frequent burns, such fires won’t be able to escape the walls of the Canyon and damage private property…unless overly dense Juniper stands are adjacent to the rims.
• The cutting and removal of other shrubs, particularly of Oregon Grape and Wax Current, which don’t contain volatile oils, and so are NOT, fire prone, makes no sense. Both grow in the tumbled basalt below the rims, where fuels are relatively few. Of more limited frequency is Rock Spiarea, which only grows in the tumbled basalt below the east Rim. Again these, along with the native herbaceous plants provide food and cover for desirable species. The ‘logic’ of this program seems to have a goal of creating essential ‘dead zones’.
• These three major prescriptions also ignore another major reality in Dry Canyon and that is the human use factor. If you strip out the shrub layer and limb the remaining Juniper up after reducing the stand density, you are opening up site lines everywhere and human beings, being what we are, without self-imposed limits, will tend to walk, ride, go, wherever they choose trampling what desirable growth might remain, cutting the landscape up.
• There needs to be a plan for the waste produced by this work, that works to support all of the goals and priorities. Those in the current plan do not.

The City needs to decide whether it truly intends to protect, even enhance the natural features of the Canyon and the living communities which are an essential part…or surrender these to follow a strictly, and limited, utilitarian path. We hope that is the first and look forward to working with you to improve this plan. Most of the work specified in it, as is, will do irreparable damage to the Canyon, if the City has any hope of preserving these values. If not I suppose there is no reason for groups such as ours to continue providing political cover for your actions.

FULL VERSION

In summer time, some people would describe Redmond’s Dry Canyon, as a ‘fire’ waiting to happen. While our regional sagebrush and juniper steppe landscapes are and always will be ‘flammable’, as are all native landscapes in the arid West, their overall health is dependent upon periodic, long cycle, fires. There is much that we can do to reduce the chances of catastrophic burns that threaten adjacent private property and their structures…without sacrificing the ‘natural’ qualities that give the landscape the values many of us admire and are drawn to. To do this we must take on the role of fire, not simply eliminate its occurrence. Fire shaped our local native plant and animal communities, without it or our substitute action, those will be lost along with much of the reason many of us visit the Park today…and it will, in its degraded form, serve as a continuous source for weed contamination across all of the surrounding landscapes. Weeds don’t recognize property lines. It will operate as a ‘broken’ landscape, out of control and as a source of ‘infection’.

For now it still draws us in and not just as a corridor for our movement. It does so much more as it impels us, through its presence to take notice, to pause and consider it. It contains beauty, opportunity and an abundance of life, if we would only take the time to observe…It ‘confronts’ us with an amazing and unique geological setting literally cut through town providing a profound window into the region’s volcanic past and the setting for a premier natural area. Where Bend has the Deschutes River cutting its way through, intensively redeveloped through its core, Redmond has its Dry Canyon carved over a period of more than 300,000 years by the Paleo-Deschutes, following and expanding the seam between lava flows of the Newberry Volcano, starting some 400,000 years ago and the accumulation of lavas from the Deschutes Formation some 5 million years ago, that streamed across the much lower landscape, from multiple vents along the eastern flank of the Cascades. We are framed to the east by the remnants of the much older, some 30 million years ago, Crooked River Caldera, Prineville sited down in its collapsed center, its volcano’s heavily eroded encircling rim still marked by such landmarks as Smith Rock, Grizzly Mountain and Powell Buttes among other notable local prominences. ’Our’ Deschutes River then some 78,000 years ago, pushed by another Newberry flow, was detoured again into it present canyon that previously contained only Tumalo Creek. This was followed by the final Newberry volcanic assault on our immediate area that occurred 3,000 years later, so about 75,000 years ago, issuing from surface lava tubes in the Redmond Caves area, filling the bottom of our Paleo-Deschutes Canyon, flowing all of the way to present day Lake Billy Chinook. This flow ‘raised’ the floor of our Dry Canyon above its earlier maximum depth, its southern end, considerably shallower than the north, because the cooling viscous flow slowed, thickened, accumulated there. Over that entire time the landscape was in a continuing tug-of-war as the Steppe landscape, in repeated waves, reclaimed and lost the surface, the shallow soils building up slowly, allowing the return of life. We modern settlers are newbies here, but our effect has been a massive redirection, a disruption to ‘natural events’. The present day landscape is not that of a natural plant community, it is not a fixed. It is highly responsive and when its natural cycling is disrupted and invaded by aggressive exotic species, by overwhelming forces, it becomes reliant upon us, the present day landscape disruptors, to aid it in seeking a new balance, lest we condemn it to a continuous wave of disruptions and instability.

