Spring in Eastern Oregon means finalizing the ongoing preparations for the upcoming wildfire season. Erring on the side of caution, land managers, fire officials and community members are planning ways to mitigate damages from what could be another challenging summer.
Harney Soil & Water Conservation District and Harney Basin Wetlands Collaborative reallocate legislative funding to help repair flood irrigation infrastructure due to major spring flooding event.
A project spearheaded by a landowner working with the Harney Soil & Water Conservation District seeks to restore the Upper Hanley Canal, where cows and wind are causing bank erosion. The project will ultimately improve wet meadow habitat.
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.
In some places in the Harney Basin the snow water equivalent is more than 300 percent of normal.
The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is embarking on a next phase of collaborative conservation planning and is inviting the community to help shape its future management. At the heart of this new phase is readdressing the existing Comprehensive Conservation Plan, a strategic document that will continue to guide the refuge's management for the next 15 years.
In the Harney Basin, ditches that are free of debris and vegetation can really help water get where it needs to be for the
flood-irrigated wet meadows in the spring. A recent pilot program has successfully helped local landowners clean ditches in 2024 and is looking for more applicants who would like assistance doing that in 2025.
High Desert Partnership (HDP) has been awarded almost $18.4 million from the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s (NRCS) Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) aimed at building climate resilience across Harney County. This initiative will address critical challenges of water scarcity, wildfire risk, and drought impacts that increasingly threaten the region's ecological and economic stability.
Protecting critical communications infrastructure from wildfire.
How Rangeland Fire Protection Association volunteers and federal and state agencies worked together to fight the wildfires of the summer of 2024.
Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler helps provide a snapshot of quantity and quality of water going through the refuge.
The sun beats down on a group of young adults, nets in hand, as they wade through a cool stream
in the Malheur National Forest. To the casual observer, it might appear they're simply enjoying a
summer day in nature. But these individuals are part of High Desert Partnership's (HDP) summer
crew. This summer, HDP assembled its largest crew ever—eight members split between stream and
habitat teams that provide monitoring support to the Harney County Wildfire Collaborative, the
Harney County Forest Restoration Collaborative and the Harney Basin Wetlands Collaborative.
Harney County is considered a “food desert” or an area that has limited access to food that is plentiful, affordable and nutritious. Harney Food Systems, an initiative of the Biz Harney Opportunity Collaborative is trying to mitigate that designation.
Over the last decade, reed canary grass has established a robust presence in the Harney Basin. While ag producers may disagree on whether this is good or bad, a pair of projects will examine a variety of habitats where the grass is present and what practices might be employed to manage it. A third project involves mapping the basin to see where various kinds of vegetation, including reed canary grass, are growing and how pervasively they are spreading.
The Southeast Oregon Wildfire Resiliency project’s three-pronged approach—cutting out juniper, spraying invasive annual grasses with herbicides and the re-seeding of native plants—has already yielded significant results. In areas where juniper have been removed, there’s an increase in groundwater in the form of springs and healthy riparian zones. Plus, the removal of thousands of acres of junipers is helping to create a more resilient, biodiverse and fire-resistant landscape. And that’s the point.
The Harney Basin Wetlands Collaborative (HBWC), a collaborative of the High Desert Partnership, was awarded a six year grant for more than $8 million from the Oregon Water Enhancement Board (OWEB) Focused Investment Partnership program. “This funding is imperative for HBWC. It will help with restoration efforts to meet the needs of ranchers, migratory birds and other species that rely on the Harney Basin wetlands for their survival,” said Melissa Petschauer, Harney Basin Ecological Coordinator.
Throughout the Harney Basin there are many water diversion structures in need of repair or replacement to spread water more efficiently and meet state safety and fish passage requirements. A recent infusion of legislative funds has made it possible to get even more work done.
Last year, the Oregon legislature designated $2.5 million to the Harney Basin Wetlands Collaborative to fund projects for wetlands restoration. All of the projects have the goal of benefiting migratory and resident bird populations as well as assisting landowners with water management.
A healthy snowpack in the Harney Basin benefits not only ranchers and farmers who rely on it to grow hay, but also migrating birds who depend on the flood irrigated wet meadows in the spring as they travel to their northern breeding grounds. Current snowpack numbers put the Harney Basin at a snow water equivalent of 122 percent of normal as of March 3, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.
How does this water journey from the higher mountain elevations surrounding the Harney Basin (uplands) end up in the wet meadows (lowlands) where birds and ranchers benefit? It starts in the Blue Mountains to the north and Steens Mountain to the south.
As of Jan. 23, the Harney Basin snowpack was at 114 percent of normal, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service interactive snow water equivalent map website. While ranchers and researchers have noted that we haven’t had the early snowstorms in November and December as we did last year, this year’s numbers still give reason for locals to be optimistic about the water year.
Portland Audubon and the Harney Basin Wetlands Collaborative, a High Desert Partnership collaborative, are working together using song meters to help monitor birds in the Harney Basin. This information will help researchers better understand how birds utilize and adapt to habitat quality influenced by ever-changing weather conditions, as well as the stewardship strategies implemented by land managers.
During the past two years the Harney County Wildfire Collaborative implemented the Southeast Oregon Wildfire Resiliency Project (SOWR) which consisted of more than 80,000 acres of critical fuel treatments to enhance wildfire resiliency across sagebrush steppe landscapes in Southeast Oregon thanks to funding from Oregon Senate Bill 762. Mid 2023 the door was opened to apply for additional funding which could enable round two of the SOWR project to be implemented; as a result of the application, $3.8 million is coming into Harney and Malheur Counties. With this funding the Harney County Wildfire Collaborative partners will implement wildfire resiliency treatments on an additional 22,000 acres of public and private land in southeast Oregon beginning this year and into 2025.
Updating the Old Dams Will Enable More Efficient Water Use
Vegetation is thriving and invasive carp numbers are dwindling.
In 2021, Oregon Senate Bill 762 passed, allocating $220 million to help Oregon modernize and improve wildfire preparedness. The Harney County Wildfire Collaborative applied for and secured more than $5 million to address wildfire issues in the southeast corner of Oregon in Harney and Malheur counties through the Southeast Oregon Wildfire Resilience Project. Click the headline above to open a web page that takes you through the planning, implementation and impact story of this project.
High Desert Partnership's Summer Monitoring Crew play an important role in furthering collaborative work in Harney County.
