Browse > Home / Archive: May 2007

Forest Service plan focuses on community protection

May 2, 2007

The U.S. Forest Service is taking a new view on treating hazardous fuels within the Lake Tahoe Basin. They are proposing a process that looks at the entire Basin landscape at one time.

This process, known as the Stewardship Fireshed Assessment or SFA, incorporates computer modeling to “design, test and schedule fuel and vegetation projects.” The ten-year plan will spend $10 million annually and treat a total of 38,000 acres. It focuses on treating wildland urban interface areas and includes the seven community wildfire protection plans (CWPP).

“What we did was take the acres that are in the CWPP and we rolled those right into our stewardship fireshed assessment process and tried to follow their priority as closely as we could,” says Dan Young, assistant vegetation staff officer at the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit (LTBMU). “CWPP had about 12,500 acres that it was looking to treat in 10 years and 6,500 of those are National Forest ownership so we picked those acres up right away.” Young spoke at a public meeting hosted by the LTBMU at the Office of the Forest Supervisor in South Lake Tahoe on May 1.
Approximately 80 percent of the total acreage to be treated lies within the wildland urban interface, according to Rex Norman, public information officer for the LTBMU.
“Tahoe is a really good example of a place where the urban world and the natural world meet and where we have to come to terms as a society in understanding what it means to live here,” says Norman. “We can’t make nature stand still.”

The SFA will not stand still either. Currently, it is a broad landscape plan that is based on computer simulations from an aerial view 20,000 feet above the ground and includes a variety of fuel treatments such as hand thinning, mechanical treatments and prescribed burning. As the plan is defined and units are selected for treatment, Young says they will “zero in” on which prescription or prescriptions will be used to treat specific areas.Areas to be treated will be identified by area photos and on the ground evaluation. Despite this flexibility, the SFA must follow the NEPA process and allow the opportunity for the public to comment on the work, according to Steve Wyert a forester from Jackson, Calif.

Currently, the LTBMU has two projects that are being looked at in Round Hill and South Shore. They are listing maps of the areas where they are proposing treatments on their Web site. The work is planned for May 1 through Oct. 15. This raises concerns for Cheryl and Tom Millham of Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care in South Lake Tahoe.

“They are cutting in the middle of or during the heavy breeding season for all the wildlife,” says Cheryl Millham. “It’s nice that they are worried about the goshawk and the osprey, but what about all the other guys?” Millham expressed concerns about ground nesting birds such as the Oregon junco. “You disturb all that ground and they’re not going to replace their nests,” she says. Another problem that Millham sees with the forest plan involves the slash piles that are left to season for 18 to 24 months. These piles are ideal for nesting and denning for a variety of wildlife. “I got three baby bobcats because they had left a slash pile (to season),” she says. “The mother made a den in the slash pile and they (USFS) came in the spring and burned it.” The man in charge of the burn had a dog that heard the kittens crying and pulled them out of the burning pile, according to Millham. Her frustration stems from a lack of planning to remove wildlife from treatment sites and the unwillingness of the USFS to address the potential for scheduling treatments in the fall and winter to prevent disturbing the breeding and nesting season. “Why do we kill animals just because it suits our schedule,” she says. “Why can’t we do the work in a time when everybody (wildlife) can live?”

Some facts:
21,000 acres treated since 1997 in the Tahoe Basin
12,500 acres of planned treatment in South Shore
985 acres of planned treatment in Round Hill
Funding is solid for five years of treatment
LTBMU is looking at an average of 3,800 treatment acres per year

Related posts: [ Are slash mats worth the cost? ] [ Has agency conflict made the fire threat worse? ] [ Public may soon own “Duke of Nevada’s” summer retreat ] [ Tahoe Summit: 10 years later ] [ Keeping Tahoe Green ] 

Written by Pamela Higgins · Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

Most connected groups

May 1, 2007

==Start Related Links==
OurTahoe.org
TahoeNetwork
Heavenly Coverage
Visualize Heavenly Alternatives
The Future of Tahoe

Related posts: [ What would you do if you were TRPA? ] [ What happened? ] [ Back to square one: TRPA to reconsider Heavenly Master Plan ] [ Is there missing information? ] [ To dig or not to dig ] 

Written by Ryan Jerz · Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment