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Hood River County Forest Resilience Initiative

County: Hood River

Primary Resource Concern Addressed: 

  • Terrestrial habitat - Terrestrial habitat for wildlife and invertebrates
  • Degraded plant condition - Plant structure and composition
  • Fire management - Wildfire hazard from biomass accumulation
  • Degraded plant condition - Plant productivity and health

Project Description
The Hood River County Forest Resilience Initiative focuses on private lands in Hood River County, Oregon and addresses concerns of wildfire risk by utilizing a series of practices to improve forest resilience. This initiative has been catalyzed by recent uncharacteristic and catastrophic wildfire events occurring in the Pacific Northwest and in this region specifically. Exclusion of fire from the landscape and changes in climatic patterns over time have resulted in a separation from natural processes in forest ecosystems resulting in undesirable conditions for wildfire behavior. Although this strategy primarily addresses concerns related to wildfire, objectives are to return systems to their natural structure and composition which will subsequently support ecosystem processes on a holistic level and promote native plant and wildlife species.

Conservation Practices Offered

  • Forest Stand Improvement (666) 
  • Brush Management (314) 
  • Woody Residue Treatment (384) 
  • Critical Area Planting (342) 
  • Prescribed Burning (338) 
  • Fuel Break (383) 
  • Firebreak (394) 
  • Tree/Shrub Pruning (660) 
  • Wildlife Habitat Planting (420) 
  • Upland Wildlife Habitat Management (645) 
  • Structures for Wildlife (649) 
  • Herbaceous Weed Treatment (315) 
  • Forest Management Plan (106) 
  • Forest Management Design and Implementation Activity (165) 
  • Prescribed Burning Design and Implementation Activity (160)

Project Partners

  • Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF)
  • Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW)
  • Hood River County
  • US Forest Service
  • East Cascades Oak Partnership
  • Hood River County Soil & Water Conservation District
  • Hood River County All Lands Partnership
  • NRCS Oregon
  • Private landowners

Application Questions
NRCS uses prioritization questions to evaluate applications for this initiative. See the list of workload prioritization questions on the Oregon EQIP page. Ranking questions below will also apply.

Ranking Questions

  1. Will the offered project have at least 20 acres or more of practice 666 Forest Stand Improvement planned over the course of the contract?
  2. Does the offered project incorporate practice 314 Brush Management on at least the same acres treated with Forest Stand Improvement for continued regrowth/resprout follow-up?
  3. The project will adopt one of the following practices for the purposes of improving upland wildlife habitat: 420 Wildlife Habitat Planting or 649 Structures for Wildlife
  4. Will fuel breaks be planned as a part of the overall project design to help create a more defensible and resilient ownership?
  5. Do the project acres adjoin or share a property line with a recent (within the last 10 years) thinning or fuels treatment project? Or is the project adjacent to land units for the same project type to be treated by partners, private landowners, or public land managers within the same timeline?
  6. Has the applicant (or if new ownership previous owner) completed defensible space work on the property and/or completed treatments on a portion of the property within the last 10 years?
  7. Are landscape features present that the client is willing to maintain, that are indicative that restoration would have greater benefit to wildlife, such as large trees, structural diversity, including snags, and large down wood?
  8. Did the inventory of the project site reveal a high to extreme wildfire risk due to biomass accumulation that can be addressed using appropriate conservation practices?