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With next year's fire season just over the
horizon, the U.S. Forest Service is proposing to
add a different type of prescribed burn to its
repertoire this spring.
More than 3,000 acres of federal land in the basin
were proposed for understory burns by the Forest
Service's Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit in
January.
Understory burns are used in areas where pile
burns already have been carried out and provide
ecological benefits to a Sierra landscape adapted
to periodic, low-intensity fires, according to
Forest Service spokesman Rex Norman. Pile burns
involve stacking excess woody material from a
forested area and allowing it to dry before
ignition, while understory burns involve fire
moving across an entire area.
"These low, creeping fires move along the forest
floor, clearing the heavy buildup of pine needles,
small twigs and other forest debris," Norman wrote
in an e-mail. "This process results in significant
ecosystem benefits, including the regeneration of
understory native plants."
The burns also produce smoke
over a longer period of time than pile burns, to
the chagrin of some basin residents.
"I'm not opposed to cleaning up the forest,"
Zephyr Cove resident Jack Harrington, a longtime
opponent of prescribed burns, said Friday. "My
premise is there are ways of cleaning up the
forest and not creating a health hazard."
All prescribed burns include measures to minimize
smoke impacts to neighborhoods, the Forest Service
contends.
Prescribed fires are undertaken only when weather
conditions will lift smoke from the basin and
include contingency plans when weather
unexpectedly changes, Norman added in the e-mail.
Basin environmental groups
have gotten behind the proposal.
"The Lake Tahoe Basin forests are fire-dependent
ecosystems, and therefore no fuels-reduction
project is complete without the application of
periodic understory burning," representatives of
the League to Save Lake Tahoe, Tahoe Area Sierra
Club and Sierra Forest Legacy wrote to Forest
Supervisor Terri Marceron in support of the
project.
As proposed, the project will be considered a
"categorical exemption" under the National
Environmental Policy Act and will not need an
Environmental Impact Statement before approval.
The project can be considered under such an
exemption because it does not involve herbicides
and does not require more than a mile of
low-standard road construction, according to a
Forest Service news statement.
January's proposal includes
understory burns expected to take place in
relatively small sections over five to eight
years.
"The largest stand that would be underburned at
any given time and location would be approximately
100 acres," according to the proposal.
Most of the work on the 888 acres of understory
burns proposed at the South Shore will take place
on Forest Service land near Pioneer Trail.
Understory burns also are planned near the
northwestern end of Fallen Leaf Lake.
The deadline for submitting comments on the
understory burn project is Wednesday, and the
Forest Service hopes to begin understory burns
this spring.
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