The campaign to rehabilitate ground burned by last summer’s record-breaking wildfires has continued this winter in parts of Baker County.

The Bureau of Land Management recently finished aerial seeding of native grasses in the Huntington Fire, said Larisa Bogardus, public affairs officer for the BLM’s Vale District. A helicopter spread the seeds in late January.

The fire started July 10 on the edge of Huntington and burned east to Brownlee Reservoir and to Farewell Bend State Park.

Bogardus said BLM officials plan to follow the grass seeding within a year or so by planting shrub seedlings in the burned area.

Officials are preparing contracts to repair burned fences and install temporary fencing for the Durkee, Town Gulch and Badlands Complex fires.

BLM firefighters did fence work for the Huntington and Cow Valley fires, Bogardus said.

The temporary fences allow cattle to graze unburned areas while keeping them away from burned ground until grass resprouts, she said.

BLM plans more aerial seeding, including shrubs in the Badlands Complex, and native and nonnative mixes for the Durkee and Cow Valley fires.

The rehab plans also include drill seeding parts of the Durkee, Badlands Complex and Cow Valley fires.

BLM officials have repaired or replaced damaged culverts and cattle guards in the Durkee and Cow Valley fires, and that work will resume when the ground dries sufficiently.

This spring, workers will use ground sprayers to try to control noxious weeds on the Durkee, Cow Valley, Huntington, Town Gulch and Badlands Complex fires.

“Emergency stabilization and rehabilitation are a three- to five-year process, so more projects will be developed and implemented as we move forward,” Bogardus said.

An assessment last fall estimated the cost at $27 million over three years to rehabilitate areas burning in the Durkee and Cow Valley fires.

The Durkee Fire, started by lightning on July 17, was Oregon’s biggest this year, at 294,265 acres. The fire started near Durkee and burned in Baker and Malheur counties.

The Cow Valley Fire, which was human-caused and is under investigation with a reward of $8,000 for information leading to an arrest, started on July 11 and burned 133,490 acres, all in Malheur County.

Even before the fires were contained, the BLM assembled a team of botanists, biologists and other experts to assess the damage to public land and proposed rehabilitation.

This is a BAER team — Burned Area Emergency Response.

The BAER reports deal only with the public land burned. But in both the Durkee and Cow Valley fires, flames spread over more acres of private property than public.

The breakdown:

Durkee

• 165,817 acres private

• 120,095 acres BLM

• 5,730 acres state-owned

• 2,623 acres U.S. Forest Service

Cow Valley

• 73,689 acres private

• 58,522 acres BLM

• 1,068 acres state-owned

• 209 acres Bureau of Reclamation