United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service November 2016 Lake Fire Restoration and Hazardous Tree Removal Heather McRae Project Proposed Action and Scoping Document USDA Forest Service Shasta-Trinity National Forest P.O. Box 1620 McCloud, CA 96057 (530) 964-3770 Mountaintop Ranger District San Bernardino National Forest San Bernardino County, California For Project Information Contact: Bob Bayer, Project Team Leader USDA Forest Service 802-362-2625 Email preferred: rbayer@fs.fed.us For General Information About The San Bernardino National Forest Contact: The Mountaintop Ranger District San Bernardino National Forest Fawnskin, CA 92333 909-382-2790
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Introduction The Lake Fire Restoration and Hazardous Tree Removal Project (Lake Fire project) is a reforestation project that includes tree planting and hazardous tree removal to address safety concerns, and restore forest health to approximately 2,000 acres burned during the 2015 Lake Fire. The project area is located in San Bernardino County on the San Bernardino National Forest, Front Country and Mountaintop Ranger Districts, within Township 1 North, Range 1 East, Sections 13, 21-24 and 26, Township 1 North, Range 2 East, Sections 19-21, 27-29 and 33-35, Township 1 North, Range 3 East, Sections 8 and 20, and Township 1 South, Range 2 East, Sections 1-3. This project includes areas within and adjacent to the San Gorgonio Wilderness. See Figure 1: Project Vicinity Map. Purpose and Need Purpose of the Lake Fire Restoration and Hazardous Tree Removal Project The Lake Fire Project is a reforestation project that includes tree planting and hazardous tree removal to address safety concerns, and restore forest health to approximately 2,000 acres burned during the 2015 Lake Fire. Planting would occur in non-wilderness land, and hazard trees would be removed from within and outside the San Gorgonio Wilderness as necessary to provide for safety along roads and trails within the burn area. The intent is to restore severely burned areas establishing forest cover, minimizing erosion and other adverse environmental effects. The Lake Fire project is intended to meet Forest Plan management direction that provides the framework for addressing National Strategic goals, national priorities, and Forest Plan goals and objectives. Goal 1.2 is to restore forest health where alteration of natural fire regimes have put human and natural resource values at risk (Forest Plan Part 1, page 21; USDA Forest Service 2005a). The present condition of the vegetation on southern California national forests has been influenced by a century of fire management, mostly fire suppression. Before suppression, fires were frequent, and because of frequent reoccurrence, they were mainly low severity fires. This is particularly the case for the montane conifer forests of this region. Forests burned often because of seasonal, high-elevation lightning storms. Frequent fires produced a patchwork of small burns that constantly thinned stands, kept fuel loading low and encouraged the regeneration of shade-intolerant plant species. However, with the success of fire suppression, these forests have not burned with any regularity, and when they do, they are more likely to burn as stand replacing crown fires that cover a much larger area and threatens populations and resources. The Lake Fire of 2015, typical of most large fires, burned over a large area in mosaic pattern, in which some stands burned extensively while others within the fire s perimeter either didn t burn or burned lightly. The primary purpose of the Lake Fire project is to complete restoration of a portion of the burned area while providing for safety and is consistent with the San Bernardino National Forest strategy (FH 1) of restoring vegetation through reforestation and revegetation or other appropriate methods after stand replacing fires, drought, or other events or activities that degrade or cause a loss of plant communities (Forest Plan Part 2, page 130; USDA Forest Service 2005a). This involves planting shade-intolerant species such as Jeffrey pine, ponderosa pine, sugar pine and incense cedar. This is also consistent with the National Strategic Plan Goal 5, which calls for improving watershed conditions.
