YSS News

Published Jan. 28, 2019 at 05:45PM

Stepped-up efforts to reduce wildfire threats are underway in Calaveras and Tuolumne counties in the wake of record-breaking deadly, destructive mega-blazes in the past two years up and down California.

One of the projects coming up is a 4.5-mile long fuel break Sierra Pacific Industries is planning in the North Fork Stanislaus River watershed to protect people and 2,000 homes in the Big Trees Village and Dorrington areas.

In autumn 2018, Pacific Gas and Electric cranked up tree removal efforts in the Twain Harte area and other mountain forest communities to comply with new fire-safety regulations ordered by the California Public Utilities Commission, requiring PG&E to maintain more clearance between trees and its power lines year-round.

In September, Cal Fire awarded the Tuolumne County Office of Emergency Services $1.6 million in grant funding to reduce vegetation along 140 miles of local roads.

SPI is a partner in the ongoing Lyons-South Fork Watershed Forest Resiliency Project, intended to reduce wildfire risks to PG&E flumes and ditches that convey 95 percent of Tuolumne Utility District’s drinking water for 44,000 people. During the massive 2013 Rim Fire, a fuel break was credited with helping keep that blaze from reaching Pine Mountain Lake and Groveland.

Foresters with SPI hope that work on the 740-acre project, with 433 acres of fuel break along the Big Trees Village perimeter, will begin this summer, according to a timber harvest plan submitted Jan.14 to Cal Fire. People who own Big Trees Village property within 300 feet of the project area have been sent letters by Cal Fire advising them of the SPI harvest plan.

A resident who lives on Teton Drive said Friday he is in favor of the SPI fuel break, but he has problems with PG&E’s demands that healthy trees be removed nearer to his home because he’s already paid some $200 to have limbs trimmed from trees close to power lines. He declined to give his name for publication.

Hasn’t burned in decades

Big Trees Village is east of Calaveras Big Trees State Park and south of Highway 4 at elevations around 5,000 feet above sea level.

Out on the south end of Teton Drive last week, snow-plowed paved roads and snow-dusted forest home lots in Big Trees Village subdivision gave way to unburned portions of the densely overgrown North Fork Stanislaus River watershed.

Numerous trees near roads in Big Trees Village were marked with red spray paint, green ribbons, yellow spray paint, red ribbons and other markings. A timber harvest plan for the fuel break is featured on a social media page for Big Trees Village Property Owners Association.

Reminders of wildfire safety in the Big Trees Village-Dorrington area are on roadside signs, bulletin boards and multiple websites. A Calaveras Foothills Fire Safe Council and Cal Fire tree mortality removal cost share program, fire safety regulations, PG&E tree work, Cal Fire inspection notices, the Be Firewise campaign, Defensible Space Background and Laws, and other fuel reduction strategies are among those featured on Big Trees Village Property Owners Association bulletin boards and websites this week.

Fire history records in North Fork Stanislaus River watershed are limited, but some people believe the last major fire in the area was a century ago, a fire history similar to the densely-forested corridor where the PG&E Tuolumne Main Canal passes through the unburned South Fork Stanislaus watershed.

Big Trees Project

Dennis Hall is a Cal Fire assistant deputy director in charge of the Forest Practice Program that regulates timber harvest activities on non-federal lands statewide. He’s based in Sacramento and lives in Arnold, and he knows the need to reduce fuel loads near communities on the Highway 4 corridor.

Aaron Smith is a manager for SPI. He’s based in Sonora at the Standard Mill off Camage Avenue. He oversees more than 100,000 acres of Sierra Pacific land in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties, the area SPI calls its Sonora District.

Smith says there are about 2,000 homes in the Big Trees Village subdivision.

“We share about five miles of property line with the subdivision,” Smith said last week. “The fuel break will be at minimum 300 feet wide, and 400 to 500 feet wide in most areas.”

The Big Trees Village project will include another fuel break about two miles long and 300 feet wide above paved Forest Road 5N02, Smith said. A third element of the project is an intended choke point, another fuel break to stop a fire coming up the canyon of the North Fork of Stanislaus River canyon.

“The last time there was a fire in there is difficult to determine,” Smith said. “Anecdotally, it could be as much as a hundred years since the last major fire in Calaveras Big Trees State Park. Obviously, there’s a lot of concern in that area. A wildfire coming through there could be catastrophic.”

The timber harvest plan allows as much as seven years to complete the work, Smith said, but SPI planners hope to be aggressive and finish the project inside two years.

