Technology being used as a partner in forest fuels treatment at Lake Tahoe

LAKE TAHOE, Nev. - "We'll lose the whole forest if we don't jump in and do work now," said Tahoe Fund CEO Amy Berry during Wednesday's demonstration of BurnBot in Incline Village, Nev. She said enough of talk, and now it's up to the private sector to partner with agencies that do forest thinning projects to get the job done.

The Lake Tahoe Basin is home to about 220,000 acres of forest, and according to Landtender, there are about 22,000,000 too many trees in the Basin. Before silver was discovered in Virginia City there were approximately 25 trees per acre around the lake. Today there are 300 trees per acre on average. The trees were spaced far enough apart to prevent large forest fires and now allow ladder fuels to get things out of control. The Lake Tahoe Basin was clear-cut in the 1800s, and then all of the trees grew back at almost the same pace, creating the dangerous conditions that currently exist.

While prescribed fire operations are ongoing around the Basin, only 2,000 were burned in 2023, and more has to be done on a faster pace.

Enter into the picture is BurnBot, the latest tool in a forest manager's arsenal.

Dr. Anukool Lakhina, co-founder and CEO of BurnBot, participated in a discussion Wednesday in front of fire professionals, many of them from CalFire and fire agencies around Lake Tahoe. Lakhina said BurnBot was formed after he learned what good fire is after the devastating Camp Fire. He wanted to be part of the solution.

BurnBot is a remote-controlled masticator that can go through the forest and remove fuels up to 6-8" thick. It does the "prep work" until fire can be added to the landscape to finish the job when it's ready. It can go up steep slopes, something that wasn't allowed prior to a change in the TRPA code that had prevented machine work on big slopes.

Technology is now being used to deliver meaningful benefits. BurnBot can clear. The diesel-powered machine can clear 22 acres in 3 days whereas a hand crew needs 15 days. It can move into tight places and up steep slopes.

"Complaining is not our friends," said Lakhina. "We need to be more efficient with less cost. This drops the prices for acres treated."

The Tahoe Fund started working with donors who didn't mind investing in a high-risk project. Berry said their Smarter Forest Fund has helped fund BurnBot to help solve the problem of all the work that needs to be done in forest treatments and a lack of enough personnel to get the job done.

"BurnBot can far exceed what humans can do," said Lakhina. "We are behind the 8-ball already as a whole."

Former CalFire Chief Deputy Chris Anthony led a panel discussion before a demonstration of the BurnBot in action in the steep 1st Creek Drainage in Incline Village.

"Technology and innovation can be used to solve the problem," said Anthony. The technology here will be used to create resilient landscapes, something that has been hard to do with climate change and more communities in the mix and people living in the wildland-urban interface.

"If we lose the first, we lose everything else," said Berry.

"Our wildfires are not small anymore," said North Lake Tahoe Fire Chief Ryan Sommers. "If we can go in and do this fuel work we will no longer see catastrophic.

North Lake Tahoe Fire has been forward-leaning in doing fuels work to protect Incline Village and the area is one of the best local examples of how to be proactive in treating a forest and mitigate problems before they start.

The BurnBot can go through the forest and remove 75 percent of the fuels, leaving behind 25 percent which has been determined the best prescription. The machines work smarter and not harder to do better. The biomass left behind can be "broadcast burned." The company has several other machines that also put the resulting biomass back into the soil, including four types of excavators, two remote models of masticators, heavy masticators, and more, all working on varying levels of slopes and landscape. One tool is an unmanned drone that can ignite prescribed fire - up to 2,000 acres/day.

Humans are still needed for the bigger jobs, and BurnBot is meant to aid in the smaller jobs efficiently. The machine can run all day long on one gallon of diesel.