During the fall months of 2020, Dick Fisher has been communicating regularly with the Forest Service and with Josh Rheingans at Bear Valley Tree Care, trying to expedite our annual Dead Tree and Brush Removal Project. Dick prepared the following status summary to share with you:
The SW Shore Colony’s 2020 Dead Tree and Brush Removal program has been thwarted thus far. During this past summer, in response to the drought, low humidity, dead trees and other fire risks that triggered so many fires around the State and County, the Forest Service closed all forest lands in Southern California, including the entire San Bernardino National Forest – strictly prohibiting all activity including any operation of chain saws and chippers – even for professionally-conducted fire fuel reduction programs such as ours. We worked that problem by seeking a variance. Forest-management staff was supportive, going so far during November as to recommend that we be granted a variance permitting us to complete our annual project. However, higher-ups sat on the variance request form rather than approving it. Eventually, the mid-December cooler weather and higher humidity permitted Forest Service staff to authorize us to proceed without need for the waiver.
However, just as we were then finally scheduling our tree service company to proceed with the work, Mother Nature intervened with the recent snow storm, followed by low temperatures that have retained the snow on the ground and our roads, making it impractical for the time being for the crew to operate. We are monitoring that situation, so that if and when snow conditions permit access, we will proceed with the work. The worst case, in terms of project completion, would be that winter weather forecloses the 2020 project completion until next Spring or Summer.
By way of perspective, a wet winter would also of course provide many compensating benefits such as a continued healthy forest in our area, and a higher lake level. Also, our past successful dead-tree removal, forest-thinning and brush-clearance projects have been so successful in fostering a healthier forest, that our 2020 project was by far the smallest we have yet experienced. We have only two dead trees to take down (rather than the dozen or many more that have been typical in the past), and the volume of dead-brush removal is also quite a bit less than in recent past years (though some neighbors believe that that decline is due more to less frequent cabin usage in 2020 due to the virus, than it is to any reduced need).