Recreation Meets Risk with Anne Graham, National Forest Foundation

Welcome to 101.5 Community Conversations on Wildfire, where we help you stay safe, informed, and ready.

I'm your host, JD Haas.

When we talk about wildfire preparedness in the Tahoe Truckee region, we often talk about what homeowners can do, what firefighters are doing, and how we can prepare our communities.

But there's another piece of the story that's happening all around us.

Sometimes right alongside the trails we hike and bike, forest restoration crews are thinning forest, reducing fuels, restoring habitat, and improving the health of the watersheds across the Tahoe Truckee region.

And some of these projects that are happening in places many of us know very well.

So today, instead of just talking about the risk, we're going to talk about the work that's actually happening on the ground to address it.

My guest is Ann Graham with the National Forest Foundation.

And welcome to Community Conversations on Wildfire.

And welcome to 101.5.

And thanks so much for having me.

All right.

And for people who aren't familiar with the National Forest foundation, tell us about the organization's work and your role.

Yeah.

The National Forest foundation is a nonprofit partner to the Forest Service.

We have a congressional charter, which just means Congress basically said, create your nonprofit.

Now our focus is, is really on wildfire resilience, land and watershed restoration, as well as recreation enhancement.

And our scale is national.

We have relationships with national forests all throughout the country, but our work is really local.

In practice, we have those on the ground relationships with forests like the Tahoe National Forest, where we're focused in those kind of three areas of work.

We are still doing work more like a traditional foundation does, where we make grants out to other nonprofits who are doing work that benefits and boosts the capacity of the Forest Service.

But we ourselves as an organization are also doing that capacity building work with the Forest Service.

We're writing grants, we're bringing in funds for projects, and we're actually helping the Forest Service to implement project work on the ground in the area here with the Tahoe National Forest, a lot of our work is focused on wildfire resilience, but we're also expanding into some of those other areas of land and watershed restoration and recreation enhancement as well as.

Okay, so when it comes to that, you touched on it just a little bit with your role with the Tahoe National Forest.

Can you expand on that for me?

Yeah.

So in the day to day, what that really looks like is the Tahoe National Forest.

We have work happening.

The Tahoe has four districts.

And just to clarify, because this was news to me a little bit when I moved to the area, the Lake Tahoe Basin is its own national Forest system unit.

The Tahoe National Forest is actually kind of northwest of Lake Tahoe.

So the outflow from Tahoe City of the Truckee river that flows through the Truckee district, But then we also have north to Sierraville, west down to Nevada City and Grass Valley, as well as south into the American River Canyon in the Forest Hill area.

So the Tahoe National Forest is massive.

And we are working on all four districts of the Tahoe in this particular area, working on the Truckee and Sierraville districts.

We have Wildfire resilience project work going on where in our day to day staff and program managers like myself are actually working with staff in the Forest Service office to understand what is your highest need right now, how can we support you?

They are actually through.

We have formalized agreements called stewardship agreements that authorize us to do work on Forest Service land, on federal land, because we as a nonprofit do not own any land.

So we're given authority to do work on federal lands and actually then come in and depending on what the project requires, sometimes we might be supporting an environmental compliance process to get a project ready for implementation.

We might be actually hiring a contractor to do the project implementation.

It can look like a lot of different things depending on what the need is.

But for the most part, we are really working with the Forest Service to understand what their greatest need is at a certain point in time and trying to help fill that need.

So there's a lot of organizations involved.

And one thing that really stands out when you look at the forest fuel reduction and the mitigation work happening around here is how many different organizations are involved.

So you have the Forest Service, local government, conservation and organizations, water agencies, community groups, and others all working together.

How important are those partnerships and how does the foundation play that role?

Yeah, so there's a lot going on in our town, which is really incredible when we think about kind of what we call the wildfire crisis and the need for this kind of work to be ongoing.

I'm going to talk with you probably a lot more about the middle Trekkie partnership that the foundation's involved in.

But I think what is so incredible about the Truckee community and what we have going on here is that we do have so many players involved.

The Truckee Fire Protection District has really rallied so many different organizations and folks as well as through measure T, giving funds to local Firewise communities and local HOAs to do work on private lands.

And our partnership is really focused on the public land side of things.

And we need all of those different entities, nonprofits, federal agencies, water agencies, fire protection districts, local community members rallying to do their part, and so that we can have really continuous fire resilience across our community.

So all of those players play their own role.

And our partnership coming together has really been able to boost the capacity and what we.

In our line of work, we talk so much about pace and scale and the need to increase the pace and scale at which we're doing this work.

So, yeah, I feel very grateful to be working in this space in the Trekkie community because there is such strong support for this kind of work to be going on.

