Northwest Youth Corps

The highway’s hum was punctuated by gobbling turkeys as Jo-Jo Morales and the Northwest Youth Corps’ pilot Wildfire Workforce arrived at a Eugene middle school for their first work day of their 10-week season. This was the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI): the area where fire scientists like Mike Medler, of Western Washington University, say fuel-reduction and logging efforts should be focused to best prevent fire from entering communities. “This is where thinning will make a real difference,” said Medler, who identified 165,000 acres of WUI in need of treatment in Oregon, as opposed to the 5 million backcountry acres identified by Governor Brown as in need of logging. Morales spent the next 10 weeks on the crew, removing overgrown wildfire fuels from properties across his home town of Eugene, Oregon.