Grass Roots Forestry

by Ellen Hopkins

Experts warn of the catastrophic effects that a Tahoe wildfire would have on the water quality of The Lake (not to mention the destruction of personal property and possible human cost that could occur). For eons, one thing kept wildfire under control—wildfire itself. Fires visited the forests of our region every 6 to 10 years, on average. Lightning would splash down, igniting dry summer grasses. Ladder fuels—slash, brush and saplings—would catch, burning upward toward forest giants. Healthy trees survived the onslaught; the weak went up in flames, efficiently thinning the woods and eradicating the undergrowth that could turn small fires into major blazes.

But since the days of Mark Twain (who wrote of mistakenly setting an East Shore blaze in 1862), most of Tahoe's forests have been protected from fires, ironically making them more vulnerable to all-out infernos. To compound the problem, in the 1860s and '70s, the Basin's open conifer mix of mostly fire-resistant pines was nearly completely clear-cut to help build the Comstock mines. During the replanting, white fir became a dominant species. Fir is not only less fire-resistant than pine but less tolerant of drought and bark beetle attack.

By the early 1990s, 25 percent of Tahoe's trees were dead or dying, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Although some forests have since been thinned, most remain a crowded tinderbox of dead trees, small trees and slash. Earlier this year, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency quoted a cost of $55 million to clear dead trees and other combustibles from Tahoe's highest-risk forests—a hefty price tag.

Some of Tahoe's communities, recognizing the danger, have taken it upon themselves to clean up not only their private land but the public lands surrounding them. One such group is in the historic East Shore neighborhood of Glenbrook. "Since 2001, we have created a protective three to four hundred foot defensible space around the community," says Dr. Stephen Dow, who helped organize the effort. The Glenbrook Project received a grant of federal funds available in the wake of the Southern California fires. Its members also raised money and, in many cases, put on work boots and helped in the effort.

"A forester marked trees to be thinned and undergrowth to be removed," says Dow. "We did the highest-risk areas first, grinding the debris into wood chips."

The Glenbrook Project is one of several community-based volunteer groups that were aided in their creation by the Nevada Fire Safe Council. The Council was formed in 1999 by fire services and relief agencies to initiate fuel-reduction projects in the "buffer zones" of the state's forests. The organization recently "absorbed" the Tahoe Basin Fire Safe Council, which had served the California side of The Lake, so it is now accepting grant monies on behalf of communities on both sides of the state line.

While the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service and the Nevada Division of Forestry are all involved, the real power of the organization comes from the grass roots efforts of the communities themselves. On the Nevada side, the Council has chapters in Chimney Rock (Kingsbury), Cave Rock, Tyrolean Village (Incline Village) and Skyland Village. In Chimney Rock, community members donate both time and money to make their area fire-safe. The General Improvement District in Skyland Village has agreed to pay for curbside chipping for homeowners who remove their own slash. (The same service is available on the West Shore through the Meeks Bay Fire Protection District.) The Council's administrator, Jennifer Arrowsmith, has begun to hold meetings with groups in the California-side Rubicon and Tahoe Woods areas with the intention of creating chapters there.

Ed Miller of the Meeks Bay Fire Protection District has seen great progress since the time the fire safe councils began and hopes to see more neighborhood chapters form. "Neighbors who want to create their own fire safe council can apply for financial support through their county or regional fire safe council," notes Miller. In addition to free chipping, the Meeks Bay District offers to send a firefighter to walk any property in its district and discuss what's required to create proper defensible space. It also assists homeowners in acquiring tree-felling permits by sending the TRPA letters on a citizen's behalf.

Across The Lake in Glenbrook, the community fire safe effort has successfully removed over 770 tons of biomass from the surrounding forest—though the folks there say their work is just beginning. Adjacent areas such as Slaughterhouse Canyon are still littered with dead and dying trees. "This is steep terrain, a stream environment zone and rich in archeological artifacts," says Dow. "The work will be difficult and expensive, requiring new funding, but it's next on our to-do list."

Elwood Miller, former director of the Nevada Fire Safe Council, says that after working with the Glenbrook group, he believes almost anything is possible. "The amazing thing is that when people come together around fire issues, they come together around other issues as well. That's the power of grass roots."