Okay, so let's go to the middle Truckee River Watershed and talk about the bigger picture.

And not a lot of the work we're going to talk about today is connected through the middle Truckee River Watershed Forest Partnership.

You touched on partnership, but for listeners who aren't familiar with that partnership, can you give us expand on that?

What is it and why was it created?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the mouthful that is the middle Truckee River Watershed Forest Park.

Yeah, we'll just call it the Forest Partnership for ease.

Perfect.

But that partnership is made up of five different organizations.

It includes the Tahoe National Forest, specifically the Truckee and Sierraville districts, the National Forest foundation, the Truckee River Watershed Council, which is a local environmental restoration nonprofit that many of you might know.

Then we also have the Nature Conservancy and the Truckee Meadows Water Authority, which is often a unique one for folks.

The Truckee Meadows Water Authority is the water provider for the Reno and Sparks area.

They own water rights in the reservoirs around the Truckee area.

When you think of Donner, Lake, Stampede, Boca, those all have water rights that different folks own the rights to.

And Truckee Meadows Water Authority has a strong interest in protecting the health of the watershed upstream so that they can have clean water for their customers in the Reno and Sparks area.

So they have actually been making investments and contributing funds to some of the projects that we've been managing, which is kind of a unique addition.

But our other folks involved in the partnership, and really the goal of that partnership is to treat 60,000 acres on the Tahoe National Forest in 10 years.

So that timeline is already ticking.

4.

So we have acres that have been treated and work that has been going on in the last few years, which some folks have definitely seen and interacted with so far.

But really, our partnership's goal is to increase the wildfire resilience and forest health of our region.

The entire Middle Truckee river watershed is 315,000 acres.

The Tahoe National Forest owns 260,000 of those acres, the largest landowner by far in the watershed.

And.

And our goal to treat 60,000 of those 260,000 puts us treating about 23% of the entire watershed in that 10 year timeline.

Okay, you were talking about folks who have interest in the water.

Does the Pyramid Lake tribe have interest in our water as well?

Yeah.

So the Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe does have water rights in this area of the watershed, but they are not currently involved in our partnership.

Okay.

All right.

Because it all flows downhill.

Yep, that it does.

It flows right from here and it stops and it ends up at Pyramid Lake.

Yeah.

Okay.

So when you're dealing with a landscape this large, how do you decide where to start and what makes one area a priority for the forest health work?

Yeah.

We started off by using a combination of a landscape level analysis tool called Land Tender, as well as a couple other models that exist.

Scientists have been working to create models that will output what are the highest priority areas of treatment.

So we used models like that and coupled them with our local on the ground knowledge of where is accessible, what is going to be the highest priority treatment.

And we took the outputs from those to both the model as well as our on the ground knowledge to then hone in on where do we need to prioritize and when using those models as well as our local knowledge, we were looking at kind of four different main categories of what is our highest priority as a partnership, which included community protection, wildlife conservation, fire behavior, and water security.

And fire behavior just means if a fire comes through that area, how would us changing what's going on in the forest actually make fire be maybe moderate to mild versus having this high severity wildfire?

So when we thought about those four characteristics and put them into these models and then discussed and looked at the outputs and understanding where is accessible, where can we get machinery into to actually do the type of work that we're trying to do as well as where can we get material out if there's road infrastructure, things of that nature.

There's a lot of layers of consideration when choosing where to go.

But our partnership looked at all of these factors to then inform, okay, what are our highest priority?

60,000 Acres to treat.

And then once we had that output in itself, we then looked at a more granular level of within those 60,000 acres, what are our highest priority areas to treat first, one of that project.

National Forest foundation been involved with is the Big Jack east.

As we talked about this one just south of Truckee.

So for people who aren't familiar with it, what was the forest like before the project began?

I know what it's like now.

I've been there multiple times.

I've rode my bike through the area.

I've been out there.

But let the listeners know.

Yeah.

So the Big Jack east project is if folks, it's just south of Sierra Meadows in the Sawtooth Trail system area.

So a lot of folks have probably ridden there.

It's a hugely popular trail system.

Prior to the project, it was just unfathomably dense in that zone.

We had a lot of small diameter trees.

And the concern when we have really high density in zones like that is those trees are not very healthy when they're competing for limited water resources, limited nutrients.

They're all going to be struggling a little bit.

And so when we think about how much vegetation was in that area of the project, our goal going in there, both from a forest health standpoint as well as from a community protection standpoint, that zone of is so critical to the protection for the town of Truckee because of our prevailing winds coming from the southwest and something starting in that area blowing fire directly into town.

