Prolonged drought has taken an alarming toll on Oregon’s forests this year, accelerating the death of the state’s official tree, the Douglas fir.

Many areas of the state are enduring what’s been called “firmageddon,” which has struck particularly hard in southwest and Eastern Oregon.

A recent survey by the U.S. Forest Service found some hot spots — or hillsides where 10% to 30% of the fir trees are dead or dying, including the Ashland watershed, Applegate Valley, Canyonville, Tiller and in the Bureau of Land Management’s Medford District.

In Central Oregon near Prineville and other locations farther east, so-called edge forests with small stands of Douglas fir are dying next to more drought-tolerant trees. Some areas in Washington are also reporting fir die-offs.

In many Oregon locations, the death of firs is obvious as large reddish swaths spread across formerly lush green hillsides and mountains.

“Forests are really stressed out by all the drought,” said Laura Lowrey, a forest entomologist with the U.S. Forest Service Southwest Oregon Service Center.

Less rain, higher summer temperatures and warmer winters continue to take their toll on stressed trees, prompting beetles to attack them more vigorously.

Lowrey said the die-off is particularly noticeable at elevations between 2,000 and 3,000 feet.

Forests in Southern Oregon along the Northern California border are some of the hardest hit, she said. Sugar pines seem to better endure the more arid conditions, Lowrey noted.

Coastal areas so far don’t seem to be as impacted, Lowrey said.

“The Umpqua still seems OK,” she said.

Lowrey said aerial mapping of forests is followed up by on-the-ground inspections to better assess the die-off.

Over the next few weeks, as we approach the driest part of summer, Lowrey expects more dying trees to become apparent.

If current trends continue, she expects 90% of the firs in some areas to die over the next five years.

Still, she remains hopeful that pockets of fir forests will remain in areas that have been hit the hardest.

Lowrey said the dilemma going forward is how to manage the changing forest landscape, pointing out that thinning operations and prescribed burns are labor intensive and expensive.

Above Ashland, the city is preparing to log by helicopter this winter to remove vast stands of dead trees to reduce the chance of a catastrophic fire.

The hillsides above this popular tourist town displayed reddish swaths this spring where Douglas firs died. Eventually the reddish needles turn gray and fall to the ground.

Siskiyou Mountain Park, a popular 300-acre woodland above town, has been particularly hard hit.

Property owners less than a mile from Southern Oregon University hired a local forester to clear dead or dying Douglas firs to provide more defensive space around their homes.

Joe Powell, an Ashland forester, has been removing dead trees from a number of private properties just above Ashland.

He said flatheaded beetles have multiplied in the dense foliage above town, taking advantage of the weakened conditions of firs struggling to survive in the increasingly hotter climate.

Powell tries to salvage dying Douglas firs and sell them to wood products companies to help offset the cost of tree removal on properties.

Firmageddon, the portmanteau that initially referred to the die-off of white firs over the past decade, is now used to describe the toll taken on many types of trees.

Douglas fir, despite its name, is actually a conifer in the pine family.

Most areas of the Pacific Northwest have seen a significant drop in rainfall over the past two decades along with warmer winters, hotter summers and a beetle infestation.

A U.S. Forest Service survey in 2022 found fir die-offs occurring on 1.23 million acres in Oregon and Washington.

Another Forest Service study estimated that between 1975 and 2019 nearly a half-million trees were killed by the flatheaded fir borer, but more trees died from 2015 to 2019 than in the previous four decades.