New partnership seeks to restore Sierra forests
By Matt Weiser, Sacramento Bee
The Sierra Nevada is many things to California: a mountain playground in winter and summer, a swath of public land stretching nearly the length of the state, and vital habitat for a broad variety of wildlife. It also provides the majority of California’s freshwater supply.
With a fourth year of drought looming, state and federal agencies have launched an ambitious partnership to improve the Sierra’s ability to store and filter water, as well as reduce fire risks, by restoring its forests.
Called the Sierra Nevada Watershed Improvement Program, it aims to coordinate the diverse activities of government agencies, property owners and nonprofit groups to focus on the Sierra’s most serious problems. Goals include restoring streams and meadows, improving habitat and thinning overgrown forests, while also protecting economic uses of the land, such as logging and grazing.
The effort is being led by the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, a state agency, in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, the primary landowner in the Sierra.
“restoring streams and meadows”: Um, I think they are already there. No restoration needed. What you mean is that these self proclaimed expert organizations are going to meddle and re-rout nature (the way they think it should be routed) like up on Luther Pass. If a private citizen did this (even on their own property) they would be arrested and fined. Let Mother Nature do her thing and stop messing with her.
Keep the government OUT of this. The government (and its leaches) said “don’t thin forests”. Then (after the Angora Fire) realized that they should thin. The government is an out of control bunch of IDIOTS! Mother Nature will always know best. And as seen by our fire, she will show us in the end, who is right and who should back off.
Mr. Kit. Um.. No. A majority of the meadows and wetlands below 11k in the Sierra have been altered by man for cattle grazing. Many have been dammed and their water courses changed, thus impacting natural filtration and biodiversity. They are most definitely in need of restoration. The forest circus does make mistakes, but you can’t just paint a negative picture of everything they do. I have some friends that work on these very projects, and the science behind them is fairly sound.
Kit just curious, what was your degree in and what do you do for work? It’s easy to disseminate vitriol and dis information from behind a keyboard. Everyone that works for the govt are leeches? Really.
I know more than you might think but in all fairness I will try to keep an open mind and see what is to be seen.
I would hope that this effort pays a lot of attention to the commercial timber growers and the forestry associations.
These people have to make a profit to be successful, and therefore know how to manage forests for less money and in shorter time frames than the tax supported agencies ever will. Given that the commercial operators operate under the same permits the agencies administer, they also know how to do this on expedited schedules.
The commercial operators don’t have time to study a project for years before going for it either, a skill the forest service lost long ago and manyother govt. agencies never had.
Gee kit, name calling seems to be your expertise.
Keep commercial forestry operations off public lands.
The meadows aren’t natural, and it’s not because of cattle grazing and re-routing streams either. It’s because someone introduced a bunch of damn beavers, which built dams, causing the meadows to flood when the willows were going to seed. Then, they got spread all over the place and grew to huge sizes. To top it all off, environmentalists think it’s natural, and won’t allow anyone to clean up the mess. Our meadows are now infested with homeless people, bums, and ridiculous populations of coyotes and bears. Just another case of man screwing up nature. Fix the mess you created, then get out, for heaven’s sake!
The government is constantly focusing on the wrong thing. They are sooooo concerned with “stabilizing” streams, while they dump hundreds of tons of salt on the roads, most of which runs straight into the lake!
Well, this whole place is probably going to burn down this summer anyway because of inadequate thinning, so then we won’t have any environmental problems to worry about. Just ridiculous…
greengrass, Very interesting comment. I agree with most of what you wrote. but not all.
Man has made a mess of this place for a long time and we are still messin’ with it! Often with questionable results.
Trying to correct past mistakes by making more mistakes! OLS
Beavers are a native species and not an “introduced invasive species ” as some have suggested.
And to add to AROD’s comment, the beavers may just be one of the best things going for keeping Lake Tahoe clear by virtue of not only storing a great deal of fine particle sediment behind their dam constructions, but also helping to spread the flow of a river/creek over larger areas of a meadow/wetland area by virtue of raising the water table behind the dams which also helps to filter fine particle sediment from reaching Lake Tahoe. Both of which are the ultimate goals of the stream zone work being done by the USFS as I see it.
Toogee and Arod, I remember beavers were introduced in the 1940s by trappers, who hoped that they would reproduce, and could then be trapped for their skins. They are not native to the Tahoe Basin, despite what many say. They have caused many environmental problems in Tahoe.