And so that particular project area with being just so dense, we then maybe take even a little bit more aggressive of a treatment in an area that is that proximate to homes and proximate to town.

Just knowing how much of a critical and strategic treatment zone that that is.

Yeah.

And I think people, if they get out there, there's work going on right now out there just past the Big Chief trailhead.

And you can actually see the line difference.

You guys are working from the road actually into the forest from what I seen.

And it was really apparent to me because the work you did a hundred yards off the road and as you're making it into that drainage, which is dry right now with no water in it, that forest is incredibly thick.

It very difficult to even walk through that forest, there's so many trees.

So those folks getting out there and taking a look at it, you can see the difference of that right now happening.

Actually, that was on Saturday.

I was out there.

So we know what you're trying to accomplish there.

But when people do hear that forest restoration or fuels reduction words, they may have a general idea of what that means, but what does that actually happen at Big Jack East?

You kind of hit on it a little bit.

Yeah.

So, I mean, we, we use the jargon and lingo of fuels reduction, but what that really looks like on a project like Big Jack east or any of these projects, when we think about our forest, we have trees, we have shrubs, we have brush, we have grasses.

Sometimes what our projects are really targeting are the species that are most detrimental to fire and what is going to burn really, really hot and really fast, or what is going to put fire potentially higher up in our forest system.

So we think about, we call it canopy fire.

But when fire gets into the tops of trees, that's really hard for firefighters to manage.

So our treatments, we call them treatments, but essentially what we are doing is we're.

We're removing shrubs and brush and we're moving.

Removing trees up to a certain diameter.

So our fuels reduction, typically our smaller diameter trees, as well as shrubs and brush like manzanita, manzanita burns really hot.

The commercial thinning element is slightly larger diameter trees.

So we are not removing trees larger than 30 inches in diameter.

We're trying to promote the growth of larger trees and have those residual trees, or remaining trees, we call them residual trees, actually be stronger and healthier when they're left behind.

We are intentionally leaving certain trees that are wildlife habitat.

We are certain, we are leaving certain areas that provide other resource protections, whether it be for the hydrology of an area or if it's a botanically sensitive species, things of that nature.

All of these go into the project design.

But what it looks like on the ground is oftentimes we're using heavy machinery, which can be big and loud and sometimes scary.

Especially when we think of these being natural spaces.

It feels very unnatural to have heavy machinery in there.

Oh, I came upon a masticator on Saturday and I was like.

And even when they move, it's like something out of Star Wars.

No kidding.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's jarring.

And I very much understand why our understanding of nature and what is natural, I understand why people have an aversion to seeing these kinds of projects.

There definitely is a level of education that, you know, I have had in working in this job as to the kind of intervention that we need to get our forests to a healthier state.

And really what the way that I've started to think about it is that we have managed our way into this problem.

We had decisions that were made to take fire off of the landscape.

Fire is a very natural part of ecosystems.

Low intensity fire is really beneficial for seed release and a lot of other functions in our forests.

But land managers decided, you know, over a century and a half ago to stop having fire on the landscape.

So we've really managed our way into this problem, and there's not going to be a path forward without us managing our way out of the problem through these kinds of radical interventions, in a way.

And we kind of, like I said a little bit earlier, I feel very lucky to work in this area because I think our community generally has a very strong understanding of what is needed or someone would be willing to have a conversation with me.

And when we walk away from it, they're like, great.

I understand a little bit better now this feels weird and wrong to see this machinery out here or to see trees getting cut down.

But I understand in the long run, this will be advantageous for the protection of my community as well as all these other things in the community that I love, like our wildlife and things of that sort.

You know, we're working on a decision and cleaning up.

Some of those decisions we made about 116 years ago.

Kevin Mecham from the US Forest Service, he hit on it.

There was a huge fire.

And that's when the federal government said, we're going to put out all these fires.

And we did for about 116 years.

And now look at where we're at today.

Catastrophic, massive wildfires.

And these fires Leanne's talking about, when they're going from treetop to treetop, it's called crowning.

And that's when you see the massive fires move at a very rapid rate.

When we see them move, you know, three to 10 miles in a day across the forest, running straight across the crowns, it's not across the bottom.

And that is a difficult thing to mitigate because that's how the fire will move so quickly into the Truckee Basin and into our homes.

And.

But in that Big Jack east, where I'm seeing that work, there's still a little work left.

Are you guys calling that project almost a wrap?

How far past Big Chief Trailhead are you going to go?

Yeah.

So in terms of Going further south from the Big Chief area.

Yeah, we have another project as a partnership that we've identified, but we haven't started the environmental compliance process on.

