Published 10:55 am Thursday, May 7, 2026
By Jayson Jacoby | Baker City Herald
BAKER CITY — Amanda Bunch certainly hasn’t changed her mind about the devastation that Baker County’s biggest wildfire caused nearly two years ago.
But she has seen ample evidence that the Durkee Fire, which was sparked by lightning in July 2024 and burned almost 300,000 acres in Baker and Malheur counties, wasn’t wholly negative.
Bunch, who with her husband, Levi, has a cattle ranch in the area scorched by the blaze, said in places the flames pruned shrubs that compete with native grasses that survived and have prospered.
“Overall I feel like the fire, as devastating as it was, had some benefit,” she said on April 9. “Our ground recovered very well.”
The skimpy winter snowpack didn’t aid in that recovery.
“We really need some water right now,” Bunch said.
Less than a week later, a series of storms brought significant rain to much of Baker County.
As of April 24, the month was the second-wettest April since at least 1943 at the Baker City Airport, with a total of 2.55 inches.
The fire had a dramatic effect on the Bunches, and many other ranchers, by forcing them to gather cattle that had been grazing, as they do each summer, on both private land and on tens of thousands of acres of public land allotments managed by the BLM.
All the public land allotments were off limits to grazing for the rest of 2024 and all of 2025.
Bunch said she and her husband moved cattle onto some of their burned land later in 2025. She said the cattle, in addition to keeping grass trimmed and reducing the risk of another fire, helped reseed areas as their hooves acted something like an aerator does for a lawn, preparing a seed bed.
“The range looked great last fall,” she said.
Bunch said it’s possible — particularly if this spring is damper than usual — that some areas burned in 2024 could produce more grass this summer than before the fire.
Alison Oszman, whose home in Rye Valley, east of Durkee, was saved by firefighters, said the burned hillsides are green this spring with new grass.
Oszman, who is not a rancher, said the fire burned much of the sagebrush, and many of the juniper trees, which she suspects reduced competition for grass.
“Right now it looks really nice out there,” Oszman said on April 16. “Everything is growing.”
As for the BLM allotments that burned in 2024, it’s not certain whether any will be open for grazing in 2026, said Tara Thissell, a public affairs officer for the agency’s Vale District.
“Range management specialists are still collecting and evaluating data, and it is too early to make final determinations,” Thissell said.
The BLM’s general policy, she said, is to “rest” burned areas for at least two growing seasons. For the Durkee Fire, that includes the 2025 and 2026 seasons, the latter ending sometime this summer.
“The end of the growing season varies depending on factors such as elevation and annual weather conditions, but it typically occurs early to mid-summer,” Thissell said.
Areas where grass seed was sowed by aircraft during the fall of 2024 could potentially reopen to grazing in 2026 if BLM officials determine that grasses and other vegetation has recovered enough to withstand livestock grazing, Thissell said. Criteria include grass seed production, seedling root mass, grass growth and rainfall during the germination and growing season.
A smaller area that was seeded by drill — about 4,330 acres — will not be open to grazing until 2027 at the earliest, because that seeding was done during the winter of 2025, Thissell said.
Bunch said she hopes at least some BLM allotments will reopen this year, including the areas her family has used in the past.
She fears that areas that haven’t been grazed for the past two summers could be susceptible to another fire because a lot of grass, including dead stalks, has accumulated since the fire.
Jayson has worked at the Baker City Herald since November 1992, starting as a reporter. He has been editor since December 2007. He graduated from the University of Oregon Journalism School in 1992 with a bachelor’s degree in news-editorial journalism.
