Central Oregon Bitterbrush Broads • Entered by Mary Fleischmann on January 24, 2025
Meeting with Deschutes County Commissioner Chang
January 13, 2025
Participants and Hours
| Pre Planning hours | 1.25 |
| Post Admin hours | 1.5 |
| Activity Hours | 1.5 |
| Participants | 4 |
| Total Hours | 8.75 |
Key Issue: Multiple apply
Activity Type: Advocacy (rallies, lobbying, meeting decision makers, letters/calls/emails)
Key Partners: Juniper Sierra Club
Short Description of Activity
Meeting with Commissioner Chang who asked to meet with us due to Mary commenting to the County Commissioners that we are not in agreement with the fire mitigation that is going on in Deschutes County – specifically the amount of thinning and mastigating that is going on.
Reflection/Evaluation
Overall it seems that Commissioner Chang and the other Co. Commissioners have bought into what the Forest Service is selling as best practices to mitigate wildfire and risks. There were a few other folks invited to attend from the Deschutes Colloroborative (we have not had good experiences with local colloroboratives). We shared some of the research and science that we are aware of, they had their own. Chang kept talking about his background when he was in college working with FS and practices – think that was MANY years ago and science has changed. Discussed need for home hardening, better infrastructure for people to exit fire zones, and basically we can agree to disagree. We left feeling like Chang really wanted to convince us to support their position, we agreed to send them more research to our position of not thinning wilderness. We support protections in areas close to the community, but not the extent of thinning that has been going on. We were invited to join the Colloborative but it did not feel like something to put our efforts into. Will see if we get invited back again – Chang made it sound like this was just the beginning of the conversation, but that is not how it felt when we left.