Oregon's biggest wildfire in 150 years killed countless cattle, wild horses, bighorn sheep, antelope and coyotes. It destroyed important sage grouse habitat and may affect national plans to revive dwindling populations of the small, sagebrush-dependent high-desert bird. The blackened scar of the huge fire is visible in satellite pictures.
Gov. John Kitzhaber declared an emergency to help ranchers and others recover from the 557,600-acre lightning-caused fire in Malheur County, and its kid brother, the 162,094-acre Miller Homestead fire in adjoining Harney County.Now as the massive mop-up begins, some of the people who depend on the wide open spaces for their livelihoods believe dangerous fuel loads growing out of federal grazing cutbacks contributed to the devastation.
But conservationists point to livestock as the cause, spreading invasive grasses and weeds as they roam the range. And the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees much of the area, attributed the intensity of the fires to the weather in a region that gets a mere 8 to 10 inches of rain per year.
The fires' aftermath ultimately might bring all sides together to discuss what to do next, said Cameron Smith, a senior policy adviser for Kitzhaber.
"It's a chance to tell the side of the ranchers in southeastern Oregon" -- many who played a big part in fighting the fires, he said.
Jordan Valley rancher Bob Skinner's family has raised cows in Malheur County since the 1860s. "We've been saying for years there is a catastrophic event coming," he said.
Lawsuits filed to protect wildlife, re-establish native grasses, stabilize soils and reduce erosion forced BLM range managers to cut back on cattle grazing. That, in turn, allowed forage to accumulate, he said.
"The simplistic way out of this is to blame BLM. As for me, I think it's a lot deeper than that," Skinner said. "I think it's the environmental movement, the courts, the judges."
The Long Draw fire began 30 miles north of McDermitt, Nev., in a BLM grazing allotment where build-ups of parched fuel had reached frightening levels, said Burns Junction rancher Dave Stoddart.
"Where this fire started, two ranchers had not been allowed to utilize that land in any meaningful way for about five years," Stoddart said.
Grazed properly, "it would have burned a small area, maybe," he said. "Now, there are about 15 ranches out there that lost every spear of grass they had."
Andy Kerr of Ashland -- who runs the Larch Co., a for-profit environmental consulting firm -- said the real culprit was livestock grazing. Domestic livestock dispersed invasive cheat grass, likened by Kerr to "nature's gasoline," over the land on their hooves and in their dung and it carried the flames, he said.
"The cows did it," Kerr said. "They caused it. Now that it has happened (ranchers) want to blame somebody else. That's a natural human response, but the facts do not support their argument."
Noah Greenwald, endangered species director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said livestock may eat grass, but that still leaves plenty of brush to burn.
"There's a large amount of science that says livestock grazing has contributed to less frequent but larger fires," said Greenwald, whose Tucson, Ariz.-based group has 340,000 members. "It's not right that the cows would have prevented the fires from happening."
"This thing was driven by wind, temperature and low humidity, and no moisture recovery at night," he said. Both fires burned around the clock, making them hard to stop as daytime highs nudged 105 degrees.
Heavy spring rains and a bumper crop of grasses that cured into "flashy" fuels fed the flames, BLM managers said. The range also didn't get a 2011-2012 winter snowpack to compress and decompose leftover grasses, and that increased the fuel load.
Among the bleakest outcomes of the fires is the loss of valuable core habitat for sage grouse.
"Where are the birds going to go now?" said Chris Hansen, Owyhee field coordinator for the 1,200-member Oregon Natural Desert Association in Bend. "They need sagebrush at all different stages of their life cycle, for brooding and rearing and nesting."The fires could affect federal planning to create a national sage grouse strategic conservation plan by 2014, said Jeff Clark, a BLM spokesman in Portland. "Not just for Oregon, but the entire Western region," he said.
The fire's toll isn't expected to be known for months.
Dan Joyce, chairman of the Malheur County commissioners, predicted many domestic cattle and calves will develop pneumonia and die this fall from smoke inhalation. "They are doctoring some of them now," he said.
His biggest worry is that the months ahead may bring more of the same.
"Our fire season hasn't really started, and we all wish it was over," he said. "It is probably time for some adjustment in management. Probably the biggest issue that has been missing is common sense."