Fire is recognized as an important component of a healthy forest ecosystem at Lake Tahoe. Prior to the arrival of Euro-Americans, studies indicate low or moderate intensity wildfires burned thousands of acres each year. The desired condition identified by the Lake Tahoe Forest Health Consensus Group is a forest that looks and functions as it did before the loggers for Comstock mines harvested the trees in the mid 1800's.
The 200,000 acre forest surrounding Lake Tahoe is overly dense and stressed with at least 30 percent of the forest exhibiting mortality from Jeffrey pine, mountain pine and fir engraver bark beetles. Due to drought, overstocked forest stands, and the suppression of fire since the Comstock logging era, some of the Tahoe Basin's forests are in a serious state of decline.
The Lake Tahoe Basin forest lands interface with miles of subdivisions and a high population of forest users. Within some of these subdivisions are parcels less than one-half acre in size that the Forest Service has purchased since 1982 under the Santini-Burton Act. Approximately 3,500 parcels comprising 11,400 acres have been purchased since the implementation of the act.
All of the parcels and urban interface areas contain a combination of dead, dying and diseased trees; dense, young-growth stands and brush leading to a very high risk to life and property from tree failure or fire. Trespass and encroachment situations occur on 60 percent of parcels where adjacent residents are using the National Forest lots for personal use.
The Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit is planning and implementing ecosystem projects to improve forest health and reduce the potential for wildfires. Resource management work conducted on these lots and interface areas include tree and brush thinning, dead and dying tree removal, watershed restoration and trespass resolution.
In the last six years, nearly 7,000 acres have been treated to accomplish these objectives. An additional 9,000 acres are currently identified for removal of dead and dying trees, thinning overstocked forest stands, defensible fuel profile zones an area heavily thinned producing open forest conditions, and prescribed activities on the south, east, and north shores. Various methods of treatments, such as helicopter logging, mechanical thinning, hand thinning and prescribed burns are being implemented.
Prescribed burning is an effective method of removing excessive fuel loads, when used under appropriate circumstances, because it is cost-effective and consistent with natural processes. This method remains controversial however, because of lack of consensus about fire in populated areas and about smoke pollution. Prescribed burns can be most effective when combined with other types of treatment.
Since the threat of wildfires is of high concern throughout the Tahoe Basin, multiple federal, state and local agencies along with local citizens and organizations have joined forces to address fire hazards throughout the region. In 1995, Tahoe Re-Green united federal, state and local agencies with private landowners in an effort to reduce high fuel loading of dead, dying and overcrowded trees on urban lots and tracts within the Basin. After thorough analysis of the tree mortality, in the Basin, three areas were identified as presenting the more severe risk of fire danger to local inhabitants: North Upper Truckee, 12th to 15th Streets in South Lake Tahoe, and the Rubicon area on the west shore. Re-Green and participating agencies agreed to concentrate and consolidate resources to reduce hazards in those areas first. Treatment of urban areas is very expensive in the Lake Tahoe Basin, where costs can be as high as $3,000 per parcel.