YSS in the Press and Stories of Interest

by John Buckley

As rains dampen California’s drought-stressed forests and reduce the risk of high-severity wildfires, it’s critical for California residents to recognize some basic truths about forests, climate change, wildfires, smoke, and precious places on public forest lands. Read more here:Middle ground needed on forest management issues 21-10-31

August 17th marks the 8th anniversary of the Rim Fire, which, at the time, was the third largest fire in the history of California. The fire started at the confluence of the Tuolumne and Clavey rivers and burning 257,314 acres in forest and shrublands including 154,530 acres on the Stanislaus National Forest. Read the full press release here:  Rim Fire 8th Anniversary (1)

Sonora, Calif.— August 13, 2021. Tuolumne County and Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions received
$5 million for a CAL FIRE Healthy Forest grant to begin implementation of the Social and Ecological
Resilience Across the Landscape (SERAL) project designed to make local communities and forests
resilient to largescale fire, insect, and drought disturbances.  Read more in this press release: YSS_TC_STF Partner NR_Final20210814

About $5 million was designated to Tuolumne County and Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions, a local collaborative work­ing group of industry and environmental interests, which Peterson said will involve the installation of fuel breaks within the Stanislaus National For­est to slow or contain po­tentials fires within that region. Read more here:  union democrat calfire grant 13aug21 (2)

The Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center in Twain Harte and 14 other conservation groups are urging Randy Moore, the former Pacific Southwest regional forester who is now chief of the U.S. Forest Service, to increase prescribed burning, thinning of surface and ladder fuels, and biomass removal in the face of unnaturally severe megablazes and climate change.

Koepele also emphasized that Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions has been an outfront collaborative group, pushing and
working with the Forest Service to do more. It’s a diverse group that includes environmentalists, conservationists, loggers, recreational users, Tuolumne County government representatives, and biomass industry representatives.
“We’re committed to getting something done that benefits the environment, the economy, and the community,” Koepele said. Read more at: Major project planned to reduce fuels in Middle, South Forks  (Spacing is off in article so keep moving down to see full post.)

Building with mass timber can ameliorate climate change because it produces less in greenhouse gas emissions than construction with concrete and steel. And wood has the benefit of storing the carbon dioxide trees absorb during their growth, keeping it out of the atmosphere indefinitely.  If you subscribe to the NYTimes, you can read the whole article at:  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/style/engineered-wood-tower-construction.html

By Davis Harper / Calaveras Enterprise / Nov 6, 2019
In an ongoing legal battle over forest restoration efforts in the 2013 Rim Fire footprint in Tuolumne County, a federal judge on Oct. 7 denied a request to issue a temporary restraining order on the United States Forest Service (USFS) that would have halted a logging project for the time being.
National conservation groups Earth Island Institute (“EII”), Sequoia Forestkeeper and Greenpeace Inc., along with James Hansen, a climate change scientist, brought litigation against USFS, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) in September of 2019.
The Rim Fire scorched more than 257,000 acres of Stanislaus National Forest land east of Sonora in 2013.
The following year, the Forest Service spearheaded the Rim Fire Recovery Project to “improve the land and local economies most affected by the Rim Fire.” That included the salvage of dead trees. EII and other environmental groups unsuccessfully challenged this project in court, alleging that the Forest Service should’ve prepared a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement to assess impacts on spotted owl habitat, and that it should’ve taken a “hard look” at comments and evidence submitted during the review period of the project, according to court records.
In 2018, HUD allocated $28 million in disaster recovery grants to be administered by the state HCD to the Forest Service for removal of dead trees in areas of the Rim Fire scar that burned at a high intensity, according to the court filing. The grant also covers the construction costs of a biomass plant to incinerate the wood for power generation, the filing states.
In the current litigation, plaintiffs are alleging that the proposed logging activities on approximately 4,400 acres of forestland fall outside of a “disaster relief grant’s” scope, and that the three agencies broke environmental laws by accepting “outdated” Environmental Impact Statements from 2014 and 2016, which asserted that most of the forest proposed for logging would not regenerate naturally for several decades.
Dr. Chad Hanson of the John Muir Project, a project of EII, has been researching conifer regrowth in the Rim Fire footprint in recent years.
He claims that logging burned forests increases fire risk and destroys “postfire snag forest habitat, one of the most biodiverse and ecologically important forest habitat types.”
Commenting on the latest developments in the litigation, Hanson said, “The bar is very high to get a (temporary restraining order), so they are rarely granted. We disagree with the district court judge in the Northern District, who denied our request, but that’s water under the bridge at this point, as the case was transferred to the Eastern District, to Judge Drozd in Fresno.”
The lawsuit highlights a larger discussion over how and whether wildfire-ravaged public lands in the Sierra Nevada should be managed to protect watersheds, wildlife and communities from future fires. Both sides say the end goal is a healthy forest, but disagree on how to get there. The Forest Service advocates for “fuels reduction” (logging), prescribed fire and reforestation treatments to reduce buildup of flammable trees that compete for water and nutrients. By contrast, Hanson argues the forest should be left to regenerate on its own (with the exception of felling hazard trees around main roads and campgrounds), based, in part, on his documentation of trees sprouting up in the Rim Fire scar.
When asked for comment, a Forest Service representative told the Enterprise, “We cannot comment on ongoing litigation.”
John Buckley, executive director of the Twain Harte-based Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center (CSERC), has vocally opposed the litigation since it was filed.
Formed in 2010 with the goal of ramping up restoration efforts in the southern portion of the Stanislaus National Forest and adjacent landholdings, the Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions (YSS) collaborative stakeholder group includes representatives of the timber industry, grazing interests, local government, environmental organizations (including CSERC), business interests, motorized recreation groups, and state and federal agencies.
According to Buckley, YSS “unanimously supports moving forward to lower fuel levels in the Rim Fire area so as to reduce the risk of yet another devastating high severity wildfire in the future … Those who filed the suit are extreme environmental organizations actively working to block a wide range of forest restoration treatments that mainstream and local environmental groups believe are not only reasonable but highly needed.”
With the temporary restraining order denied, Buckley said there may only be approximately 1,000 acres – less than a quarter of the project area – left to be logged that could be affected by a court decision later this year.
The next court date is scheduled for Dec. 3 in Fresno. At that time, the court will determine whether or not the biomass removal of dead trees and fallen logs should be allowed to continue, whether pile burning in the forest is consistent with the Forest Service-approved plan, and whether the HUD grant is an appropriate funding source for the fuel reduction work, according to Buckley.

March 21, 2019

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.