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Fuel Reduction Program

Community Wildfire Protection Plan:

The Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) developed for the California Side of the Lake Tahoe Basin was approved by California Department of Fire and Forestry, El Dorado County supervisor and the Lake Valley Fire Protection District Chief in 2005. The CWPP was developed with the guidance of the Wildland Fire Leadership Council.

The CWPP identified eight communities-at-risk in the Lake Valley Fire District and assessed structural ignitibility and defensible space and performed fire behavior modeling. Also, recommended fuel reduction projects are described in the CWWP for Defense Zone, Urban Lot, Meadow Restoration, and Roadside Protection Projects. These projects cross all types of land ownership including private, state, county, city and federal lands.

Multi-Ownership Collaboration:

Wildfire is oblivious to property lines; therefore in order to create and maintain effective fuel reduction treatments it is necessary for all landowners, private and public alike, to be involved. The LVFPD Fire and Fuels Division is working as a liaison between grant funding sources, public agencies and private owners of larger parcels to facilitate the goals set forth in the CWPP.

• Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team
• California Department of Fire and Forestry
• Nevada Fire Safe Council
• California Tahoe Conservancy
• U.S.D.A Forest Service
• California State Parks and Recreation
• City of South Lake Tahoe

Potential Funding Sources:

• California Department of Fire and Forestry - Proposition 40
• Nevada Fire Safe Council - Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act (SNPLMA) and USDA Forest Service State Fire Assistance
• California Fire Safe Council - USDA Forest Service State Fire Assistance
• Private Landowners

Restoration Forestry in the Lake Tahoe Basin:

The goal of forestry and fuels management programs in the Lake Tahoe Basin (LTB) is to protect life, property and the environment from the effect of a catastrophic wildfire. The dense stands and considerable fuel loading that predominate in the Basin are ideally suited for large catastrophic wildfires (USDA, 2003a). The specific objective of forest managers is to achieve vegetation structure and species composition in the Tahoe Basin consistent with the historic fire regime. Current research recommends the reintroduction of fire as a regulating process and long-term restoration goal. Hand and mechanical treatments can serve to manipulate the vegetation arrangement and reduce available biomass prior to the reintroduction of fire.

History of Tahoe Basin Forest

Contemporary forests in the Lake Tahoe Basin vary in different ways compared to presettlement references (Taylor, 2004). People have influenced vegetation in the LTB for at least 9,000 years (Lindstrom, 2000). Native Americans (Washoe) burned forest in the LTB to drive game and to increase production of certain plants for food and fiber. Parts of the LTB were cut between 1873 and 1900 to meet demand for wood in mines in Virginia City, Nevada (Nagel and Taylor, 2005). Large-scale timber harvesting removed most of the large, widely spaced trees along the west side of the LTB (Murphy and Knopp, 2000). Although the forest stands successfully regenerated, a reduced emphasis in forest management on public land and 55 years of effective fire suppression has resulted in a denser forest stand than occurred historically in the LTB (Holl, 2004). Without fire in the ecosystem, the Lake Tahoe Basin’s forest has experienced a high amount of dead or dying trees as a result of overstocking, drought, insects and diseases.

Sierra Nevada mixed conifer stands in the LTB are composed of Jeffrey Pine (Pinus jeffreyi), sugar pine (Pinus lambertiana), white fir (Abies concolor), red fir (Abies magnifica), incense ceder (Libocedrus decurrens) with red fir replacing white fir at higher elevations (Laake and Fiske, 1983). At high elevations in the LTB, western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla) becomes common, and replaces Sierra Nevada Mixed Conifer at the highest elevations. The LTB also contains stands of Jeffrey pine and stands of pure lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) in wet soils (Helms and Tappeiner, 1996). There are also limited stands of western white pine (Pinus monticola) present in the highest elevations of the LTB.