This op-ed by Amy Berry and Caitlin Meyer was published in the Reno Gazette-Journal on December 4, 2024.
If you drive down Mt. Rose Highway, you will see remnants of the recent 5,824-acre Davis Fire: Retardant sprayed across the mountain, charred trees on ridgelines, and a forest floor turned black by flame. You will also see “Thank You Firefighters” signs dotting the roadway, reflecting our shared feelings of deep gratitude to firefighting personnel for saving lives and homes.
But here’s what you won’t see: Signs thanking foresters for carrying out forest health treatments in the area. With good reason, we hear often about courageous efforts to suppress wildfire. But the unsung heroes in those firefights are our foresters, who work year-round on wildfire prevention.
In many ways, prevention is suppression.
Due in large part to a history of logging to feed silver mines in the 1800s, plus decades of policy to put out wildfires as quickly as possible, Tahoe’s forest has far too many trees in it. A forest with too many trees is like a cup with too many straws. Trees are competing with each other for essential resources like water and sunlight, and as a result, are unhealthy, dying by the millions, and decreasingly resilient to wildfire, drought and invasive bugs.
To address these problems, foresters are implementing forest health treatments. Forest health treatments are highly tailored, science-driven efforts to get rid of excess, hazardous and dead trees and underbrush by removing them from the landscape, or using low-intensity prescribed fire to clear them out. Importantly, these treatments do not entail clear-cutting or anything like it. Clear-cutting is what made our forests so unhealthy in the first place. No mainstream practitioner would advocate for its return.
In sharp contrast, forest treatments create healthier trees and more resilient forests that are better able to withstand wildfire and other threats. As it turns out, they also help our firefighters. Here’s why.
When a wildfire breaks out, excess woody material in the forest becomes potent fuel, allowing the fire to spread faster, hotter and more erratically. Overgrown low-lying vegetation acts as “ladder fuel,” carrying flames into taller trees. In a dense continuity of taller trees, flames are forced upward to the top of the tree canopy, where they form high-intensity “crown” fires that race across the landscape. It is nearly impossible for firefighters to manage these sky-high walls of flame.
Forest treatments help by creating space between trees, which lets wildfire spread on the ground at a lower intensity, in a way that is much safer and more manageable for firefighters.
During the Davis Fire, treatments gave firefighters a chance to get the fire under control and minimize its impact to the community. Nevada State Forester and Firewarden Kacey KC explained, “In untreated areas, the fire ran through the tree crowns, killing all vegetation and creating extremely difficult conditions for firefighters. In contrast, when the fire hit treated areas, its intensity was greatly reduced and it went to the ground. This lower intensity fire was easier for firefighters to control. It also kept large portions of forest alive and had the bonus effect of clearing hazardous fuels off of the forest floor, similar to a prescribed burn.”
We saw this during the Caldor Fire, too. New research examined the impact of treatments done in the years leading up to the fire. In treated areas, fire severity was significantly lower, making trees three times more likely to survive and helping firefighters stop forward progress into the Basin.
“In Nevada, and across the U.S., we’re seeing great success with these treatments, which decrease wildfire’s damage to forests, homes and even watersheds,” KC said.
If this was a board game and you wanted to help your firefighters beat a wildfire, you would play a “forest treatment” card. The Tahoe Fund is working closely with private, nonprofit and public agency partners to play this card again and again.
For example, we teamed up with local organizations to bring BurnBot’s remote-operated forest management tools to the region. BurnBot’s masticators completed a 22-acre treatment in Incline in just three days. Next spring, its prescribed fire machine will allow crews to conduct burns during extended weather windows and without smoke or the risk of runaway flame.
This fall, with support from the Tahoe Fund and others, the Washoe Tribe of California and Nevada hosted a 10-day Intentional Fire Training. This was the first step toward developing a skilled workforce to help blend Indigenous knowledge and techniques with modern forest restoration practices.
Utility companies are also stepping up to help. The NV Energy Foundation contributed $250,000 to the Tahoe Fund’s Smartest Forest Fund to support more game-changing initiatives that increase the pace and scale of forest treatments. NV Energy is also doubling down on its efforts to create resiliency corridors in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, by treating thousands of acres around power lines.
This work is so important because it helps our forests and our firefighters. Forest treatments give both trees and firefighters the edge they need to succeed. So, while you may not see it on a sign (yet!), we want to say it here: Thank you, firefighters and foresters!
Amy Berry is the CEO of the Tahoe Fund. Caitlin Meyer is the Tahoe Fund’s chief program officer.
View this op-ed with a Reno Gazette-Journal subscription here.
Header photo by California Tahoe Conservancy