Mark Luster, a SPI community relations manager based in Placer County, emphasized the purpose of the Big Trees Village project is to protect the community of Dorrington from a fire coming out of the North Fork Stanislaus canyon.

“We have had community meetings with overwhelming support for the project,” Luster said last week. “As we are experiencing the increase and magnitude of catastrophic wildfire it is critical that we do everything we can to protect our communities wherever possible.”

Partnerships

Sierra Pacific has another plan to do another fuel break in its Lyons tracts off the Highway 108 corridor, an example of what SPI is doing in Tuolumne County, Smith said. Wildfires don’t recognize property boundaries and that’s why SPI is partnering with other agencies and groups to try to protect neighbors like those who live in Big Trees Village, Smith said.

“With all the recent fires there are more partnerships to create fuel breaks and protect resources,” Smith said. “It’s not just us. It’s cooperative, it’s the Forest Service, the Fire Safe councils, it’s TUD and the Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians.”

Sierra Pacific owns about 150,000 acres total in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties, about 1.7 million acres altogether in California, and another 200,000 acres in Washington state. It’s billed as being among the largest lumber producers in the U.S.

Asked for perspective Monday, John Buckley with the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center in Twain Harte said the Big Trees Village project has positives and negatives.

“Bottom line, SPI generally clear cuts aggressively and they have chosen to use shaded fuel breaks in the interface with the subdivision,” Buckley said. “If I lived next to one of the fuel breaks I’d be concerned but I’d be accepting, and I’d be glad to have some green trees left.”

There’s always the risk of a windblown wildfire sweeping into one of the forest subdivisions in Calaveras and Tuolumne counties, said Buckley, who is a former Forest Service firefighter and fuels treatment foreman. He agrees fuel breaks increase safety for fire crews trying to stop a fire as it approaches a residential area.

The Forest Service and the nonprofit Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions group want more fuel breaks on ridge tops and around forest communities because no one wants catastrophic wildfires here, Buckley said.

But the Forest Service and YSS and some timber industry people agree that shaded fuel breaks are just one part of a strategy that should include thinning logging on much broader areas, and widespread prescribed burning to reduce wildfire threats and improve forest health.

Asked what communities near Sonora are most at risk from a potentially devastating wildfire, Buckley said it’s probably the Big Hill community north and northeast of Sonora, followed by Ponderosa Hills, northeast of the town of Tuolumne. Buckley also included communities along the Highway 4 and Highway 108 corridors, including Mi-Wuk Village, Sierra Village, Arnold, Avery and Forest Meadows.

“People with concerns about their neighboring forest areas can see this Village project as a glass half full or a glass half empty,” Buckley said. “The fact they are not doing clearcut-type logging next to the subdivision should be a benefit and contrast to clearcut-type treatments that will be done in other areas, such as along Highway 4.”

Contact Guy McCarthy at gmccarthy@uniondemocrat.com or 588-4585. Follow him on Twitter at @GuyMcCarthy.

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By Julie Cart | Aug. 7, 2018 | ENVIRONMENT

As crews across California battle more than a dozen wildfires—including the largest in state history—the blazes are spewing enough carbon into the air to undo some of the good done by the state’s climate policies.

What’s even worse: Climate-warming compounds that will be released by the charred forests long after the fires are extinguished may do more to warm up the planet than the immediate harm from smoky air.

Scientists say that only about 15 percent of a forest’s store of carbon is expelled during burns. The remainder is released slowly over the coming years and decades, as trees decay.

That second hit of carbon, experts say, contains compounds that do more to accelerate climate change than those from the original fire. And future fires over previously burned ground could make climate prospects even more bleak.

“The worst possible situation is the fire that comes through and kills everything,” said Nic Enstice, regional science coordinator for the Sierra Nevada Conservancy. “Then, 10 or 15 years later, another fire comes through and releases all the carbon left in the trees on the ground. That’s really bad.”

It’s a scenario that could explode at any time. Enstice cited a research paper published this year that laid out a chilling tableau: California has more than a 120 million dead trees strewn around its mountain ranges, with the southern Sierra hardest hit.

When fires hit those downed trees, the state will begin to experience “mass fires” spewing plumes of carbon. The resulting conflagrations, according to the researcher, will be almost unimaginable.

“The emissions from those fires will be unlike anything we will have ever seen,” Enstice said. “And you won’t be able put it out.”

Computing the carbon released from the fires so far this year will not happen soon. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration flies planes through smoke plumes, gathering data, but air traffic over wildfires is tightly restricted. Scientific research is not a top priority when fires are threatening towns.

But some preliminary data is available now.

