Thinning the Forest for the Trees

Beneath the soaring heights of mature sugar pines, throngs of midstory trees struggle to reach the sun. Where light does reach the forest f loor, it illuminates tangled brush. A hiker might see beauty in this unkempt version of the Sierras. A forester sees an ecosystem in distress.

The dense forests we know today are the result of a century of land managers suppressing fires that burned smaller trees, and left behind larger ones. Without these low intensity burns, crowded stands lack the space to grow into healthy, mature forests that can withstand severe flames. The National Forest Foundation and our partners are removing the built-up vegetation that fuel megafires, but project costs hinder work from occurring at the pace and scale needed to protect communities.

Timber mills offer a simple, if surprising, solution. By selling thinned materials to a mill, the NFF can recoup part of the cost of removing those materials—reducing the overall cost of forest health projects and increasing the number of acres we restore.

There are still plenty of barriers to mills supporting cost-effective thinning broadly. Many areas that need thinning are too remote to supply timber lines. When facilities are nearby, they may not be equipped to process smaller logs, and what they do process can be challenging to sell in a market that has dwindled over time.

But on the shores of Lake Tahoe, conservation and timber interests are building positive momentum toward a shared goal: healthier forests for future generations. In 2022, Tahoe Forest Products opened the first new mill in the area to salvage timber from recent fires. Now, they are retooling to process smaller logs coming from NFF projects on the Tahoe, Humboldt-Toiyabe, and Inyo National Forests. The partnership is a small but powerful example of innovation supporting economies, communities, and healthy forests.

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