“Wallammette” by Henry Warre, 1845. Painting shows valley landscape of oak savanna with scattered wooded pockets. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas.

In the South Willamette Valley, where the Coast Range folds into the broad floor of the Willamette Basin and oak-dotted prairies once stretched as far as the eye could see, fire has always been more than an element. For millennia, fire was a relative, a teacher, and a medicine. Indigenous people of this valley—most prominently the Kalapuya—know that flame is essential sustaining the land.

The valley was not a wilderness untouched by human hands, as early settlers’ colonial ideologies often romanticized. It was a cultural landscape, shaped by generations of stewardship through burning. Fire cleared the prairies for camas and yampah, kept Oregon white oak groves thriving, renewed hazel for baskets, and created openings for deer and elk to graze. Fire was woven into the seasonal round, part of a cycle that linked food, ceremony, and community.

Today, after more than a century of suppression, the relationship between people, fire, and land is being reawakened. Tribal Nations, local conservation groups, and community-led Prescribed Burn Associations are bringing good fire back to the valley, reconnecting people with landscapes that depend on flame to thrive.

This is a story of fire in the South Willamette Valley—its cultural and ecological roots, the rupture of colonization, and the hopeful resurgence of community-led burning today.

In the South Willamette Valley, where the Coast Range folds into the broad floor of the Willamette Basin and oak-dotted prairies once stretched as far as the eye could see, fire has always been more than an element. For millennia, fire was a relative, a teacher, and a medicine. Indigenous people of this valley—most prominently the Kalapuya—know that flame is essential sustaining the land.

The valley was not a wilderness untouched by human hands, as early settlers’ colonial ideologies often romanticized. It was a cultural landscape, shaped by generations of stewardship through burning. Fire cleared the prairies for camas and yampah, kept Oregon white oak groves thriving, renewed hazel for baskets, and created openings for deer and elk to graze. Fire was woven into the seasonal round, part of a cycle that linked food, ceremony, and community.

Today, after more than a century of suppression, the relationship between people, fire, and land is being reawakened. Tribal Nations, local conservation groups, and community-led Prescribed Burn Associations are bringing good fire back to the valley, reconnecting people with landscapes that depend on flame to thrive.

This is a story of fire in the South Willamette Valley—its cultural and ecological roots, the rupture of colonization, and the hopeful resurgence of community-led burning today.

The Kalapuya and the Valley of Fire

Since time immemorial, the multiple bands and tribes of Kalapuyan people have lived throughout the Willamette Valley, thousands of years before colonization. Their homelands stretch from the Calapooia Mountains and all along the Willamette Valley.

The Kalapuya relied heavily on plant foods and terrestrial game. Camas (Camassia quamash) was especially important, forming the carbohydrate-rich foundation of Kalapuya cuisine. They dug camas bulbs in early summer, roasting them in earth ovens until they transformed into a sweet, storable food. Other staples included yampah roots, tarweed seeds, acorns, hazelnuts, and berries. Deer, elk, and smaller game rounded out the diet.

Spring 2025 camas field after reintruding fire in fall 2024. Photo by Tim Lawes.

Fire was central to sustaining this abundance. Each summer or early fall, after the camas harvest was complete and seeds had been gathered, families prepared to burn. Elders and fire-keepers chose their timing carefully—when winds were steady, humidity was right, and fuels were cured but not explosive. Flames moved across prairies and oak woodlands in steady sheets, low enough not to kill mature trees but hot enough to clear the understory.

The benefits of fire are abundant. Camas and root crops thrive after fire clears thatch and competition. Tarweed and biscuitroot produced stronger seed crops. Oregon white oak woodlands are kept open, ensuring ample acorn harvests. Hazel shrubs resprout straight and tall, perfect for basket weaving. Elk and deer are drawn to fresh green shoots after burns, making hunting easier. Ticks and pests are reduced, creating healthier conditions for both humans and wildlife. Trails and travel corridors are kept open.

For the Kalapuya,historically and contemporaneously, fire is a partner. In pre and early colonial times, the smoke rising from the valley floor was not a sign of destruction but renewal, a signal to neighboring families that the work of tending the land was underway.