The Dry Canyon Firewise Maintenance plan, as written, has a singular priority, the suppression of fires which could escape the canyon and damage adjacent private property, no other. No one is going to argue with that as a priority, but there are others, others that in the City’s Master Plan for Parks and in the City’s communications with us, the public, you appear to recognize, but when it comes to actionable items, you set aside, delay or reject for reasons not made clear to us. Friends of North Dry Canyon Natural Area, FNDCNA, has been trying to work with the City on the maintenance and management of Dry Canyon, what would be the defining, singular geological feature for any City in the arid West, and one that still retains some portion of the locale’s biodiversity. 

Who are the FNDCNA? We are a group of neighbors, some with professional natural resource backgrounds including the care of public parks, working to educate the public, advocate with the City and provide boots on the ground to improve the health, beauty and diversity of Dry Canyon Park’s natural area. We’ve provided a regular presence in Dry Canyon and among other things:

• Pick up trash, staff seem to ignore; 
• Pull invasive weeds which seem to be of low priority to the City, based on your budget and staffing, weeds that left alone will absolutely overwhelm what remains of the desirable natives here; 
• Work, independent of the City, to educate the public about the Canyon’s natural history, its ecology and diversity, its unique and sensitive qualities through our interaction with visitors, on our Facebook page and, at one time, on the kiosks you provide before you suddenly removed them for unexplained reasons. (These were popular. Visitors would often question us about the disappearance of the kiosks.); 
• Organize and support guided educational walks provided by ourselves and other groups: 
• Continually reach out to the City to work with you on projects of value to both of us, such as doing the Juniper tree inventory, work you have leveraged in your media to show how you are getting important work done.

The Juniper inventory was begun with the support of Maria Ramirez, Special Projects and Natural Resources Program Manager and Avery McChristian, City Arborist. Levi Roberts set up the GIS program we could use to map our work and create a data base for the City to use to help create a management plan, which would include a plan to limit and mitigate fire. We’ve repeatedly strived to impress on you the necessity of a comprehensive management plan for the Dry Canyon Natural Area, so that work could be tracked, adapted over time and coordinated, not done in a piecemeal, single priority fashion, that often compromises other priorities while meeting the priority de jour. In this case fire. Apparently the Juniper inventory and a more integrated way to work toward multiple priorities, is being discarded….(?)

Part of the problem appears to be one of definitions. We have been lead to believe that the North Dry Canyon was to be protected as a ‘natural’ area, a compromised ‘native’ landscape, but still one that possesses value, from those active uses that could damage it. Our goal has been to make improvements, not just maintain the reality of its current state. In recent years it has been in decline. Our goal has been to encourage, and otherwise support the return of some of the lost diversity, to make it an example of what could be done, and thus serve to educate the public at large. Meanwhile the City appears to be operating under a natural area definition that leans entirely on their erroneous faith in ‘Nature’s’ ability to repair and maintain itself, which it can’t given the heavy and increasing human use of the space, the loss of species, and the arrival and establishment of several invasive plant species….Either that or your definition is just closer to what other municipalities commonly refer to as ‘Rough Areas’, vacant lands or lands simply awaiting development when monies become available…land that is essentially in an undetermined holding pattern. The City needs to decide. It can’t have it both ways. Currently there is a significant segment of the local population who view Dry Canyon as a valuable ‘natural area’, a place they can easily visit to experience ‘nature’. You promote that vision, yet your actions as revealed by your budget priorities say otherwise. 

