Watershed panel draws large audience to City Hall during Wild and Scenic Film Festival
- daniel58762
- Feb 19, 2024
- 6 min read
Attendees of the 22nd Annual Wild and Scenic Film Festival (SYRCL) packed Nevada City’s City Hall on Sunday morning to hear from an all-star panel of federal, state and regional watershed managers, scientists and policy makers from across the state.
The well-attended panel discussion moderated by SYRCL Executive Director Dr. Aaron Zettler-Mann took place after the screening of the 2024 official selection, “California’s Watershed Healing” by filmmaker in attendance James Thebaut.
The film addresses threats to the Sierra Nevada’s forested ecosystems from drought to wildfire and how the need for restoration and sustainable management is needed to avoid environmental, economic and national security threats to California’s most precious resource – water.
The panel discussed a new paradigm to managing forests as a “multi-benefit asset” that will require enlisting partnerships to find sustainable solutions as the crucial link to California’s future water supply and ultimately human populations in the face of a ticking time bomb – extreme climate chaos.
Panelists included California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot, Forest Supervisor for the Tahoe National Forest Eli Ilano, General Manager of Yuba Water Agency Willie Whittlesey, Professor Emerita of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Merced Dr. Martha Conklin and Professor of Engineering and Management at UC Merced Roger Bales.
“Even when we don’t have big wildfire years, our forests are still changing. In 2023, last year, just on the Tahoe National Forest, 6.5 million trees died and the year before, that number was 3.5 million. That’s a result of climate change, drought and all those stressors. Even when we don’t have big fires, our forests are dying. In some ways, our forests are speaking to us and saying there are too many trees,” said Forest Supervisor for the Tahoe National Forest Eli Ilano.
Leaving dead wood on the forest floor to decompose is no longer an option, members of the panel agreed, because it increases the risk of large-scale fire substantially.
“The more fuel you have on the ground, the more flame length you’re going to get on the ground fire and the quicker it’s going to get into the canopy,” said Professor of Engineering and Management at UC Merced Roger Bales.
“There’s so much material in the forest right now, we have to remove it or we’re not going to achieve our goals,” said Ilano. “This notion that if we don’t do anything things are going to stay static. We have to get out of that mindset. I know for some people it’s troubling to see machines in the forest taking out trees but I just want to tell you we’re doing it with the best science available to us. We’re making progress to a sustainable forest and a sustainable watershed,” said Ilano.
California is the fifth largest economy in the world and most of the state’s domestic water comes from the Sierra Nevada mountains. The increased frequency and severity of catastrophic wildfires is threatening the state’s water supply. Fire suppression over the past 60 years has led to unhealthy forests with a buildup of fuels that historically would have burned by lower intensity natural lightning fires or indigenous cultural management. Today’s hotter and higher intensity fires are wiping out entire forest ecosystems and making it harder for them to return.
Today, multiple jurisdictions are trying to figure out how to restore watersheds, build more resilient forests and communities and holistically balance the environment with the needs of a modern world dependent on vulnerable infrastructure.
The North Yuba Forest Partnership is a diverse group of nine organizations passionate about forest health and the resilience of the North Yuba River watershed. Together, the partners are working on an unprecedented scale to collaboratively plan, analyze, finance and implement forest restoration across 275,000 acres of the watershed.
The partnership includes Yuba Water Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, The Nature Conservancy, South Yuba River Citizens League, Camptonville Community Partnership, Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe, National Forest Foundation, Sierra County, and Blue Forest.
“Reading the future of this work, we have to think bigger, we’ve got to think larger, we’ve got to think faster. So we looked at landscape scale and watershed scale,” said General Manager of Yuba Water Agency Willie Whittlesey.
“One of the reasons Yuba Watershed Agency jumped in with both feet on the North Yuba Partnership was because it was scalable, it was large, it was something that could be replicated throughout the West.”
Finding a way to bring forest jobs to Californians is a piece of the puzzle.
“We don’t have to create the economy. We have to integrate into it. 80 percent of the forest products consumed in California come from outside of California. So the economy is there, we have to integrate into it,” said Whittlesey.
There’s more funding than ever before for wildfire risk research but a viable restoration economy remains out of reach. This is the part of the equation that will bring green jobs to Californians, keep communities safe from wildfire and protect water resources.
“We haven’t cracked the nut on these emerging industries, environmentally sustainable industries to actually reach scale to create that economic incentive to help us. We’re trying, we’re subsidizing things. We’re trying to build demand. But we’re not there yet,” said California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot.
In a race against time, water and land managers are constantly researching and scrambling to identify the winning technologies and sustainable solutions from green hydrogen to small scale biomass plants like the up and coming Camptonville Community Partnership, something Yuba Watershed Agency has heavily invested in.
“Even on the scale of the work we’re doing in partnership with Tahoe National Forest, it can only handle a small percentage of the material that will come from these projects,” said Whittlesey.
Former SYRCL Executive Director Melinda Booth joined the panel at the closing of the discussion. A resident of Montana for the past year, she says the Yuba River Watershed is leading the way in terms of finding workable forest management solutions.
“We’re experiencing all the same issues and I would guess we’re 10 to 15 years behind where we are here. What I realized, the work that is happening here with the North Yuba Forest Partnership, is really special. What’s happening here is a model and if we can figure out how to make it replicable and really get people on board, I believe we’ll have real change,” said Booth.
Professor Emerita of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Merced Dr. Marha Conklin agreed.
“I think what has happened in the last 20 years is really amazing. This partnership and the one on the American River are so important for showing the rest of the state how we can move forward,” said Conklin.
Audience questions addressed everything from homeowners insurance to firewise communities and how to engage youth who are burnt out on issues like climate change and saving the planet.
Funding, pace and scale and finding enough people to do the work remain key challenges in the years ahead.
“Some folks who lost their jobs in forestry are now back working. That’s exactly what we want to see. We have a real workforce challenge,” said Crowfoot.
“There is a ton of funding that is coming in from federal and state governments to train young people including tribal members. We have a tribal conservation corps and these different conservation corps. But we have to do it quickly so [young people] can stay in these communities with good paying jobs,” said Crowfoot.
The 22nd annual Wild and Scenic Film Festival continues through Feb. 19. Learn more at https://wildandscenicfilmfestival.org/
Learn more about South Yuba River Citizens League at https://yubariver.org/
Original article can be found here: https://yubanet.com/regional/watershed-panel-draws-large-audience-to-city-hall-during-wild-and-scenic-film-festival/
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