Matt McElligott said the financial disaster wrought by the wildfires that have scorched more than 1 million acres this summer in Eastern Oregon will linger long after the last ember has cooled.

And it’s a span measured not in months, but in years.

“We’ll feel the effects of this fire season for a long time,” said McElligott, a cattle rancher in Baker County, Ore., between Haines and North Powder, and president of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association. “The economic losses to the state and the beef cattle industry are probably the largest ever for a single fire season.”

And as McElligott pointed out during an interview on Aug. 12, that season isn’t over.

The fire risk could extend well into September, and even into October, if the rest of summer is nearly as dry, and hot, as July and the first two weeks of August have been.

“The fires aren’t out,” he said.

But the damage the flames have done to a region where raising beef cattle is a major industry — the biggest one, in Baker County — is significant, McElligott said.

Tallying the losses

Tallying the economic losses is a daunting task.

Indeed an impossible one at this point, McElligott said.

Although firefighters have substantially slowed most of the region’s major blazes, many aren’t fully contained.

During the chaos of fast-moving fire — the Durkee Fire in Baker County, for instance, raced 18 miles in a single day in July — McElligott said fences are cut or crushed by bulldozers and gates are open to give cattle a chance to escape the flames.

But with animals from many herds running loose, it will take time for all cattle to be sorted, he said.

Until then it’s impossible to say with any level of accuracy how many cattle were killed, McElligott said. Based on anecdotal stories, though, he anticipates the death toll will be “fairly large.”

He thinks something approaching a thorough census might be possible by late September.

But even that count won’t be complete, McElligott said.

Besides the dead animals, others will need to be euthanized due to burn injuries, he said.

The financial effects aren’t limited to dead animals, though.

McElligott said some cattle have had their lungs damaged by smoke and heat.

“You can’t see that,” he said.

Those animals will be more susceptible to pneumonia this fall, he said, when the same storms that end the fire season also bring freezing temperatures and snow.

Some mature cows will be unable, or less likely, to bear calves in the future.

And McElligott said the chronic effects of fire can be even more insidious.

Cattle exposed to heat and smoke tend to be less productive in general, he said. Calves need more time — and more food, which costs money — to reach the same weight, he said.

Where do cattle go now?

With hundreds of square miles charred, ranchers will need to find places to move their herds and, of course, food for them.

McElligott said some ranchers have hay fields where they can graze their cattle, but that means they can’t harvest hay that they normally bale to use as feed during the winter.

Those ranchers will instead have to buy hay, an additional expense.

Feed can cost $2.50 to $3 per day, or more, per animal, he said.

McElligott said the Oregon State University Extension Service is coordinating a program through which people can donate either hay, or pasture, to ranchers affected by the fires.

“People are being very generous,” he said.

The OCA has also been working with state lawmakers and Oregon’s congressional delegation to lobby for all available state and federal programs that can help ranchers.

And McElligott said Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek has written letters to the secretaries of agriculture, who oversees the Forest Service, and the Interior, which includes the Bureau of Land Management, seeking exceptions that allow ranchers to use unburned public land grazing allotments longer than usual.

Another exception allows ranchers who aren’t fully using their allotments to temporarily share those areas with another fire-affected rancher, McElligott said.

None of those programs can completely offset the losses, but “every little bit helps,” he said.

McElligott said some ranchers had insurance that covered the loss of cattle due to fire, but he didn’t have an estimate for what percentage were covered.

One “small ray of hope,” he said, is that cattle prices have been strong the past couple years. Ranchers who have had to sell animals because they don’t have a place to pasture them — McElligott said he’s talked to some ranchers who have done so — will get a good price.

But he noted that inflation, which affects the price of fuel and equipment, will offset the relatively robust beef market.

He said many ranchers had to spend money to run their own heavy equipment to fight fires. They also have to pay for any damage to the machines.Damage to rangelandMuch of the land burned this summer, both public and private, is grazed by cattle during the spring, summer and fall.

Those acreages support tens of thousands of cattle each year.

The Durkee Fire, for instance, burned all or parts of 63 public land allotments, a total of 118,742 acres, according to the BLM’s Vale District. Combined, those allotments are permitted for 19,069 “animal unit months” — AUMs. One AUM is the amount of forage that a cow-calf pair eats in a month.

Of those 63 allotments, the grazing season for 22 had ended before lightning started the fire on July 17, according to BLM.

Another 22 allotments had cattle grazing on them when the fire started, and 19 other allotments have a grazing season that starts Sept. 16.

The Durkee and other fires burned hotter in certain places, with commensurately more severe damage to the vegetation and soil.

Despite the varying effects, McElligott said it’s common that burned public allotments are closed to cattle for the two years following the fire — the 2025 and 2026 grazing years, in this case.

A document from the BLM’s Vale District states that, “in general, the plant communities consumed in the Durkee Fire are resilient to fires and will likely recover within the next two years. However, there may be areas where intensive restoration such as noxious weed control and desirable plant seeding will be needed.”

Restoration might also be needed on burned private land, McElligott said — another expense for ranchers.

He said private allotments could potentially recover sooner, but that it’s likely those won’t be available for grazing in 2025.

The best case scenario, he said, is that enough rain falls this autumn and next spring to spur the growth of new grass. Some private rangeland could potentially be open for grazing next year, he said, although it wouldn’t support as many animals for as long as usual.

“We’ll feel the effects of this fire season for a long time. The economic losses to the state and the beef cattle industry are probably the largest ever for a single fire season.”

— Matt McElligott, Baker County rancher and president of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association