The reason that we're really focused on both the ridge where the Sawtooth Trail system is, as well as on the west side of 89.

Highway 89 is a really critical ingress egress for the Tahoe Basin as well as for Truckee for getting folks in and out.

And so we have identified that as being a really critical area for us to treat.

And we're doing a lot of work in the 89 corridor, both 89 south of Truckee and 89 north of Truckee, for that community protection element, as well as for watershed health.

So we have another project that is several years out because we haven't started the environmental compliance process on it yet.

So we will see more work south of the Big Chief area eventually.

But for the time being, once the Big Chief project finishes, we'll be done in there for a while.

But that also introduces the topic of maintenance on these projects.

Yeah, we're going to talk about that.

Yeah.

What is the maintenance?

And we'll get into that now.

But as that project keeps moving further south, that's going to actually go into the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit, which puts another layer on top, correct?

Yes.

So the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit has similar partnerships and types of work going on.

They have the Tahoe Fire and Fuels team, as well as the National Forest foundation is working with what we call the LTB MU on project work.

We'll jump into management here in a little bit.

But I want to talk about wildlife.

And you tipped on that just a little bit.

How do you balance that with the wildlife habitat?

Because we're not just managing these forests for wildfire.

It's habitat, their watersheds, their recreation areas, their ecosystems.

How do you balance all those priorities?

Yeah, I myself am very much a generalist, and I feel very lucky to get to work with the Forest Service because they have so many specialists like wildlife biologists, hydrologists, botanists, that really have intimate knowledges of where these critical species are, where critical areas are on the Tahoe National Forest or any national forest that need protection.

So when a project starts, we go through an environmental compliance analysis.

We'll identify a project area.

And that entire analysis takes kind of the minimum of a year to accomplish.

And what that is targeted to do or focus on is to survey the entire project area and understand what species are there, what critical things exist, what archaeological sites exist that need Protection.

And that ultimately influences the design of a project of what types of treatments, whether we use mechanical treatments or hand treatments with chainsaws and crews of that sort.

So that we can actually protect those resources.

Because you recognize those are assets that we need to protect and preserve in our, in our area.

So the project is designed understanding where those research resources are.

The project also has ongoing surveying because we know wildlife moves around.

The project design itself uses science based understanding of what is best at this point in time to accomplish forest health.

Using an understanding of what kind of natural range of variation looks like.

Trying to get us back to what our forests in this area looked like kind of pre Comstock era.

And ultimately we will do intentional things when implementing a project to create additional wildlife habitat.

We will leave some dead standing trees, knowing that birds like to nest in cavities like that.

We will leave certain debris on the ground, even though it could be flammable.

But we are also balancing that that needs to be wildlife habitat.

So there are those kinds of decisions and design elements that go into every single project.

Okay, you touched on something Comstock era.

But we're going to go pre Comstock era.

But during the Comstock they were taking all of that material and they were milling it.

What goes, what happens to all of the material that comes out of these projects now?

Where does it go?

So we have several mills in the area that we are taking our wood products to and those are being milled and will produce lumber in the same way that they were in the Comstock era.

For smaller diameter timber, we have some outlets for that.

There are wood to biomass facilities that exist that can burn that material to create energy.

And in some instances on projects when we don't have enough money to actually move that material off of a project site because hauling that material a long distance to get it to one of those facilities can be fairly cost prohibitive.

The material may also be piled on site and burned on the actual project site.

That's why they're being piled in big, big, big piles.

Yep.

Like look like big campfires.

Yep.

Yeah, got it.

Because it's challenging, probably finding a place to move all these materials to.

Are you finding a challenge with that?

I think that is a huge challenge for us.

We understand that having that material off the project site would be our best case scenario.

But it is very cost prohibitive, especially when we don't have as many outlets in the local area.

We've pursued some biomass utilization solutions.

We know that there's a lot of folks in the area that are Piloting different biomass utilization, you know, technology to actually more thoroughly use that material and get it off project sites.

But that is definitely a big bottleneck for us at this point in time.

Okay, let's move into some areas that a lot of folks are familiar with.

Let's roll over to Cabin Creek now, the big Chief area.

So it's along.

This is the Highway 89 corridor.

This is between truck and out by meadows, homes, campgrounds, trails, jackass mountain biking trails, Elboro.

A lot of people saying, what.

What's going on here?

But you're doing work there and beyond.

But why was this landscape identified as a priority?

I would think that it'd be the same with that prevailing south and southwest wind pushing that fire into Truckee.

Kind of like the big Jack east project.

Am I correct in saying that?

You are correct in saying that, yep.

And I think the other factor, you know, still going in protecting that evacuation corridor, as well as thinking about critical infrastructure for our region, the landfill is.

