Cleveland-Icehouse Forest Health Project
The Eldorado National Forest has engaged in a 10-year Stewardship Agreement with the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) to help implement and administer the Cleveland-Icehouse Forest Health Project. The Eldorado National Forest is one of the most popular forests for wild turkey hunters in California, and the Cleveland-Icehouse Forest Health Project will enhance upland game bird habitat on 481 acres of public hunting land within that landscape. The NWTF will oversee contractor administration, treatment design, implementation, and project financing in conjunction with the project lead from the USDA Forest Service. Implementation of the project will continue to grow as funds are acquired throughout the life of the agreement.
The Cleveland-Icehouse Forest Health Project is a 2,976-acre forest thinning project, broken up into 90 separate units. The individual units will be commercially thinned with the objective of decreasing stand densities to attain a residual basal area that would vary from approximately 60 to 100 ft2/ acre. Some units will be hand thinned while others will be treated with mechanical mastication, focused on increasing residual tree health, stand heterogeneity, and rearranging fuels to decrease fuel ladders and canopy continuity.
The award of a 2017-18 Upland Game Bird Account Grant to this project will allow for the treatment of 50 additional acres through mechanical mastication.
Benefits will include the increased production of shrubs, along with annual grasses and forbs, which are all important spring and summer food resources for wild turkeys and mountain quail. The growth of herbaceous plants that will occur post-treatment will create beneficial nesting cover for wild turkeys, who prefer lateral cover up to 1 meter in height. Stand diversity will increase through the reduction of ponderosa pine encroachment on hardwood species, which will also maintain acorn production.
Once treated, these stands will be much more resilient to landscape level disturbance events, such as catastrophic wildfire, and large-scale insect and disease infestation. The project area will be able to be managed in the future through prescribed fire, where low-severity fire conditions will help to set back overgrown understory succession, and enhance the quality of forage for upland game birds.