It’s late summer, and the Bear Creek Greenway is buzzing with life. An endless symphony of birds calls throughout the landscape. Ducks search for food underneath the water, and squirrels dart across the bike path between bushes.
But five years ago, this place was the opposite of lively.
“The way I described it to folks is it looked much like the moon,” said Steve Lambert, Jackson County roads and parks director. “It was just nothing but gray ash all over the place.”
The Almeda Fire started just outside of Ashland and spread quickly through the greenway, fueled by the endless amounts of invasive blackberry bushes.
“There are sections of the Bear Creek Greenway that you literally were bike riding down a tunnel of blackberries,” Lambert said.
Invasive species like blackberries burn really hot and create high-intensity fires that are much harder to control.
A silver lining
The Almeda Fire was devastating. It destroyed thousands of homes, and many residents still live with lingering trauma. But John Speece with the Rogue River Watershed Council said for the Greenway, the fire was a bit of a blessing.
“It was about a million dollars of site preparation work that was burned that day,” he said, referring to blackberry thickets that otherwise would have been expensive to clear.
The fire burned those tunnels of blackberries to the ground, leaving a blank canvas for the restoration work.
“It was about a million dollars of site preparation work that was burned that day.”
Standing by part of the creek near Talent, Speece said they’ve restored the area to what it was like centuries ago.
“Historically, before European settlement, before I-5, this whole valley was a braided network of beaver dams, very productive Coho salmon habitat,” said Speece.
The group removed around 650 dump trucks’ worth of dirt and debris to reopen the creek’s historical side channels. A few areas along the project have logs sticking out from the ground, used to trap other wood as it flows downstream.
“We've got this slow water habitat, great for juvenile aquatic species to rear,” Speece said.
Native plants also provide another key benefit — fire resistance. They tend to burn less intensely than invasive blackberry bushes. One example lies just downstream along Wagner Creek, a tributary of Bear Creek.
The Freshwater Trust ripped up invasive blackberries and planted native vegetation along Wagner Creek, wrapping up in 2017 — a few years before the Almeda Fire. When the fire came through, surveys found that the fire destroyed 90% of the region’s tree canopy. But in the restored section, 80% of the vegetation survived.
“In this treated area, we saw the fire drop to the ground, away from the canopy, and burn much less intensely,” said Freshwater Trust’s Taylor Owen.
That approach is now being expanded across the rest of the greenway. And the benefits go beyond plants. Lower-intensity fires not only cause less damage, but they also move more slowly, giving firefighters a better chance to contain them.
Grading the greenway
Conservation Biologist Dominick DellaSala stands on the asphalt path with his binoculars, listening to the calls of warblers and acorn woodpeckers. His eyes focus on the ghostly, blackened tree trunks rising above the lush undergrowth.
As native plants like tall snowberry and willow returned to the greenway, so did the birds.
“I wish we were here during the bird nesting season,” he said. “There's just so much habitat rejuvenation that has been created by this fire. I expect it to be rich with birds for years to come.”
JPR brought DellaSala to this area a year after the fire. He hadn’t been back since. Now, 10-foot cottonwood saplings line the path, and native plants surround the bike path.
He said the fire was a natural reset for the greenway.
“The healing took place as soon as the flames went out,” he said. “Woodpeckers — all of a sudden, that's great habitat.”
The standing dead trees that were at risk of falling onto the pathway were cut down, but Lambert said they all still remain on the greenway. Large piles of logs can be seen among the bushes, which provide habitat for squirrels and other small animals. The remaining standing trees serve as nesting spots for birds and will eventually fall on their own.
Other species, such as vultures or red-tailed hawks, may have to wait decades before the saplings grow tall enough to support roosting. But DellaSala said overall, people have taken advantage of the fresh start.
“It's a really good example of people working with nature during that reset,” he said.
He pointed to efforts to replace invasive species with native plants as a means to guide the greenway’s recovery.
Still, he only gives the restoration work a B-plus. Invasive species, such as star thistle, cheatgrass and blackberries, have persisted or reemerged, filling in previously sparse areas.
He said invasive plants crowd out diversity by consuming most of the habitat’s resources.
“When you have only a couple of species in there, it simplifies it,” he said.
It all comes down to funding
You can’t just pull up blackberry bushes once and expect them not to return. They’re called ‘invasive’ for a reason and require ongoing work to keep them at bay.
But that’s complicated. Jackson County owns some of the land, but the rest is owned by ODOT, five cities and private landowners. Lambert said vegetation management has become a higher priority for landowners involved in the Bear Creek Restoration Initiative, which was formed just before the fire to coordinate planning.
But they’re still working out how to pay for it.
“It doesn't make much sense for one jurisdiction to manage their tax lots to one level of service and another to a different level of service,” Lambert said. “Fire will find the path.”
“What we don't want to see is the whole corridor filled with blackberries again."
He said the county is considering creating a taxing district to support long-term funding and cohesive management for the greenway. But Lambert said it would be a good investment.
Speece agrees that stable funding is key.
“What we don't want to see is the whole corridor filled with blackberries again,” he said.
Whether that upkeep is worth the cost will likely be up to voters. But Lambert’s optimistic. He said the greenway’s revival is hard to ignore.
“There's a plethora of wildlife out here. And it’s a treasure to have this close-to-home kind of wildlife corridor.”
