Stanislaus forest drafting plans to replant after Rim fire

The Stanislaus National Forest is drafting a plan for replanting part of the vast acreage burned by the Rim fire last year.

Crews could plant conifer seedlings on perhaps 30,000 to 40,000 of the 257,314 acres in the burn area, Georgia Dempsey, public affairs officer for the Rim Fire Recovery Team, said Monday.

The plan does not cover the parts burned in Yosemite National Park, which leaves the recovery to natural processes, or the timberland owned by Sierra Pacific Industries, which has its own reforestation plan. Nor does it include national forest acreage that was not severely burned and thus has enough natural seed sources – the cones from the pines, cedars and firs that remain.

“Certainly, some areas have a chance to come back,” Dempsey said, “and some areas may not because of the distance from seed trees.”

The forest staff hopes to release a proposal for public comment in August 2015 and announce a final plan later in the year. Then it would order the trees, in specific types and numbers, from the U.S. Forest Service nursery in Placerville. They would need about a year to reach the desired height, then could be planted in 2017.

The cost of the planting is not known, Dempsey said, but it could be funded by income from the salvage logging that started this fall on part of the burn. That work, which is providing raw material to lumber mills, will cover about 33,000 acres over two years.

The Rim fire, the largest in the Sierra Nevada’s recorded history, started Aug. 17, 2013, near the confluence of the Tuolumne and Clavey rivers. Federal authorities have accused bow hunter Keith Matthew Emerald of Columbia of building an illegal campfire that sparked the disaster. He has pleaded not guilty.

The public can weigh in on the replanting at a Dec. 16 open house, likely to be in Sonora at a time and exact location to be announced.

The vast majority of the planting will be done by experienced crews who know how to place each seedling carefully in the soil while working quickly. A few small areas might be planted by volunteers, as happened after the Stanislaus Complex fire of 1987.

“It’s everybody’s forest, so that gives them an opportunity to help out,” Dempsey said.

The forest also announced that Monday brought the end of the closure order that had kept the public out of most of the fire area for the past 15 months. A few places, such as the Cottonwood Road and Spinning Wheel areas near Cherry Lake, remain closed because of safety concerns.

“There are still structurally damaged trees in the forest that can fall without warning,” Forest Supervisor Jeanne Higgins said in a news release. “Wind, snow load and insect infestations can negatively impact these trees for some time to come.”

The Stanislaus has extended its firewood-collection season by two weeks, to Dec. 15, to make up for some of the lost access during the Rim closure. Households can get permits allowing them to take dead and downed wood, at a cost of $25 for 2 1/2 cords.

More information is at (209)532-3671 or www.fs.usda.gov/stanislaus.

This story was originally published November 17, 2014 at 8:52 PM with the headline "Stanislaus forest drafting plans to replant after Rim fire."