El Dorado RCD advances forest health in the Central Sierra
7/5/18In collaboration with state and federal agencies, El Dorado Resource Conservation District (RCD) and neighboring RCDs have been leading efforts to improve forest health in mountain communities in the Central Sierra east of Sacramento.
The following excerpt is from an article written by Howard Hardee and published in the Sacramento News & Review on June 21, 2018.
Oak trees gradually give way to evergreens as Highway 50 rises from the Sacramento Valley floor to the mountain community of Pollock Pines, just west of Placerville. An exit leads to Jenkinson Lake at Sly Park Recreation Area, a reservoir that serves as one of the primary water sources for the residents of rural El Dorado County. It’s a brisk morning and a gaggle of geese calls overhead, unseen in the overcast sky.
On the scene are Jim Branham, the executive officer of the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, and Mark Egbert, manager of El Dorado County Resource Conservation District, or RCD. Overlooking the glass-smooth lake, the pair explains that the 3,724 acres of surrounding forestland are encompassed by the Sly Park Vegetation Management Project, an example of proactive forest management in action.
In March, the Sierra Nevada Conservancy awarded the RCD $500,000 to create a fire-resistant landscape around Sly Park. Now, multiple agencies—including Cal Fire, the Forest Service, the El Dorado Irrigation District and others—are working to avoid a disaster on the magnitude of the 2014 King Fire, which consumed nearly 100,000 acres of nearby forest and a dozen homes. Workers hand-thin brush and small trees, in addition to employing mechanical removal, with the goal of using prescribed fire to mimic natural processes.
The alternative isn’t pretty, Egbert says. He subscribes to the philosophy that excess trees either leave the forest as lumber or wood chips, or burn. “The trees in the King Fire, they’re not sequestering carbon anymore,” he says. “They’ve burned up. They’re dead.”
The strategy remains hard to sell to the public. “It’s somewhat counterintuitive to say we need to cut a bunch of these green, live trees to make the forest healthy,” Branham says. “It’s not the easiest message to deliver to people who’ve grown up thinking more trees are better.” But there’s been a shift in public perception since the King Fire, Ebgert says. Now, residents regularly thank them for their work; they understand that it benefits forest health, air quality and their own safety.
Count Branham and Egbert among those who are optimistic that full restoration is still achievable, despite the daunting scale of California’s forest-carbon problem. They say reducing stand density promotes growth, and therefore carbon storage; and bigger trees are generally more resilient to fire, insects and disease.
That’s why Jenkinson Lake can be a model for proactive forest management throughout the Sierra Nevada, Branham says: “This is exactly what we need to be doing if we want to store carbon long term.”
With another fire season heating up, it’s a good time to remember that forests provide more than lumber for our homes, recreational settings and pretty backgrounds for our profile pictures. Our dependence on trees is as basic as breathing. And if Mother Nature keeps coughing up carbon like this, we’re pretty much on our own with this whole climate change thing.
Additionally, One Tree Planted has featured El Dorado & Georgetown RCDs, Amador RCD, and Calaveras RCD on their blog. Please click here to read the full story. The RCDs were recognized for their leadership and participation in a reforestation effort that has contributed to 320,000 native trees being planted and distributed in 2018.
