Forest thinning project at Incline to close public access to some areas

A 4,000 acres project in the North Lake Tahoe area is underway to thin trees in the forests to be both fire safe by reducing fuels, and to keep the forest healthy.

The latest project in the Incline Village area started last week on approximately 355 acres of National Forest System lands above Incline Village. Mechanical cut-to-length (CTL) tree removal will take place on USFS urban lots and in areas adjacent to communities over the next several months and some areas will be closed for public safety.

CTL thinning involves using a harvester to cut the tree down, remove the limbs and cut the tree into sections in the cutting area. This type of mechanical operation requires closure of the project area during operations due to the hazards posed by heavy equipment and falling trees. The Forest Service will issue a forest order closing the project area (unit 1) located on the east side of Mt. Rose Highway 431 south of Tahoe Meadows, to pedestrians from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. daily for the next several months. Hazards may be present even when operations have ceased for the day and the closure is not in effect. The Forest Service will post closure signs in the area and the forest order will be posted at http://www.fs.usda.gov/goto/ltbmu/ForestOrders when it becomes available.

Goals of the project:

 - Provide for defensible space adjacent to communities in the project area where fire suppression operations can be safely and effectively conducted in order to protect homes and communities from wildfires.
 - Complement defensible space treatments that have been implemented by local municipal fire districts.
 - Reduce the potential for a catastrophic wildland fire in the area by reducing wildland fire intensity, rate of spread, and crown fire potential.
 - Lower fire intensity along primary travel corridors (i.e. state highways, county roads) to improve ingress and egress of emergency transportation systems as well as residents and visitors within the project area during a potential wildland fire.
 - Move the project area toward a pre-Comstock era vegetative condition related to stand density, tree size class, and species composition that provides for healthy forest conditions to decrease the risk for widespread tree mortality during drought conditions.
 - Improve forest health by thinning trees in areas where densities are high, leading to decreased potential for spreading diseases and insect infestation such as white pine blister rust, dwarf mistletoe, Jeffrey pine beetle, and mountain pine beetle.
 - Create conditions that enable the managed reintroduction of fire into fire-adapted ecosystems by shifting the fire regime conditions in the treated landscape from Class 2 and 3, toward Class 1 and 2.

The forest thinning is part of the Incline Hazardous Fuels Reduction and Healthy Forest Restoration Project, which will treat nearly 4,000 acres on North Shore of Lake Tahoe to reduce the risk of severe wildfire, improve forest health, and provide defensible space to neighboring communities.

In addition to temporary closures of recreational areas, other short-term impacts from fuels reduction projects include changes to the appearance of basin forests. Treated areas look disturbed at first, but recover visually within a few years. Overall benefits to forests in treated areas include reducing fuel for wildfires and providing the remaining trees with less competition for resources such as water, sunlight and nutrients, which allow the trees to grow larger and become more resistant to drought, insects and disease.

For more information about the project, visit http://www.fs.usda.gov/goto/ltbmu/InclineFuelsProject.