Oregon Trail Vegetation Management – Fuel Break Project

The goal of the project is to reduce fuels from the landscape in Oregon Trail Reserve for wildfire mitigation. Fire officials and restoration leaders have identified this area as a high priority due to its proximity to homes. Additionally, the City of Boise has received grant funding for fuel reduction that can be applied to this work.

For the purposes of this project, a masticator is a piece of heavy equipment – like a skid steer or excavator – with an attachment head that consists of a rotating drum and teeth that shreds, grinds, and chops woody vegetation into fine mulch. It works similar to a woodchipper.

When crews are on-site using the masticator in Oregon Trail Reserve, community members can expect to see large equipment working near the southern half of the Basalt Trail. Masticators are heavy machinery, and those in the immediate vicinity can expect to hear the high-speed rotating drum cutting up and removing brush. Crews will use all required safety equipment and precautions, and work will only happen during daylight hours.

The section of Basalt Trail #101, below the cliffs and adjacent to Suprise Valley Homeowners Association, will be closed while contractors are working as a safety precaution. Masticators can throw woody materials, rocks, and debris up into the air while operating and this is a hazard for trail users in the area.  There will be closure signs indicating no access.

Mastication is a mechanical management technique that shreds brush and downed vegetation, or “slash” into small pieces (mulch) that is left on-site.

Mastication is used to reduce hazardous fuels by breaking down large amounts of brush and then converting them into mulch. Mastication reduces wildfire intensity by breaking up fuel continuity and lowering “ladder fuels” which is vegetation which can connect to fires to tree canopies, roofs, fences, or other structures.

The Oregon Trail Reserve area is surrounded by homes and other publicly owned open space dominated by sagebrush-steppe ecosystems. This type of landscape is called the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI), which is a zone of transition where human-developed structures intermingle with undeveloped wildland. It represents the intersection of nature and human development, posing high wildfire risk to communities.

Mastication acts as a buffer or fuel break around homes, communities, and infrastructure, which is critical in the WUI. This helps protect property by slowing the spread of fire and reducing the risk of ember ignition.

Check out these online resources:

• Journal of Environmental Management Publication, “Optimizing woody fuels treatments to reduce wildfire risk to sagebrush ecosystems in the Great Basin of the western US” - https://www.fs.usda.gov/rm/pubs_journals/2025/rmrs_2025_day_m001.pdf
• Rocky Mountain Research Station Bulletin, “Is Mastication Right for Your Site? Science-Based Decision Trees for Forest Managers” - https://ucanr.edu/sites/default/files/2020-11/340142.pdf
• United States Department of Agriculture Publication, “To Masticate or Not: Useful Tips for Treating Forest, Woodland, and Shrubland Vegetation” -https://www.fs.usda.gov/rm/pubs_series/rmrs/gtr/rmrs_gtr381.pdf

You can email Boise Parks and Recreation or call us at (208) 608-7600 option 1 (TTY: 711).