bark beetles 2 | The Smokey Wire : National Forest News and Views

Rim Fire Images

May 27, 2015 by Larry Harrell Fotoware

The media does like to sensationalize events like the Rim Fire, often implying that the lands have been “destroyed”. The Rim Fire is so huge and burned across so many differing kinds of vegetation that you cannot summarize too much. Even my own “sampling” from the access roads doesn’t cover very much of the impacts and effects of a 250,000 acre wildfire.

Much of the wildfire burned in plantations generated from previous wildfires. Here is an example of one of those plantations that wasn’t thinned. I can see why it wasn’t but, maybe a “pre-commercial thinning” kind of task could have been included into one of the other commercial plantation thinning projects that I worked on, back in 2000.

In the same area were blocks of land that were left for “Mother Nature”, after the early 70’s Granite Fire. Here is what a 40 year old brushfield looks like. Those blocks are choked with deer brush, whitethorn and manzanita, with very few conifers, and fewer oaks than the “natural stands” (as they called the unburned portions).

As you can see, sometimes there is a fine line between a total plantation loss and one that has survived a wildfire. This is one of the thinned plantations, near Cherry Lake.

Here is another example of an “old growth” brushfield. While this one didn’t burn much, there are many examples of them burning at moderate to high intensities. Looking at Google Maps, I can find examples where the flames from the brushfields were pushed into the thinned plantations. The Forest Service should be treating those old brushfields with prescribed fire, instead of “whatever happens”.

This unburned stand, within the fire perimeter, is a good example of the work we did back in 2000. I don’t really know of any other reason why this large patch, near Cherry Lake, didn’t burn

The Clavey River, long-cherished by the local eco-community, acted like a conduit for the Rim Fire, as it burned so many acres in just one day. However, you can see that the intensity and damage is rather minimal. There is a fork in the river, down there, and the main fork of the fire went up that way, finding more conifers to burn. (It also found the big block of Sierra Pacific Industries lands.) I found it very interesting that the isolated pockets of Douglas-firs had very high mortality, but only a low-to-moderate intensity.

Here is one of those pockets, alongside the Clavey River. In the past, this kind of pocket would be thrown into a large helicopter salvage project.

The Rim Fire Salvage Seems Done

May 8, 2015 by Larry Harrell Fotoware

My last expedition included another trip to Yosemite, and the Rim Fire. I DO think that there are enough dead trees for the owls to “enjoy” in their respite from breeding. Then again, maybe this new “Circle of Life” will provide more food, in the form of baby owls, to larger predators?

You might also notice the ongoing beetle kills, which will increase when spring and summer come into play. This next picture shows the little bit of harvesting that was done along Highway 120. You can see the drainage where the Highway sits, and you can also see how wide the hazard tree units are. The barren area in the foreground is/was chaparral.

I am glad that the Forest Service “took my advice” about getting the work done before there was any chance to appeal to a more liberal….errr….. higher court. However, is THIS what we want our salvaged wildfires to look like? This area should be ready for re-burn in a few short years. Also, be reminded that two of the plantation salvage projects did not sell, despite the prompt action by the Forest Service. My guess is that SPI was low-balling the Forest Service to get those smaller trees at less than “base rates”. That means that the prices remain the same (rock bottom) but, some of the non-commercial treatments would be dropped. It appears that the Forest Service wasn’t willing to go as low as SPI wanted. So, those perfectly good salvage trees will be left, “for wildlife”, it appears.

Happy Earth Day!

April 22, 2015 by Larry Harrell Fotoware

26 years after “protected” forests burned, in Yosemite National Park, this is what we now have. Chances are, it will burn again, before conifer trees can become established enough to resist the next inevitable wildfire. You might notice that even the manzanita is having trouble surviving. I doubt that John Muir intended this on public lands. This landscape is probably the future of parts of the Rim Fire, within Yosemite National Park.

Update From the Yosemite “Laboratory”

April 17, 2015 by Larry Harrell Fotoware

Here is a stitched-together panorama from the Foresta area of Yosemite National Park. I’ll have to pair it up with my historical version, one of these days. Restoration processes seem to be minimal, as re-burns continue to ravage the landscape, killing more old growth forests and eliminating more seed sources. Even the brush is dying off, due to a lack of organic matter in some of those granitic soils. With the 200-400 year old trees gone, we have to remember that these stand replacement fires, in this elevational band of the Sierra Nevada, weren’t very common before the 1800’s.

