Arnold Avery Project: Restoring Forests and Popular Trails in the Sierra Nevada

Jason Smith with Margalit Shetreat-Klein
Southern Sierra Shared Stewardship Advisor
January 10, 2024

The Arnold Avery Healthy Forest Restoration project checks all the boxes of a successful collaborative landscape project — multiple partners, high levels of public support, stewardship agreements, and unprecedented levels of public and private funding.  

You can find your way to this area by following California’s Highway 4 as winds its way through the Central Sierra Nevada mountain range. Follow along Ebbetts Pass Scenic Highway, as it connects the towns of Avery, Arnold, Calaveras Big Trees State Park, and Dorrington.  

Protecting these population centers and the surrounding Wildland Urban Interface from wildfire threats has long been a priority for the area’s largest landowner, the Stanislaus National Forest. This area knows fire all too well — the 1992 Old Gulch Fire, 2001 Darby Fire, 2004 Mineral Fire, and the 2015 Butte Fire. They all pushed their way toward the communities of the Highway 4 corridor. These fires serve as regular reminders of the need to maintain strategic fuel breaks along the nearby canyon rims.  

Adding to the challenge, in the early 2010s, the region was hit hard by the bark beetle epidemic, killing large stands of the dominant ponderosa pine species. The result? Enormous fuel loads and significant public safety hazards throughout the area. Planning efforts went from strategic to urgent.  

“The location of the Arnold Avery project is right behind Arnold [and] Avery on the north side of the highway, and it’s heavily used by the public,” explained Carinna Robertson, Stanislaus National Forest’s Calaveras Ranger District Resource Management Staff Officer.  

“It has a network of trails and roads, it’s a big OHV area. But also, when you look at the geography of the area — if a fire was to come up to the canyon, it’s going to rip right through the Arnold Avery project. So, by us going in there and treating that whole side, it’s really protecting the community.” 

Crossing Forest Boundaries with Partners 

Extreme wildfires, severe drought, and invasive species do not recognize borders or boundary lines Through the Shared Stewardship Program, the Pacific Southwest Region of the USDA Forest Service is working with tribal governments, states and other partners to explore opportunities to improve forest health across jurisdictions. 

One of these partnerships is with CAL FIRE and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to support the Shared Stewardship Advisors. The Shared Stewardship Advisors work with the Forest Service and partners across the state to identify opportunities and implement cross-boundary forest health projects. 

The Stanislaus National Forest was able to use the 2014 Farm Bill to help expedite planning and treatment of the landscape to begin treatment up to 3,000 acres. And so the Arnold Avery Healthy Forest Restoration project was created in 2018.  

The first half of that year was spent gathering important input from local groups. Plus, public scoping sessions with the Amador Calaveras Consensus Group, a community-based collaborative working to create fire-safe communities, healthy ecosystems, and sustainable local economies. 

The 3,000 acres were analyzed, and the Stanislaus National Forest proposed a wide range of treatments to include mastication — or mulching of vegetation — mechanical thinning, logging dead trees, biomass removal, prescribed burns, fuel breaks, and hand and mechanical fuels work.  

Funding from Pacific Gas & Electric and the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, who work to protect the communities and ecosystems of the Sierra-Cascade region, helped jumpstart the project. The first phase of the project began in 2020 by the Mule Deer Foundation, a conservation group focused on habitat restoration for various deer populations, under their stewardship agreement with the national forest. Initially just over 800 acres, the Mule Deer Foundation’s project grew as the beetle mortality spread and more funding became available.  

Trail Work and More 

This portion of the Stanislaus National Forest is also home to the Arnold Rim Trail, a popular recreation area with over 30 miles of non-motorized use trails. Anyone using these trails in the past few years has seen the growing footprint of cleared understory and decked logs from the project.  

In all, the Mule Deer Foundation has treated about 1,500 acres over two project phases. They are one of a few national foundations to have keystone agreements with the Forest Service. This allows for multi-year, large landscape restoration projects. With a recent increase of funding available to Keystone partners through the Inflation Reduction Act, the Mule Deer Foundation is looking ahead to even more projects on public lands.  

Randy Morrison, Senior Habitat Partnership Coordinator with the Mule Deer Foundation and Project Manager and Agreement Manager for the Arnold Avery Healthy Forest Restoration Project, emphasized the need for immediate action on this landscape. 

“Even if there wouldn’t have been the bark beetle issue, the project would have still been important because there was too much inventory in that project. It was too overgrown, too thick — the ladder fuels were there that would cause a fire to go from ground fire to a canopy fire,” Morrison said.  

Finally, another round of funding came through the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) Wildfire Prevention Grant program in 2021 to the Calaveras Healthy Impact Product Solutions team (CHIPS). CHIPS has a successful track record of administering grant-funded forest restoration projects in the Central Sierra, managing their own forestry, and working with Tribes.  

For this landscape, CHIPS brought in three different local contractors to perform fuels reduction on around 1,000 acres. Mastication on the final treatment units on the western end of the project were finished in fall 2023.  

As Robertson emphasized, it’s crucial to “stay engaged and make sure we have eyes on the ground — or our partners have eyes on the ground — to see where treatments are needed.”