December 2024 Conservancy Newsletter

grantee spotlight:
South Shore Fire Agencies Advance Projects to Reduce Wildfire Risk Around Schools

Lake Valley Fire and South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue, together with Tahoe Resource Conservation District (Tahoe RCD), are making progress in preparing projects to reduce wildfire risk around South Tahoe schools. First up will be a project to thin overcrowded forest on school property around South Tahoe High School, planned for summer 2025.

Supported by a 2023 Conservancy grant, the two fire agencies have been serving as project managers for new priority fuels reduction projects on the south shore. Much of their work has involved coordinating with Lake Tahoe Unified School District, which owns the public land around south shore schools. The fire agencies are planning for forestry projects around the schools. Funding from the USDA Forest Service will support the first on-the-ground forestry operations around South Tahoe High. Following the work at South Tahoe High, the agencies will tee up projects to reduce wildfire risk around Meyers, Sierra House, and Tahoe Valley Elementary Schools.

“We appreciate the Conservancy’s partnership in creating a wildfire resilient Tahoe Basin,” said Captain Martin Goldberg with Lake Valley Fire Protection District. “We would not be able to complete fuel reduction on local government and private land without the state’s funding and leadership.”

For all of these school-centered forestry projects, Tahoe RCD is providing the necessary professional forestry services, completing environmental review and preparing prescriptions and layout for the forest resilience projects. Tahoe RCD’s work is also supported by a 2023 grant from the Conservancy.

The Conservancy’s funding for these grants comes from the State of California’s 2021 wildfire package.

Prescribed Fire vs Wildfire Smoke

Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team partners, including the Conservancy, are using the favorable weather conditions to implement prescribed fire operations. Residents and visitors in the Basin may notice smoke in the air from prescribed fires, such as pile burns. Have you wondered about the smoke differences between wildfires and prescribed fires? This video from CAL FIRE dives into the science.

While both emit smoke, prescribed fires help prevent catastrophic wildfires, returning California to a more natural fire interval. With carefully planned management, beneficial fires minimize health and environmental impacts, unlike the prolonged smoke from wildfires.

Forestry Aides Help Prepare for Future Forestry Projects

The Conservancy’s seasonal Forestry Aides have wrapped their season, having completed the field work needed to prepare eight future forestry projects for implementation. Their on-the-ground efforts are a crucial step before the Conservancy can move ahead with projects to improve forest health and protect communities from wildfire.

In an ecosystem such as the Basin, low-severity wildfires frequently occurred on forested lands, resulting in fire-dependent habitat that was resilient to disturbances such as drought, disease, and insects. Following decades of logging, grazing, and development, Tahoe forests are unbalanced and frequently overgrown. Land managers like the Conservancy thin overgrown forests and brush to help balance goals of reducing wildfire risk while improving forest resilience and enhancing wildlife habitat.

The Forestry Aides support the Conservancy’s Forestry Program, preparing potential projects by identifying and marking project boundaries using flagging and stakes. They also mark trees for removal to meet the prescription set by the Conservancy’s Forester. For its thinning operations, Conservancy prescriptions call for removing small trees to allow larger, healthier trees room to grow, reducing competition for limited water and nutrients. Larger trees may also be removed on a limited basis to create forest openings, reduce conifer encroachment in meadows or riparian areas, or to achieve tree species composition goals. Such approaches reduce the buildup—and break up the continuity—of vegetation that can act as fuel in the event of a wildfire. In addition to reducing the risk from high severity wildfires, these activities are intended to result in more climate-resilient forests.

The Forestry Aides completed their work to prepare future projects on 379 Conservancy and 141 USDA Forest Service parcels. Under a Good Neighbor Authority agreement with the Forest Service, the Conservancy includes both Conservancy and Forest Service open space lots when planning and implementing comprehensive neighborhood forestry projects.

The Forestry Aides also help the Conservancy monitor the effectiveness of its past forestry operations, which allows us to adaptively manage forested lands. By measuring and assessing the results of past forestry projects, we can incorporate what we learned to improve planning for future projects. The Forestry Aides completed nearly 70 new post-project surveys, in addition to helping digitize more than a decade of past paper survey results.

If you or someone you know is interested in becoming a Forestry Aide in 2025, the Conservancy is hiring now.

Conservancy Awards $792,125 Grant to the National Forest Foundation to Remove Hazard Trees, Protect Public Safety in Caldor Fire Footprint

The Conservancy has awarded a $792,125 grant to the National Forest Foundation (NFF) to help support a project to protect people and property from dead and dying hazardous trees damaged by the 2021 Caldor Fire.

Since 2021, Lake Tahoe Basin partners have sought to protect public safety and restore lands damaged by the Caldor Fire. The Caldor Fire burned almost 10,000 acres within the Basin, mostly on federal lands managed by the USDA Forest Service, Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit.

The NFF is using crews with chainsaws to remove dead and dying hazardous trees within 200 feet on either side of roads, trails, private property, and infrastructure. The work spans 463 acres of National Forest lands, largely in areas inaccessible to mechanical equipment, such as land with 30 percent or steeper slopes. In most areas, crews will pile material for later burning by the LTBMU to reduce ground fuels and lower wildfire risk.

The NFF’s project complements work being completed by the LTBMU to thin forest impacted by the Caldor Fire using mechanical equipment, supported by a grant the Conservancy awarded in 2022.

The LTBMU is providing additional funding to the NFF for project management.

Conservancy funding for this grant comes from the State of California’s 2021 wildfire package.

Conservancy Awards $250,000 Grant to Great Basin Institute to Support Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative

The Conservancy has awarded a $250,000 grant to the Great Basin Institute (GBI) for work to support the Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative (TCSI). The TCSI aims to accelerate large-landscape forest restoration to improve the health and resilience of the Sierra Nevada. Supported by this grant, the GBI will help TCSI partners manage projects and data and conduct outreach to community members and partner organizations.

The TCSI is collaboratively led by the Tahoe Conservancy, Sierra Nevada Conservancy, USDA Forest Service, The Nature Conservancy, NFF, and California Forestry Association. It responds to state and federal mandates that call for increasing the pace and scale of forest management and restoration and better protection of communities from wildfire.

The TCSI focuses on developing and demonstrating innovative planning, investment, and management tools across a 2.4-million-acre landscape.