We have regularly requested help with signage, enforcement and the installation of barriers and other fencing to stop, limit and regulate, both illegal uses as well as those that are overwhelming the Canyon’s capacity to recover from their increasing, often destructive use, specifically, the use of motorcycles, both gas and electric and off leash dogs, which will force desired wildlife out of Dry Canyon, and the increasing practice of more residents who are NOT picking up their dog’s shit..it is everywhere!!! And, organic though it may be, it doesn’t belong, disturbs the use and patterns of native, desirable wildlife and stinks! Then there is the uncontrolled expansion of mountain bike motorcycle trails, while individuals, trails cutting up the landscape, crossing back and forth between, add still more randomly, destroying ever more of the intact native plant community. On these issues and others the City has responded with silence, inaction, endless discussion, or claims that there isn’t a problem or simply that there isn’t the money (Park’s funds appear to be prioritized for building and maintaining active/sports areas and conventional, water intensive, landscapes, dominated by lawn and shade trees from summer wet climates (In the City’s newer community Parks water saving/xeric landscapes are given a nod, planted mostly with a conventional plant palette with a smattering of drought tolerant natives, all regularly watered, often too heavily, by drip)…while discouraging us from doing anything, work that would cost the City little or nothing, but demand your political support and and adjustment to your public messaging. The City claims to welcome our participation, but then creates hurdles for us, generally discouraging our participation.

The North Dry Canyon Natural Area, extends north from the Fir Street stairs to the wastewater treatment plant and below the west rim along the paved ramp at Upas Way. It is not an intact ‘native plant community’…but it is the closest thing to that on publicly held property Redmond has. Redmond’s pattern of development basically obliterates the remaining remnants of once intact natural areas within the UGB and the North Dry Canyon Natural Area is in danger of being lost. As the City expands on to former pasture lands, these aren’t intact native plant communities, reserving pieces of these to be developed as ‘natural landscapes’, doesn’t work if one is looking to preserve functional habitat. It can never be done on small disconnected fragments, a patch here, a patch there. And attempting to create a native landscape from ‘scratch’ takes expertise, commitment and years. Again, Dry Canyon provides the City with a unique and valuable opportunity to preserve and provide such a landscape for the enjoyment and education of its residents. The new wetlands complex, which is far less accessible, in addition to the fact that it will be a wholly created landscape, the City has no plan to acquire and protect other significant natural areas within the current UGB. This is it! But it does have plans for expanding its active use Parks.

Heavily disturbed, Dry Canyon, still retains many of the features characteristic of undisturbed natural areas in the local region, including birds and other wildlife such as Mule Deer, Fox, Marmots (Rock Chucks), a variety of reptiles and bats. Many residents use the Canyon regularly, some for exercise, some as an attractive alternative route to get through town, while others simply visit to enjoy what lives there, the plants, animals and relative quiet. Protecting, even enhancing these features and qualities is at the center of our priorities. 

We appreciate the opportunities we’ve had to be heard over the last three years, the aid in ‘legally’ recognizing us and providing us a place at the table, however, our relationship feels more like window dressing than substance, as support is offered, verbal assurances made and then the rules changed with little or no explanation. Decisions appear to be made before hand. Participation repeatedly turns into placation. Volunteerism is promoted but not supported, a strategy for the City to claim it has effective and responsive volunteer programs without committing to them, thus gaining some kind of political ‘points’ as it sells its decisions and programs to the public. It is a ‘game’ in which the ‘goal posts’ keep getting moved. The Firewise ‘plan’ is the latest case in point. We have been pressing the City for a management plan for the Canyon for at least the last two years. Suggesting what it might look like, what it might require to be effective. Several of us have professional experience with such plans. We were brought in, once the major players were already in place, promised a meaningful chance to participate and assured that our Juniper survey work was valued and necessary for the plan. And then, suddenly, the plan is done, being put into action, with literally zero input or opportunity to contribute….

Planning for a single priority will ALWAYS result in compromising all other priorities and that is the case here. Fire cannot be the only priority that makes a difference. The proposed Firewise Maintenance Plan offers three broad solutions: Mowed Fire Breaks, Ladder Fuels, Thinning and Defensible Space. This isn’t a plan, it is a series tactics/actions applied broadly without consideration of other priorities or even the varying needs and conditions throughout Dry Canyon. Each of these broadly defined prescriptions completely ignore the needs of wildlife, wildlife that many Park users appreciate and look forward to observing. They ignore the needs and reality of any healthy native plant community. They set aside the reasons many residents have for visiting it and reduce it to a problematic corridor. How does it do this?

