July 2022 Conservancy Newsletter

Upper Truckee Marsh Restoration Nears Completion

The third and final year of construction is underway for the Upper Truckee Marsh Restoration Project. Much of the Conservancy’s work addresses harm from 20th-century development at the Marsh, one of the largest remaining wetlands in the Sierra Nevada. Work this summer includes final planting of wetland plants before removing a soil berm that separates 12 acres of newly created wetlands from the Upper Truckee River. This will allow river water to flood the new wetland area. The Conservancy will also complete a new, accessible-to-all trail to Lake Tahoe. Project benefits include improved wildlife habitat, enhanced resilience to extreme weather, and pollution filtering of water entering Lake Tahoe.  Learn more. 

Reducing Wildfire Risk on Conservancy Lands

Community Forestry, Part 1 – Crews at Work in Tahoma

Our seasonal forestry crew, a partnership with Tahoe Resource Conservation District (Tahoe RCD), helps maintain forest health on Conservancy lands. Tahoe forests are fire-dependent ecosystems. In the absence of fire, forests can become overly dense. Crowded forests are less resilient to insects, disease, and drought, and pose a greater wildfire risk to the community. Here, the crew is taking down hazard trees that could threaten neighbors on one of the Conservancy’s thousands of small, neighborhood lots. Crew members buck the logs and stack the cut wood along the street for community members to collect as free fuelwood for next winter (free permit required). They chip branches and small-diameter trees for mulch for use on Conservancy restoration projects.

Preparing Conservancy Lands for Future Fuels Reduction

Community Forestry, Part 2

Within the nearly 4,700 Conservancy-owned parcels are approximately 5,500 acres of forested land. Most of these properties are small neighborhood lots. Our Community Forestry Program improves forest health and reduces risk from wildfire on these Conservancy lands. Before the Conservancy can thin our forested lots, we identify the boundaries for each project. This season, we have been working our way north through our west shore lots in Placer County. Here, staff flags project boundary lines near Tahoma to prepare for future work to improve forest resilience and reduce wildfire risk.  

Land Management Crew Repairs Conservancy Land Affected by Caldor Firefighting

This summer, the Conservancy’s Land Management Crew has been repairing Conservancy lots damaged as a side effect of efforts to fight the 2021 Caldor Fire.

As the Caldor Fire advanced towards Tahoe, fire protection agencies bulldozed trees and brush along miles of “contingency lines” around neighborhoods. By removing flammable fuels, these lines would have helped firefighters protect homes if the fire had reached the neighborhoods. Luckily, the fire was stopped and no homes were lost in Tahoe. Fire agencies repaired contingency lines after the fire, and the Conservancy took further repair steps last fall, but some Conservancy lots remained at risk of erosion because of lost vegetation and disturbed soils.

This month, the Land Management Crew, also a partnership with Tahoe RCD, returned to a Conservancy property above Mule Deer Circle in El Dorado County. Crew members used natural materials to repair a bulldozed drainage. They placed rocks and logs in the drainage to slow water flows, and fortified the trail with rock to secure it against floods. These steps will distribute flows and keep sediment onsite instead of washing out into creeks downhill. The Conservancy will continue to adaptively manage this 31-acre property and other Caldor-affected lands for years to come. This management is not only good for the property’s hillside habitat – it also protects water quality that drains to Lake Tahoe.

How Demolishing a Building Can Help Lake Tahoe

As part of its Tahoe Livable Communities program, the Conservancy acquires aging developments on environmentally sensitive lands. By removing the development, restoring the land, and putting the development rights to better use, we can help protect Lake Tahoe’s water quality and support efforts to make Tahoe town centers more walkable and bikeable.