Newman points out the firebreak he maintains on the Top Ranch. The fuelbreak planned by two federal agencies on adjoining public land will be much wider, providing a higher level of protection from wildfire.

The manager of a 3,000-acre ranch near Monument, surrounded by the breathtaking beauty of forested ridgelines and ravines, has been fighting the good fight against the constant threat of wildfire.

Now, he and other private landowners in the area appear poised to get a whole lot of help.

In a first for Grant County, the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, in coordination with a group of private landowners, plan to work together on a major forest fuel reduction effort to create a wide fuelbreak protecting hundreds of acres surrounding the Top Road Firewise community above Monument.

Firewise is a national program that helps groups of landowners in fire-prone areas improve their defenses against wildfire. Eight Firewise communities have been established in Grant County since 2010 to improve their wildfire defenses, with Pine Creek becoming the first in Eastern Oregon to receive the designation in 2014. Other Grant County Firewise communities are Ritter, Middle Fork, Upper Laycock Creek Road, Canyon Creek Lane, Corral Gulch, Antelope Lane and Top Road.

Bill Newman, manager of Top Ranch, said it’s been a long time coming. He’s happy plans are in the works to start the fuelbreak projects later this year.

“We really appreciate it,” Newman said. “It’s been a lot of hard work on a lot of these people’s part.”

On Top Ranch, Newman bulldozed his own 6-mile-long, mostly 10-foot-wide firebreak along the ranch’s northern boundary with land owned by the BLM, which is being earmarked for the fuelbreak treatment.

“As it stands now with the amount of fuels there is there, this dozer line is basically useless except as an anchor point to start a backburn into the fire in those fuels, because the flame lengths will be 150 to 200 feet high as it comes up out of there with that amount of fuel,” he said. “When they get done with their treatment in here and take all these fuels out, it will be a ground fire that this dozer line can stop. It’s a much better situation.”

On the Bureau of Land Management side, the BLM Prineville District fuelbreak project at Top Road would be undertaken on 351 acres north of the community.

The proposed fuel reduction will include logging of merchantable timber and hand-thinning of conifers that are 9 inches in diameter at breast height or under across the project area, officials said. Scattered encroaching junipers in the project area will also be removed, regardless of diameter, unless they exhibit old-growth characteristics, according to the BLM.

“It’s unique in Grant County, where in Grant County we have not done joint projects, if you will,” said James Osborne, BLM Prineville District fire management officer. “We have projects that border and have happened in Grant County, but this is a first that incorporates the Firewise community, (Oregon Department of Forestry), BLM and the Forest Service, all working together in the same direction.”

The Forest Service fuelbreak project would reduce fuels on 485 acres in the Heppner Ranger District, along the boundary of the Umatilla National Forest, Bureau of Land Management acreage and the Top Road community. The project intersects County Road 670 as well as multiple Forest Service roads, officials said.

Forest Service officials hope to start laying the groundwork for the project in late spring or early summer, with completion of initial thinning by fall of 2025 and prescribed burning after that, said Jeromy Wilson, fire management officer for the Heppner Ranger District.

“This has been one of the more unique projects that I’ve worked with since it has engaged so many state and federal agencies as well as the Top Road Firewise community to get it done,” Wilson said.

When completed, the two agencies’ projects will form a continuous, wide fuelbreak protecting the community, officials said.

Irene Jerome, the longtime Grant County Firewise community coordinator before her retirement at the end of last year, said she had never seen this level of cooperation for such a major wildfire prevention undertaking in the area.

“It’s interesting to have a private community and the Forest Service and the BLM working together,” Jerome said. “When you have a cross-boundary project, they’re doing fuel reduction all over the place to make a bigger fuelbreak, and they’re more effective when they’re larger.”

The BLM plans to start its project next fall year and hopes to complete it by next year.

The public scoping process is open on the BLM fuelbreak project until March 27. More information can be found at https://tinyurl.com/2s3dewzh, where public comments can also be submitted.

“We need as much positive public comment as we can for these types of projects to move forward so we can get more of them in the future,” Newman said.