Sierra on the Precipice

In this old railroad town high in the Sierra Nevada, the waitress at the Cafe Meridian asks if you want your sandwich on focaccia bread or a baguette.

In the historic river valley where gold was discovered in 1848, a local rancher wants to build a 10,000-seat rock ‘n’ roll pavilion.

Down the road from the clearing where the Donner expedition came to grief trying to cross these mountains in the bitter winter of 1846, the groundwork is being laid for an 800-acre destination resort and conference center.

It is all part of what some people are calling “Sierra Nueva”--a region beloved for wilderness and 19th-century rusticity where, today, software firms are becoming more numerous than sawmills and the stillness of some mountain meadows has less to do with solitude than with the decline in birds, deer and frogs.

Home to nearly 700,000 people, and a playground less than a day’s drive for many millions more, the nation’s longest unbroken mountain range is metamorphosing into a metropolitan region of shopping centers, office parks and gated subdivisions spread over a majestic landscape.

The Sierra is still a land of natural superlatives: the world’s largest trees, the tallest mountain in the Lower 48 states, one of the deepest and bluest lakes on the continent. But the region of John Muir and Ansel Adams, of giant sequoias and Yosemite, also is about to become the home of Sun City, a full-service community for several thousand retirees, and of Wal-Mart mega-stores in the Gold Rush towns of Auburn and Placerville.

The changes to the Sierra slip up on you. Pollution robs Lake Tahoe’s crystalline water of about a foot of clarity each year. The view of high peaks above the Desolation Wilderness seems to grow a bit hazier every summer. On Pine Hill, in the western foothills, the riotous spring bloom of orange flannel bush and white ceanothus belies the fact that one of the most prized rare plant preserves in the country has lost nearly half its range to encroaching development.

One way to take in the new Sierra is from the top, on the John Muir Trail, where a hiker can pass 100 people a day on popular stretches. Another is along the South Fork of the American River, where 140,000 rafters a year turn the river into a white-water amusement park on summer weekends.

But Sierra Nueva may best be appreciated after dark, when the lights twinkling in the night sky remind you of a city. It’s not an illusion.

The valleys and foothills are filling with prosperous retirees from Southern California and log cabin entrepreneurs who run international businesses from home computers. They want some city comforts while hoping to not disturb the mountain serenity.

Change Began in ‘70s

The pace of change, however, is hastening the loss of qualities that help make the Sierra special.

Scientists estimate that most of the region’s wild salmon has been lost to dams, diversions and pollution and that half the frogs, toads and salamanders are in serious trouble.

“Sierra-wide extinction of many of the fish species and all of the amphibians is likely in the next 50 years if present trends continue,” said Peter Moyle, a UC Davis biologist who authored a paper on Sierra stream systems.

These mountains have always been irresistible. Reminiscing about a summer beside Lake Tahoe in “Roughing It,” Mark Twain wrote that he could not imagine a happier life anywhere. “The air up there is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. It is the same air angels breathe. . . . The view was always fascinating, bewitching, entrancing.”

Generations of Californians have felt the same way. The Sierra is where they saw their first deer or black bear, discovered the pleasures of sleeping outside next to a campfire and learned to ski or paddle a kayak. It was a place for wilderness retreats and family reunions, for recouping as well as roughing it.

The transformation to Sierra Nueva began in the 1970s when young people who loved the place began looking for ways to begin living full time in the mountains.

Michael Funk was among them. He bought an old truck and began delivering produce to rural food cooperatives. Twenty years later and now based in Auburn, Funk presides over Mountain People’s Warehouse, the nation’s second-largest distributor of natural foods.

Funk, 41, learned early the gospel of Sierra capitalism. “The costs of doing business are lower and morale is higher because your employees love where they live.”

High-Tech Industries

Today, high-tech is everywhere, lured in part by the lower costs.

Hewlett-Packard and Intel employ several thousand people in large satellite operations on the edge of the Sierra. In Quincy, a century-old logging town in the northern Sierra, Trilogy Magnetics repairs computers for companies worldwide. Near Yosemite National Park, MRL Industries employs 200 people in Sonora making the furnaces used to manufacture silicon chips. And in Bishop, at the head of Owens Valley on the east flank of the Sierra, Allan Pietrasanta quit his job as a mountain guide 13 years ago to start ABCOM, a mail-order firm that makes carrying cases for portable electronic gear.

