Panel endorses extension of old-growth tree protection

Wednesday, April 12, 2000 | 5:06 a.m.

The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency's Advisory Planning Commission recommended the extension to its parent TRPA, which will have final say at an April 26 meeting.

"I think it's a valuable ordinance. I think it needs to be kept in place to protect what we've got," said Steve Chilton, the TRPA's chief of environmental compliance and an APC member.

The restrictions block loggers from cutting any trees 30 inches in diameter or larger. Trees that size in Tahoe's mostly pine and fir forests would be at least 150 years old.

The limits would stay in place for one year while the California-Nevada TRPA's Forest Health Consensus Group works on a comprehensive strategy to preserve the precious timber stands.

More than half of the Tahoe Basin was covered by old-growth timber before Comstock Lode-era loggers arrived in the mid-19th century. Only about 5 percent of undisturbed old-growth remains.

Advocates of the cutting ban include Dave Roberts of the League to Save Lake Tahoe, who says it's the only thing protecting the old-growth timber pending adoption of the comprehensive forestry plan.

"There's some feeling the 30-inch rule is too arbitrary but at this point we really don't have anything else to ensure a number of large trees won't be removed," Roberts said. "This way we can allow some forest projects to go ahead with some assurance old-growth trees will be protected."

But the cutting ban has its critics, mainly private land owners who claim it is arbitrary, scientifically flawed and overly restrictive.

J.B. Lekumberry, whose family owns 2,300 acres of timber in the south Tahoe area, said the policy could actually threaten forest health by forcing loggers to remove trees just a little less in diameter than the 30-inch cutoff, never allowing those trees to mature.

A proper harvesting strategy would allow removal of a mixture of tree sizes, including some greater than 30 inches, Lekumberry believes.

Thirty-inch trees can be felled at Tahoe, but loggers need express tree-by-tree permission from TRPA foresters. The agency fined a Grass Valley, Calif., timber company $160,000 last month for allegedly removing 49 old-growth trees without permission. The company, Menasha Corp., has said it will fight the civil penalty in federal court.