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Debate on Tahoe forest health best practices continue on cusp of timber mill opening

Kayla Anderson / Special to the Tribune

Over the last century, scientists, environmentalists, the U.S. Forest Service, the government, ecologists, firefighters, and Indigenous people have all had different opinions about best logging and forest management practices. Whether that’s to help mitigate fire risk, create construction materials, or simply leaving trees alone to help fight climate change and provide important resources such as oxygen, shade, and wildlife habitat, living in the Tahoe forest in today’s world is a complex issue with a lot of perspectives involved.

However, while the idea of a thick, natural forest is all good and well, there is a tradeoff to living in a heavily forested area. Experts say that particularly to the Tahoe Basin landscape, harsh logging practices of the Comstock era have left a forest that is too damaged, dense, and susceptible to more destructive wildfires. So, the question is, do tree thinning practices and doing controlled burns help mitigate wildfire risk? The US Forest Service, Tahoe Forests Matter, and Tahoe Forest Products weigh in:

Concerns About Cutting Down Healthy or Fire-Resistant Trees in the Tahoe Forest



This past summer, South Lake Tahoe resident Melissa Soderston saw a post on Facebook where people were concerned about logging projects they noticed in the Meyers and Golden Bear area as well intense smoke from prescribed burns near Fallen Leaf Lake.

“I do a lot of online work on a national level – like with the John Muir Project – and I didn’t realize this was going on in my own backyard,” Soderston says. She started talking with people who were against all the logging going on, bringing up issues about aesthetics, erosion, and roads cut into hillsides within the forests. Soderston soon became the face behind Tahoe Forests Matter, a nonprofit formed to spread awareness and their perspective on how to best support Tahoe trees.



A prescribed burn in Carnelian Bay.
Provided / Kayla Anderson

Soderston says they are concerned that all this clear-cutting is not going to stop the embers of a wildfire blowing in from other places and burning homes down, and more effort and money received should be put towards fire wise education, defensible space, and home-hardening materials.

“The problem is that the funding [from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2021] is going towards commercial logging projects – billions of dollars – and there have been little to no public comment periods about it. My concern is that a few well-respected fire scientists have already conceded that thinning trees to mitigate wildfire is dubious at best. There’s a disconnect between the management and science. But policy moves quickly, and preserving forests doesn’t make as much money as commercial logging profits.”

“Thinning the trees is destroying the soil, and logging isn’t removing those under fuels. I don’t think that the trees they are cutting down are considered ‘old growth,’ but they’re removing the more fire resistant trees. Around Golden Bear, it seems like the Forest Service didn’t mark the trees or take a survey, they just let the logging company decide that,” Soderston says.

“We live up here because we love nature and are aware of the fire danger. I think we need to decide whether we want trees in town or in nature,” she adds.

The Reasoning Behind Cutting Trees Down

The US Forest Service argues that tree thinning, and prescribed burns are the best way to prevent a catastrophic wildfire. In the Comstock era (1860-1920), logging companies decimated the forest, cutting down large trees that had commercial value and not acknowledging what those effects would have on future generations of the forest. What happened was a carpet of baby trees that have all grown up together, creating a denser, thicker forest with more under fuels.

The consequence of all this brush and trees growing up at the same time is that they are competing for resources, mainly water. A few foresters use the straws-in-the-cup analogy to explain what is happening with the Tahoe forest … the notion that so many trees competing for the same amount of water and resources doesn’t make them as strong and makes them more susceptible to disease and root rot, like how it’s going to be harder to get water from 40 straws in a cup rather than one.

USFS Silviculturist Rita Mustatia said that there were likely 20 trees per acre on the landscape before the Comstock logging era, and now there are around 50-75 trees per acres. More regular and perhaps smaller fire intervals were happening to keep everything cleaned out.

“And when the Comstock logging came by, they just cut everything down and when they did that it created an entirely different situation. Everything just grew back all at once,” Mustatia says.

A prescribed burn in Tahoe Vista.
Provided / Kayla Anderson

Lisa Herron with the USFS Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit says that through extensive research and studies, they found that thinning out trees and performing prescribed burns to create more open space is not only healthier for the forest, but it also helps in combating a wildfire. Herron explains that when the 2007 Angora Fire moved from crown to crown, the tops dropped to the ground and could be suppressed easier with that open space around it. Same with the Caldor Fire.

Herron believes that the field reduction/fuel treatment projects that have been done have worked to help control and suppress the Caldor Fire and prevent any other blazes from spreading worse than they could have.

LTBMU Fire Chief Carrie Thaler says that she believes there were about 6,000 acres of planned prescribed burn coverage when she started her position, and down it’s down to about half that.

“I want to say the last four or five years have allowed us to catch up with the slash piles,” says USFS Urban Forest Management Program Manager Brian Garrett.

“We have been making a significant amount of progress. We were behind for so long just because of previous forest management practices. We intentionally select the locations that we are working in first to be by communities and along the evacuation routes so that we’re creating the defensible space in the right areas. Just this week they will probably have approximately 50 acres accomplished and maybe there could be an opportunity to do a little bit more before the next storm system comes in,” Thaler adds.

Herron does acknowledge that prescribed fires put out a bit of smoke, like the one that recently happened near Fallen Leaf Lake, but it’s nowhere as intense as the air quality that an uncontrolled wildfire produces. Prescribed fires create smoke that is less intense and shorter in duration … when it’s prescribed it’s predictable, and sensitive groups can plan their time around them. With a wildfire, people don’t have that choice.

“It can be uncomfortable but there’s kind of a tradeoff to living in a fire-adapted ecosystem. When you live in these types of areas, you’re going to see smoke sooner or later,” Herron says.

Where the Money is Coming From for Tahoe Forest Management Projects

Herron says that money for these forest management projects largely comes from grants it receives, then is distributed to certain contractors to complete the work.

