15,790 trees planted this spring!

Spring Planting Review

We will have a lot of little trees to water this summer because 2024 has already been a HUGE planting year! Within the next week, 15,790 seedlings will have been planted this spring!

We were fortunate to have incredibly favorable weather for planting this spring. Thanks to lucky timing of our planting events, we managed to stay mostly dry even though it rained and snowed quite a bit in April and May. Of course, the precipitation was fantastic for watering our newly planted baby seedlings!

The vast majority (9,530) of trees planted this spring were sugar pines. Over 5,000 seedlings were planted by El Dorado National Forest crews in the Caldor Fire scar around Grizzly Flats. Nearly 2,000 more were planted by California State Parks staff at Burton Creek State Park outside Tahoe City. Roughly 2,500 more sugar pines were mostly planted by volunteers at sites around South Lake Tahoe.

About 4,300 Jeffrey pine seedlings were planted mostly by crews in the Tamarack Fire, Dixie Fire, and Walker Canyon burn scars.

Nearly 2,000 western white pine seedlings were also planted this spring! This is the most western white pine we've ever planted in one season. We hope these babies will thrive at Echo Summit in the Caldor Fire, in the High Meadows bulldozer line, in Walker Canyon and at Tahoe Donner. This gorgeous species is just as important to restore as sugar pine since it suffers high blister rust infection rates across its range. 

We had amazing turn-outs at all of our Community Plantings this spring and we are incredibly grateful to all the volunteers who came out to plant with us!

Our partners and friends at Patagonia, Everline Resort, Edgewood Tahoe, Patriot Restoration Ops, Tahoe Regional Planning Association, Tahoe Rim Trail Association, Design Workshop, Rotary International, Alpine County, Terramar, Society of Outdoor Professionals and especially the Cub Scouts of South Lake Tahoe also came out in force to help plant - we appreciate you all!

Special thanks to the friends and family of Ann Margaret Valentin, the Pipkin Family Foundation on behalf of Desolation Hotel, Terramar and the Cub Scouts of South Lake Tahoe for sponsoring our work this spring.

Last but not least, we are deeply indebted to our wonderful partners who provided truly stellar sites for us to plant:

Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit
California State Parks
California Tahoe Conservancy
Bureau of Land Management
Placerville Ranger District
Tahoe Donner Forestry Department
Carnelian Woods HOA
Edgewood Tahoe
Nevada State Parks
Nevada Division of Forestry - it doesn't get much better than the East Shore Bike Path, pictured below!

THANKS to all our partners, sponsors and volunteers for your support, comraderie, time and efforts! YOU ALL helped  make this spring planting season a great success!
It takes a lot of collaboration and hard work to restore our vitally important forests!