The eastern regional landfill is located kind of in the middle of that Cabin Creek project.

We actually, you know, partnered with Placer county, and they are.

While we are doing fuels reduction work on the federal land surrounding the eastern regional landfill, and they are also implementing mastication work on their property, where their facility actually is surrounded by forested land.

So they are, you know, we will often say, you know, we don't want to have an eyebrow.

We don't want to have an untreated area next to a treated area, because fire can still get into that untreated area.

So it's really been rewarding to work with Placer county and understand that we will have that continuity protecting that critical infrastructure.

Does recreation influence how you design these projects?

And I guarantee you it's the mountain bikers in that corridor.

You're smiling.

Look, you should see the smile on her face because she knows she's heard you.

Does it influence the work you're doing?

Because I saw the work you did last year, and you guys really tiptoed around the trails and didn't do a lot of damage to them.

Yeah.

I think what's challenging about recreation is that our recreation is the lifeblood of our community.

You know, everyone.

I don't want to be dramatic and overstate.

Almost everyone moved to Truckee because they love to recreate.

We want to be on our public lands.

We want to be able to utilize these trails that exist.

And it's a challenge for our partnership.

And we're really thinking about the inflection point that we're at.

We Started this partnership.

We've gone through the first few years.

We've really been focused on environmental compliance, and we're now really hitting the ground running, where we have all these projects coming into implementation at the same time that we've set as our highest priority.

Our partnership has really set our highest priority projects as the projects that are closest to our town center and having all of those accessible trails and accessible project areas.

Starting implementation at the same time is seeing a massive recreation impact.

Our partnership is utilizing project area closures for public safety.

Because these machines, as you said earlier, they can throw debris really far.

Really far, really far.

And we know that there's a strong chance that someone could get hurt if they bike through that area or run through that area while a project's going on.

And so from a standpoint of.

To your question of how do recreation areas or trails influence the design of projects?

You know, we know the public will.

Will potentially be there if they don't know that the closure is ongoing or that project implementation is ongoing.

And so we have the trails, you know, system trails that are designated by the forest Service.

We are designing the project to protect them.

They have to be left in as good of or better condition as when the project started.

And so we have those protection measures in place for recreation assets like a trail.

But I think the way that it influences the quote, unquote design of a project or how we implement or manage a project is really more we have a higher attention to detail, knowing that there will be members of the public who are unaware that a project is ongoing and may still enter a project area.

And we really want the community to remain safe.

And also our implementation contractors to be able to implement a project without having the concern in the back of their mind that there will be someone riding through there, because that's a liability for them and they don't want to hurt anyone as well.

No.

Those pieces of wood and debris fly far, and they're sharp.

Yeah.

Because when they masticated, it's not a straight cut.

It's almost like a little tiny spear.

And those are like little spears flying through the air.

Yeah.

No one.

No one needs a speared on a bike ride.

No.

No.

Be very careful out there.

You know, even I will tell you after you finish a project.

My daughter, she has.

We have horses, and we went out and rode in some of these, and we bopped off a trail, and the moment we popped off a trail, the horse got a cut in its hock.

Yeah.

Because it's so sharp.

Right.

That they're not cut.

And so that was.

That was an eye opener for me.

We thought, oh, we're gonna just go ride through the forest now.

No, we're not just gonna go ride through the forest, honey.

Okay, you hit on something before we move on over to the Carpenter Valley 89.

It's an evacuation route that's part of this plan.

Yes.

Yep.

And can you elaborate on that at all?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing to elaborate on there, I think, would be when a fire comes through an area, we both need people to be able to get out safely, and we also need first responders to be able to get into an area safely.

And whether that be the 89 corridor or whether it be other roads, you know, there's a lot of dirt roads in the area, Forest Service system roads that our first responders utilize to actually get into fire areas and get necessary machinery in to fight fire.

And so all of these projects, whether it be in the 89 corridor or not, are really focused on ensuring that there is significant clearing around our road areas so that fire would not be very intense coming up to the road's edge.

And we also know that there's other players doing this.

This kind of work in the area.

The Fire Protection district is focused on this.

Caltrans has work that's ongoing to ensure that areas within their road right of way are cleared of vegetation or have reduced vegetation density so that a fire coming up to a roadway will not impact travel on the road.

Yeah.

And there's.

And I will, and I will.

Big kudos, too, because it's expensive.

But those private landowners, private property, they're doing work, too, within the area.

Big work that's costing a lot of big money.

And it's coming out of their own pocket, too.

It's not just the federal and state dollars.

It's coming out of other people's money, too, for those projects.