1, These limited prescriptions destroy and compromise habitat that wildlife is dependent upon for survival, by indiscriminately removing or destroying ‘cover’ that all wildlife depend on to avoid predation; that provides places for secure rest and nesting; reducing the already compromised plant diversity they and their food sources rely on for survival. Insects, despite the phobias many of us might have, are indispensable food sources for birds and reptiles. Plants provide the basic trophic level for all life. Weeds generally are very poor substitutes for healthy, diverse plant communities at a trophic level for ALL of the wildlife which depend upon a site. By reducing plant and species diversity, Dry Canyon is being reduced into being a food desert for dependent wildlife. No food. No cover. No wildlife.

2, Mowing, limbing up Junipers, removing 80%(!!!) of the shrub growth, masticating remaining fuels on the ground, exposing mineral soil, is game over for any chance at all of a native plant community with any chance of survival. By destroying diversity and eliminating ground level fuels, you are preparing the way for the spread of aggressive weeds, including the most aggressive invasives. The only plants that can tolerate such drastic and regularly schedule abuse are WEEDS. You think you have a weed problem now? Dry Canyon will quickly be overwhelmed by invasives, including even more Cheatgrass, Hare Barley,Tumble Mustard, Tumbleweeds, Kochia, the several Knapweeds and exotic Thistles. Mowing down natives before they have a chance to flower and ripen seed, before they have a chance to spread their seed, greatly reducing the overall vigor of the remaining natives, reduces their chances to colonize available soil and compete with weeds. It favors weeds like Cheatgrass that are among the earliest plants to flower and go through their cycle in the spring and those other weeds like Kochi that can go on and flower and produce seed even after they’ve been cut. Many natives, especially perennial ones, can’t do this and will be weakened progressively with each mowing. Native plants exist in communities. The health of any landscape is not just about out competing your neighbors, it is about finding and filling a niche, fulfilling a needed service in that community. That goes to fitness. Human disruption, especially regularly occurring, poorly timed disruptions, destroy communities. Doing this will result in an explosion of weeds. There will only be two solutions following this Firewise strategy, surrendering to the weeds or the incredibly expensive option of a full scale redevelopment, including the installation of extensive hard, artificial surfaces, or of water intensive lawns that can out compete the weeds. Any other ‘landscape’ will require the heavy use of herbicides across the entire 160 acres, both pre-emergents, or sterilants, and regular heavy spot spraying.

3, Thinning of Junipers through the removal of all Junipers of 8” dbh and smaller, we don’t have much of a problem with. All of these smaller Junipers are survivors dating back within the period beginning with our settlement and the transformation of the local landscape. The blanket stand density rule of 10’, however, ignores essential conditions on the ground and still allows for relatively intense fires and adds weight to the limbing of remaining trees which we consider undesirable. This seems to be a prescription that allows removal crews to get the work done quickly while taking a minimum amount of time for training and education. It ignores both how healthy ‘old growth’ juniper woodlands develop as well as the soil/rock conditions of the immediate area. Healthy old growth Juniper woodlands survive on rocky, often ‘raised’ sites with very shallow soils. Such soils can’t provide the necessary support for both the Junipers over head and a dense shrub layer below. Fire has sculpted these old growth stands. Where soils are deeper, fuel loads are heavier with more dense shrub communities and grasses which provide ignition areas and ramping up fuels. These areas may fill with Juniper during recruitment periods when weather patterns support it over several years, but these same areas, will burn off every 50-100 years taking out all of the Juniper other than those growing on the rocky areas where survivors can grow to great age and girth. The 10’ stand density standard is a simplistic response. Removals should consider both stand density and the literal soil/rock condition. 

4, Limbing the trees up isn’t a good or healthy solution, it is a ‘solution’ only when Junipers are allowed to grow in overly dense stands. Naturally spaced healthy stands of Juniper don’t form single leader trunks, clear of branching. Only in youth do they approach the classic conifer form. They twist, break lean and die, limb by limb over hundreds of years. They retain their dead branches for decades, if not centuries, providing nesting places for birds and bats, their dead branches often becoming covered by Wolf Lichen. What are you trying to accomplish here. A groomed and cultured landscape???

5, ‘Heavy’ shrub growth cannot occur on the soils of healthy old growth Junipers. Where the two combine it is on areas of deeper soils and will be subject to more frequent intense burns. If there is heavy shrub growth within Juniper stands it is the Junipers that should be removed, not just limbed up. When soil condition can provide enough for  both ‘dense’ Juniper and shrub communities, these are likely conditions that would have historically burned intensely enough to limit the Junipers. Understand that in fire dependent landscapes like ours, when we exclude fire, and we want healthy landscapes, we need to mimic the work of fire. A uniform stand of Junipers on ten foot centers is a contrived landscape. 