“There has been a steady move away from the boom-bust resource-based economy of the past to a diversified, sophisticated and relatively high-wage economy,” said William Stewart, an Oakland economist who just completed a study of the region for the Sierra Business Council, a group of 350 firms concerned about the future environment.

Vanishing Rangeland

Mining ore, cutting trees and raising cattle used to be the main ways to make money. Now, those provide less than 10% of the jobs. In the past decade, the number of sawmills has fallen by more than 40%, and the volume of logs taken off national forests has dropped by half.

Still, gold mines continue to blast into the bedrock. Trees are felled and livestock are put out to pasture across one-third of the region. Much of the historic appeal of the Sierra is etched in the remnants of old mine works and mills, in the forlorn facades of fading timber towns such as Greenville and Crescent Mills and in the back-country corrals and horse camps such as Jordan Hot Springs in the Golden Trout Wilderness.

After 150 years of logging and grazing, the marks are everywhere. Seen from the air, the forests surrounding Sequoia National Park and Lake Tahoe resemble a moth-eaten quilt. Ragged clusters of clear-cuts, where new seedlings have failed to take root, lie bare near trampled meadows where too many sheep and cattle have foraged.

About two-thirds of the Sierra is owned by the government, mostly in national parks, forests and wilderness areas. As subdivisions creep up the flanks of the range and fashionable resorts elbow their way into historic towns such as Fish Camp and Truckee, private timber preserves and ranches are the last bastions of open space around many lower-lying communities. Even they are falling fast.

In the western foothills, new communities are swallowing up rangeland at an estimated rate of 6% a year. About 800,000 acres of oak woodlands have been cleared--that’s about two-thirds of all oak forests in California obliterated during the past 40 years. In the fastest-growing counties, rising from east of Sacramento to Lake Tahoe, new homes are expected to fill in half of the remaining privately owned pasture and forest.

“Rangeland is becoming housing whenever the price is right,” said Paul Starrs, a University of Nevada geographer, in a recent paper on land use changes in the Sierra. “Unless policy changes encourage livestock ranching,” Starrs wrote, “the cattle, sheep, goats, horses and llamas will disappear.”

The Forni family ranch may be among the casualties. Descendants of Swiss immigrants who came to El Dorado County in the 1870s, the Fornis have been ranching in rolling oak-clad hills south of Placerville ever since, sharing the semi-wild with deer, bobcats and mountain lions.

Because the Fornis--like many foothill ranchers--acquired their land one piece at a time, their pastures are not contiguous. Up to now, that hasn’t been a problem. The land around was undeveloped, and they could drive their cattle over a neighbor’s ground to get to their own land.

But the neighborhood is about to change in a big way. One of the most ambitious real estate developments in the Sierra is taking shape on 8,000 acres encircling much of the Forni holdings. Unless they can secure a right of way, the family faces the prospect of being shut off from their pasture.

“One of the developers came up with the idea that we could drive the cattle through the streets of the subdivision,” rancher Toni Forni said. “Just imagine it. Cows on people’s lawns, in their gardens. Calves bawling. Manure, flies, dust.”

To serve nearly 600 homes and 2,000 people on land where no one lives now, local officials anticipate the eventual construction of roads, schools, stores and fire stations. Up to 32,000 trees will be removed, along with 521 acres of native plant community associated with wildlife habitat.

The transformation of the Sierra landscape is becoming worrisome even to people who stand to benefit most from it.

“People are attracted to the rural, small town way of life . . . volunteer fire departments, church picnics, holiday parades,” said Bob Hayden, president of the Placer Savings Bank. “You don’t have parades in Wal-Mart parking lots.”

Steve Teshara, executive director of the South Lake Tahoe Gaming Commission, worries that fewer people will want to make the drive to Tahoe if the ranches, forests and small towns that lend color to the trip fade into a suburban landscape of housing developments, office parks and strip malls.

“People want to get into the mountain mode when they come up here,” Teshara said. “Unfortunately, more and more of the scenery gives you the impression you are still in the urban stress zone.”

