INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. – Above Matchless Court in the First Creek drainage, new technologies are destroying vegetation and trees in an environmentally friendly, efficient and safe way.
Two remote-controlled BurnBots RCU75s demonstrated precision chewing on Wednesday as part of a demonstration hosted at the Parasol Tahoe Community Foundation by the Tahoe Fund and regional partners including the North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District, Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team, Tahoe Regional Planning Agency , Truckee Tahoe Community Foundation and Martis Fund.
“This thing can do 10 times more than manual teams can do,” said BurnBot CEO Anukool Lakhina. “BurnBots’ mission is to make destructive wildfires a thing of the past.”
BurnBot is a new and innovative tool created to help increase the pace and scale of forest restoration. It weighs around 7,500 pounds.
BurnBots chew or cover the forest. It is a fuel reduction treatment method to reduce wildfire risk and fuel load by returning the forest to natural conditions.
“If we continue to do things the way we always have, we should expect the same results,” said former CAL Fire Chief Deputy Chris Anthony, who moderated the panel. “This is not acceptable.”
The $50,000 project will remove 75% of vegetation on 22 acres in 2 to 3 days. This would take 1 hand crew or 20 firefighters for 15 days.
“Twenty-two acres in 3 days is truly tremendous,” said Tahoe Fund CEO Amy Berry. “…you can’t get that level of efficiency from a manual team.”
BurnBot was created to complement human efforts and address the necessary scale of fuel reduction and management, according to the BurnBot website. The BurnBot handles tough conditions and goes where most other machines can’t. It performs difficult mitigation work and works in dense brush, including trees up to 8 feet in diameter, and terrain up to 60 degrees.
BurnBot creates defensible space, infrastructure right-of-way clearance, vegetation removal, firebreak maintenance, invasive species removal, land clearing, and fire/fuel shutoffs.
“Our mission is so big… you could put the whole planet Earth into this and it still wouldn’t get done,” Lakhina said.
Lakhina added that there is no infinite time, so he helped invent BurnBot.
“I think it’s a really good technology,” said North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District Chief Ryan Sommers. “I like them to recognize a problem and have a solution.”
The problem, Berry said, is that the composition of our forests has changed. The forests are excessively dense and are dying because of it.
The Tahoe Basin has 22 million more trees than a healthy forest should, Berry said in a 2023 Tahoe Daily Tribune op-ed.
As a speaker before the rally, Berry spoke about the progression of the Tahoe forest.
The Washoe Tribe managed a healthy, thriving Tahoe forest, whose traditional ecological practices allowed the landscape to thin and regenerate.
In the 1800s, logging and mining deforested the Basin. When the forest grew back all at once, it eliminated the variety of trees and changed the diversity of species. Then, firefighting agencies adopted a suppression policy that led to uncontrolled overgrowth.
“Now we have a forest with many trees competing for a very limited supply of water and sunlight,” Berry wrote. “This leaves them prone to disease, infestation and mortality, which in turn makes them an extremely potent fuel for catastrophic wildfires.”
There are about 300 trees per acre in Tahoe, according to Land Tender. When the forest was at its healthiest, there were 25 trees per acre.
“We plan to use (BurnBot) when we can,” Sommers said.
Next week, Incline Village and Crystal Bay will add 60 seasonal firefighters.
“We can increase the pace and scale of the work needed on fuels by working together with technologies like BurnBot,” said Sommers.
In 2023, firefighters cut and treated 200 acres plus 35 acres of prescribed burns. They are on fire about 100 days a year.
Placer County Supervisor Cindy Gustafson said she is passionate about finding solutions for a healthy forest.
“It’s amazing,” said Gustafson, a Tahoe Fund board member. “It’s another tool in our kit to know how we treat the forest and do it more efficiently and effectively. We can treat more hectares.”
The BurnBot team will return in the fall to do a fully enclosed prescribed fire to set the stage for when a natural fire occurs.
It will cost an additional $50,000.
“Tahoe is a sanctuary,” Lakhina said. “It’s heartbreaking to see city after city being destroyed by fires.”
Brenna O’Boyle enjoys covering entertainment in Lake Tahoe. Her beat includes Incline Village, Kings Beach, and Tahoe City. She loves writing travel articles and reporting on food/alcohol related events. Brenna is also a member of the Reno Public Art Committee which identifies, reviews and recommends artists for public art opportunities.
