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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] More on forest mismangement
  • Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 10:42:58 -0600

More on forest mismangement

RAGING TAHOE FIRE'S ROOTS: 150 YEARS OF FOREST ABUSE
By Carl T. Hall San Francisco Chronicle Science Writer
June 26, 2007

The raging fire that is denuding hillsides and darkening the clear blue
waters of Lake Tahoe is the final product of 150 years of mismanagement of
the Sierra Nevada ecosystem, fire management experts said Monday.

>From Gold Rush clear-cutters to modern home-builders, people have brought
changes to the Tahoe basin that have fueled the intensity of the 2,500-acre
Angora fire near the town of South Lake Tahoe. By Monday night, 178 homes
had fallen casualty to the two-day-old blaze, which was only 40% contained.

Ecologists and local residents said they saw such a disaster coming. "It's
the fire we've been anticipating for 20 years," said Patsy Miller, who owns
a residence at Fallen Leaf Lake, about a mile from where the flames had
spread by late Monday.

"People have interjected their homes into a system that has a natural
tendency to burn very frequently, and where we have suppressed the
frequency of those fires for so long, there's an ungodly amount of fuel
there," Forest Service regional ecologist Hugh Safford said.

The immediate cause of the Angora fire was under investigation Monday. But
the fire's beginnings can be traced all the way back to the Gold Rush and
the Comstock-era mining boom. "They clear-cut about two-thirds of the
basin," said Shane Romsos, science and evaluation program manager for the
Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.

Mixed-growth forests of fire-tolerant species like the self-pruning Jeffrey
pine were replaced by uniform stands of dense white fir and undergrowth,
which grew rapidly in the unusually wet years of the early 20th century.
Then came the vacation homes and ski areas. As development spread, land
managers focused on fire suppression, allowing the fuel load to build every
year.

Federal officials began to shift fire-management policies in the mid-1990s
and in recent years have sought to clear away dense underbrush and thin
trees in the forests around Tahoe and in the rest of the Sierra. U.S.
Forest Service officials said those efforts probably saved at least 500
homes that otherwise could have been engulfed by the Angora fire.

But many forests are still vulnerable to catastrophic burns. This past
winter had a notable shortage of snowfall, and Sunday brought ferocious
winds that whipped the flames from treetop to treetop even in woodlands
where some thinning had been done. Winds that died down Monday were
expected to pick up tonight and Wednesday. "Conditions were ripe for a fire
like this," Romsos said.

Now, fire-stripped hillsides could lead to a surge of runoff, clouding Lake
Tahoe. "When the rains start, there should be basically a pulse of ash and
carbon-black moving out into the lake," said Martha Conklin, a water
chemist at UC Merced who is studying Sierra watersheds.

It might look worse than it is.

Black fallout from the fire could stay on the lake surface long enough to
spoil views next year but settle to the bottom without causing much lasting
damage. The runoff into the lake is likely to be mostly ash and burned
material that wouldn't fuel algae growth.

The real question, Conklin said, is how quickly vegetation will return to
hold hillsides together in the fire-stricken areas. Land managers are
expected to help by putting out ground cover, installing drainage systems
and taking other erosion-control measures.

Just letting nature handle the recovery isn't an option after 150 years of
human activity and mismanagement. "We need to more aggressively manage our
forests," Miller said. "In the days of the Indians you had a lot of
periodic small fires that kept the forests clean, so fires wouldn't get
huge and out of control. We can't rely on that anymore."

The Forest Service's Safford noted that even the climate has come under
human influence, as evidenced by global warming and increased forest fires
in a dryer, warmer West. A study being prepared documents what Safford
described as a significant increase in Sierra fires during the past 21
years, which clearly goes beyond any naturally occurring cycle.






  • [Livingontheland] More on forest mismangement, TradingPostPaul, 06/27/2007

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