The fullest accounting of the new Sierra, a three-year study of the region’s environment and economy, will be delivered to Congress later this week. The $7-million Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project report predicts a population of 2 million by the middle of the next century. It is also expected to confirm growing suspicions of troubling declines in fish, amphibians, birds, deer and other animals, document the loss of natural habitat, and analyze the deterioration of forest health, air quality and water purity.

Scholars who have reviewed the report say it concludes that only 15% of the Sierra’s oldest and biggest trees are left. These old-growth stands of mostly pine and fir are believed to be home to the healthiest mix of forest plants and animals that remain.

More than half of the Sierra’s major watersheds were found to be in fair to poor condition, according to biologist Moyle. The stream systems have been impaired by dams, agricultural diversions, grazing pressures, untreated sewage, pesticides and heavy silt deposits created by new construction, road building, logging and mining, he said.

“Only the high-elevation habitats were found to be in good shape,” Moyle said.

Ozone Weakens Pines

Frequently, the culprits for environmental damage lie outside the Sierra and beyond its control.

Ozone, the main ingredient of smog blown in from San Francisco Bay and the Central Valley, is weakening stands of ponderosa and Jeffrey pine along much of the west-facing slope, particularly in Sequoia National Forest. The trees absorb ozone that settles on their leaves, which leads to premature defoliation, limited growth and increased vulnerability to bug infestation and fire.

On slopes facing the valley and its increasingly poor air, researchers report a 13% decline in the average diameter of Jeffrey pines. “In a sense, the western slope is being held hostage by the Central Valley,” said Thomas Cahill, a professor of atmospheric physics at UC Davis and an expert on the ozone problem.

Drifting air pollution from cities below the mountains also is a factor in clouding the clear water of 6,228-foot-high Lake Tahoe. Nitrogen descending from the skies and local runoff are stimulating algae growth.

Lake Tahoe has lost one-third of its transparency, according to scientists who have monitored its clarity since the late 1950s. “At that rate, we are talking about a fairly ordinary-looking lake in another 40 years,” UC Davis ecologist Charles Goldman said.

Ornithologists looking at dwindling bird species in the Sierra are trying to determine if the declines are caused by local disturbances or habitat damage as far away as Central and South America.

Only 34 of the region’s 150 land bird species have been studied over a period of years, said David DeSante, executive director of the nonprofit Institute for Bird Populations in Point Reyes. Of those, DeSante said, 11 are declining. They include juncos--the area’s most abundant species--which are disappearing at a rate of 3% a year, and robins, which are vanishing almost as fast.

In part, DeSante blames grazing by cows and sheep that disturbs shrubs and streams, reducing wet mountain meadows to dusty fields of minimal value to birds.

Positive Signs

Yet the prognosis for the Sierra environment is not entirely negative. More than 3 million acres of national park and wilderness preserves, off limits to hunting, logging and development, provide high elevation sanctuary for black bears, mountain lions and other animals likely to run afoul of the expanding population.

Massive clear-cutting that has laid waste to some forests in the Pacific Northwest has not occurred in the Sierra. The California spotted owl has fared better than its northern relative, which is on the endangered species list.

Conservation agreements at Mono Lake and in the Plumas National Forest promise new protection for fish and waterfowl. And on the eastern side of the Sierra, researchers hope they are on the brink of solving one of the region’s worst pollution problems.

Wind-whipped dust from Owens Lake, the vast navigable body that dried up after Los Angeles took the water early this century, has been reaching across the Sierra. The caustic mix of fine-grained salt, clay and sulfates qualifies as one of the most potentially injurious forms of particulate pollution in the country.

For years, researchers have been conducting experiments at the dry lake, trying to stabilize the dust through irrigation, salt-tolerant vegetation, gravel cover and wind screens. The proposed solution is expected to involve a combination of approaches.

To some, the draining of Owens Lake is more than a bitter chapter in Sierra history. It exposes a weakness that will shape the future of Sierra Nueva.

Although the population has tripled since 1970, the fate of the Sierra’s natural resources--especially water--is mostly governed by the appetites of people in other parts of the state.

In his research for the Sierra Business Council, Stewart estimated that the Sierra produces more than $2 billion in goods and services annually, most of it tied directly or indirectly to the environment.

