A town of 400 in the Southern Cascades buys surrounding forest for wildfire protection, tourism, and to set an example

100-year-old Douglas firs in the Butte Falls Community Forest
(Photo by Amanda Loman via Columbia Insight)

The small town of Butte Falls, Oregon, decided to purchase its surrounding timber -- not to sell it, but to create an older, more wildfire-protected forest that also serves as recreational tourist destination, reports Grant Stringer for Columbia Insight, a Pacific Northwest environmental news source. "With a population of just 400 people, Butte Falls is a speck in an ocean of remote timberland, much of it burned. . . . Conventional wisdom in the region would have Butte Falls try to reclaim its former glory as a logging hub. . . . But community leaders plan to protect their future by looking to the forest itself. . . . Locals want to grow an older and biodiverse forest that they say will better protect the town from wildfires while attracting outdoor tourism."

Butte Falls' town leadership is onto something. "Conservationists and the state's top politicos say the small project playing out in a remote corner of Pacific Northwest forest can teach other communities how to adapt to climate disasters and hard times," Stringer writes. "It's a strategy some environmentalists want to implement across U.S. forests to sequester carbon, promote biodiversity and blunt severe wildfires. . . . In the new Butte Falls Community Forest, local foresters could build a trail network and recreation amenities near a roaring waterfall to bring outdoor tourism to the town, providing incomes without relying on dwindling timber jobs."

Map by Mackenzie Miller, Columbia Insight

The idea for a community forest came to Linda Spencer following the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise, Calif., 250 milkes south. The blaze was "a wake-up call for Spencer, who was the mayor of Butte Falls at the time. . . . When the Seattle-based timber giant Weyerhaeuser informed the Butte Falls City Hall of plans to clear-cut and sell the cleared parcels surrounding the town, likely to another timber company, Spencer jumped at the opportunity to create a community-owned forest instead. . . [she saw] the project as a way for the community to assert control of a resource that is critical to the town's future and the quality of its environment." Spencer told Stringer: "We didn't want someone else managing the forest around us. We wanted to manage it ourselves."

Stringer reports, "Climate science is unpopular in Butte Falls, which is staunchly conservative, says Mike Smeltz, a local forester. . . . But when a group of locals visited the new community forest on a recent Saturday, there was broad agreement that the climate is less hospitable for certain conifers than it once was. . . . . If Butte Falls can weather this fire season, Smeltz will lead efforts to thin the forest by cutting down young trees and dead limbs. . . . That will help the largest trees, including mighty ponderosa pines towering above the thicket, to continue flourishing. According to Smeltz, the town already secured $450,000 from the Oregon Department of Forestry and another $450,000 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for this work."