AP: Juniper gobbling up Oregon wilderness

Juniper gobbling up Oregon wilderness

The Associated Press

PORTLAND — Seventy-five years ago, about 1.5 million acres of Oregon's wilderness was covered in Western juniper. Now it has grown to 6.5 million acres, or about 10 percent of the state's surface — and the plant is spreading fast.

A new survey by the U.S. Forest Service shows that juniper is taking over grassland, alarming biologists who see it as a threat to native habitats.

"Some juniper is a good thing,'' said Rick Miller, a professor at Oregon State University. "But you can have too much of a good thing.''

Junipers send their roots deep beneath the surface, soaking up water before it reaches any other plants.

"Eventually as they dominate, then you lose the shrubs, the grass and then you get bare ground,'' Miller said. Water runs off, gullying the landscape. Too little food or open range remains to support much wildlife.

Ranchers talk of springs running dry when junipers take root.

"After you cut it, springs start running,'' said Steve Lent, a former fire management officer with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. "If you burn it, water starts showing up everywhere. All of a sudden you see grass growing.''

Usually, the presence of humans puts strain on the natural world, causing species like the salmon and the spotted owl to veer toward extinction. But in the case of the juniper, people helped it spread by fighting wildfires that otherwise would have controlled juniper overgrowth.

Scientists also say that growing levels of carbon dioxide in the air may be helping junipers spread, acting as an invisible fertilizer, said Miller.

The recent Forest Service survey found that many smaller junipers had been overlooked in earlier surveys, which relied on aerial photos.

About 800,000 acres showing only scattered junipers turned out to be thick forest, said Dave Azuma, who led the project.

The recent survey classified areas covered with juniper as either a forest, with dense growth, or a savanna, containing smaller and fewer junipers.

The survey detected about 3.3 million acres of juniper forest and 3.2 million acres of savanna, which together cover more than 10 percent of the state's total area.