The Need for Lake Fire Project Area Restoration There is a need to restore forest health on the non-wilderness portions of the severely burned Lake Fire project area while providing a safe environment. The fire left a high number of standing dead and dying trees across the landscape and associated roads and trails. Removal of hazardous trees is needed to ensure public safety. The project would plant Jeffrey pine, ponderosa pine, sugar pine and incense cedar that would move the area towards a species mix similar to the historic montane conifer forests typical in the pre-suppression and early-suppression eras. This is consistent with San Bernardino National Forest strategy FH 3 (Forest Plan Part 2, Appendix B, page 131; USDA Forest Service 2005a). There is also a compelling need to revegetate the area to eliminate or minimize soil loss, erosion and adverse sedimentation impacts to hydrologic resources on the burned over lands. The Proposed Action The proposed action has been designed to meet the purpose and need described above to restore the Lake Fire project area after the 2015 fire that covered about 31,000 acres. A substantial amount of fire burned in the San Gorgonio Wilderness. While no restoration would occur within the San Gorgonio Wilderness, hazard trees within the wilderness boundary that could impact trails and adjacent roads would be removed. Public Safety: Hazardous Tree Removal To allow for safe public access into the burned area, the Forest Service is proposing to remove hazard trees to along roads and trails. Due to proximity of roads adjacent to the San Gorgonio Wilderness, approximately seven acres of burn area within the wilderness would have hazard trees removed. The Chief of the Forest Service and the Regional Forester have stressed that the safety of the public and our employees is our central concern. In developed recreation areas and within the transportation corridors, hazard tree management is vital to everyone s safety (Angwin et al. 2012). The project area will be surveyed for hazard trees left after the fire burned through the area. Regional guidelines would be used to determine hazard trees. Trees identified as immediate hazards would be removed throughout the life of the project. Hazard trees standing within a distance of either 150 feet, or 1 to 1 ½ times the height of the tree (Angwin et al 2012), from roads and trails would be removed to mitigate concerns for public safety. All standing dead trees with no green needles that meet the distance criteria would be removed. Trees will be cut using a combination of hand and mechanical falling techniques. Heavy equipment may be used for decking of cut trees along roadsides, as well as chipping of excess slash if necessary. Hazard trees removed would be left as down wood for wildlife habitat, removed through deck sales and/or made available for sale to public fuelwood cutters. Where heavy equipment is used, it would be on existing roads and trails as much as possible. Any use off roads and trails would need approval by the Forest Service. Roads and trails would be rehabilitated as needed after operations are complete. Planting To meet the Forest Plan objective of restoring forest health on the severely burned lands in the project area and move toward the desired condition for the San Gorgonio Place as outlined in the Forest Plan (Forest Plan Part 2, pages 87-88; USDA Forest Service 2005a), the Forest Service proposes to plant seedlings on approximately 2,000 acres of National Forest System lands. Planting is expected to begin in spring of 2017. Various planting units have been identified and are scattered over the project area.
Seedlings to be planted include Jeffrey pine, sugar pine, ponderosa pine, and incense-cedar. These seedlings were requested to be sown at the Regional nursery in Placerville, California from seed stock previously collected in appropriate seed zones. Up to 200 trees per acre would be planted for an ultimate survivorship five years after planting of between 50 and 100 surviving trees per acre. This proposed action is consistent with the desired conditions of the San Gorgonio Place. Forest health and restoration projects such as the proposed Lake Fire Project would remove dead trees, reduce stand density and promote pre-fire suppression era fire return intervals. The proposed reforestation with the species mix as described above would also maintain forest diversity and allow forested areas to subsequently be managed to protect from type conversion to grass, thus providing some level of fire protection for adjacent urban communities, recreation areas, and wildlife habitat (Forest Plan Part 2, pages 87; USDA Forest Service 2005a). Trees would be spaced at a minimum of 15 by 15 foot spacing yielding around 200 trees per acre. In some situations, there would be less than 200 trees planted depending on the site conditions. Spacing of plantings would vary from the designated 15 by 15 spacing to take advantage of acceptable planting spots and would be spaced off existing live conifer seedling/saplings. Seedlings would not be planted within the driplines of existing live trees larger than sapling size. Holes would be dug either with hand tools or mechanical augers directly before planting seedlings 6 to 12 inches deep to accommodate root depth. Plantings would also incorporate microsite considerations and shading when possible. Site preparation would involve clearing a small area of existing vegetation and debris. A roughly 18 by 18 inch area would be cleared around each planting spot. The area would be cleared of competing vegetation by scraping or grubbing out vegetation. Naturally regenerated trees would be retained with planted trees spaced around them. Release treatments, which include hand grubbing or cutting of vegetation a minimum of 24 inches around a planted tree, may occur one or more times after planting to reduce competition from competing vegetation. The areas needing release treatments would depend on the success of planting, level of competition observed from vegetation, and availability of Forest Service resources. No fertilizer or herbicide would be applied with this action. Monitoring of survival would be done one and three years after planting as lined out in Forest Service Manual 2472.03. Planting sites would be accessed by foot traffic, horseback, or vehicles. No new temporary roads would be created; existing roads and trails, where available, would be used to access planting sites. Vehicles would not be used off of designated roads and trails.
Figure 1: Lake Fire Reforestation Vicinity Map