Our Forest Landlord
by Jerome Evans
Terri Marceron, supervisor for the USDA Forest Service's Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit (LTBMU), came to Tahoe a year and a half ago not only with a love of the outdoors but also with a solid background of working collaboratively with a variety of other federal, state and local agencies and organizations. And nothing could be more important to success in her job, given the multitude of public and private agencies with a stake in the Basin's welfare.
"There are a lot of interested players up here," she says, "and I have to assure them that I understand their different perspectives." Concerned parties include the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA), the California Tahoe Conservancy, Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, the Sierra Club, the League to Save Lake Tahoe, six counties, hikers, mountain bikers, skiers and a host of other recreation and business interests. The Lake Tahoe Basin is one of the Forest Service's smallest jurisdictions, but entails the greatest concentration of urban development along with an unsurpassed concern for its water, air and vegetation.
The Forest Service is responsible for the management of nearly 80 percent of the land within the Basin, or some 165,000 acres. Since 1980, the agency has acquired more than 12,000 acres of environmentally sensitive land under the Santini-Burton Act and 3,259 acres by means of land exchanges. This includes more than 3,500 urban lots as well as the heavily wooded and, in some areas, surrounding precipitous forest. Given the size and scope of their work, it's important to understand how the Forest Service gets the job done.
A Little History
"This agency has gone through an enormous evolution that refl ects the transition of Tahoe itself," observes Don Lane, who has worked with the LTBMU for over 30 years and, therefore, is its "institutional memory" as well as a frequent speaker on Tahoe's past.
Conservation interest in the Basin began in 1899 when some 30,000 acres became part of the Forest Reserve system. Originally managed by the Department of the Interior, these lands were the forerunner of the National Forests. In 1905, the Forest Service itself was created to provide professional forest management. In the words of Gifford Pinchot, the fi rst chief forester, "The greatest good for the greatest number in the long run."
Some years later, a delegation from the Department of Interior visited the Basin to determine whether it should be designated as a national park. They decided that the area was already far too developed, and so federal lands at Tahoe were divided between three national forests, each with acreage both inside and outside the Basin: Tahoe National Forest to the north, Toiyabe National Forest to the east and El Dorado National Forest to the south and west. By 1973, however, supervisors determined that divided management made little sense, especially as private development proceeded apace and concern for resulting damage to "the jewel of the Sierra" grew. In that year, the LTBMU was created to manage all National Forest land within The Lake's watershed.
Prior to 1973, the Forest Service's concerns in the Basin were focused on fi ghting fi res and building trails and campgrounds. With TRPA's inception in 1969, however, it was evident that a new train was in the station, and that the Forest Service needed to get on board or be left behind. So while TRPA was struggling to establish itself in the 1970s and early 1980s, the Forest Service began directing more of its resources toward watershed and environmental restoration, hiring a growing number of biologists, hydrologists, archeologists and other scientific staff, and eventually publishing a Forest Plan in 1988 with a strong emphasis on ecological restoration.
In 2000, President Clinton signed the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act, which authorized $300 million for environmental improvement over the next ten years. However, little of that sum was actually appropriated by Congress, and by 2004, it looked like there might be no more funding for such projects. Nevada senators John Ensign and Harry Reid stepped in, helping amend the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act (SNPLMA) to secure direct funding of Tahoe projects from the sale of public lands in southern Nevada to private developers. Now, SNPLMA provides $35 million or more annually for environmental improvement projects in the Basin and will continue to do so for at least eight years.
Fighting Fire with Fire
Since the adoption of the 1988 Forest Plan, the Forest Service has focused its resources on three principal areas: ecosystem restoration; recreation management; and fi re suppression, fuels reduction and forest health. The last of these is the responsibility of staff officer David Marlow, who knows the forest as well as anyone in the Basin after many years of service.
Firefighting will always be an important responsibility of the agency, given the population density in the Basin and the speed with which fl ames can move up or down mountain slopes. With the help of local and regional fi refi ghters, the Forest Service is able to respond rapidly to fi res anywhere in the Basin. In recent years, only a small number have burned more than a few acres (such as the 2002 Gondola Fire, which burned 673 acres, an important exception).
Nevertheless, fuels reduction remains a high-priority activity. Fuels reduction is accomplished by thinning—removing crowded smaller trees and brush as well as lower limbs of larger trees—by burning the resulting material and by prescribed burning. The Forest Service handles some 3,000 to 4,000 acres a year in this way, and is well along the way toward signifi cantly reducing fuels in the 40,000 acres of forest remaining to be treated. Prescribed burns and the burning of slash piles generate a lot of smoke for a short period and more than a few complaints from area residents and businesses. In response, the Forest Service dries slash piles for 18 to 24 months to reduce smoke production, restricts burns to small areas and tries to burn on days when smoke will rise out of the Basin.
In some cases, slash piles produced by thinning are run through large chipping machines, producing biomass that can be spread on the forest fl oor to reduce erosion or be trucked off to biomass suppliers for heat- and power-generating furnaces in the region. Although chipping reduces the need for on-site burning, as well as resulting smoke and particulate matter, some of which fi nds its way into The Lake, it remains a limited option for various reasons. For example, the market for biomass is small due to transportation costs. Also, much of the Basin is either too steep or too sensitive for the heavy machinery required. Thus, chipping has been excluded from stream environment zones, which are especially sensitive to fuel buildup. The Forest Service is hopeful that lower-impact equipment may make a difference, such as a carefully monitored, specially permitted demonstration project underway on a lower reach of South Shore's Heavenly Creek.
