The 2024 wildfire season in Eastern Oregon was one of the most intense in recent history, with over 200,000 acres burned across multiple fires. Land managers, fire professionals and community members are reflecting on the season and asking, what worked, what didn’t, and how do we improve for the future?

As a culmination of several Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board (OWEB) Focused Investment Partnership projects, Casie Smith, an ecologist with U.S. Geological Survey, developed a tool using a spreadsheet to determine how water availability and water management activities create various types of bird habitat on the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The hope is that water managers will be able to use this in and around Malheur Lake to assess and improve resident and migratory bird habitat. The goal with this spreadsheet-based tool is to bring together existing data sources to synthesize what is known about the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and the Malheur Lake basin at this time.