A retardant drop on the Bear Fire on September 4, 2024. Photo by Tahoe National Forest.
SIERRA COUNTY — The US Forest Service has conducted sweeping fuels management projects throughout its lands at a high rate for several years. The projects aim to reduce fire risk through logging, removing excess woody material, and conducting prescribed burns, among other techniques. Now, the Forest Service believes the work has paid off, directly affecting the ability of firefighters to control wildfires this year.
The Bear Fire was one of the clearest example of forest health projects benefitting firefighting efforts. The fire burned within an area where forest thinning occurred as part of the Smithneck Fuels Reduction Project in 2022-2023. According to Sierraville District Ranger Rachel Hutchinson (now tapped for Deputy Forest Supervisor), the Smithneck Project “removed densely growing small trees, brush and grass on over 723 acres surrounding Sierra Brooks that had grown back after the Cottonwood Fire. These densely growing trees had created conditions that would easily carry fire near Sierra Brooks.”
The Smithneck Project was created out of a partnership between the Tahoe National Forest, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, and Sierra County after the 2020 Loyalton Fire — a 47,000-acre wildfire that destroyed six homes and 29 outbuildings in the Loyalton area. Now, that work is expected to continue through 2025 with the added partner of Fire Safe Sierra County to thin an additional 500 acres of trees and brush along Antelope Valley Road. There are also at least seven different fuels management projects on the Tahoe National Forest in various planning stages, amounting to potentially hundreds of thousands of acres of forest treatment.
Efforts by the Forest Service to mitigate wildfire risk for communities have been received very positively by the Sierra County Supervisors and by the public for the most part. Supervisor Sharon Dryden, representing Sierra Brooks, said that the Smithneck Project was “probably one of the largest reasons we have homes to go back to” and that the success should be used as an example in the future.