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While county parks in Linn County largely survived the fire damage from last summer, other area parks were hit much harder, leading to closures of some of Oregonâs most popular natural gems. One of the areas most affected by the 2020 Labor Day fires was the Opal Creek Wilderness, which is completely closed to the general public. Not only is access limited due to burned bridges and downed trees along the road to the trailhead, the recreation areas themselves still have hazardous conditions that mean theyâre unsafe for normal activities. A trip to Salmon Falls County Park on Thursday revealed that downed trees and dead standing timber were indeed all over. ....
Reforestation efforts are already underway in some parts of Oregonâs forests that were affected by the Labor Day fires last year. While tens of thousands of trees have been replanted and even more seeds have been dispersed via aerial drops, it will still be a years-long undertaking to build back the Santiam State Forest and other areas that were devastated by the Beachie Creek Fire and the Lionshead Fire. The first thing to understand about Oregonâs forests is that there is a real patchwork of ownership in some places, especially in the Santiam Canyon, where wildfires burned more than 16,000 acres of state forest land and 38,000 acres of federal Bureau of Land Management woods in both Linn and Marion counties. The nearby Willamette National Forest, managed by the U.S. Forest Service, saw more than 175,000 acres affected to varying degrees, though that number also includes the Holiday Farm Fire in Lane County. ....