Pope Baldwin Bike Path to see closures as trees are thinned along trail

Trees will be thinned along the Pope Baldwin Bike Path off of State Route 89 north of South Lake Tahoe starting Monday, August 21. Recreationists can expect path closures for up to 30 minutes at a time as flaggers intermittently close the bike path for public safety as trees are falling.

This phase of the project will take place Monday through Friday from 6:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. and is expected to last several weeks. Bicyclists may use the bike lane on Highway 89 to detour around the traffic control areas.

This project involving mechanical cut-to-length (CTL) thinning near Pope Beach is currently underway. CTL thinning involves using a harvester to cut the tree down, remove the limbs and cut the tree into sections in the cutting area. For public safety, the Forest Service advises recreationists to avoid these areas due to the hazards posed by heavy equipment and falling trees. Hazards may be present even when operations have ceased for the day. Work is expected to continue through mid-October, weather permitting.

The forest thinning is part of the South Shore Hazardous Fuels Reduction and Healthy Forest Restoration Project, which aims to treat approximately 10,000 acres on the South Shore of Lake Tahoe over the next few years. For more information about the project, visit http://www.fs.usda.gov/goto/ltbmu/SouthShoreFuelReduction.

In addition to temporary disruption to recreational areas, other short-term impacts from forest thinning projects include changes to the appearance of forests. Treated areas look disturbed at first, but recover visually within a few years. Overall benefits to forests in treated areas include reducing excess trees and vegetation that can feed 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.