As dozens of wildfires blaze across Oregon, Gov. Tina Kotek is asking federal agencies to release emergency aid to farmers and ranchers impacted by wildfires this summer.

On Wednesday, Kotek wrote a letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of the Interior secretaries Brooke Rollins and Doug Burgum. Kotek is asking the agencies to act together to provide immediate relief and long-term recovery to farmers and ranchers caught up in the throes of a wildfire season that’s ravaged hundreds of thousands of acres.

Among several requests, Kotek is asking the agencies to declare a wildfire disaster in at least 14 counties, which would make farmers and ranchers eligible for emergency federal loans and disaster relief programs.

The governor is also asking the agencies to temporarily open up public lands that haven’t burned and allow livestock to graze there while other federal lands recover.

“What [farmers and ranchers] ask of their government is not sympathy; it is speed,” Kotek wrote in the letter. “A ranch runs on a calendar fire does not respect, seed must be planted in burned ground before the fall rains, hay must be stacked before the snow, and next spring’s calves will land on whatever ground we save this month.”

Kotek is also asking the federal agencies to work with and collaborate with federally recognized tribes on recovery efforts on both tribal trust and ceded lands.

Diana Wirth, a Klamath County rancher and the president of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association, told OPB earlier in the week that some members have already lost their feed stores to fires, and gobbled up private rangelands and public grazing allotments alike.

That means some ranchers will have to buy extra hay or find new land to graze their cattle on — a costly prospect.

In Harney County alone, wildfires have blazed through over 300,000 acres of mostly sagebrush and grassland.

Mitch Baker, a rancher living a few miles north of Burns, said one wildfire, the Second Flat Fire, has burned through a combination of private and public lands he runs cattle on. Most of his cattle were able to find spots the fire didn’t go through, but he’s still missing four bulls and now has at least 100 cows with no pasture.

And his neighbors are facing a similar problem.

“We’re basically all in the same boat,” Baker said. “We’re wiped out on the pasture.”

Wirth told OPB some ranchers have been forced to evacuate their livestock, though it’s been challenging and it’s still too early to tell the extent of the damage the fires have caused in some places.

“If you’ve got a fast-moving wildfire, what goes into that is you’re saddling horses, you’re trailing out to that location, and you’re trying to pull [cattle] off the land that they’re grazing on,” Wirth said. “If you can’t do that, you’re gonna cut fences and open gates and hope they make it out. It’s painful.”

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/07/31/oregon-wildfires-tina-kotek-ranchers-cattle-aid/