Yeah, I think that's a huge thing that we haven't talked about yet and I'm sure we'll talk more about.

But no, don't go ahead.

Let's go then.

Let's.

We can hit funding before we roll in, because another pro.

I.

We're going to go to Alder 89, Carpenter Valley next, which I highlighted and focused on that area at the beginning of mountain bike season in the single track report, because there's a lot of work going on there, too.

Yeah.

So.

But go ahead, touch on funding for a minute.

Yeah.

Funding is, I think, probably our biggest bottleneck for doing this work.

Our partnership, when we formed our Partnership did a financial assessment of how much this work would cost, and we estimated to do 60,000 acres of treatment, it would cost $140 million.

And that was in 20, $22.

Diesel's double now, you know.

Yeah.

So we have not yet rerun that, but we anticipate that it is more than our original estimate.

We, as a partnership have raised.

This might be a dated number, but I want to say we've raised $26 million toward this work.

So we.

We have made progress.

You know, that is a lot of money that we have put a lot of work into raising to be able to implement and do the work and the planning work that we've done thus far.

But we still have a long way to go to get to that, you know, minimum $140 million goal.

And we so far have had pretty minimal federal funding support.

Most of that work, or most of that funding has come from state agencies.

We've also had some local foundation support and corporate funding from folks that are based in the Reno area.

The Truckee meadows water authority and the nature conservancy have done a lot of work in trying to build some of those corporate relationships with folks in the Reno and Sparks area.

And so we're really hodgepodging together our funding.

It would be absolutely incredible if someone just came out of the sky and said, here's $140 million check so that you can do all the work that you need to.

And we know that's not a reality.

And we have to continue to figure out ways forward through these kind of financial bottlenecks so that we can achieve having the most resilient community that we can.

That's not an obtainable amount.

The $100 million, if you look at all the images that the Reno Tahoe is selling to the world to come, if those images are black moonscapes, you think they're just going to come to gamble?

I don't think so anymore.

100 Million is not a whole lot to bring those people into one of the places that is exploding.

I call Reno the new Denver, but that's a whole nother story.

I under.

And word on the street, too, is there's about $10 million in contract work that needs to be done out there, but nobody to do the work.

Is that.

Am I correct in hearing that?

Is there not enough companies to do all this work that we're looking to do?

That's, I'm sure, very project and area dependent.

Okay.

It's not an area of expertise for me.

All I can say Is that for the projects that we've been putting out, we've been seeing a project that I put out recently.

I got 28 bids from different contracting companies on.

For a company, I think they are interested in bidding on a project like that because it means guaranteed work for a longer amount of time.

I think where we're maybe seeing some of those smaller bottlenecks, I don't, I don't want to speculate, but I would assume that it's maybe challenging for some smaller projects to get a contractor to, to bite on some things like that.

Yeah, it's a modern day gold rush.

It really is.

I'm thinking about quitting radio.

I'm going to go buy some chainsaws in a truck.

All right, let's go north on 89 right now to the Alder 89 Carpenter Valley project happening.

This is in the WUI, the wildland urban Interface.

It does include the Immigrant Trail, Prosser OHV areas and it does border residential.

So here we are again.

Is this treated any differently than Big Jack East?

Any differently than the other projects we talked about?

Yeah, I think generally speaking, when we have any projects that are abutting residential areas, we have some additional protection measures that we use.

We have some noise limitations and hours of operations that we confine our contractors to within a certain distance from residential property lines.

So I think that's one layer that's different.

We also utilize that on the Big Jack east project.

So that's not necessarily new or different, but a layer that we haven't talked about.

I think the other interesting thing with the Alder 89 project is we have worked with Tahoe Donner.

They've been doing a ton of work with their forestry department or within their forestry department to do fuels reduction work on Tahoe Donner common areas.

And part of our Alder 89 project abuts some of those common areas.

And so we've done cross boundary work in that project area.

But I think for the most part those projects similar to the, to the ones we've already discussed, we know there are, you know, beloved trails in those areas.

We're trying to implement in the high use recreation areas first and as quickly as we can so that we can reopen some of those areas for public use.

We know that people love to bike into Carpenter Valley.

People love running along Alder Creek on the Emigrant Trail.

So we are working as diligently as we can to, you know, keep the public safe, implement the project as.

As quickly and as effectively as we can.

But we also recognize that there are.

There are areas that, you know, will see recreation impacts so that we can get this necessary work done.

I've heard personally see wildlife impacts for the better.

So the Verdi it is.

It has a mule deer herd, and it migrates back and forth through that corridor.

And that Carpenter Valley Alder 89 project that's been going on for about two years, am I correct or a little bit.

