In the Pine Nut Mountains, federal land managers plan to reverse a troubling trend.
Pinyon-juniper trees are spreading everywhere. They grow in dense stands apt to explode at any time into a massive wildfire, just as they did last summer when a lightning strike started western Nevada's largest blaze on record.
They're marching into sagebrush, altering habitat needed by diminishing populations of sage grouse and other wildlife. They suck up limited water like straws, crowd out native grasses and shrubs.
And, studies suggest, there's nothing to indicate things won't continue as they are, with pinyon-junipers spreading across the landscape and producing more profound impacts in the years and decades to come.
That potential has the U.S. Bureau of Land Management embarking on a multiyear effort, likely costing in excess of $10 million, to halt or at least slow the spread of pinyon-juniper across the Pine Nuts, returning the rugged landscape to something closer to nature's intent.
"There are some trends in play, with some declining conditions, and this will hopefully reverse some of those trends," said Brian Buttazoni, planning and environmental coordinator for the BLM's Carson City District. "This will hopefully turn that around."
With work slated to begin this year and continue for another 10 to 14 years, the BLM plans an ambitious forest restoration project across nearly 40 square miles of the Pine Nuts, which straddle the boundary of Douglas and Lyon counties south of Reno. Planning for the project has occurred over the last two years.
In a phenomenon believed at least partly related to a warming climate, expansion of pinyon-juniper woodlands has more than tripled over the last 150 years, largely at the expense of sagebrush and bunchgrass communities, according to a report detailing the BLM's decision to proceed with the project. Trees are now thriving in previously sagebrush-dominated terrain where soil types indicate few if any should exist.
"...Barring some major environmental change or management action, trees will continue to dominate most of the sites favorable to their expansion," the report said.
One dangerous result is a continuous tree canopy that could feed a "stand-replacement wildfire with catastrophic consequences" much like the Bison Fire of 2013. The fire, sparked by a bolt of lightning on the Fourth of July, burned nearly 38 square miles. Western Nevada's largest wildfire displayed extreme fire behavior, burning through the night and threatening dozens of homes near Smith Valley and Gardnerville.
To prevent future fires and the continued ecological impacts of spreading pinyon-juniper woodland, the BLM proposes a range of treatment activities. Thinning would occur across nearly 20,000 acres, or more than 80 percent of the project area. Elsewhere, trees and shrubs would be ground up with machinery, while piles of woody debris left from treatment activities would be burned. Some 3,000 acres would be seeded with native vegetation.
The idea, once work is done, is to produce a landscape with a more balanced mix of shrubs and other plant communities similar to what existed prior to the 1860s.
"That's what we had before we allowed those trees to march down the mountain," Matt Spaulding, range resource specialist for the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, said of needed changes in the Pine Nuts shortly after the Bison Fire was extinguished last summer.
"We've got to restore something similar to that," Spaulding said at the time.
Thinning of trees and brush will be particularly intense near where the backcountry abuts residential areas such as Ruhenstroth and Fish Springs in Douglas County. As a rule, the largest and oldest pinyon-juniper trees — considered highly valuable to tribes in the area — would remain, Buttazoni said.
The project is in line with long-term goals to protect the bi-state sage grouse, proposed for listing as a threatened species, Buttazoni said. Pinyon-juniper encroachment into sagebrush habitat needed by the bird is said to be one of the greatest threat's to its future.
Pine Nut treatment
Hand-thinning: 19,942 acres.
Mechanical mastication: 4,622 acres.
Pile burning: 2,000 acres.
Seeding: 3,000 acres.
Source: Bureau of Land Management.