Burning continues along Carson Range

Pile burning has been underway across the Carson Range for the last few months as winter weather helps keep the forest floor cool and damp.

But that doesn’t mean that firefighters get an occasional question about the smoke rising in the mountains despite the orange signs along the road alerting residents the smoke is OK.

A half dozen sites between Spooner Lake and Kingsbury Grade are scheduled to see burning over the course of the week.

Burning is conducted by the Tahoe Fire & Fuels Team, which includes the North Tahoe and Tahoe Douglas fire protection districts, California Tahoe Conservancy, Nevada Division of Forestry, and the USDA Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit.

“Prescribed fires are a vital forest management tool used by land managers to help protect communities by removing fuels that can feed unwanted wildland fires,” team officials said. “Burning excess vegetation also benefits forest health by making room for new growth which provides forage for wildlife, recycling nutrients back into the soil and reducing the spread of insects and disease.”