“Congress appropriates funding to the Forest Service to manage the National Forest, and that appropriation comes in a lot of different ways,” says Garrett.

“Often it comes in the form of funding for hazardous fuels reduction projects. It comes in the form of forest vegetation management projects; other kinds of watershed restoration and recreation projects and that money is distributed out through the National Forest system. Sometimes Congress also gives money to pass through to non-federal landowners to do forest health work on non-federal land. So, to Lisa’s point, we often are providing grants to local governments and local communities to support their fields reduction work on non-federal land,” he explains.

Garrett adds that a big funding source for the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit (LTBMU) is via the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act (SNPLMA), and the State of California and other agencies provide grants as well. He believes that the USFS has received around $10-$12 million dollars through SNPLMA and thinks that maybe $6 million has been filtered through the Inflation Reduction Act, a federal program.

“We’re happy we got this money to perform this work,” Herron says. “There’s a lot of planning and work that goes into these projects; and some take years before they are completed.”

Fire Districts and House Hardening Efforts

Each fire district puts out information for neighborhoods on being fire safe and Herron affirms that there are some funds that support those house hardening and defensible space efforts.

“We all meet on a regular basis. The Forest Service is always sending out notifications and trying to make it simpler for the public to understand. There’s a lot of collaboration going on behind the scenes,” Herron says.

People in their regularly held meetings often include the fire chiefs from all local agencies, Nevada and California state park representatives, the Nevada Division of State Lands, Tahoe Conservancy, air quality specialists, and Nevada Division of Environmental Protection. Briefings are held the night before a prescribed burn, and burn permits are issued morning-of.

“Everything we do in the basin has to comply to all different codes and regulations,” Herron says.

Where Tahoe Forest Products Fits In

A lot of buzz has been around Tahoe Forest Products LLC, the new timber mill that has been built in Carson City in a partnership with the Washoe Development Corporation, which is an affiliate of the Washoe Tribe. TFP has been accepting logs for over a year now and will start lumber production this fall.

Hallador is an investment company that holds assets in real estate, stocks, and other things and the idea to open a sawmill near the Tahoe Basin began when Hallador was approached by a Northern California resident who was looking to sell his shuttered sawmill and bring it back to life. They passed on the opportunity to buy that particular property but looked at a dozen or so other sites to build a sawmill. The idea to open a sawmill was also bolstered by the Tahoe Fund, who came to them and said, “We have too many trees.”

As Hallador was looking at prospective land with its first intention to be a place to accept burned out logs from the Caldor Fire, they were introduced to the Washoe Tribe who owned the land at the bottom of Highway 50 in Carson City. The tribe welcomed Hallador for a sawmill because it touched on three points it cared greatly about: It helps to take care of Mother Earth; it helps the economy; and it provides jobs.

Hallador signed an up-to-25-year lease with the tribe and got to work on creating storage for the overwhelming number of logs that would maybe otherwise end up at the dump.

“There are a lot of logs around here that have no place to go,” says Hallador CEO Kevin Leary, adding that everyone who works for Hallador knows and loves Lake Tahoe. Leary himself grew up in the Tahoe school system on the East Shore learning all about trees.

“The trees are 80% denser now than they were prior to the arrival of settlers, and Native Americans practiced prescribed burns for the past millennia. The harmful logging that went on during the Comstock era left three to five inches of bark over Tahoe. It left Tahoe with a low density of trees, and it turned into this carpet of them that all grew up at the same time.” Leary believes that this is also what has made wildfires more intense, “fire cutting through 2-inch thick steel cable at Sierra-at-Tahoe during the Caldor Fire.”

“The most obvious way to make a fire less intense is to provide less fuel,” Leary adds, saying that many of its logs have been procured from USFS public lands to help with their forest restoration efforts. When the Forest Service received grants to perform their work, they then sent out an RFP (Request For Proposal) for certain contractors (ex. logging companies, ecologists, fire departments) to complete the project.

“Various people from the lumber ecosystem bid on that project; Hallador as a sawmill company submitted a bid,” Leary says.

As a lumber mill, sometimes Tahoe Forest Products buy the logs and sometimes they just accept them, like in the case of fire salvage sales. Leary explains that trees die when wildfire rips through, and even if they are still standing, they could still fall at any time.

“The Forest Service maintains trails, and if it creates a hazard to people then they have to close down those landscapes. The president of Sierra-at-Tahoe said he heard loud bangs at the resort of dead trees falling down [after the Caldor Fire], questioning whether it was safe enough to open the resort,” he says.

When asked about the “if a sawmill opens, it’s never going to shut down” argument, Leary says that sawmills shut down all the time when there’s not a need for them.

“In the last 40-50 years, 80% of sawmills [in California] shut down,” he says. The supply needs to be there for a sawmill to stay open, the demand for a place to put wood. Leary says that all the equipment they bought for TFP was at auction from other closed mills, and that Tahoe Forest Products isn’t a big enough sawmill to keep up with the amount of lumber that’s been cleared. “We are a helper [of mitigating fire risk in the Tahoe area] but not the entire solution. We are not big enough of a sawmill to harvest all the trees.”

“I firmly believe that what we are doing with the trees is the right thing to do for the forest. I have memories of what this place looked like in the eighties. I look at a carpet of trees and think, ‘what a beautiful forest’. But now I look at it and wonder if open space would create a healthier forest. It’s all about tradeoffs and asking … what’s better ecologically for the land?”

For information about the prescribed burns and USFS forest health management in the area, visit https://www.tahoelivingwithfire.com/. For information about Tahoe Forests Matter, visit https://tahoeforestsmatter.wordpress.com/. For information about Tahoe Forest Products, visit https://tahoeforestproducts.com/.


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