SACRAMENTO – This time, the frequent visitor fondly dubbed Cinnamon or Baby Bear crawled painfully instead of rambling through a favorite foraging route, one she had followed since she was a cub growing up near some South Lake Tahoe homes nestled in the forest.
Responding to pleas from concerned residents, veterinarian Kevin Willits treated the bear's singed paws and sent her off to recuperate in the wild – a cheery outcome during a depressing time for the fire-scarred region.
But a few weeks later, Willits was summoned to examine another bear, this one with little hope for survival. The animal's paws were scorched, some toes were missing and a serious infection had taken hold.
“It wasn't fair to the animal, the suffering it would have had to go through,” Willits reasoned as euthanized the bear. “It was just tragic.”
This summer's Angora fire – the largest recorded in South Lake Tahoe history – took an immeasurable toll on wildlife, from bears to trout. It claimed a rare moss, ravaged majestic cedars and robbed the northern goshawk of territory. Unless erosion is controlled, the lake's pristine waters could be clouded and polluted by sediment washing down from barren hillsides.
The human tragedy has been well-documented: 254 homes and 3,100 acres consumed, $153 million in property damage, and hundreds of lives changed forever. Fortunately, no one was killed in the inferno ignited by an illegal campfire June 24.
Today, nearly two months after firefighters doused the last flame, the fight goes on to limit the blaze's impact on the region known worldwide for its Alps-like setting and clear lake.
At the same time, the fire has reopened deep divisions over limits on tree thinning. A joint California-Nevada task force appointed by governors of the two states will review forest management, funding and other fire-related issues. Its first meeting is tomorrow.
Officials will deploy aircraft to shower mulch from the sky in hopes that a blanket of ground cover would prevent loads of sediment from spilling into Lake Tahoe.
Teams have been dispatched to improve drainage and shore up slopes with straw bales, fences and other barriers before winter sets in. Crews then will move into once-forested areas to remove hazardous trees. A long-term strategy is being mapped, but it must pass muster with government agencies and the public.
Many experts predict that the surviving wildlife will rebound, particularly if a normal weather pattern returns to the region, bringing with it a spring bounty of berries, wildflowers and new habitat. Tahoe, like most of California, has been punished by a dry spell.
“The natural system has adapted to recovering from fire. Eventually, it will come back,” said Shane Romsos, a wildlife biologist for the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.
State wildlife biologist Jason Holley added, “From a wildlife standpoint, it's a short-term loss. The wildlife should start coming back as early as late spring.”
That may be some consolation for volunteers who scrambled for days to protect and treat lost and injured animals. Some say the fire took a staggering number of animals that couldn't outrun the flames, mostly squirrels, raccoons and porcupines. Brook trout were found belly up in a stream. Because the blaze erupted toward the end of bird nesting season, many chicks are feared lost.
“Most of the animals, if they couldn't fly out or run fast enough, are dead,” said Cheryl Millham, executive director of Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care, a local volunteer group.
The fire also has been blamed for a rash of bear break-ins. Refrigerators and pantries are not safe, even in occupied homes, prompting concern in a community accustomed to sharing their forest.
On Aug. 13, El Dorado County sheriff's Lt. Les Lovell reported an unusual spike in the number of encounters and warned that deputies may have to take potentially unpopular “proactive measures” if “this pattern of unusual bear behavior” continues. Two weeks later, a deputy was forced to shoot an aggressive 300-pound mother of two cubs that had trapped a resident in his bedroom.
Millham, whose organization provides care and treatment for the region's wildlife, said she was trying to arrange food drops in the wild to draw bears away from neighborhoods.
“The bears have lost their homes,” she said. “They have lost their food supply.”
Some are not convinced that the surge in bear encounters is all fire related, given a shortage of forage in the high country.
“The fire surely displaced some bears,” said Holley, the state biologist. “We've had a lot of problems before the fires. We've had lots of problems after the fires.”
Campgrounds are a favorite dinner spot for bears, but state parks official Ken Anderson said he hasn't noticed a sudden jump in encounters that can be traced to fire refugees.
The Angora fire has drawn new attention to an old problem in Tahoe's forests. Some blame the blaze's rapid spread on environmental regulations that prevented thinning trees to reduce fuel for a fire.
“It was unhealthy in the first place. Now it's gone,” said Thomas Bonnicksen, a national forestry expert who tends to support timber industry views.
Bonnicksen was the author of a warning carried a year ago in the industry magazine California Forests. In the article, he noted an “eerie parallel” between Lake Tahoe and Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino Mountains, which suffered a disastrous fire in 2003.
But Bonnicksen takes no satisfaction surveying the skeletal remains of fir, cedar and pine in Lake Tahoe a year later. He concluded that the trees were too crowded, feeding the flames.
“The houses didn't start the fire,” he said. “The forest started the fire.”
A U.S. Forest Service analysis cited several factors for home losses, noting that some residents stored combustible materials, such as paint and gasoline, and had firewood stocked under wooden decks.
“Clearly, fewer houses would have burned had they had more effective defensible space, better access for firefighters and contained less flammable material,” the report stated. In some areas, the analysis said, thinning reduced the intensity of the fire and helped firefighters control the spread.
“The Forest Service report was a real eye-opener,” said Julie Regan, a spokeswoman for the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.
The agency agrees that unmanaged forests are a significant issue and has been working on thinning projects for the past decade, Regan said.
Pending regulations on pollutants could make thinning more complicated.
Jack Landy, Lake Tahoe basin coordinator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said new regulations are being developed to limit sediment and other substances that threaten the lake. If planners allow forest thinning or other projects that produce more erosion, the trade-off could be tighter controls on other sources to safeguard water quality, Landy said.
The question that planners will have to ask, Landy said, is “how do we balance the risk of wildfire and its impacts with other factors that affect lake clarity, such as urban storm water runoff?”
The fire did not immediately threaten Lake Tahoe's world-renowned clarity.
The first film of black soot to fall on the lake dissipated quickly. Within two weeks, “we were reading no measurable change in clarity,” said Geoffrey Schladow, director of the Tahoe Environmental Research Center.
Crews initially concentrated on installing defenses in areas most prone to erosion, getting a jump on summer thunderstorms that could wash sediment into the lake. Fortunately, few serious storms have developed.
“So far, we've been lucky,” Schladow said. “But it could happen tomorrow.”
Just as worrisome is what lies ahead. Heavy rains this fall, or a warm wet pattern during the spring snowmelt, could bring more erosion, he said.
And there might be other side effects of the fire: Noxious weeds could get a toehold and compete with natives. Nutrients carried by runoff could feed algae, which can choke underwater plants and potentially harm fish. The loss of creek-side shade could reduce spawning grounds and elevate water temperatures, both bad signs for trout and anglers.
The fire also released 190,000 tons of greenhouse gases, linked to global warming, according to the Forest Foundation, a timber industry group.
