Like many areas across the West, forests in the Tualatin River Basin of northwest Oregon face two emerging climate resilience concerns: hotter, drier summers and increasing wildfire risk. Heat-related tree stress and mortality are becoming more common across the landscape, and fire season is beginning earlier and ending later in the year, with more frequent ignitions than ever before.  

To identify the most vulnerable communities within the 242,000 forested acres in the basin, Tualatin Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) organized focus groups, gathered existing data, and led new research to conduct a forest resilience prioritization analysis. The analysis examined aspects, slopes, soils, vegetation, and past disturbances across the landscape and included wildfire severity and probability modeling from OSU Extension. The results identified several distinct communities with the highest cumulative vulnerability.  

“I presented our findings to some colleagues at the Oregon Department of Forestry and OSU Extension and was very excited when they expressed shared concerns about these specific communities because of forest health issues and wildfire,” said Brandy Saffell, Tualatin SWCD Forest Conservation Specialist. “We also agreed that the communities in the southwest corner of the basin, around Hagg Lake, are of particular concern because of two recent fires in 2020.” 

In 2023, Tualatin SWCD gathered multiple local partners to plan an outreach event for small woodland owners in the Hagg Lake area, including communities like Gaston and Cherry Grove. Collaborators included the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF), Oregon State Fire Marshal, OSU Extension, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Washington County Emergency Management, two structural fire protection districts, Washington County Small Woodlands Association, Stimson Lumber, two water treatment utilities, and two power providers. The partner groups focused the event on wildfire preparedness while also committing to incorporating other climate resilience topics. The event, Wildfire Ready, was planned for June 2024 at Scoggins Valley Park on Hagg Lake.

Tualatin SWCD used a three-pronged marketing plan to attract attendees, including print media (e.g., posters in community spaces and op-eds in local newspapers), digital media (e.g., informative wildfire social media content and paid social media event promotions), and community engagement activities (e.g., a native plant giveaway to the first ten registrations). In total,139 people registered for the event, and 93 attended, with 42 percent of participants living within the outreach focus area around Hagg Lake.  

The event included a welcome address from the ODF District Forester followed by three field demonstrations on defensible space around the home, managing your forest for climate resilience, and management tools for forest managers during fire season. In the afternoon, participants engaged with staff from partner organizations at a resource fair. Topics ranged from how to safely burn slash piles to cost-share programs to how to prepare your family and livestock for evacuations.  

Participant feedback was overwhelmingly positive and encouraging to continue offering similar events. One participant commented, the event, “was great – the amount of work involved in being fire ready can be overwhelming, but this event helped me prioritize where to start. Looking forward to next time!” Tualatin SWCD and other partner organizations made several new connections with community members and have already started scheduling site visits to offer technical guidance on managing forests for climate resilience.