Yet, Stewart found that only about 2% of the value of the Sierra’s marketable resources is reinvested in the ecosystem or in local communities. Today, that value is predominantly in water and hydroelectricity, generated by about 500 reservoirs, 100 hydropower facilities and two of the world’s largest irrigation projects.

Sierra water fueled the growth of Los Angeles and San Francisco and created one of the most productive agricultural belts on Earth in the Central Valley. Yet, the Sierra is able to lay claim to only about 5% of the water that originates in the mountains and virtually none of the profits from the generation of hydropower, according to Stewart.

“The Sierra is in its third or fourth wave of colonization,” said Bill Center, a former El Dorado County supervisor who runs a rafting company on the popular South Fork of the American River.

“Big timber, agribusiness, urban water agencies. . . . Now, it’s powerful land interests from Sacramento and Orange County trying to have their way with us.”

Center speaks from experience. A slow-growth advocate and outspoken environmentalist, he lost a reelection bid in 1994 after being targeted by political action committees financed by Northern and Southern California building and banking interests.

Yet, two years after his defeat, Center is optimistic.

He figures that the newcomers flooding into the Sierra will want to preserve what remains of the mountains’ splendor, what he refers to as the region’s natural capital.

“The people who come here do so because they love the place and want to leave it the way it is,” Center said.

‘Lone Eagle’ Businesses

Kris and Bill Anderson-Moore are part of the new breed.

Refugees from the Oakland suburbs, they moved to the Sierra in the mid-1980s. They built a log house on 20 acres inherited from Kris’ grandfather in the forest outside Georgetown in the western foothills.

Typical of a new generation of entrepreneurs dubbed “lone eagles” for their ability to run businesses in remote locations, the Anderson-Moores established a truck licensing firm in an upstairs room equipped with two personal computers and a fax machine.

They process licenses and inter-state permits for the owners of 70,000 commercial vehicles. It has grown into a $250,000-a-year business, Kris Anderson-Moore said. She and her husband also are leaders in a campaign to limit growth and commercial enterprise in rural, forested areas.

“Before I came up here, I had never before been involved in anything civic or political. Then, two things happened,” she said.

Local officials approved a motorcycle racetrack in the middle of a deer wintering range, and her neighbors began to clear-cut their land. In the process, she said, they carelessly marked 38 of the couple’s trees for removal.

“I’m sure we could have made a lot of money by cutting those trees down, but that’s not why we came here,” she said.

Yet, by clearing a home site and building a house in the woods, the Anderson-Moores and others like them who demand better roads, schools and fire protection--pushing the frontiers of suburbia higher into the mountains--are part of the inexorable transformation of the countryside.

“If I had to do this all over,” said Kris Anderson-Moore, “I wouldn’t live here. I would live in Georgetown. Then I wouldn’t feel so guilty.”

But building homes in the wilds is only one of many impacts that urban society is having on the Sierra region.

Cradled by the forks of the picturesque American River, Georgetown and its environs are in the heart of one of the most heavily visited corners of the Sierra. River rafting, hot-air ballooning, horseback riding and wine tasting at 15 local wineries attract throngs of weekend visitors.

Across the Sierra, recreation and tourism now employ more people than any other line of work. And all those campers, skiers, rafters, hunters and weekend sybarites who gamble at Lake Tahoe, soak in hot tubs high above Squaw Valley or stay overnight in bed-and-breakfast inns take a toll on the Sierra environment.

“Look at winter activity in places like Mammoth and Truckee,” said Timothy P. Duane, a UC Berkeley regional planning scholar who is writing a book about the Sierra. “You’ve had some of the highest particulate pollution in the nation as a result of wood smoke and cars.”

By the middle of the next century, population experts predict that 65 million people will be living within a day’s drive of the Sierra.

“We have no idea what the carrying capacity of the land is,” Duane said. “We can’t say that, in the end, a well-managed, sustainable timber operation won’t be easier on the land than mass recreation.”

Ed Bacchi takes in the changing landscape from his 100-year-old family ranch near the hamlet of Lotus along the South Fork of the American River.

