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 Currently
Today, Oregon’s 33.8 million acres of forest lands
are all under organized protection. Three operating forest protective associations (Coos, Douglas, and Walker Range) and nine others managed by the Oregon Department of Forestry
provide protection for approximately 16.2 million private-timber and grazing acres throughout the state. KOG is given a contribution of one cent per acre of that protected land to promote
statewide wildfire prevention campaigns. The landowners are the
backbone of the organization. In addition, cooperative agreements with the Department of Forestry, Coos, Douglas, and Walker Range
forest protective associations, and federal wildfire agencies, as well as grants, partnerships, and private contributions provide the basic revenue for
Keep Oregon Green..
The 37 members of the Board of Trustees govern the
Association and its day-to-day-operations are directed by its president/CEO.
These members are affiliated with
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American Forest Resources Council
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Oregon Small Woodland Owners
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City
of Bend Fire Department |
Oregon State Federation of
Garden Clubs
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The forest industry
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Oregon State University
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Forestry
consultants |
State
and federal wildfire agencies
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Office
of the State Fire Marshal |
World Forestry Center
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Oregon Forest Industries Council
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The task of promoting wildfire messages is becoming
increasingly difficult. In past years it was a challenge to have the wildfire prevention messages reach traditional visitors to the forest. Now, we are faced with getting them to an
increasing number of people who live in and around these 3.5 million acres. This “wildland-urban interface” poses a double threat
- from people living in or near the forest who may start fires that spread to
the wildlands or from wildfires that spread to the nearby residences. In either case, the result is potentially disastrous but
could have been avoided by responsible prevention actions taken by the
homeowner.
Perhaps no money is better spent in Oregon than that
contributed to the KOG campaigns. Concrete evidence of the program’s success is given
by the annual wildfire statistics. They show that, in spite of greater use of our forest for recreation and
housing, the numbers of human-caused wildfires are not increasing in proportion to the population.
In the future the need to prevent wildfires will be
greater than ever before. More and more people are moving into the wildland interface; there is a greater demand for recreation in the forests; the health of federal forests is declining; wildfires
are bigger than ever before; and suppression costs have become astronomical.
According to wildfire experts, wildfires are now burning so intensely that it
will take years for the forests to recover; and due to the effects of these
super hot wildfires where the soil has burned leaving nothing but rock, some
of the forests may never grow back. As a result, the ecosystem is
drastically changed.
The number of human-caused wildfires currently
stands at 71 percent of the total in Oregon. As these numbers are reduced, there will be less smoke in the air, less carbon introduced into the atmosphere; more carbon sequestered by
the healthy trees; and the atmosphere cleaner. The journey ahead may be a steep one, but Keep Oregon Green will always be up to the challenge. | 