6, This prescription also ignores the shrub diversity issue and succession. Both Rabbitbrush species while flammable survive it res-touting soon after providing early protective cover and protection and are early recolonizers before either Bitterbrush or the Sagebrush species, which don’t resprout, move in. Cutting and masticating the latter two, eliminates them from the landscape. Their return takes years. Currently Bitterbrush and Sagebrush are only found on thin soiled rocky sites where there is relatively little to no Juniper. Some Sagebrush burned two summers ago on the site below the west rim, immediately south of the Maple Bridge, where soils are loose and deep, prone to erosion. This particular area is being cut apart by mountain bikes and electric motorcycles, made even more vulnerable after the fire and the resultant absence of shrubs as obstacles to bikes and the loss of their roots which would help hold the soil in place. 

7, The cutting and removal of other shrubs, particularly of Oregon Grape and Wax Current, which don’t contain volatile oils, and so are NOT, fire prone, makes no sense. Both grow in the tumbled basalt below the rims, where fuels are relatively few. Of more limited frequency is Rock Spiarea, which only grows in the tumbled basalt below the east Rim. Again these, along with the native herbaceous plants provide food and cover for desirable species. The ‘logic’ of this program seems to have a goal of creating essential ‘dead zones’. Fuels are the byproducts of normal and healthy growth. This entire approach ignores virtually every other ‘service’ and value plants provide. Ignoring the role of fire in the arid Western landscape and ignoring our responsibility to take those on ourselves will result in a diminished, weedy landscape that serves few if any other functions. If we can’t afford’ to responsibly care for the landscapes we create then we Central Oregon has nothing to look forward to other than continuing decline in terms of any and all other criteria. Whoopee! We’re safe from far…but what are we left with?

8, These three major prescriptions also ignore another major reality in Dry Canyon and that is the human use factor. If you strip out the shrub layer and limb the remaining Juniper up after reducing the stand density, you are opening up site lines everywhere and human beings, being what we are, without self-imposed limits, will tend to walk, ride, go, wherever they choose. Without obstacles, signs and fencing, what little desirable vegetation that will exist at that point will be subject to trampling or obliterated by tires. The Fire Breaks do this as well, mowed down, people tend to create more trails, criss-crossing the Canyon bottom. This has been a problem, but it can and likely will get so much worse as this program is implemented. 

9, What about the debris produced by this work? Chipping? Mastication? Removal. These three options are not neutral in such a landscape. Dumped and mounded chips cover the ground and inhibit the germination and establishment of desirable natives.Agencies like the BLM and Forest Service, who manage thousands and thousands of acres of Juniper woodlands, don’t do this. They don’t limb up trees either. They remove the problematic stands, bump off all of the branches, stack them for drying and burn them later when conditions support the work. They don’t masticate everything, because they are trying to mimic fire and not destroy the elements needed to return the landscape to a state of health. They want a healthy, diverse and appropriate, native ground layer to discourage the invasion of weedy species. These landscapes go through long cycles, one stage following the other. Rather than chipping, masticating and removing everything, pile and burn the cut branches, stockpile the trunks for later use. Most of the removed trees will be straight and their trunks can be used as poles to build structures to block and guide users, reducing the creation of the otherwise proliferating, random creation of trails. Let’s have an integrated plan that considers the needs of the site and recognizes ALL of our values!

With more time and cooperation a more comprehensive plan that effectively addresses these other important priorities a plan can be developed and implemented. A plan that considers all of the Redmond  community’s priorities, not just a response to timelines, political pressures and the single minded priorities of insurers and fire agencies. If we don’t, we will lose far more. Dry Canyon can easily be degraded to the point where it is devoid of its remaining values, its plant and wildlife communities, the ‘beauty’ that draws visitors, to a state of dirt and weeds, that neither residents nor the City, will then care about. It could be reduced to nothing more than a budgetary pain in the ass. But now, we still have time to do something about it. Like any opportunity, the longer we wait, the more losses we suffer, the more expensive and difficult it will become to correct our course.

The Friends of North Dry Canyon Natural Area

Lance Wright

Below is the bones of the City’s plan.

FireWise Presentation – with Attachments