In a brief but devastating few days, the Angora wildfire blew through portions of south Lake Tahoe consuming over 3,100 acres, 250 homes and buildings, and causing evacuations of thousands of South Tahoe residents. 

It is scary how close the authors in the Fall 2006 issue of California Forests magazine were to predicting this very disaster!  The “Keep Tahoe Blue? Manage the forests around it” issue of California Forests magazine can be visited at the website www.foresthealth.org.

While we are thankful there was no loss of life, we should be well aware that forestry professionals have seen the potential for this disaster for decades.  They have tried to warn California’s decision leaders that you can’t suppress fire, restrict proactive forest management, and expect forests to stay healthy and safe. 

You simply can’t have multiple agencies enforce regulations that simultaneously require defensible space and prohibit people from creating it. Furthermore, you can’t realistically expect 100 feet of defensible space to stop the onslaught of a 200-foot wall of flame blowing in from an overcrowded forest. 

Forest scientists have noted for decades that Tahoe’s forests were in trouble, increasingly looking like the forests that covered Southern California’s mountains before they burned just four years ago.  When Southern California burned in 2003, as we grieved we wondered if that catastrophic event would demonstrate once and for all the folly in leaving national forestland virtually unmanaged. Unfortunately, it did not. 

Ultimately, the fact that there are too many trees around Lake Tahoe is responsible for the Angora Fire and its devastation. There are too many trees, however, because ineffective, duplicative regulations delay thinning and restoration while costs and dangers rise. Litigation and appeals often cause additional delays, leaving national forestland elsewhere in the Sierra laden with excess fuels. 

Lake Tahoe’s legendary water clarity will suffer dramatically because of the Angora Fire. The next time it rains in the Tahoe Basin, mud, ash and debris are going to fill creeks and pour into the lake. A zealous passion to keep even the tiniest amounts of sediment from reaching creeks during timber harvesting has helped create the perfect storm for Tahoe’s water quality. 

It’s true that thinning forests can increase sediment delivery to nearby watercourses, but in amounts virtually undetectable and for a brief period of time. Imagine the long-term increase in sediment delivery a mudslide washing into Lake Tahoe will cause. 

There are more trees growing around Lake Tahoe than in any time in the last 150 years. With neither low-intensity fire nor timber harvests – harvesting on California’s public forestland is down 90 percent since the late 1980s – many Sierra Nevada forests are straining to support more than ten times their natural number of trees per acre.  

More than eight million California acres and 1,000 California communities remain at high risk of high-intensity wildfire. 

We must return natural forests to California’s landscape. We have the science and technology to re-establish the kind of forests the first European settlers saw when they reached the Sierra Nevada. Early explorers and naturalists like John Muir described forests “so open you could gallop a horse through.”  

That’s not what’s burning now. 

There’s a scientific methodology in which restoring and caring for California’s forestland can pay for itself. It can also reduce firefighting costs, provide renewable energy, lower greenhouse gas emissions, protect water quality, encourage biodiversity and help make communities safer – all without taxpayer dollars. 

But the plan will fail without clear leadership. There must be flexible forest management regulations and unfettered lines of authority. We can’t afford any more duplicative processes where multiple agencies can claim jurisdiction and shut down management efforts before they start. 

Presidential visits and federal summits have long decried the state of Tahoe’s forests and emphasized the need to reduce fuel loads. Legislators have sung the praises of the many productive uses that could come from harvesting the excess vegetation around the lake.  

But still there was far too little action before the Angora Fire and too much finger pointing after it.  It’s time for real leadership to address this growing risk. 

On California’s private forestland, the single leadership authority should be the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. On national forestland the authority should be the USDA Forest Service.  Let’s support them and hold them accountable. That’s not contradictory and it might be the key to future generations having their Kodak moments in the Sierra, too. 

Once the embers are cold and the victims are helped, we hope the positive outcome of this tragedy is that all the Tahoe stakeholders truly come together to implement some real proactive change – on a scale that will help avert future catastrophic events. 

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David A. Bischel is a registered professional forester and president of the California Forestry Association.

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The California Forestry Association is a non-profit trade association representing California's forest products profession.
We are dedicated to assuring an adequate and sustainable supply of forest products at an affordable cost while enhancing forest health and safety.

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