Restoring the Ecosystem
"Preservation of Lake Tahoe's clarity has always been one of the major focuses of the management unit since it was established," says Sue Norman, a 17- year veteran who heads up the agency's monitoring projects. "We have the largest group of hydrologists of any forest in the nation." Several are involved with designing and developing restoration projects, while others spend their time on interdisciplinary teams involved in the environmental planning process.
There are a couple of promising examples of recent ecosystem restoration by the Forest Service. One is the Cookhouse Project near Luther Pass, where construction of Highway 50 resulted in a down cut of the stream channel, drying out its adjacent meadow. "The idea here was not so much to improve water quality but to improve habitat and restore the wet meadow," says Norman. The Forest Service constructed a new stream channel through the meadow but retained the existing sod, so that in a very short time there was little or no sign of disturbance. "It is probably one of the most successful restoration projects we have done," says Norman.
Another, much more ambitious project is the restoration of the Blackwood Canyon, south of Tahoe City. Halfway through completion, the work aims to correct the many past abuses that made the watershed the second largest producer of lake sediment (after the Upper Truckee River watershed). To date, obstacles to the natural stream fl ow have been removed, including a gravel quarry in the middle of the streambed, an outdated fi sh ladder and a narrow culvert along Barker Pass Road that has been replaced by a bridge. Construction will commence in 2008 on the middle stretch of the canyon. The streambed, which has become deeply cut and unstable, will be replaced by a narrower and more stable channel designed to fl ood with a heavy spring runoff. Monitoring to measure the project's effectiveness will start this spring; key indicators, of course, will be water quality as it reaches The Lake.
Managing Recreation
Increasingly tight agency operating budgets have weighed upon recreation management, which does not benefit from SNPLMA funding. Since the late 1940s, the Forest Service has become the Basin's largest recreation provider, managing miles of trails, nine campgrounds, eight beaches and a visitors' center, along with special-use areas like Camp Richardson, Zephyr Cove and Meeks Bay Resort. Yet, on average, only 11 percent of Forest Service funds are allocated for recreation administration.
"My world is the world of people," says Lane, referring to the area's numerous outdoor enthusiasts, such as the 35,000 who hike up to Eagle Lake each summer from the Eagle Falls trailhead above Emerald Bay. "But we don't get any money from the wonderful programs like SNPLMA to help us manage the beaches, campgrounds and backcountry. We are not expanding our recreation capacity. We don't have the money." Lane worries about what will happen in the next 20 years, when the population in nearby areas is expected to double or triple, and recreation use to climb.
"On peak days at the most popular sites, we are full," he says. "So, should we add campgrounds, picnic areas and trails? Or should we tell visitors they have to go elsewhere because we are full? Of course, capacity is a relative term," he acknowledges. "People perceive crowding differently. Is it based on physical space; is it based on social space?" Forest Service surveys show that most visitors enjoy their outings now, but, as Lane is quick to point out, many of those respondents come from densely populated urban centers across the country.
Evolution in recreation activities has also presented a challenge for the Forest Service. "None of the original trails in Tahoe were created with mountain bikes in mind," Lane says. "We have done a lot with the help of others to make our trails compatible for bikes, hikers and horses." Mountain bikers like David Hamilton of the Tahoe Mountain Bike Association agree, giving the Forest Service high marks in this regard. But in doing so, Lane says, "nice little trails winding through meadows, like the one we had at Meiss Meadow, have been rerouted."
Managing area outdoor enthusiasts' conflicts with one other is another challenge for the Forest Service—disagreements between mountain bikers and hikers, snowmobilers and cross-country skiers, rock climbers and Cave Rock defenders, ski resorts and environmentalists. Some user conflicts are inevitable, says Lane, as are associated charges of preferential treatment for one group or another, but he hopes such differences of opinion can be resolved with good will.
A New Forest Plan
In collaboration with TRPA, Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, and under the umbrella of the Pathway 2007 collaborative, the Forest Service is currently drafting a revision of the Forest Plan, as required by the National Forest Management Act. The first step has been the preparation of a Comprehensive Evaluation Report to describe progress under the previous agenda and to identify the changing social, economic and ecological conditions that have created the need for an update.
For the most part, however, the Forest Leadership team has found that the 1988 plan got it right. Thus, big shifts in focus are not expected; however, changes in content will occur. The new blueprint will not identify specific projects; it will be "strategic rather than prescriptive," says Forest Supervisor Marceron, and will emphasize "adaptive management," a phrase currently in vogue among planners around the nation. That means greater attention will be paid to desired conditions and monitoring the effectiveness of each project. To that end, the plan is to be reviewed every fi ve years to determine if changes are needed based upon unforeseen results, new science or other factors; the new plan is slated for completion next year.
Whatever the results, it is clear that the Forest Service intends to continue to play a major part in the Tahoe Basin's stewardship, and all of us have a stake in understanding that role.
For more information, visit the LTBMU website, an excellent source for Basin facts and history, volunteer and recreation opportunities, and information on prescribed burns, www.fs.fed.us/r5/ltbmu