Yes, it IS important that we learn our lessons from the “Whatever Happens” management style of the Park Service. Indeed, we should really be looking closely at the 40,000+ acres of old growth mortality from the Rim Fire, too! Re-burns could start impacting the Rim Fire area, beginning this fire season.

Yosemite Visit

March 31, 2015March 30, 2015 by Larry Harrell Fotoware

I recently spent three days in the Yosemite National Park area, shooting each day, in different locations. Yes, I did find a marvelous group of dispersed camping sites (free!) within the Rim Fire perimeter. Of course, they were there before the fire but, those spots still look great. Yes, there are also patches of high-intensity burn along Hardin Flat Road (the old highway) that have been salvage logged, too.

One of the places I went to, inside the park, was a large patch of high-intensity burn, all around Hodgdon Meadow. The campground wasn’t really impacted much by the fire. All around the fringe of the large meadow were green and healthy trees. They should be a good source of seeds, and it looks like most sugar pines had an excellent “cone year”. The problem will be the inevitable re-burns, with heavy fuels from trees like these:

Yes, there are some tufts of green up there but, will the trees be able to fight off drought and bugs, with damaged cambium? Probably not. Yosemite has become a giant incubation “Motherland” for bark beetles, who don’t stay inside the lines on the map. However, I would recommend Hodgdon Meadow Campground (right near the Highway 120 Entrance Station) for your visit to Yosemite. There is something very primitive to camping under such giant trees (non-Sequoias).

Speaking of Giant Sequoias, I dropped into the Tuolumne Grove, to see how the Rim Fire impacted the area. I knew that firefighters had set up sprinklers, and I could tell by looking at the Google Maps view that there wasn’t much intensity there. This area (pictured below) was about as scorched as much as I could find, along the trails. Certainly, nothing to worry about. I’ll bet there is more insect mortality in the area than fire mortality. I’m sure that some will say they wished it had burned a little more intensely. Most of the grove didn’t burn nearly as well as in this picture.

I went to Foresta, to view last year’s re-burn and the progress of “recovery” of the Yosemite side. Here are some views of that situation:

Nine years after the re-burn, and 25 years after the original A-Rock Fire, this area remains desolate. Even brush is having a hard time growing, in soils with very little organic matter. The soils dry out and growth stops, during the hot summers.

Looking westward, you can see last year’s re-burn, mostly on the Forest Service lands outside the Park. I worked on the original A-Rock salvage project, way back in 1991. I still have some Kodachrome slides from those days, up on that long ridge. The snags in this view probably survived the A-Rock Fire but not the Big Meadow Fire.

Yes, I did go into Yosemite Valley and found some uncrowded hiking along the Merced River.

I did see some significant pine beetle patches, in Yosemite Valley. It seems like a “normal” level of bark beetles, considering the horrible drought, and all.

There is a lot more to see over on my Facebook page www.facebook.com/LarryHarrellFotoware

The Tahoe Basin

March 11, 2015March 11, 2015 by Larry Harrell Fotoware

Lake Tahoe would probably be a National Park, by now, if the Comstock Lode had never been found. There was clearcutting right down to the lakshore, for mining timbers, in the silver mines. Incline Village was named for the switchback road that transported logs to a flume that went all the way down to the Washoe Lake area, thousands of feet below.

Today, there is very little “logging” next to all that blue Tahoe lake water. Newspapers especially like to describe the basin as “pristine”, apparently not knowing the actual meaning of the word.

Much of the Lake Tahoe Basin is “de facto” Wilderness, with very little management happening, even when wildfires occur. Residents seem to be in denial about wildfire issues, not remembering the last drought that decimated their forests. However, it is easy enough to see the results of the last bark beetle infestation, in the form of accumulated fuels far beyond what is “natural”. Many areas of forest mortality were left “to recover”, on their own. Well, sometimes “recovery” takes decades or even centuries, as long as humans don’t intervene. That might also include multiple wildfires, opening the ground to accelerated erosion and having clarity-declining sediments flowing into Lake Tahoe.

Ironically, the lake’s level isn’t all that far down, thanks to the lobbying of lakeshore land owners, putting pressure on water regulators. That can only go so far, as Reno area interests need more water to keep growing and thriving. We’ll just have to see how the battle goes, as the Truckee River drops further and further.

