Antelope Creek WUI Forest Health and Fuels Reduction Project (Tahoe National Forest) (SNC #1564)
Summary
SCH Number
2023060182
Public Agency
Sierra Nevada Conservancy
Document Title
Antelope Creek WUI Forest Health and Fuels Reduction Project (Tahoe National Forest) (SNC #1564)
Document Type
NOE - Notice of Exemption
Received
Posted
6/6/2023
Document Description
The Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) will provide funding to the Sierra Valley Fire Safe and Watershed Council to implement fuel treatments on 45 acres of Tahoe National Forest (TNF) land to create a fuelbreak along Antelope Valley Road west of Sierra Brooks. The area is adjacent to the 1994 Cottonwood Fire footprint. SNC funding will be used to complete treatments that will restore heterogeneous lower-density forest conditions with reduced surface fuel loads that reduce the risk of mortality from drought, insects, disease and fire; result in post-treatment conditions that will allow for the safe application of prescribed fire; and provide a critical fuelbreak and connectivity of existing and planned fuelbreaks adjacent to the communities of Sierra Brooks, Loyalton, and Sierraville to allow for future fire-management opportunities. Mastication will be the primary method of treatment across the project area with smaller areas of lop and scatter and hand removal in sensitive riparian or wet areas. The project activities on these 45 acres of the TNF would be funded by the same grant that would fund implementation of related fuel-treatment activities on 130 acres on the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) Antelope Valley State Wildlife Area. The CDFW is Lead Agency under CEQA for its project, (SCH 2008082031) with an IS/ND filed in August 2008 and a NOD in November 2008.
Contact Information
Name
Mary Akens
Agency Name
Sierra Nevada Conservancy
Job Title
Legal Counsel
Contact Types
Lead/Public Agency
Phone
Location
Cities
Southwest of Loyalton
Counties
Sierra
Regions
Northern California
Other Location Info
The project is adjacent to the 1994 Cottonwood Fire burn scar and within the Tahoe National Forest (TNF), northeast of Sierraville and southwest of Loyalton within the Feather River Watershed. Work will focus predominantly along Antelope Valley Road.
Notice of Exemption
Exempt Status
Statutory Exemption
Type, Section or Code
Public Resources Code Section 4799.05(d)
Reasons for Exemption
CEQA does not apply to prescribed fire, reforestation, habitat restoration, thinning, or fuel-reduction projects undertaken on federal lands to reduce the risk of high-severity wildfire that have been reviewed under NEPA if the primary role of a state or local agency is providing funding or staffing for those projects. The SNC would provide funding to reduce forest fuels and conduct thinning to create a fuelbreak along Antelope Valley Road on federal land within the TNF. The proposed activities were reviewed in their entirety pursuant to NEPA in the Brumby Project Environmental Assessment (2008) and as part of the Cottonwood Fire Restoration EIS (Supplemental Information Report dated April 2017).
County Clerk
Sierra
Attachments
Notice of Exemption
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