The Ellis project entails logging, prescribed burning on about 110,000 acres west of Ukiah

PENDLETON — The Umatilla National Forest is taking public comments about one of the bigger logging and prescribed burning projects proposed on the forest in the past couple decades.

The Ellis project covers about 110,000 acres in parts of the Heppner and North Fork John Day ranger districts. Kristen Marshall of the Heppner Ranger District said the project calls for logging, prescribed burning and noncommercial thinning of forests over 10 to 20 years.

The area is about 15 miles southeast of Heppner and 7 miles west of Ukiah. Forest Road 53, the Blue Mountains Scenic Byway, runs across the northern part of the project area, which includes parts of Umatilla, Morrow and Grant counties.

The Umatilla on Thursday, May 29, released a final environmental impact statement and draft record of decision for the Ellis project. More information, including maps and options for submitting comments, is available at tinyurl.com/5bfv32mp.

The project has multiple goals, according to the environmental impact statement.

These include reducing the wildfire risk, improving wildlife habitat and producing timber to bolster the local economy.

The Ellis project is included as an action item in the Morrow County Community Wildfire Protection Plan due to its proximity to the wildland urban interface areas of Penland Lake, Blake Ranch and Cutsforth Park.

Douglas McKay, Heppner District ranger, considered numerous approaches, known as alternatives, to achieve those goals. He chose a modified version of alternative 2, which includes:

• Commercial logging on about 25,000 acres. Logging would be limited to trees from 7 to 21 inches in diameter.

• Noncommercial thinning of smaller trees, 9 inches or less in diameter, on about 54,000 acres.

• Thinning trees and brush to create fuelbreaks — strips with less combustible fuel that could serve as anchors for firelines in the case of a blaze — totaling about 273 linear miles. The fuelbreaks would be about 500 feet wide.

• Prescribed burning on about 88,000 acres.

The modified version of alternative 2 would not make any changes to motorized access to roads in the Ellis project, according to the Umatilla.

The draft record of decision states that logging could produce about 10.4 million acre-feet of timber annually.

Marshall said it’s not clear how many timber sales could result from the Ellis project. The first is likely to be offered to buyers in 2026.