One method uses inventories of existing forests—surveying how many trees and which type. Those records are updated every 10 years. Researchers then overlay infrared images captured from satellites that show what’s burning and at what intensity. From that, predictions can be made about carbon emissions on any given day.

Scientists say that emissions from burned forests are one of the most virulent types, called black carbon. According to the most recent accounting from the state Air Resources Board, California’s annual black carbon discharge—excluding wildfires—is equal to emissions from about 8 million passenger vehicles driven for one year. Not a small number.

But when the state calculates the same annual average of black carbon coming solely from wildfires, it’s the equivalent of nearly 19 million additional cars on the road.

With year-round fire seasons and fire intensity off the charts, state officials admit that wildfires could set back California’s myriad policies to offset the impacts of climate change.

“It’s significant,” Enstice said. “We don’t have a lot of data to measure yet; we’re still using primitive tools. But everyone is gearing up to study this.”

A new kind of thinking…
Patrick Koepele will put his environmentalist’s credentials up against anyone’s. He runs the Tuolumne River Trust, which is fighting to keep more water in the state’s rivers, drawing howls of protests from farmers and the Trump administration.

Yet he’s advocating for more chainsaws in the woods, through his work with Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions, a group of environmentalists and loggers attempting to reduce fire risks in the region around Yosemite National Park.

The group’s members, who first convened in 2010, were wary about working together — until the disastrous Rim Fire, which burned 250,000 acres in Yosemite and the Stanislaus National Forest in 2013.

“That kind of cemented my sense of the forests in the Sierra as really overgrown,” Koepele said.

The group is now planning a project that will thin about 1,000 acres of forest east of Sonora.

“Before I lived in the foothills and became more closely acquainted with forests, I would have been skeptical of something like this,” said Koepele, who moved to Sonora from Davis in 2000. “Now I’ve gotten to see the forests, and spent time with researchers and spent time with some of the loggers.

“That’s my evolution. I think there’s a quite a bit of that among environmental groups in the Sierra.”

Sonora, CA — As wildfire season rages officials share word of a multi-million dollar grant that will fund forest management plans in the Mother Lode and boost the local economy.

In an interview with Clarke Broadcasting, Tuolumne County Administrative Analyst Liz Peterson recounts that the soon to be incoming $5 million award was a major collaborative between the county and U.S. Forest Service along with other Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions (YSS) stakeholders. While YSS members represent a spectrum of interests ranging from timber industry members to environmentalists, Peterson points out, “Everybody is all in together to make sure that this is successful for the industry, forest, residents and air quality.”

Last December the board of supervisors signed the county’s Master Stewardship Agreement under which it can conduct restoration projects on the forest. It also provides the mechanism to apply and receive receive funding for supplemental project agreements, also known as SPAs. It turned out that CAL Fire’s California Climate Investment Forest Health program, which is funded by cap and trade monies, was the first opportunity that presented itself for larger landscape projects. The county’s original request was for $14.7 million. A total of $91 million was awarded across the state.

Stepping Out To Lead Stewardship Efforts

“On a global scale, what this means is that we are going to take quite a large step towards restoring the health of the National Forest, certainly the Stanislaus National Forest,” Peterson enthuses. “As we are seeing now with impacts from forest fires – and they are burning at high intensity and severity with tree mortality on the landscape – fires are becoming a more serious threat every year. We get to be proactive about making a change to bring the landscape to a healthier place so that the impacts from fire are reduced.”

Too, she comments, “We would see increased habitat. We are hoping to do some meadow restoration projects through the Master Stewardship Agreement…some reforestation stuff. It is really a whole range of things. The goal is to restore the forests to the healthy state that we all know they need to be in.”

She adds that the economy also stands to benefit as the projects will be going on for the next few years. “Ideally, we are going to bring more jobs here with the work that we need to do. We are going to have more contractors, the mills could potentially add shifts,” she maintains. Unlike many other counties, Tuolumne already has the industry infrastructure: two mills, two biomass plants and a wood shavings plant.

A ‘Suite’ Of Activities To Consider

The submitted project list, which must now be whittled down somewhat, includes several “low-hanging fruit” Forest Service projects that had gotten through all the federal environmental hoops but did not have funding to begin for the next few years. Describing the group’s approach, “We looked at what could be completed within the March 2022 timeline when the money has to be spent,” she confides.

Among the “wish list” activities, all focusing within the Tuolumne River watershed area around the 1987 Complex Fire footprint are fuel reduction; thinning; mastication; reforestation; biomass removal; prescribed fire preparation.