As far as “stabilizing” streams, get a clue, people! When streams run through the dirt, some sediment is just going to wash out! Haven’t you ever noticed that if you leave your garden hose running in the dirt, it digs a pit? That’s just how nature works! Trying to change that will just mess things up more! If you want to make a dent in the lake clarity problem, work on the massive amounts of road salt that caltrans is now using, or maybe stop constantly adjusting the lake level with the Tahoe City Dam! Has anyone ever noticed that all the trees around the snow-dump are dying or dead from the salt in the snow? That stuff can’t be good for the environment!
As far as the meadows, I think we need to do some major cleaning up of the overgrown willows, which would naturally eliminate the homeless encampments and keep the animal populations at natural levels. Since we can’t get out of the ridiculous measure F mess now, why not use some of that money to clean up the college meadow? We’re losing a huge natural fire break right in the middle of town!
And “restoring” the Sierra forests? Everyone is worried about reforestation, when they should be worrying about thinning the forests before the burn completely to the ground! And please don’t tell me that the forests are in their natural state. When you clearcut a forest, it grows back way, way, way, thicker than what is natural.
But unfortunately, as usual, the government is focusing on all the wrong problems, so they don’t get exposed for the disasters they created, when we should be doing everything in our power to clean up the forests before summer, due to the extreme drought. It’s no wonder that they have made hardly any difference at all in the clarity of the lake. OLS hit the nail on the head: “Trying to correct past mistakes by making more mistakes!”
greengrass
There is a Washoe word for Beaver “c’imhelhel” In a 1926 interview with Washoe elders it was stated that there was a legend where the beaver played with the weasel near Sheridan, Nv and “to the other side, to a big lake” described as a description of Lake Tahoe. The Washoe have been here over 10,000 years. I found this information from the Ca Fish and Game dept. study 98(2):65-80 2012 done by the Institute for Historical Ecology. https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=67444.
Draw your own conclusions as to how long the beaver have been here.
Seems green grass has all the answers….
Beavers have been here a long long time
@nature bats last and Kenny: Beavers have been in the Sierras for a long, long time, but they are not native to Lake Tahoe. I remember they were introduced in the 40’s.
The folks who are most detrimental to the environment are the ones who came here in the last 20 or 30 years from LA or the Bay Area, who didn’t see what it was like before everything got ruined. They think they know how things work and what is natural, but they haven’t seen both sides of the coin. The think they know ever so much more than the people who’ve been here for 50 or 60 years and watched it all happen, and refuse to listen to the one’s who really know. But since this seems to be rapidly degrading into typical pointless internet flame-war, how about we just abandon the question of beavers and keep it peaceful and respectful?
greengrass
GG has a poor memory. Let’s see, who am I to believe the person’s memory from the 1940’s or all the natural science texts? The answer is obvious.
From wikipedia:
1. The California Golden beaver subspecies (Castor canadensis subauratus) was prevalent in the Sacramento and San Joaquin River watersheds, including their tributaries in the Sierra Nevada. Recent evidence indicates that beaver were native to the High Sierra until their extirpation in the nineteenth century.
2. Castor canadensis were re-introduced to the Tahoe Basin by the CDFG and the U. S. Forest Service between 1934 and 1949 in order to prevent stream degradation and to promote wetland restoration. Descended from no more than nine individuals from the Snake River in Idaho, 1987 beaver populations on the upper and lower Truckee River had reached a density of 0.72 colonies (3.5 beavers) per kilometer.
Draw your own conclusions as to how long the beaver have been here. Everyone is correct in their own way as to how the beaver have gotten here or how long they have been here. There are no more native beaver but transplanted beaver. Kinda like how we all got here. Taking care of the environment by the govt. is job security at it’s best.
Kenny: You only confirmed my point. Beavers are native to parts of the Sierras, but not the Tahoe Basin.
“Castor canadensis were re-introduced to the Tahoe Basin by the CDFG and the U. S. Forest Service between 1934 and 1949 in order to prevent stream degradation and to promote wetland restoration.” A fine example of the government doing something foolish before they have all the facts. Just like “stabilizing” the streams. They think they are doing something good for the environment, when, in fact, they may well be hurting it.
What evidence has shown that beavers were native to the Tahoe Basin? I haven’t seen any.
But beavers aside, my main point is that the meadows and forests around Tahoe need a lot of attention, and the environmentalists and government programs seem to consistently focus on insignificant or nonexistent problems, while ignoring major disasters. What happens if we have a Rim-Fire sized wildfire in Tahoe this summer because of dry conditions and inadequate thinning? “Stabilizing” streams and reforestation won’t matter much then. We should be focusing on the immediate, serious threats, instead of fooling around wasting money on pointless projects. Go for the biggest problems first!