"There's our lomatium," he said, indicating a small, yellow-flowered plant. "You can see it's growing out of a burnt clump of grass, and coming back quite nicely. This is a very good sign that the burn was effective."

Zika, who works for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, couldn't be more pleased to see these healthy specimens of the endangered Bradshaw's lomatium, commonly known as Bradshaw's desert parsley.

The BLM, cooperating with other public and private agencies, conducted prescribed burns last fall in small pockets of remaining prairie around Eugene to revitalize the native prairie plants, including the rare lomatium.

The agencies are trying to emulate the burning practices of the Calapooya Indians, who set fires in the Willamette Valley for thousands of years before pioneer settlement to help nature maintain an open prairie of abundant wildflowers, herbs, grasses and wildlife.

On a walk Thursday morning, Zika observed that last year's burn already is beginning to re-establish the prairie, restricting the growth of invading woody pants and trees, and clearing out flower-choking thatch. Scattered specimens of Bradshaw's lomatium, one of the earliest blooming spring prairie plants, were in full flower.

"There's a lot of dead material that piles up in an area -- when you burn it, it releases nutrients and causes an extra flush of vegetation," Zika said. "Here are some Willamette Valley bittercress and some camas and over there a patch of buttercups."

About 2 1/2 million acres of prairie once covered the Willamette Valley. Today, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the original prairie remains, making the Willamette Valley prairies perhaps the rarest of all plant communities in Oregon.

"That's why this lomatium is so scarce," Zika said. "It only grows in the wet Willamette Valley prairie."

Bradshaw's lomatium was added to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's endangered species list last year, becoming Oregon's third federally listed endangered plant species.

BLM workers torched about 38 acres in three tracts of land in the Fern Ridge area where the Bradshaw's lomatium is known to grow. Also involved in the lomatium recovery effort are Oregon State University scientists, the Army Corps of Engineers, The Nature Conservancy and the Fish & Wildlife Service.

The next step in the study is to survey the native prairie plant population in areas that were burned as well as areas that were not burned, Zika said. It's likely that some parts of the prairie will be burned again this fall, while others will be left unburned to contrast the differences, he said.

"I'm excited about plants and the conservation of rare species, so this whole project has been very exciting, " he said. "Botanists have been expressing concern for this plant for over 10 years and it's exciting that we're doing something about it."