A meadow below Deadman’s Peak, just a short distance east of Champman CampgroundBASSETTS — Starting this past September, the Upper North Yuba Forest Resilience Project commenced, and we are delighted to report the results are simply astounding.

Back in 2018, the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC), a State of California agency created by legislation passed in 2004 with a mandate to aid in the preservation of working landscapes, reducing the risk of wildfires, plus protecting and improving water and air quality, awarded a grant of $500,000 to Sierra County to help fund the thinning 267 acres of conifers lining the Highway 49 “scenic” corridor from just below the headwaters of the North Yuba to roughly a quarter mile east of Bassetts Station.

In addition, the US Forest Service allocated $2.7 million to support the thinning work, and the sale of timber and biomass was slated to complete the funding of the $3.7 million project.

For a variety of reasons, including the intense fire seasons of 2020 and 2021, the need to complete environmental impact analyses, and the lengthy process of securing encroachment permits from Caltrans, the original expiration date of the SNC grant, 6/30/2022, was extended through 1/1/2024.

Now, with the ten-member crew of Sierra Valley Enterprises, the Loyalton firm contracted to perform the forest thinning work, having advanced down nearly two-thirds of the project’s 6-mile route along Highway 49, SVE expects to have completed their work within the next three weeks. However, any series of winter storms during this period may well interrupt progress from just above Mileage Marker 36 to Bassetts. Thus, according to SVE’s project manager, Kevin Holland, the odds of another extension being required for SNC’s grant are slim.

A Peterson 5710D chipper loading a truck bound for Sierra Pacific Industries’ biogen plant in Quincy.Whatever the case, the rapid pace of the work has been made possible by a very impressive collection of equipment. Besides old-fashioned chainsaws for felling trees on steep slopes, SVE’s crew utilizes excavators, feller-bunchers, heel-boom log loaders, and a huge chipper (capable of grinding logs up to 23” in diameter) to fell and process the timber. And, since all the felled wood and slash is to be removed from the site, as many as 15 loads per day, each carrying 24 tons of wood chips, have been trucked to the Sierra Pacific Industries biogen plant in Quincy.A feller-buncher amidst the log piles created within Champman Campground

According to Lauren Faulkenberry, Public Affairs Officer for the Tahoe National Forest, the public reaction to work has been a “mixture of support and shock.” However, given the purposes of the project, greater safety for the forest and the public, plus the fact the landscape will look as if nothing happened within a year, the Forest Service is pleased with the work.A log loader feeding the Peterson chipper below Deadman’s Peak

In the opinion of Sierra County Supervisor Paul Roen, who spent many long days making sure the project came to fruition, the project is “outstanding, and we need to do more of it.”

In fact, Roen said, we should be seeing similar projects soon: the Greene Acres treatments for Aspen restoration will be ready to start in 2024; a Request for Proposals will be released next spring for thinning the forest along Mountain House Road; and, the National Forest Foundation has been working to secure bids for thinning the national forest surrounding Downieville.