Fire and Forestry
2024 in review and 2025 outlook
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Mid Klamath Watershed Council
Overview
WHO WE ARE
GOALS
OUR PROJECTS
2024 SUCCESSES
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Mid Klamath Watershed Council
Bacon Flat Womens+ Firing Team
Projects that make a difference for our community and forest.
Pathway to success
Working with our partners and focusing on areas of agreement in planning, implementation, and monitoring helps direct our work, focus funding, and achieve our objectives.
These relationships have continued to grow and have increased their resilience over time.
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IMPLEMENTATION
MONITOR
PLANNING
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Mid Klamath Watershed Council
Bacon Flat AAR
Our people
MKWC and the Fire and Forestry Program has a intentional focus on our people. Providing a living wage, a healthy work life balance, and a pathway to advancement are key factors in decisions we make.
Our most important asset is the people willing to work for MKWC. The strength and security of these individuals directly effects MKWC as an organization.
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Mid Klamath Watershed Council
Bacon Flat Unit A 10/2/2024
WILDFIRE
Increasing environmental and community resilience.
1. The reality
2. Home hardening and defensible space
3. Provide a Solution
4. Educate
Wildfire is coming and we will not out pace it. But there is plenty we can do to accept it .
The best tool we have in the time we have is to implement point protection.
We will prioritize community service by chipping, thinning, and burning next to values.
Knowledge of wildfires place and reality on this land provides insight on the “WHY”.
Community Engagement
Community Liaison Program (OSB CLP)
Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP)
Home Hardening Proposal
The path to success requires community buy-in.
The OSB CLP has 25 neighborhood representatives signed up from Ti Bar to Bluff Creek for communications and volunteerism during wildfires.
In 2024, liaisons worked with the Salmon CLP to convey information to affected residents during the Boise Fire.
The CLP has also been enlisted for notifications during TREX burns and other WKRP implementation
Both the Happy Camp and the Orleans/Somes Bar CWPPs were updated and ratified in 2024 after lengthy processes involving input from residents in both communities.
MKWC worked with KTHA to survey over 30 homes for home hardening needs for a grant proposal being submitted to FEMA in March
Orleans and Junction
Firewise Day
Firewise Happy Camp
Youth Event
Free Chipping Days
Providing free chipping services a few times each summer in both communities increases social capital and builds relationships
The third annual HC Youth Firewise Event held in July engaged 20 children as part of the HC Community Center’s Summer Kids Camp. Stations provided fun activities aimed at fire safety and living with fire.
Firewise events in the Orleans area schools started in 2015. These events have continued to be popular, well conceived, and increasingly collaborative. In 2024 over 80 children and 40 adults participated in the Firewise Day at Orleans Elementary School. Partners included KDNR, OVFD, MKWC, USFS, CAL FIRE, SRRC, and FSC of Sisk,
2024 Accomplishments
1. Thinning Treatments
2. Pile Burning
3. Understory Burning
4. 2024 TREX/AHAL
5. Youth engagement
6. Training
Public: 906
Private: 379
Public: 631
Private: 111
Public: 73
Private: 254
We implemented prescribed across all available windows.
Hosted youth on multiple burns this year
Training was accomplished throughout the year with certifications and qualifications.
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Mid Klamath Watershed Council
Bacon Flat 2024
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Mid Klamath Watershed Council
2025 OUTLOOK
RT-130 Field Day
1. Workforce development crew
2. 5 year work plan
3. MKWC RX fire policy
Hiring and utilizing the workforce development crew. Utilizing this crew in multiple programs.
Develop a detailed 5 year work plan for F&F. Identifies funding shortages, treatment needs, and employment opportunities.
Write a policy level document that outlines MKWCs RX procedures from planning to monitoring.
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Mid Klamath Watershed Council
RX Crew in South Carolina
THANK YOU
Questions
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Mid Klamath Watershed Council