Scholar Henry B. Zenk, in his Contributions to Tualatin Ethnography: Subsistence and Ethnobiology (1976), describes how the Kalapuya’s use of fire in prairie-land burning was deeply bound to their subsistence cycle—burning supported the growth of camas, tarweed, hazel, and more—so that when those fire regimes were suppressed, many foundational food and plant systems were disrupted. Historian Robert T. Boyd, in Strategies of Indian Burning in the Willamette Valley, documents that early Euro-American explorers and settlers in the 1800s described the Willamette Valley as dominated by wide prairies and oak savannas maintained by Indigenous burning practices.

Fire is not a hazard to be feared but a gift to be respected.

Colonization and the Suppression of Fire

That relationship was shattered with colonization. Beginning in the 1820s, fur traders, missionaries, and settlers entered the valley in increasing numbers. By the 1830s, epidemics of introduced diseases devastated the Kalapuya population. Within a generation, communities that had stewarded the valley for millennia were reduced by as much as 90%.

During the 1850s, surviving Kalapuyan communities were forcibly removed to the Grand Ronde and Siletz reservations. Along with this dispossession came the suppression of fire. Federal and territorial authorities criminalized Indigenous burning, framing it as wasteful and dangerous. Settlers, seeking to protect crops and fences, lobbied against the practice.

Fire exclusion became policy. What had been an annual cycle of renewal was abruptly halted.

The ecological consequences were dramatic. Douglas-fir trees both by being planted in abundance for capital gain and fire suppression, spread into prairies and savannas, shading out light-demanding species. Camas meadows dwindled as thatch accumulated and woody plants encroached. Oak woodlands declined under pressure from fir competition, losing their vitality. Biodiversity collapsed as specialized prairie and savanna species lost habitat.

By the late 19th century, the valley was no longer recognizable as a fire-shaped landscape. The expanding forests became naturalized and the prairies became socially constructed as having always been minor, accidental clearings. In truth, what disappeared was the human-fire partnership that had kept the land open and abundant.

Fire moving through grasses, forbs and oak litter, Fall 2024. Photo courtesy of the Long Tom Watershed Council

The Ecological Role of Fire in the South Valley

Modern science has confirmed what Indigenous science has always known: fire is essential to the health of Willamette Valley ecosystems. Fire suppression, along with development of valley and foothill land, has led to the decline of oak and prairie ecosystems. Some estimate that about 2% of native prairies, and 7% of oak savanna remain compared to pre-colonization. Most of these habitats exist on private land and these habitats, rich in native plants, pollinators, and other species, are at risk of further decline without the disturbance of fire or (management that mimics fire).

Research in wet and upland prairies has shown that low-intensity burns:
Stimulate vigorous growth of native grasses like tufted hairgrass.
Increase flowering and seed production of species like camas, yampah, and Bradshaw’s lomatium.
Reduce invasive species such as tall fescue and bentgrass.
Kill back shrubs and young Douglas-firs, maintaining open habitat.
Recycle nutrients into the soil, promoting fertility.

At sites like Finley National Wildlife Refuge and The Nature Conservancy’s Willow Creek Preserve, repeated burns have led to visible increases in native plant populations. For endangered species like Fender’s blue butterfly, which depends on Kincaid’s lupine found only in fire-maintained prairies, prescribed fire has been critical to survival.

Fender’s blue, female. Nectaring on Kincaid’s lupine. Photo courtesy of Institute for Applied Ecology photo gallery.

Fire also benefits wildlife. Deer and elk forage on tender regrowth after burns. Birds such as western meadowlark, once common across the valley but now rare, rely on open prairie maintained by fire. Even soil microbial communities are stimulated by the nutrient pulse of a burn.

Without fire, restoration is far more difficult and costly. Mechanical mowing or manual tree removal can substitute in part, but neither replicates the nutrient cycling, seed germination cues, or landscape-scale mosaic that fire creates.

Barriers to Prescribed Fire Today

Despite its ecological and cultural value, bringing fire back to the South Willamette Valley faces significant barriers.

