AS THE Caldor Fire made its menacing march toward South Lake Tahoe last summer, it burned through more than two hundred thousand acres and destroyed more than seven hundred homes. While the effects of the fire were tragic, a greater disaster was fortunately averted when firefighters steered the fire away from the city and to an area where fuel loads had been reduced through active forest management. This tamed the fire enough to get it under control. South Lake Tahoe was not the only area where recent management actions helped stave off disaster in 2021. The Dixie Fire, the largest single fire in California's history, burned nearly one million acres, including 70 percent of Lassen Volcanic National Park. Thankfully, firefighters "successfully leveraged the park's previous and current fire and fuels management projects to preserve park resources and structures," according to a Park Service release. Without the benefit of these projects, more of the park's infrastructure could have been lost, making its recovery from the fire more difficult.
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