Popular for Rafting

This is divide country, where the river has carved a series of lush, narrow canyons separated by grassy ridges and low nobby mountains. The beauty of the area has helped make the South Fork the most popular white-water-rafting river on the West Coast.

Bacchi recalled that when his grandparents arrived here in the late 19th century and began acquiring property, the land was considered “junk land” because it wasn’t very productive. It was good enough for raising cattle though, and Bacchi said his family eventually acquired 10,000 acres.

Today, the land is going the way of much of the Sierra. Bacchi said he plans to subdivide some of the property and convert some of it to recreational use. “I want to get in on this new atmosphere thing that’s so popular with the tourists. I’m thinking of horseback rides, maybe a golf course.”

“The other landowners on the river all left,” Bacchi said. “They couldn’t get used to all the people going by and having picnics in their backyards.”

Taking a more pragmatic view, Bacchi established a private camp and picnic grounds along a pretty stretch of riverfront that he leases out to commercial river-rafting outfits and film companies.

“The future is economics. You can choose to be part of it, or not.

“But the idea that you can plan your own destiny or the destiny of the land . . . people are kidding themselves if they think they are free to do that.”

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The Sierra Nueva

The 430-mile-long Sierra Nevada range is showing signs of becoming a mountain metropolis. Almost 700,000 people live in the region, triple the population of 25 years ago. Another 20 million live within half a day’s drive. The population influx is transforming the land, towns, forests and wilderness.

RANCHING: Ranch lands are being developed at a rate of 6% a year.

BIRDS: Juncos, robins, band-tailed pigeons and other species are in decline.

SALMON: Dams cause severe drop in migrating chinook salmon, sapping streams of nutrients.

INVADERS: Noxious exotic weeds such as yellow star thistle and Scotch broom are moving into disturbed lands.

AMPHIBIANS: Frogs, toads and salamanders are disappearing at a high rate. Factors from the loss of insects to higher levels of ultraviolet light are suspected.

WILDFIRE: Houses sprouting in historic wildfire paths put people at risk and increase pressure to suppress forest-rejuvenating blazes.

AIR: Smog from wood smoke, car exhaust and distant cities is a fact of life in many areas.

ENDANGERED SPECIES: Bald eagles and 50 other animals are listed as endangered, threatened, candidates for listing or species of special concern.

SPRAWL: New suburbs are spilling over ridges in hopscotch patterns.

GOLDEN TROUT: State fish is under assault from livestock damage and non-native brown trout.

RECREATION: Day users are leaving an increasing mark on lakes, forests, streams and meadows.

WATER: Water quality in streams and wells is declining.

SMOKEY AND BAMBI: Black bears are flourishing in the parks and protected areas, but the size of deer herds is declining. Mountain lions are becoming more common.

LAKE TAHOE: Water clarity has dropped to about 70 feet from 102 feet in 1968. Nitrogen from wood smoke and urban smog is feeding algae growth.

CUTTHROAT TROUT: Lahontan and Paiute cutthroat trout are threatened. Non-native rainbow trout are a factor.

YOSEMITE: More than 4 million people visited the national park last year. Higher gate fees and limits on valley parking are being considered.

MONO LAKE: Level is rising an from all-time low after a court-ordered halt to stream diversions by the city of Los Angeles.

DAMS: Virtually all rivers and major streams have been dammed for mining, power or water. The biggest dam is the 770-foot-high Oroville on the Feather River.

BACK COUNTRY: Use by backpackers has leveled off, but popular routes to Mt. Whitney and along the John Muir Trail remain busy. Water must be treated for giardia.

DRY LAKE BED: Alkali dust raised from the once-navigable lake causes worst small-particulate air pollution in the nation.

FORESTS: 15% of old-growth trees remain. Air pollution, drought and lack of fires have weakened forest health.

Sources: Calif. Dept. of Fish and Game; Calif. Dept. of Water Resources; Calif. Exotic Pest Plant Council; Calif. Native Plant Society; Institute for Bird Populations; Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District; Mono Lake Committee; National Park Service; Sierra Business Council Sierra Nevada Wealth Index; UC Davis, Tahoe Research Group; U.S. Forest Service; U.S. Census Bureau; Times staff reports.

Researched by NONA YATES / Los Angeles Times