1. Complex, Overlapping Agency Jurisdictions

In some areas, the Oregon Department of Forestry is responsible for burn permitting. In others, fire departments. Sometimes you need permission from both. In yet others, neither one, in which case it defaults to the county board of commissioners. Multiple permits, reporting, and layers of notification are required for smoke regulations and burn permitting. Additional notifications that are not strictly required by law remain important- neighbors, partners, other agencies, etc.

2. Smoke Management

Smoke management is a crucial consideration in one of the most populated areas of the state. Wind direction must be just right to avoid degrading air quality in nearby urban areas, which can limit otherwise good burn opportunities.

3. Cultural Disconnect and Public Perception

Fire was removed not only from the land but from community memory. Many people no longer see fire as a tool of care, only as a destructive force. Decades of Smokey Bear campaigns conditioned the public to see all fire as dangerous. Neighbors worry about smoke impacts on health, visibility, or property.

4. Costs and Capacity

Burns require trained crews, fire engines, drip torches, radios, and protective gear. Most private landowners lack these resources.

5. Cultural Disconnect

Most fire management agencies and fire departments are focused on putting fires out; lighting fires is at best, a secondary priority. As a result, burning is likely to be shut down if it is seen as conflicting with the overall state policy of suppressing fires to protect resources and public safety.

These barriers have kept prescribed fire limited to agency lands and specialized conservation sites, leaving much of the valley’s private landscape fire-starved.

A New Fire Movement: Tribal Leadership and Community Partnerships

In recent decades, however, momentum has grown to reintroduce cultural and prescribed fire to the South Willamette Valley. Of note, there are key differences between prescribed fire and cultural fire.

The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, both the heirs of the Kalapuya peoples and lands, have partnered with federal agencies and local organizations to conduct cultural burns. The importance of these burns extend beyond the ecological benefits of burning, which is the primary objective of prescribed fire. Within these Indigenous communities, cultural burns are ceremony. Cultural fire reconnects people with traditions suppressed by settler colonial structures for generations, and it is a renewal of human-to-other-than-human relationality, a renewal of reciprocal responsibility. Meaning, the land and other-than-human relations within the landscape takes care of you, if you take care of them.

Conservation organizations such as The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Long Tom Watershed Council (LTWC), among others, have integrated both cultural and prescribed fire into land management plans and restoration projects. Their work has demonstrated that burns can be conducted safely, with clear ecological and social benefits.

Prescribed burns began in the 1970’s at Finley National Wildlife Refuge. The practice continued into the 1980’s to early 2000’s, with conservation organizations and government agencies such as The Nature Conservancy, The City of Eugene, Army Corps of Engineers, and Bureau of Land Management, in the West Eugene Wetlands. Over the years more partners have joined, integrating prescribed fire into restoration projects in well known local places such as Buford Park. These partners, and others, formed the Rivers to Ridges Partnership Ecological Burn Group. As the partnership grew, so did the local ecological burning community. From burning 30 acres at Willow Creek Preserve in 1986, to a record year of 517 acres across 26 sites in 2022, the work of these burn partners has demonstrated that burns can be conducted safely, with clear ecological benefits.

LTWC staff Abby Colehour creating a “black line” during burn operations. Photo courtesy of the Long Tom Watershed Council

Carrying Fire Forward in the Long Tom Watershed

Until 2021, the majority of prescribed burns in the Southern Willamette Valley were on public lands or private nature reserves, and yet, the majority of oak and prairie habitats are on private land. This is where the Long Tom Watershed Council (LTWC) enters into the story of revitalizing fire in the region. Katie MacKendrick, former LTWC staff and ecologist, worked with Tribal partners, non-profit organizations, and others in the Rivers to Ridges Partnership to discuss ways to increase collective capacity to implement prescribed and cultural fire in our region. Through a robust engagement process, they identified shared values, capacity gaps, and ideas for building the region’s future. This process was an idea that has come to fruition in numerous collaborative efforts. These efforts include: cultural and prescribed fire training; an ecological fire volunteer program and coordinator; burns on private land; more private landowners showing interest in fire; shared monitoring efforts between organizations and agencies; and more organizations involved in the Rivers to Ridges Ecological Burn Group. While barriers to good fire still exist, the collaborative efforts between LTWC and other partners continue to build capacity for bringing fire back to the landscape.

