UO stepping in to help preserve cultural sights damaged by wildfires

The museum will map out locations in fire zones across the state that have Native American sights, historical landmarks, and archaeological sights

11" new tonihet at 11 university of oregon is stepping in to help crews cleaning up the devastating reservee across state heritage sights.

Thank you for joining us, i chynna greene.

Kezi nine news reporter connor mccarthy joins us live from the university campus in springfield tells us what exactly they will be doing to help.

Chynna the university museum of natural and cultural history were approached by odot to help with this project.

I spoke with the head of archeological research and he says his team of three will spend hours pinpointing heritage sights inside the firelines for crews to be careful of when cleaning up the fires.

Tom connolly says that he and his team have worked with odot since the '70's on various projects to preserve hertiage sights.

Those sights include native american grounds, historical landmarkers, and archeological sights.

He says what his team will do is map out areas of wildfire zones in the state that have these sights marked.

This way when crews continue to clean up the burn scars, they don't damage these heritage and cultural sights even more.

Connolly says these records need to be pereserved for an accurate record of human history.

Everything we know about that deep past comes from the archelogical record and as i said, it's a record that is fragile and is dispearing at kind of an alarming rate.

It's the only record of human history to tell the story of the place we live.

One example of a hisotrical sight in a wildfire zone is the mckenzie fish hatchery.

That burned down but what's left is still part of a historical sight.

Chynna-- one example of how clean up efforts could damage archelogical sights.

Connolly said replacing gaurd rails along damaged highway requires a lot of underground digging.

This diggid could disturb sights.

Connolly says thats where his team comes in to make sure that doesn't happen.

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