-- Campaign For Old Growth | Reference Articles --

The few remaining stands of old-growth timber in the Lake Tahoe Basin will remain untouched.

The decision by governors of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency ends five years of intensive and sometimes divisive debate among government officials, landowners, environmentalists and others trying to agree on long-term timber policy for Lake Tahoe.

The agency's policy board spent much of Wednesday trying to balance the interests of those insisting on an aggressive approach to protecting Tahoe's oldest trees against those asking for a less stringent strategy.

Private property owners continued to press arguments that they shouldn't be held to the same standards proposed for public land and that existing state regulations are sufficient to protect the forest.

"I'm here to ask for an exemption as a private landowner," said J.B. Lukemberry, whose family owns Tahoe's largest stand of private timber, 2,300 acres.

Lukemberry said logging on private land is not subsidized as it is on national and state forests.

"It's giving me the chance to decide what tree must stay and what tree must go," he said in asking for relaxed standards.

The new regulations are designed to allow Tahoe's forests to evolve to historic conditions, with 55 percent displaying old-growth characteristics.

"This is an extremely difficult issue. This is an issue we're debating nationally," said Dave Roberts of the League to Save Lake Tahoe, a conservationist group involved in timber discussions.

Loggers during the Comstock era nearly a century and a half ago clear-cut much of the Tahoe Basin, with only about 5 percent of today's existing stands of timber characterized as old-growth.

TRPA's new rules would prohibit the felling of trees larger than 30 inches in diameter on the west side of the Tahoe Basin and greater than 24 inches in diameter on the drier east side.

Cutting larger trees would be allowed in places where they pose a fire threat near homes or present some other danger. They could also be felled to help ecosystem goals such as promoting growth of aspen trees.

Cutting of larger trees would be allowed on private land if their number is limited and a plan is prepared for TRPA consideration that shows the logging project would not significantly impact overall goals of protecting old-growth timber.