The Skunk Hazard Reduction Timber Sale covers approximately 3,000 acres on the east shore of Lake Tahoe, north of Spooner Summit near Bliss Lake. Like much of the Basin, the area of the sale was heavily logged in the mid 1880's, stripping the area of pines (Sugar, Jeffery, Ponderosa pines) to feed the mines of the Comstock near Virginia City. Over the next 100 years fir species moved in, dominating the area, and dramatically changed an open forest condition to a more thickly-forested environment. This change was common through the Lake Tahoe Basin and left the forests vulnerable to disease, insect attack, and drought.
The drought of the late 1980's and early 1990's hit the Lake Tahoe Basin hard, including the area of the Skunk Hazard Reduction Sale. Drought-induced, insect-caused tree loss averaged 25 to 30 percent. In patches of 10 to 100 acres, mortality was 60 to 80 percent. The Skunk Hazard Reduction Sale was among the many projects the USDA Forest Service designed to remove dead and dying trees, selectively thin overcrowded stands, and improve resistance to drought, disease, and insect attacks.
The objectives of the sale are to reduce hazards to public safety from falling snags along heavily used roads and trails, to reduce the long-term potential for high severity wildfire, and to move the forest ecosystem towards a healthier, more sustainable condition. An interdisciplinary planning team identified the desired future condition as a forest, which looked and functioned as it did prior to Comstock-era logging. Natural processes, such as fire, are also important factors for proper functioning of the ecosystem.
The Sierra Club appealed the Forest Supervisor's 1993 decision to go forward with the project. The appeal was resolved with agreement to incorporate citizen monitoring of project implementation. For example, a forester hired by the Sierra Club accompanied Forest Service timber sale personnel for several days when the trees were marked for removal. Both the appellant's attorney and the USDA Forest Service view citizen participation in this project as a model of good public involvement in timber sale operations.
The contract for logging was awarded competitively to Sierra Pacific Industries. The purchaser began limited operations in 1994, and expects to complete the contract this summer. The Forest Service will use receipts from the timber sale to fund slash pile burning, to accomplish additional erosion control work, remove "cull" trees too rotten to be utilized by the purchaser, additional thinning of small trees, and tree planting in openings left by concentrations of tree mortality.