One landmark program that has increased cultural fire in the region, is the Traditional Ecological Inquiry Program (TEIP). With its fiscal home, the Long Tom Watershed Council, TEIP centers cultural fire in fire discussions. TEIP’s mission is to “nurture the inseparable bond between the health of Native people and the health of the land. By promoting eco-cultural reclamation, amplifying Native voices in education and environmental stewardship, and empowering Native youth, families, and communities, the program revitalizes Traditional Ways of Knowing that have been disrupted by systemic separation from ancestral lands.” Along with stewarding 30 acres in the Long Tom watershed, TEIP partners in restoration of prairies and wetlands through cultural practices- including fire.

Since TEIP’s formation in 2017, the program has participated in and performed numerous burns and fire related activities for Tribal youth and families. TEIP brings together cultural fire practitioners, cultural bearers, elders, storytellers and youth to discuss and determine the future of cultural burning within the region.

Prescribed Burn Associations: Neighbors Helping Neighbors

Alongside Tribal and non-tribal organizational efforts, a grassroots movement is emerging: Prescribed Burn Associations (PBAs).

Originating in the Great Plains in the 1990s, PBAs are cooperative networks where landowners, fire practitioners, professional conservationists, and community members pool resources, share labor, and learn together. The model has now spread across the country, with more than 140 PBAs burning tens of thousands of acres each year.

PBAs reduce barriers by sharing equipment like water tanks, pumps, and torches. They provide training for volunteers, from basic fire behavior to ignition techniques. Working collectively with people with all ranges of experience builds trust among communities that fire can be used safely. They aid in shifting the culture—from fear of fire to acceptance of fire as stewardship.

In the South Willamette Valley, the new South Willamette PBA is forming with support from local landowners and conservation groups. Together, they are beginning to return fire to oak savannas and prairies on private land.

PBAs embody a relational shift with fire: fire is no longer solely the domain of agencies or professionals but an entity of the people.

TEIP Intern, Kanim Cushman-White Eyes (Chinook), applies fire to recently coppiced hazel plants to support healthy weaving materials. Photo courtesy of the Long Tom Watershed Council

Toward a Fire-Adapted Future

The story of fire in the South Willamette Valley arcs from millennia of Indigenous stewardship, through a century of suppression, into today’s tentative renewal. Each carefully lit flame reconnects people to the land and to one another.

The ecological benefits are clear—healthier prairies, thriving oaks, resilient wildlife. The cultural benefits are profound—restoring Indigenous practices, strengthening community bonds, reaffirming human-to-other-than-human relationships, and transforming fear into respect.

Yet the work is just beginning. Scaling up prescribed and cultural fire will require:

Respect for tribal sovereignty and Tribal voices centered in burning efforts.
Policy reforms to reduce liability barriers.
Expanded training and capacity building for local crews.
Community engagement and public education to normalize good fire.
Community-based networks like PBAs to carry the practice forward.

As climate change intensifies wildfire risks, the urgency of this work grows, and so do the opportunities for different possible futures. By embracing fire as medicine rather than enemy, the South Willamette Valley can once again become a landscape of renewal.

The Valley Remembers

Long before Eugene or Corvallis rose from the prairie, the South Willamette Valley was a fire-shaped land. The Kalapuya tended it with flame, ensuring abundance for people and other-than-human kin alike. That relationship was broken but never erased.

Today, as smoke curls once more above the valley floor—from cultural burns, from conservation driven burns, from neighbors working together—something deeper is returning. The valley remembers.

Fire is not only coming back to the land. It is coming back to the people.

To learn more about the Long Tom Watershed Council and their mission to improve water quality and watershed condition in the Long Tom River Basin and surrounding drainages visit www.longtom.org

The Valley that Burns to Bloom