Added protection
Conservancy announces $2M grant for fuel break near Big Trees, Arnold, Dorrington
Agrant of more than $2.1 million has been approved for a strategic fuel break intended to protect communities and resources including Arnold, Dorrington and Calaveras Big Trees State Park from fires originating in the North Fork Stanislaus River canyon, which will add further protection for the state park’s North Grove of roughly 100 fire-endangered giant sequoias.
The Mckays Strategic Fuelbreak as planned will not add any further protection for the Calaveras Big Trees South Grove of roughly
1,000 fireendangered giant sequoias, which is south of the North Fork Stanislaus River and entirely within Tuolumne County.
The successful grant application came from the Calaveras County Office of Emergency Services and Pat Mcgreevy of the Calaveras County Resource Conservation District, and the funding was awarded by the state nonprofit Sierra Nevada Conservancy board at a meeting last week in Sacramento.
The Mckays Strategic Fuelbreak is intended to treat 957 acres of mixed coniferous forest — south of Arnold and Calaveras Big Trees, near Mckay and Love Creek, and north of the North Fork Stanislaus River in the Stanislaus National Forest — that is overstocked with heavy fuel loads in the understory and dead and dying trees in the overstory, caused by the persistent drought and beetle epidemic.
The grant will be supplemented by federal Forest Service funding of $250,000 and other contributions for a total project cost of nearly $2.5 million. When work will begin on the project was not clear Monday. Representatives with Calaveras County OES could not be reached for comment.
Angela Avery, executive officer for the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, praised the Calaveras OES description of the project.
“The Mckays Strategic Fuelbreak is an excellent example of the kind of multi-benefit projects that SNC likes to fund,” Avery said in prepared remarks. “While it was designed as part of the Highway 4 Wildfire Defense System with a clear focus on protecting communities like Dorrington and Arnold from fires originating in the Stanislaus River Canyon, reestablishing this fuel break also means an added layer of protection for Calaveras Big Trees State Park and the giant sequoia which grow there.”
Michael Pickard, a Sierra Nevada Conservancy representative for the nonprofit’s South Central Area, said the driving force behind the Mckays Strategic Fuelbreak and other projects like it in the area is Pat Mcgreevy, a retired Calaveras County resident who has brought millions
of dollars to the county for wildfire protection projects.
Mcgreevy writes grants and manages them to make sure they get done, Pickard said. When the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management does not have staff to do things like flag project boundaries or conduct bird surveys, Mcgreevy has the skills needed and does them himself to make sure projects happen.
“He is just an incredible individual who has volunteered more hours than anyone I know of to protect Calaveras County communities and natural resources,” Pickard said of Mcgreevy.
Letters of support for the Mckays Strategic Fuelbreak project included one from Heather Reith, Natural Resources Manager at Calaveras Big Trees.
“As forestry professionals managing California State Parks only giant sequoia groves,
we strongly support the Mckays Fuelbreak Maintenance project in southern Calaveras
County,” Reith said in her letter of support. “This project borders Calaveras Big Trees State Park … providing for protection of the park’s natural and cultural resources.”
In February 2022, members of the nonprofit Calaveras Big Trees Association characterized fire threats to the roughly 1,100 giant sequoias in Calaveras Big Trees State Park as a crisis and an emergency. On Monday, the nonprofit’s president called the Mckays Strategic Fuelbreak “important” and said the park needs more like it, especially for the South Grove.
“This grant is important, and it’s just one piece of
the puzzle,” Paul Prescott, president of Calaveras Big Trees Association, said Monday. “We need more grants like it to complete and maintain the strategic defense system that the Cal-am Forestry Team, along with county, state and federal partners, is creating around Arnold and Big Trees.”
Prescott also noted that, while important to protecting Big Trees from a fire coming up the Stanislaus Canyon, the Mckays project is on the opposite side of the Stanislaus River from the South Grove, which “continues to need urgent attention by the state to protect our giant sequoias from catastrophic fire.”
According to the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, the Mckays Strategic Fuelbreak project has support from people and organizations including District 3 Supervisor Merita Callaway, Calaveras County; Ray Cablayan, District Ranger, Calaveras District, Stanislaus National Forest; the Calaveras Visitors Bureau; Cal Fire’s Tuolumnecalaveras Unit; Ebbetts Pass Fire District; Save The Redwoods League; Sierra Pacific Industries; and the Amador-calaveras Consensus Group. The conservancy received no letters in opposition to the project, Isaac Silverman with the state nonprofit said.
State parks authorities plan to do prescribed burns on the entire 1,300 acres of the fire-threatened South Grove of Giant Sequoias at Calaveras Big Trees State Park this year, Danielle Gerhart, superintendent for the California State Parks Central Valley District, said in December 2022 at the park.
Gerhart announced the plan during a Giant Sequoia Land Coalition meeting of local, tribal, state, and federal grove managers, custodians, and stewards for a progress report on the coalition and its members’ 2022 efforts to save giant sequoias from the threat of severe wildfires, and to sound the alarm for their conservation in California.
There were similar ambitious plans to do prescribed burns on the entire 1,300-acre South Grove this year. Weather windows and other variables did not coincide, so burn bosses, biologists, and fire managers will try again in 2023.
“Calaveras Big Trees State Park is home to two groves of giant sequoias,” Gerhart told coalition members in December. “We are the only California state park entrusted with the preservation of over 1,000 giant sequoia trees.”
The last prescribed burns in the fire-threatened South Grove of Giant Sequoias at Calaveras Big Trees State Park were done in 2006 and 2007, Gerhart said in December. The 2006 burn was on the north section of the South Grove and it was planned as an anchor point for future burns.
To prepare the South Grove for prescribed burning this year, work in the South Grove in 2022 included the felling of 300 snags, preparing 250 giant sequoias and monarch sugar pines for prescribed burning, Gerhart said. About nine miles of roadway encircling the South Grove was prepped in 2022 for controlled burning operations.
In addition, Calaveras Big Trees has $8.6 million for prescribed burning and other proactive treatments in the park’s North and South Groves of Giant Sequoias, Gerhart said in December. The plan in 2023 is to bring prescribed fire to the entire South Grove “if conditions are right and it’s properly prepped,” Gerhart said.
Calaveras Big Trees State Park is one of 11 organizations that comprise the Giant Sequoia Lands Coalition, which formed just over a year ago in the wake of wildfires that resulted in the loss of close to 20% of the world’s giant sequoias killed or mortally burned in 2020 and 2021, Gerhart said.
Giant sequoias, limited to 37,000 acres in the Central and Southern Sierra, have long been believed to be among the most fireresilient tree species on earth, and were once considered virtually indestructible, coalition members said in December.
With the emergence of record-breaking megafires in recent years in California, giant sequoias are now viewed as a tragic harbinger of the reality of climate change and symbol of what people can try to save if they come together to fund badly needed restoration work in the state’s — and the world’s — remaining sequoia groves.