Rim Fire Update

December 9, 2014December 9, 2014 by Larry Harrell Fotoware

Apparently, enough of the hazard trees within the Rim Fire on the Stanislaus NF have been cut so that the travel ban has finally been lifted, after more than a year. I heard one report that says that the litigation has failed at the District Court level, losing their pleas to stop the logging three times. The article below includes the Appeals Court but, I doubt that an appeal has been seen in court yet. It seems too soon after the District Court decision for the appeal to be decided.

http://www.calforests.org/rim-fire-update-final-motion-halt-restoration-forestry-rim-fire-denied/

Since the Rim Fire tore through the area and devoured over 250, 000 square miles of National, State and private forested land, the community has come together to put together a solution with positive environmental, economical and social sense. The whole effort to restore forests has been very successful due to cooperation of a diverse group of individuals, organizations and government agencies.

(Edit: Thanks to Matt for pointing out the acres/square miles error. That should be 250,000 acres.)

With a monster storm approaching California, we should be seeing some catastrophic erosion coming from the Rim and King Fire areas. Of course, very little can be done to prevent erosion on the steep slopes of the canyons with high burn intensity. Standing snags tend to channel water, while branches and twigs on the ground can hold back a surprising amount of soil. This flood event would have been great to document through repeat photography but, it appears that opportunity will be lost, too.

Bark beetle activity has also spiked where I live, northwest of the Rim Fire.

Urgent Action Needed to Save Sierra Forests

September 29, 2014 by Larry Harrell Fotoware

This viewpoint shows more of the reasons why the desire to have larger and more intense wildfires, in the Sierra Nevada, is the wrong way to go.

In this picture below, fire crews were run out of this stand, and back into the “safety zone”, on this fire I worked on, back in 1988.

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/28/6737076/viewpoints-urgent-action-needed.html

Air quality the past two weeks has been several times worse than some of the most polluted cities in the world due to smoke from the King fire. Last year’s Rim fire emitted greenhouse gases equivalent to 2.3 million vehicles for a year.
Also, the lost habitat and recreational opportunities from major fires like these are significant. It is not an exaggeration to say that virtually all Californians are affected when these “megafires” occur.
The report points out that wildfires are getting larger and burning at higher intensity than ever before. The Rim fire burned at nearly 40 percent high intensity – meaning virtually no living vegetation is left – covering almost 100,000 acres. More acres have burned in the first 4½ years of this decade than in seven decades of the last century.
What can we do about it?

The main bottleneck in treating more acres is in implementation. The Forest Service is unwilling to increase the size of its Region 5 timber management staffs. They use some of the usual excuses, some of which are beyond their control but, not all of those issues are really significant, looking at the big picture. Yes, it is pretty difficult to implement extremely-complex plans when you are constantly training new temporary employees, hired right off the street.

No TRO for the Rim Fire Salvage!

September 17, 2014 by Larry Harrell Fotoware

As I predicted, there will be no TRO for the Rim Fire, from District Court. Once the sales are sold, restoration work can begin. Let’s hope that SPI has an army of fallers, ready and waiting. I also hope that they will leave the plantation salvage for last. *smirk*

Sonora, CA –A Federal Judge in Fresno has denied a temporary restraining order regarding the lawsuit filed against the Rim Fire Recovery Record of Decision.
Forest Service Spokesperson Wyn Hornbuckle says, “We are pleased with the court’s decision.” He would not comment further.
As reported earlier this month, three environmental groups including the Center for Biological Diversity were seeking an injunction to halt logging within the 37 occupied California spotted owl territories within the burned area. The Chair of the Yosemite Stanislaus Solutions (YSS) group and President of Sierra Resource Management, Mike Albrecht, worked with local environmental groups and the Forest Service to hammer out a compromise on the Rim Fire Record of Decision. He applauds the Judge’s decision.

http://www.mymotherlode.com/news/local/223061/logging-injunction-denied.html

Rim Fire Logging Lawsuit

September 12, 2014September 12, 2014 by Larry Harrell Fotoware

Yes, we all knew it was coming but there is one surprise. (See the 3rd plaintiff)

Again, owls will “occupy” almost ANY landscape, as long as there is prey there. If the nest stands were cooked, then they will have to find, and build, new nests. Owls are notoriously lazy in building nests, and often will use abandoned goshawk nests (and vice versa). One question I’ve wondered about for a long time is; Why do PACs retain their “protected” status when nesting habitats (the reason the land is protected) are destroyed? The loss of spotted owl (AND goshawk) nests is merely another part of the “whatever happens” strategy, so loved by the plaintiffs.

“The complaint issued by the Earth Island Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the California Chaparral Institute seeks an injunction to halt logging within the 37 occupied California spotted owl territories within the burned area. That would prevent logging in about 40% of the Rim Fire areas already approved by the decision for tree removal.”

http://www.mymotherlode.com/news/local/221678/rim-fire-logging-lawsuit.html