Additionally, there is also a LiDAR acquisition request to gather more data, mapping and analysis, which will help determine future projects. LiDAR radar can pick up on forest characteristics like tree mortality, water retention and vegetation density. Mapping the county then processing and validating the data, which might cost $1.5 million, would provide valuable planning tools.

News of this latest grant comes on the heels of a $178,000 USDA rural business development grant received last month, as reported here, which will study biomass removal from local forests in ways that benefit local forests and businesses.

Other Forest Health, Fire Prevention Awards

Today, CAL Fire formally announced its funding awards. Two other forest health projects in this grant cycle were awarded locally. One, for $2.1 million to Save the Redwoods League in Calaveras and Tuolumne counties, will focus on increasing carbon sequestration storage potential, augmenting climate change and fire resilience, enhancing critical habitat and improving water quality in Calaveras Big Trees State Park and at Beaver Creek. The project will also begin developing a cohesive plan for managing fire and other threats.

The other, a nearly $2.7 million award to the University of Nevada-Reno, will fund a Sierra Nevada-wide silvicultural treatments and fuels reduction program involving six counties, including Tuolumne.

In addition to the forest health grants, CAL Fire also divvied up $79.7 million in prevention project awards statewide to 142 recipients. Locally, the County of Tuolumne received over $1.6 million; Highway 108 Fire Safe Council just over $250,000; State Parks and Recreation over $102,000. In Calaveras County, the Calaveras Foothills Fire Safe Council was awarded six grants totaling nearly $3 million; Calaveras Resource Conservation District received almost $101,000; Utica Water and Power Authority, $7,000.

By John Amodio, Special to CALmatters

In his State of the State address in January, Gov. Jerry Brown declared that we must act boldly on forest health. He and the next governor must make good on that promise, and not simply appoint another commission.  Click on the “Read More” button  and then https://calmatters.org/articles/commentary/my-turn-whats-needed-to-prevent-megafires/

 

Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions (YSS) is a collaborative
formed in 2010 to increase the pace
and scale of restoration to prevent large wildfires in the Stanislaus National Forest.
The collaborative was in its early stages of de­
velopment in 2013 when the Rim Fire devastated
the region and shifted the focus ofYSS from a
preventative approach to a reactive one.
Since then the group has implemented several habitat restoration projects with the help of a large volunteer base and has raised $4.5 million for habitat restoration.
The YSS collaborative model is an approach that can be replicated in other forested areas.
See full article at:  Forestland Steward 18-7

Tuolumne County is already seeing progress from a much-hyped “master stewardship agreement” with the U.S. Forest Service that elected officials approved in late December to boost the pace and scale of tree-thinning projects in the Stanislaus National Forest.

The county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved the first project through the agreement that aims to remove 5 million board feet of commercial timber and 50,000 tons of biomass across nearly 1,000 acres of the forest.

To put the numbers in perspective, the amount of biomass proposed to be removed is roughly equivalent to the average weight of a U.S. Navy battleship. Five million board feet of timber would produce enough lumber to build about 310 homes.

Mike Albrecht, a logger and co-owner of Sierra Resource Management Inc. near Jamestown, said the amount of timber is also roughly 10 percent of the average amount sold in the forest each year.

“This is not replacing the Forest Service’s annual timber program,” he said. “This is additional.”

Albrecht also said the 50,000 tons of biomass is about one-third of the amount needed to power the Ultrapower Chinese Station biomass-energy plant in Chinese Camp for a whole year. He called the project and overarching agreement “really important” for the future of the plant.

The project will be structured in the form of a commercial timber sale, with all of the profits going back into the agreement for future projects.

Timber-industry giant Sierra Pacific Industries, which operates mills in Standard and Chinese Camp, is one of the 24 partners that’s participating in the agreement and will donate its biologists to conduct the required wildlife and vegetation surveys prior to the sale.

The Forest Service will also chip in $160,000 for the project.

Albrecht said the project and others through the agreement will help keep the local timber industry strong and create jobs, as well as prevent wildfires and improve watershed health by reducing tree overcrowding in the forest.

“A lot of this is being done just because we believe in it,” he said. “We need to thin these forests rapidly to prevent fires and improve water yields.”

Tuolumne River Trust, a nonprofit river advocacy organization with offices in Sonora, Modesto and San Francisco, was approved by the board on Tuesday to manage the projects under the agreement.

The trust is one of the 24 partners along with SPI that collectively comprise the multidisciplinary collaborative group called the Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions, which was formed in 2010 but rose to greater prominence after the 2013 Rim Fire.