It started at the OHV area a little bit, and they worked their way off the OHV on the north side of Prosser.

And those herds of deer, about 60 to 90 days after the mastication, those herds of deer were actually in there browsing where they couldn't browse before.

Cool.

It was really cool to see because Kevin and I talked about this from the US Forest Service about the last time we've seen true herds of deer in the area.

And so that's one thing I'm seeing working.

And now with the hawk fire and all that, they've lost a lot of wintering ground, and there's gonna be a lot of pressure for them to move back up into these areas and try to sustain here.

So good work on that.

Good work on that.

Let's talk about the wildfire connection.

Okay.

We've talked about a lot of different projects, and while each project has its own goals, wildfire resilience is clearly an important part of the larger picture.

So how does the work you're doing today change the way these forests may respond to wildfire tomorrow?

Yeah, we.

I want to be very forthcoming in saying these projects are not going to prevent wildfire.

Fire can start anywhere.

Fire can be caused by a lot of different things.

The.

The goal of our partnerships work is to treat at a landscape scale.

I think a lot of the work that is happening directly adjacent to town or when we think about our, you know, personal duty for defensible space work around our homes, that's at a small scale.

And we think about that from, you know, an individual lens, but from this landscape level scale, and trying to treat what might seem like a very bold goal of treating 60,000 acres.

We.

We are trying to understand that if a fire comes through this area at a large scale, how can we change the fire behavior so that we can control the fire and move the fire in a way so that we can contain it?

You know, there are no guarantees.

There are a lot, you Know we are at the mercy of mother Nature.

There's so many factors that play into what is going on when a fire does happen.

But our goal and intention is at a landscape level.

How can we understand or how can we treat areas that will give us the greatest success in managing a wildfire in the event that it does come through so that we can decrease the risk and decrease the severity of which it will hit our community with?

There's two sides of management though.

You talked to one part of managing the fire, but how do we manage the actual land itself once step one is done?

The mastication, the deforesting, the trees removed and now we have all this.

Low.

Brush, all these little parcels out there.

Is it back burning?

What is the management of this for the future after we go through with step one and remove all the massive debris?

Yeah, from.

In so many ways we exist in an ideal world and the real world, our ideal world is that we would be able to reintroduce low intensity fire across the landscape.

At scale.

Low intensity fire, as I said a little bit earlier, has so many beneficial uses, or beneficial fire is, it's sometimes called that as well, but is really important for, you know, burning down some of the pine needles that accrue, opening up seed pods.

That beneficial fire, being able to be reintroduced to the landscape would be our ideal scenario because if we could have consistent low intensity fire on the landscape, that would reduce the amount of flammable material that would burn in general and would just generally reduces the risk of high severity wildfire.

That's our ideal world.

Our realistic world is we understand there are so many factors, we have so many structures and other assets and resources on the landscape that it's going to be very challenging to reintroduce low intensity fire across the entire landscape.

And so we will continue to design projects and function under this ideal world scenario and utilize those tools in our toolbox whenever we can.

Also knowing that there are going to be a lot of circumstances and conditions in which we can't actually meet that ideal world scenario because of the reality that we're in.

We will continue to educate ourselves and understand how can we get as close to that ideal world scenario as possible.

And I think a lot of that also comes into play with public education around smoke and having some smoke, though really not ideal, when we're trying to do beneficial burns or understory burns where we're burning the forest floor in a safe and contained area.

I think having the general population understanding, though not ideal, and it can also be very you know, stress inducing when you smell smoke and you think that there is a bad fire going on.

But we need to have some level of tolerance to good smoke so that we can burn some of those areas when we do have windows of opportunity to do so.

Okay, let's look ahead now, Ann.

Let's talk about the future.

You've got a lot of projects out there that we've talked about that have been completed, projects in progress.

Now let's shift to what's still ahead of us.

When you look at what's coming next, what are you excited about?

What project out there?

Any of them excite you?

Yeah.

Right now I'm managing a project that's going on in the Alpine Meadows area that I'm really excited about.

It's a very challenging project.

It's very steep terrain, and there's a lot of really fascinating soil in the area.

That for me, as a project manager and an environmental science kind of nerd a little bit, it's been really fascinating to learn about and understand what kinds of resource protections and different project management elements do we need to consider to be able to implement in this steep, rocky terrain.

That is a very different project location than some of the other areas, like the Big Jack east project in the Sawtooth.

Sawtooth area.

So it's really been, for me thus far, a bit of a challenging project.

But I'm really excited to see kind of the fruits of all of our work coming together on that.

So that that community, who has been very engaged and involved, and they actually financially supported some of the environmental compliance going on for that project a couple years ago.

