{"id":2512,"date":"2022-08-27T13:46:53","date_gmt":"2022-08-27T20:46:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/?p=2512"},"modified":"2022-08-27T13:46:53","modified_gmt":"2022-08-27T20:46:53","slug":"solution-to-fight-wildfire-a-new-sawmill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/08\/27\/solution-to-fight-wildfire-a-new-sawmill\/","title":{"rendered":"Solution To Fight Wildfire: a New Sawmill"},"content":{"rendered":"
By: Laura Bliss, BLOOMBERG<\/pre>\n
(PLACERVILLE, CALIFORNIA) Aug 27, 2022 \u2014 As California braces for another potentially devastating wildfire season, state officials and some environmental advocates are finding hope for forests in an unexpected place: a new sawmill under construction near Lake Tahoe.<\/p>\n
Tahoe Forest Products, LLC broke ground last month on a $10 million sawmill in Carson City, Nevada, which sits just across the California border on the eastern side of Lake Tahoe. It will be the first sawmill of its size to be built in the area in nearly a century, according to project leaders. Many scientists say forest-thinning projects are\u00a0urgently needed in the face of climate change<\/a>, and the new mill\u2019s supporters believe it will make a major impact in managing wildfires in a heavily wooded region that was threatened just last year by a massive blaze.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy jaw dropped when I heard the news,\u201d said Forest Schafer, director of the Natural Resources Division at the California Tahoe Conservancy, a state agency. \u201cIt\u2019s really rare to see a success like this that will make a real difference in Lake Tahoe overall.\u201d<\/p>\n
A century of fire suppression policies have left forests overgrown with smaller trees. While wildfire is part of the natural ecosystem, rising temperatures and worsening drought are leading to explosive blazes that decimate forests. Part of the answer, according to many ecologists and restoration experts,\u00a0is to ramp up the removal of younger trees<\/a>\u00a0from the understory, while simultaneously\u00a0introducing prescribed fire<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0trying new planting strategies<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Yet sawmills \u2014 the places where loggers take those logs \u2014 are few and far between in California. Economic recessions and the consolidation of the industry into larger, high-volume mills have played a role, and timber harvesting has declined. Multiple factors are behind that trend, including federal protections for endangered species, which restricted logging on public lands. In the Lake Tahoe area, the closest destination is more than 100 miles away, according to Amy Berry, the CEO of the Tahoe Fund, a philanthropy that supports environmental projects.<\/p>\n
The silencing of chainsaws was the sound of victory for environmental activists and forest ecologists, even a few years ago. And no one wants to see the type of clear-cutting that destroyed old-growth forests for much of the 20th century. But now scientific consensus is shifting towards acceptance \u2014 and even encouragement \u2014 of a certain amount of logging.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s just such abundant evidence that if we do nothing, we\u2019re going to lose it all,\u201d said John Battles, a professor of forest ecology at the University of California at Berkeley. \u201cThe forests will suffer such severe losses that we\u2019re no longer protecting the species. We\u2019re putting them at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
\"logging\"<\/p>\n
Leaders at Tahoe Forest Products envision a facility that processes roughly 40-50 million board feet of lumber per year \u2014 a modest operation compared to many other mills around the US. The Carson City operation will start processing logs in early 2023, said Jon Shinn, the CEO. It will produce construction lumber, fence posts and other products to sell to West Coast distributors.<\/p>\n
Most of the wood will initially be taken from trees that were killed in the massive Caldor fire that blazed through 221,000 acres in the Tahoe area in 2021.<\/p>\n
After that supply is finished, the mill will mainly process the smaller-diameter trees that experts say are overloading California forests, fueling the kinds of wildfires that leave landscapes obliterated. If nothing changes, those fires may pose a risk to the longevity of all sawmills, Shinn said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI worry that one of the insecurities of this venture is that there will be so much fire in the Sierra Nevada that the growing stock will decline to where we aren\u2019t growing that much anymore,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Tahoe Fund helped convene the sawmill project leaders, which include Shinn and Kevin Leary, the CEO of a Reno-based private investment firm, Hallador Investment Advisors. In 2021, it commissioned a study that\u00a0examined how much supply would be available for a sawmill operation in the region<\/a>. It cited recent funding and planning by the state of California and the US Forest Service to increase fuel reduction treatments such as thinning as well as prescribed fire. That support should help keep the supply of logs for the sawmill flowing, with the oversight of environmental regulators, said Berry of the Tahoe Fund.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone has a role to play here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The Carson City mill will be built on land owned by the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California. Wendy Loomis, the executive director of the tribe\u2019s business arm, said the project will aim to hire tribal members for jobs that will be available in the sawmill.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we look for projects, our first priority is to support the Tribe\u2019s vision and mission statement to help Mother Earth,\u201d Loomis said. \u201cNumber two is to create workforce development. So this accomplishes both of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several environmental groups and restoration experts offered cautious support for the types of thinning projects that the new sawmill is supposed to help. A spokesperson for the Nature Conservancy, the largest environmental nonprofit in the US, said that while it did not specifically endorse the Carson City project, \u201cwe can envision a future where a small-diameter sawmill, properly sited and sized, could help scale forest restoration efforts.\u201d The Sierra Nevada Alliance, an environmental nonprofit based in the Tahoe area, similarly advocates for healthy forest restoration.<\/p>\n
Last year\u2019s Caldor fire provided some evidence that thinning and prescribed fire \u2014 which was developed and practiced by Indigenous people for millennia \u2014 are beneficial for forests. In areas that had been treated,\u00a0flames dropped down enough to leave patches of forest still green and alive<\/a>, officials said at the time.<\/p>\n
Not everyone is in favor of the Carson City plan. Some residents have registered\u00a0concerns with elected officials<\/a>\u00a0about noise impacts related to the mill. And there are some scientists and activists who oppose all forms of logging, arguing that forest thinning is a smokescreen for the economic interests of timber companies. A lawsuit impacting a restoration-focused logging plan in\u00a0Yosemite National Park reflects that ongoing tension<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Battles, the Berkeley scientist, said those voices are in the scientific minority. And the Carson City sawmill isn\u2019t the only project of its kind. Further north, in Quincy, California, another\u00a0sawmill is being built to tackle the acres of dead trees killed by last year\u2019s Dixie fire<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to do more forest management, whatever it is,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we need the capacity for it, and one way to get that is to sell the wood and make sawmills that can handle it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Photos by Patrick Mouzawak\/Bloomberg<\/em><\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The logging facility will be a major help in forest-thinning projects that are urgently needed in California and Nevada to aid fire prevention, advocates say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2512"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2514,"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2512\/revisions\/2514"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inedc.com\/22\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}