June 29, 2000: Fire burns part of monument

Fire burns part of monument

This story was published June 29, 2000

By Annette Cary
Herald staff writer

The new designation of national monument wasn't any help in protecting the Arid Lands Ecology Reserve on Wednesday as a large chunk of the Hanford Reach National Monument went up in flames.

Sage and grass lands were consumed by fire at the reserve - land on the west side of Hanford that makes up more than a third of the new national monument. But it was sage and grass lands that were beautiful enough and rare enough to warrant federal protection.

"The single most important thing out there that would be lost is sagebrush," said Larry Cadwell, a staff scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "There isn't that much good quality sagebrush steppe out there."

Land at the reserve has remained largely untouched by the 20th century. The federal government fenced off the land as part of a buffer zone around the Hanford atomic works in the 1940s, making some of it the last remnant of sagebrush and bunchgrass in the state that hasn't had 150 years of livestock grazing or crops grown on it.

The grass should come back next year despite the fire. The fire only burns off the top, and the underground parts of the plant survive.

But sagebrush is a different story.

Some acres that were farmed before the land was taken over by the federal government during World War II still have not had sagebrush return.

While grass will come back from its root system, sage depends on a delicate seeding system.

"Most years those seeds do not germinate," Cadwell said. "They need plenty of moisture and little competition from other plants."

Tiny, dense seeds fall from the parent plant to nearby ground, but they don't travel more than a few feet. Unlike some other plants, the seeds aren't carried off by animals, a method that spreads them far from the parent plant.

Without sagebrush, wildlife species that depend on it also disappear.

Biologists had been excited about the first confirmed sightings in more than 10 years in 1999 of several sage grouse on the reserve. The grouse are listed as an endangered species, disappearing as sagebrush has disappeared in the West. They depend on sage leaves for more than 99 percent of their diet in the winter.

Late Wednesday afternoon, the fire had spread to near the area where the birds have been spotted.

The black-tailed jackrabbit also has a difficult time surviving without sage, Cadwell said. The brush provides a canopy to conceal the animals. With just grass for hiding, they're easily spotted by raptors and are more vulnerable to coyotes.

Several species of birds also nest in sagebrush, including the loggerhead shrike, the sage sparrow and the sage thrasher.

"A whole host of animals depend on sage," Cadwell said. "If the sage is not there, they're not there."

Biologists also are concerned that a fire can clear ground and give non-native plants and noxious weeds a chance to invade.

"They can only come in and take over after major disturbances," Cadwell said. Heavy equipment used to fight a fire also can disturb the ground, making it susceptible to invasion by tumbleweeds and cheatgrass.

Some of the land that burned Wednesday had burned in previous years, increasing the probability that noxious weeds could gain a foothold.

In 1984, some 20,000 acres burned near Hanford. A smaller fire in 1998 burned 6,000 acres in about the same area of the reserve as Wednesday's fire.

Of course, there also were likely fires there hundreds of years ago. But 300 years ago, the results of the fire were much different, Cadwell said. Much of the region's sagebrush has since been destroyed by development and agriculture, and noxious weeds have been introduced.

"Yes, fire is natural, but everything else is not natural," Cadwell said. "It is a problem."