Partners in the group represent a broad range of interests, including county government, environmental organizations, logging companies, mining companies, industry associations, tribal representatives and more.

Under the agreement, the Forest Service will cover 80 percent of project costs and partners will pay for the remaining 20 percent through grant funding, in-kind contributions, or other potential sources.

District 1 Supervisor Sherri Brennan remarked at how the agreement is an example of what’s possible by finding common ground and working together.

“So much of the success is because of the partnerships that are formed,” Brennan said. “This is going to pay huge dividends in our county for safety, forest health and economic development.”

The board has been working on the agreement for the better part of seven years.

Such agreements, which were first authorized by Congress in 2003, allow the Forest Service and a partner to identify high-priority projects and let the partner carry out the projects over the course of 10 years.

District 2 Supervisor Randy Hanvelt said he believes the agreement with the county represents a “cultural change in the U.S. Forest Service.” He also gave credit to Stanislaus National Forest Supervisor Jason Kuiken, who was hired in October, credit for helping to foster the change.

“This is such a huge step forward,” Hanvelt said. “We’re going to improve safety, improve our watershed, improve our environment. Everything is going to be a winner in this.”

Hanvelt also said the new $1.3 trillion federal omnibus spending bill passed Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump in March allows for the agreement to be extended an additional 10 years.

District 3 Supervisor Evan Royce said he was at first skeptical when Hanvelt brought up the idea of the agreement seven years ago, but he now believes that it “truly is a fundamental change in the way things are done.”

“To see incentives aligned between industry and environmental communities is really I think the core root of the success of this,” he said. “You’re giving people reasons to work together.”

The board also approved county staff to submit an application for a $14.7 million grant through Cal Fire to fund multiple projects under the agreement that would remove an additional 125,000 tons of biomass across 12,550 acres of the forest.

Funding for the grant comes from the state’s greenhouse gas reduction fund that’s comprised of cap-and-trade revenues and intended for projects to restore forest health, protect watersheds, promote long-term storage of carbon in the forest, and minimize the loss of carbon from large wildfires.

If the county receives the grant, the deadline for the work to be accomplished is March 30, 2022.

 

Many of our FF forests have failed to receive the very
management that could increase resilience to disturbances
exacerbated by climate change, such as the application
of prescribed fire and mechanical restoration treatments
(Stephens et  al. 2016). Recent tree mortality raises serious
questions about our willingness to address the underlying
causes. If our society doesn’t like the outcomes from recent
fires and extensive drought-induced tree mortality in FF
forests, then we collectively need to move beyond the status
quo. Working to increase the pace and scale of beneficial fire
and mechanical treatments rather than focusing on continued
fire suppression would be an important step forward.

California is grappling with the counterintuitive dilemma of too many trees, packed too closely together, robbed of the space they need to thrive—and with how to clear out more than 100 million dead trees, felled by drought or insects, that provide tinder for the next infernos.  At stake is nothing less than life, property, air quality and the lands that hold most of California’s water. A state commission recently prescribed radical changes to address what it terms the “neglect” of California’s largest forests.  Read more:  https://www.newsreview.com/chico/environmental-catastrophe/content?oid=26106279

California’s headwater forests are not thriving under current management practices, and changes are needed to make them more resilient to periodic drought and long-term climate change.  Read the report by the Public Policy Institute of California:  http://www.ppic.org/publication/improving-the-health-of-californias-headwater-forests/?utm_source=ppic&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=epub

Read the Forest Service report that includes results, application, principles, and challenges from over 25 years of study.  There are nineteen principles and 10 conclusions resulting from this research program, but more work in the form of 11 challenges is recommended.

https://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr231/

Read the article from the SF Chronicle:  SF Chronicle Wildfires and Greenhouse Gas 17-11

To read the study co-authored by Dr. Eric Knapp, please use the following link:  Knapp_etal_2017_FEM_VariableDensityThinning&RxFire (1) 2017

The findings of a scientific study reviewing the 2013 Rim Fire, conducted by a team from Penn State University, highlight the benefits of controlled burning.  Read the article:  https://www.mymotherlode.com/news/local/338012/study-finds-earlier-controlled-burning-limited-severity-of-rim-fire.html

Read the full study at:  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.2019/full

Chris Trott, chairman of YSS and managing partner of CT Bioenergy Consultation in Twain Harte, said the agreement will reduce reliance on the Forest Service’s limited budget that’s increasingly being diverted to fighting massive wildfires.  Read the full article in the Union Democrat by using the “Read More” button for the live link.

http://www.uniondemocrat.com/localnews/5871122-151/deal-aims-to-restore-forests-support-jobs