It's really going to be exciting to see that project start implementation and get to kind of reap the benefits of understanding how to get all those complex layers to come together and so we can have a successful project outcome there.

You can't see this, but when she was talking about the soil, she started glowing the smile on your face.

It was out the soil.

And I've learned a little bit about the soil throughout these community conversations on Wildfire with Dawn Johnson from the National Weather Service.

We talked about the soil and what that means and what's underneath it and where we're at today.

That one's in the missing snowpack, and there's a lot of information in the soil.

Okay, so if we have this conversation again five or ten years from now, what would you hope the Tahoe Truckee landscape looks like?

Well, ten years from now, I'm hoping that all of the projects that our partnership set out to do have been accomplished?

I think we will have accomplished, in my ideal world, all of the initial treatments that we set out to do.

I know five to ten years from now, we will be even deeper in the conversation around maintenance on these projects.

Vegetation grows back and we will need to continue to treat these areas, whether it be through more mechanical intervention, whether we're able to reintroduce fire in certain areas to slow down that vegetation regrowth.

We've also been trying to pilot some targeted grazing using goats and sheep.

Sheep too.

There's so much.

There's so much sheep poop out there.

I mean, I come across it and I'm like, what happened here?

Well, it's tough because they don't like eating manzanita, so.

No, they don't.

I don't know that that's going to be a really effective tool for us in this area, but it was a cool pilot for us.

But yeah, five to ten years from now, I think we're.

I'm really hopeful that our partnership will have done these initial entries and we're really just focused on figuring out the maintenance plan for all of these project areas and figuring out a sustainable financial plan to actually support that maintenance as well.

Okay, so getting close to wrapping it up here with you.

How can ordinary people become better stewards and advocates for the public lands they enjoy?

As it pertains to our partnership specifically and the forest health work that we are setting out to do, I think being an informed recreationist is the most helpful thing for our partnership.

We have a website, TrekkieForests.org that has up to date project information and some interactive project maps where you can see that what projects we have actively in implementation and or upcoming.

And I think the big challenge for us, as we've talked about, is that recreation and project implementation nexus, where we have people wanting to recreate where we have projects that are unsafe for people to be recreating in.

And so if folks can normalize checking that website or sharing with their friends where projects that they know about are ongoing, that's a huge help to us in being able to implement these projects quickly and effectively so we can reopen these areas to the general public.

And I think also just from an advocacy standpoint, from public lands management, we do manage these lands and we are managing these lands and they need to be managed so that our community can be resilient to wildfire.

And having more knowledge about that is only a power.

And having more people in the community who are informed and able to share with their Friends or their mountain biking buds that that's going on is a huge help.

Okay, so if you could take our listeners to one place in the Tahoe Truckee region and show them an example of what successful forest restoration looks like, where would you take them and what would you show them?

Hmm.

Hmm.

I think there's.

I mean, it depends.

Do you want me to geek out?

Over.

Okay, I'm gonna give you.

You have about four.

Four minutes left.

Okay, geek out.

But we want them to go there and actually see this, the listeners.

Yeah.

So a place people can go and see.

Yeah.

I mean, I think it feels like low hanging fruit, but I would absolutely take them to the northernmost area of the Cabin Creek project where the jackass trail system is.

I was absolutely blown away by the implementation contractor working in there and how they were able to.

To cut away trees and leave the berms of the trail totally intact.

It was mind blowing to me.

And I think that's maybe a little bit challenging to see now that the project has completed implementation in that area, but it is very impressive.

These implementation contractors are highly skilled at their jobs, and it gives me a lot of peace of mind seeing them be able to do this kind of work in a very thoughtful and caring and intentional way to protect our resources, because we have so many recreation assets and wildlife assets that I personally really care about in our community.

And so getting to work with implementation contractors like that one where they did a really phenomenal job to protect a trail system that I personally ride on and I really love to go to, was just really affirming in the work that we're doing and feeling like there is a way for us to do this and protect these resources at the same time.

They did such a good job in that area, they make Christmas tree hunting very hard.

I'm telling you, I've been hunting Christmas trees right there for 20 years.

That is a difficult spot to find a Christmas tree now.

Hey, there are worse things than having to find a new Christmas tree hunter, isn't that right?

But.

But those.

It's not just about mountain biking.

It's not just about trail running.

It's not just about hiking.

The families that are going out there Christmas tree hunting, they're doing their part to a point, but they're seeing it as well.

There's a lot of families out there.

Well, Ann Graham with the National Forest foundation, thank you for joining us and helping us understand the work that's happening across the Tahoe Truckee region.

Thanks so much for having me to.

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