When a monster of a wildfire whipped into the Sycan Marsh Preserve here in south-central Oregon in July, it was feared that the worst was yet to come.
The Nature Conservancy's fire manager was in charge of a crew that was helping to fight the blaze, which was one of the largest in a summer of extreme heat and dry conditions in the West.
She saw a shocking sight when she watched the fire, which had already burned through thousands of acres of the national forest. She said there was nothing they could do.
The fire changed dramatically as it got closer. It had gone from being the most extreme fire behavior I had ever seen in my career to seeing four-foot flame lengths through the stand. The station survived the fire that kept burning through the forest.
Firefighters describe this kind of change in behavior as a fire dropping down, which is a fire that is less dangerous than a fire with intense flames that spread quickly from tree crown to tree crown. There are many reasons why this can happen.
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For Ms. Sauerbrey and her colleagues with The Nature Conservancy, what she witnessed was most likely a real-life example of what they and others have been studying for years: how thinning of trees in overgrown forests, combined with prescribed, or controlled, burns of accumulated dead vegetation on the
The goal was shared by others in the West, where there were several large fires. One of the largest fires in the state's history was the Bootleg fire. The two fires in Northern California burned over a million acres.
Global warming has made forests more prone to burn due to the dry weather. More than a century of management policies that called for every fire to be extinguished, no matter how small, also contribute to the problem by allowing dead vegetation to accumulate and add fuel to fires.
The Coyote Restoration was a part of the preserve that had been treated twice. In 2016 it was thinned and three years later Ms. Sauerbrey burned out the dead underbrush.
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The Nature Conservancy has a fire manager.
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The area of the Sycan Marsh Preserve was scorched by the Bootleg Fire.
She said that the buildings would not be there if the conservancy hadn't done the treatments.
The organization has been studying forest treatments for over two decades. The goal has been to use intentional burning to restore forests to the way they were in the past, when fire was a regular part of the forest life cycle.
James Johnston, a researcher at Oregon State University, said that they have been suppressing fire in these systems for over a century. Hundreds of thousands of acres are burned when there is a fire. Most of the large trees that make up the forest canopy are killed by these fires.
Thinning has been criticized as a way for timber companies to harvest the biggest, most valuable trees in a forest with little regard for the ecological consequences. In New Mexico in 2000 a prescribed burn went awry and caused the destruction of more than 200 homes.
Researchers say that these techniques can make forests healthier and more resistant to fire.
Sharon Hood, a research ecologist with the United States Forest Service in Montana, said that forest management used to log a lot of larger trees. She said that practices have changed.
Thinning allows us to quickly change the forest structure and which species are there, mimicking the way forests were disturbed in the past. Thinner can be simple or complex.
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The Nature Conservancy has been studying forest treatments for over two decades.
The Nature Conservancy works with the Forest Service, academic researchers and with the local Native American tribes, who have a long tradition of managing forests through intentional fire.
Pete Caligiuri, who directs the conservancy's forest restoration program in Oregon, said that the forests were driven by frequent fire and they were resilient to fire, insects, and the like.
The preserve has different treatments applied in parts of the forest which are dominated by lodgepole and ponderosa pines. Large ponderosas are often left standing as they are more fire resistant.
Thinning is meant to leave a mixture of species and ages in some plots. There is less of a pattern in others.
Craig Bienz is the director of the Sycan Marsh program. The plots are studied to see how well they encourage growth or how healthy the crowns are.
Some plots have prescribed burns conducted on them. The Coyote Restoration, which had been burned, appeared to fare better in the Bootleg fire. There was more fire damage when a scheduled prescribed burn was delayed. The control plot was mostly destroyed by the fire.
Burning is expensive, can be difficult to do, and can be opposed by nearby owners who are concerned about the risks of flames becoming out of control.
Prescribed burns on national forest lands lag behind the thinning. We don't have the money or personnel to do as much prescribed fire as we want.
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Craig Bienz is the director of the program.
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The 20,000 acres of wetlands in the Klamath Basin are home to thousands of birds and fish.
The infrastructure bill signed by President Biden in November will help the Forest Service increase the amount of fire treated over the next decade, a spokesman said.
Dr. Johnston has shown that even thin can be beneficial for a while until there is more regeneration of trees and shrubs that increase the risk of a larger fire.
The research shows that forest treatments can help reduce fire intensity. The view that treatments are beneficial is not shared by everyone.
Wild Heritage, an organization that seeks to keep primary forests intact, says that there are benefits to wildlife diversity in older, untouched forests, even after wildfire sweeps through them.
It depends on how we view the forest. Some people see the forest as a source of fuel, while others see it as a habitat for wildlife.
Bryant Baker of Los Padres ForestWatch found that much of the forest land burned in the Bootleg fire had been treated with prescribed burning as far back as the 1960's.
He said that the area was heavily managed for decades.
As fires grow larger and more ferocious in a warming world, proponents of prescribed burns acknowledge that treatments won't necessarily slow every fire. The evidence shows that treatments are effective.
It is not rocket science according to Dr. Johnston. It works, and it is the right thing to do.
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Chona Kasinger worked for The New York Times.
