The Big Grass Fire in Owyhee County

The Big Grass Fire in Owyhee County isn’t the only wildfire burning in Idaho, but right now it’s the largest. Ranchers are especially affected because of the loss of cattle in the fire, and also thousands of lost acres for grazing.

Verbatim:

(Chris Black) “I've been around fire my whole life and I see how volatile they can be and how unpredictable they can be.”

That’s Owyhee County Rancher Chris Black, and he grazes his cattle near where the massive Big Grass Fire is burning. It’s one of many fires burning across the west right now, especially in the Northwest. It started in Oregon and grew to more than 300,000 acres as it crossed into Southwest Idaho.

The Owyhee County Sheriff’s Office doesn’t have final numbers, but says 13 to15 structures have been burned, and several hundred cattle have been lost.

Ranchers have been scrambling to try and move their herds to safer areas.

“Where my cattle are, it's impossible to truck them out plus finding a place to go. We're just going to have to move to areas that are more fire resistant. And we also have equipment out to make basic fire guards for them. So we're trying to prepare.

 I'm a member of the RFPA, the Saylor Creek RFPA.”

That’s one of many Rangeland Fire Protection Associations that allows ranchers, farmers and landowners to respond quickly to wildfires. They can legally participate in fire suppression efforts alongside state and federal firefighters

”We're trained to help with fires. To protect our resources. And that's a big thing because Waihee County is 93% public land.”  

(Chelsie Johnson) “So lots of small fire departments as ourselves. We're out for two days the other day, Monday, Sunday night, Monday night, and Tuesday out in Jordan Valley doing structure protection and back burns.

All volunteer work. So that's kind of what brought us to doing this is we want to get food and water out to the people that need it.

Since Monday, we have started collecting donations for local fire departments that are deployed out on these wildland fires. The community outreach has been absolutely amazing. As you can see behind me, we have lots of people still bringing in donations.

Businesses, local, far and wide.  We've sent out 28 pallets so far of stuff and then we have 38 pallets sitting on the ground right now.

Seeing everyone come together for a very good cause is a big deal to me. I've never seen this much donations come in my 22 years of being here.”

For now, they say they have plenty of food and drinks available from all the generous donations and say the best way to help now is to donate money that can be used for things like fuel, batteries, and vehicle maintenance. If you’d like to donate check with your local fire departments to find out how.

(Black) “The RFPA in a whole is not getting reimbursed for anything. You know, they're paying for their own fuel, they're paying for their own time. It's just a service to ourselves and to our community. It's ranchers working together to cooperatively try to benefit the situation.

Black says knowing the wind could pick up at any time and blow the fire towards his herd is difficult to deal with.

Stress is the biggest thing because our livelihood is on the line and we The not knowing and the things that nature will throw at us in the future and the things we can't control about the firefighting, it's all a big stress.

So even though things are good in the cattle business now, they're not good if you don't have any cattle to sell and you don't have any land to run on.

We are still on margins.

Plus, the loss of so much grazing land could affect ranchers for years.

It means possible loss of our livelihood. And that's not even an exaggeration because our cattle are what our livelihood is. If we can't protect them, we can't protect our income for the year. And if we can't protect the resources, that we run on if we can't, that eliminates the economics that we can get off of those cattle. So it means the world to us.