Current projects
LAva
This project has been completed. Combined with Rush 1, 1,050 acres have been masticated.
Rush 2/ Doe Springs
Rush 2/Doe Springs, Northeast of Adin resumed operation in June '21 on a 112-acre parcel When this project is completed, 605 acres of forest will have been treated. Operations resumed in July of '22.
Snell
The Forest Service has completed treatment on 1,170 acres of Snell project, just north of White Horse.
Round Mountain/Sweagert
The community of Adin and surrounding areas has received various hazardous fuel treatments, including the Round Mountain Project, a 1,135 acre treatment near Long Bell, Adin/Canby. This project was completed in April of '22. Sweagert Projects will see treatments totaling 1,845 acres near Cal Pines, and Ash, a hand piling and mastication treatment of 625 acres East of Adin was completed in November '22. The 750-acre Adin Canby Project, a combination of mastication and biomass thinning of natural stands between the communities of Canby and Cal Pines, was completed in 2023.
Phase II
County Road 91 project
This project began in November of 2021 and has completed environmental review and agency review process and anticipate operations summer 2024.
Rush Creek WUI
The Rush Creek Wildland Urban Interface project encompasses numerous private landowners in the Rush Creek area northeast of Adin in Modoc County. Forest fuel consisting of dead-standing trees, overcrowded live trees, logs, dense shrubs and slash will be treated to aid in fire prevention and suppression as well as to create healthy forest conditions that are resilient and resistant to insects, disease and drought. The first phase of operations commenced in the summer of 2022 and treatments will be completed by early 2025. The RCD hopes to add some additional landowners north of the original project footprint in the Spring of 2024.
Adin Pass Fuel Break
This project has completed environmental review and agency review process and anticipate operations summer 2024.
DG Plantation
This project is a USFS parcel with the goals to harvest 3,285 acres of biomass.
Wagontire Natural Stands
This project is a USFS parcel with 1,200 acres targeted for treatment. Botany surveys are currently ongoing.
Wagontire Plantation Stands
This project is a USFS parcel 1,200 acres targeted for treatment. Botany surveys are currently ongoing.
Scarface
This project aims to thin approximately 2,220 acres of natural forest stands north of the community of Lookout. Additionally, 150 acres of planned mastication around lookout junction will help tie in previous treatments in the area and add over the areas overall fire resilience.
Garden Thin
The Garden Thin Project is a collaborative plantation thinning project on the Modoc National Forest that aims to commercially thin areas planted after the 1951 Mears Fire. Initial plantations took place in the early 1950s and continued incrementally through 2000s. Approximately 600 acres have been completed thus far and 2,000 acres of thinning is planned
for 2024.
The USFS and RCD have identified multiple restoration opportunities on public and private lands to make increase forest resilience, accelerate reforestation of severely burned forests, and reduce the risk of future catastrophic fire impacts to both communities and natural resources. Forest thinning through the diameter class and other fuel treatments (e.g. mastication, prescribed fire) would be used to reduce forest biomass and surface fuels in order to reduce the risk of catastrophic fire. This reduction would help to protect tree-based carbon stocks, improve growth rates and carbon uptake of residual trees, and minimize greenhouse gas released in the instance of wildfire.
Reducing forest density and surface fuels are a key step towards building a resilient landscape. Thinning prescriptions were designed to restore forest structure and facilitate the widespread use of prescribed fire by removing biomass, reducing stand densities, and shifting species composition towards more drought- and fire-tolerant species. Thinning treatments would reduce inter-tree competition from limited water and nutrients, thereby reducing the risk of insect and disease-caused mortality and GHG emissions from dead and decaying trees.
Prescribed under burning would be used to maintain the benefits of widespread thinning and to begin restoring fire as a process in forests throughout the project area. Prescribed burning would reduce surface and maintain the reduction in ladder fuels by reducing understory shrubs, small trees, and raising the live crown heights of residual larger diameter trees. As a result, fuel ignitability, ignition of tree crowns, rate of fire spread, and fire duration and intensity would be reduced. Creating favorable stand conditions across the landscape at scale would reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire and associated adverse effects to air and water quality. If fires occur on the landscape, fire size and severity could be reduced, resulting in less GHG emissions when compared to fires that occur if forests are not treated.
Funding for this project provided by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection as part of the California Climate Investments Program and the CAL FIRE Forest Health Program.
CAL FIRE's Forest Health Grant Program awards Greenhouse Gas Reduction Funds allocated by the legislature for California Climate Investments (CCI) to implement projects that seek to proactively restore forest health and conserve working forests, protect upper watersheds where the state's water supply originates, promote the long-term storage of carbon in forest trees and soils, and minimize the loss of forest carbon from large, intense wildfires.
Upper-Pit Watershed Health Project, Phase II, is part of California Climate Investments, a statewide program that puts billions of Cap-and-Trade dollars to work reducing GHG emissions, strengthening the economy, and improving public health and the environment– particularly in disadvantaged communities.
The Cap-and-Trade program also creates a financial incentive for industries to invest in clean technologies and develop innovative ways to reduce pollution. California Climate Investments projects include affordable housing, renewable energy, public transportation, zero-emission vehicles, environmental restoration, more sustainable agriculture, recycling, and much more. At least 35 percent of these investments are located within and benefiting residents of disadvantaged communities, low-income communities, and low-income households across California.
For more information, visit the California Climate Investments website at: www.caclimateinvestments.ca.gov.
For more information on the CAL FIRE Forest Health Program please visit https://www.fire.ca.gov/grants/forest-health-grants/
Stone fire salvage
The Stone Fire burned over 30,000 acres during the summer of 2018. The RCD and Forest Service have developed a Master Stewardship Agreement and a Supplemental Project Agreement to remove hazard trees. Project is expected to begin immediately and end in 2021.