By JAMES SINKS
The Register-Guard

After years of trying to reduce field burning, a cluster of agencies, including the city of Wugene and some environmental groups, now say that the Willamette Valley ould use a few more grass fires.

But these fires would not be like the agricultural field burns to eliminate straw and pests.

"What we're suggesting is that controlled burns - which were once a part of the wetlands ecosystem - will help restore native prarie strsd," said Ed Alverson, the Wiltamelie Valley stewardship ecologist with the Nature Conservancy.

To help illustrate that point, Alverson helped touch off a few fires Thursday in three tinder-dry west Eugene wetland areas.

In a 5-acre field the Nature Conservancy owns near West l8th Avenue and Bertelsen Road, firefighters from the Bureau of Land Management touched glowing road flares to dry grass, sending orange flames leaping 4 feet into the air and a plume of brown smoke billowing into the afternoon sky.

Other firefighters circled the perimeter of the burn area, dousing rogue flare-ups with hoses few by nearby water trucks. The fire, which left only smoking skeletons of branches and a smoldering blanket of froy ash in the lumpy field, burned for less than half an hour.

Calapooya Indians, who inhabited the Willamette Valley before European settlers arrived, regularly burned the grassy prairies that once covered the region, Alverson said.

Over the years, invadIng plant species that were kept out by the fires have just about choked out the last of the native prairies.

Fire doesn't kill the native plants, Alverson said. Rather, the burn stimulates new growth in older plants and clears underbrush so young seedlings can grow.

According to the BLM, native wetland prairie areas have shrunk to less than I percent of their former size.

"Even aerial photographs of Eugene in the 1930s show we had for more wetlands then," Alverson said.

Many plant species, including the endangered wildflower Bradshaw's lomatium and the increasingly rare Willamette Valley daisy, have become threatened as their habitat is ensnarled by blackberry bushes and ash trees, said BLM botanist Kathy Pendergrass.

Eventually, the city of Eugene, the West Eugene Wetlands Plan, the BLM and the Nature Conservancy cooperatively will manage between 1,500 and 2,000 acres of wetland prairie, she said. Oregon's densest concentration of remaining prairie lands exists in the Danebo area, west of Eugene.

"We're looking at different techniques to try and discover which method will be most effective for wetland management," Pendergrass said. "What we've seen is that controlled burning has some very good potential."

But because the idea of burning wetlands often puts some fols on edge, Pendergras and the BLM are using caution in touting controlled burns as the way to restore native species and habitats.

Eariler Thursday, firefighters burned five 45-foot-long test plots in native prairie wetland behind the BLM office in west Eugene. The burn is part of a two-year, $30,000 research project co-sponsored by Oregen State University.

In the project, botanists and students will compare the effects of controlled burning with other management techniques: haying, tree and shreb removal, and doing nothing.

"We can't just say controlled burning is the only option," Pendergrass said. "We need to look at other alternatives and weigh the costs."

If funding can be found, an interpretive boardwalk will be erected next spring as the research site so the public can view the differences between the methods - "without getting their feet soaked," Pendergrass said.

Thurday's west Eugene burns were approved by the City Council and sanctioned by the Lane Regional Air Pollution Authority, which granted the BLM a special use permit.

Other agencies also are exporting the use of controlled burns to restore and maintain wetland prairie habitat. In early October, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will burn an estimated 200 acres at the Finley Wildlife Refuge near Corvallis.