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Forest Futures: Our Impact Investment for Healthier Forests & Safer Communities

Communications
Published on January 31, 2025

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The Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation (TTCF) has just made its first Forest Futures impact investment in Alpenglow Timber, a new Truckee-based sawmill and cross-laminated timber (CLT) facility. Alpenglow Timber will process excess woody biomass cleared from local forests and properties, a critical need as Tahoe Truckee has recently doubled down on wildfire mitigation efforts in the face of unprecedented blazes. The mill will contribute to forest health strategies and add 25+ local jobs while producing fire-resistant housing materials. The Alpenglow Timber investment rounds out TTCF’s suite of woody biomass solutions that seek to address several challenges rampant in the rural Mountain West.

Restoring Health to the Region’s Overcrowded Forests
The forests of the Sierra once held an estimated 30 trees an acre – forests you could gallop a horse through. According to UC researchers, that number is closer to 300 – a 10-fold increase in forest density.* This is thanks to a combination of past logging practices, which disrupted forests’ ecological balance through clearcutting and a legacy of suppressing fire, a natural part of Western ecosystems.**

As efforts ramp up to remove the excess trees and overgrowth fueling unprecedented wildfires in recent years, the question becomes: what do we do with all this wood? 

The More Crowded the Forests, the More Catastrophic the Fires
Dense forests burn hotter and faster – as flames feed on multiple, concentrated fuel layers, from downed logs to underbrush to full-grown trees. These fires are more unpredictable, jumping fire lines cut by firefighters and sometimes even creating their own weather.*** Over recent years, we’ve seen how when these fires reach communities, they leave little in their wake. 

Forest restoration activities can end up stalling without places to take the wood being thinned from our forests. Having to transport felled timber and biomass long distances increases the costs of projects for contractors – and can also limit the number of contractors who submit bids in the first place, as some TTCF partners have reported. When this happens, projects either don’t get done, or we see piles of branches and small-diameter trees stacking up in bonfire-like mounds in forests as they wait to be burned or processed. 

TTCF Bets on Small, Localized Solutions
Our community recognizes the need to develop regional infrastructure to alleviate this challenge. This includes woody biomass facilities that convert woodchips and low-value biomass into heat, energy, and other usable products.

TTCF is proud to support several such projects. In 2024, we announced key investments that simultaneously provide places to process our excess woody biomass, build forest resilience, and support the development of a strong, diversified local economy:

  • Sierra Institute for Community and Environment – TTCF invested $1 million in a community-scale wood processing operation to produce CLT to support resilient construction, especially in communities recovering from fire.
  • Northstar Community Services District Wood Energy Facility – TTCF is supporting this Truckee-based operation to convert biomass that typically holds lower market value (e.g., woodchips) into heat. Through a new two-boiler system, Northstar Village can leverage biomass for 99% of its average thermal demand. 

Processing excess biomass also requires sawmills, particularly those equipped to handle smaller-diameter trees (targets for forest thinning operations and typically more difficult to process). However, besides the recently established Tahoe Forest Products in Carson City, the closest mills to Tahoe-Truckee are 70-100+ miles away and unable to meet growing needs. 

A New Impact Investment Rounds Out a Suite of Woody Biomass Solutions
TTCF’s latest impact investment aligns with this focus: supporting a local community partner in building a sawmill and lumber facility to manage the lower-value materials from local forest thinning projects. 

This new sawmill, Alpenglow Timber, located on California State Route 89 north of Truckee, comes with a number of community benefits:

  • Forest restoration – Alpenglow Timber plans to treat 1,500 acres of forest per year and 75,000 acres over its 50-year useful life. 
  • Local employment – Alpenglow Timber will create an estimated 25+ jobs and support its workforce through building on-site employee housing. 
  • Producing fire-resistant materials – Alpenglow Timber will also focus on producing CLT to make use of smaller and otherwise low-value trees and support resilient construction in the region.

What Matters to the Community Matters to Us
TTCF’s signature bundle of woody-biomass solutions aligns a blended capital approach to bring regenerative solutions in our forest for the protection and future of our community. This investment has undergone a lengthy due diligence process – including six years of research, landscaping, and community engagement identifying biomass and timber processing needs in the Tahoe-Truckee region. In a commitment to community benefit, we executed this investment only after the conclusion of the public process and preliminary investments by trusted partners, including the Sierra Nevada Conservancy and USDA.

This investment also aligns with TTCF’s Forest Futures Impact Strategy, which launched in 2021 with the input of more than 40 scientists, forestry experts, consultants, environmentalists, investors, and nonprofit leaders. Since then, we have raised over $16 million and invested in over 50 projects. Throughout it all, we remain steadfast that what matters to the community matters to us – supporting projects that demonstrate long-term benefits to our local ecosystems and strengthen the resilience of the place we call home. 

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Check out more projects and partners that we’re monitoring here. If you’d like to stay in the loop on our Forest Futures program and other work, subscribe to our newsletter.

Are you passionate about protecting our forests and communities? Please donate to Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation’s Forest Futures Fund. Donations support a multi-year campaign. Funds will be rapidly deployed to projects that protect our community from catastrophic wildfire, build a forest economy for the region, and stimulate innovative market-based solutions. Donate now.

 

Footnotes

* “Too Extreme? Why UC Researchers Propose Idea of Cutting Down 80% of Sierra Trees,” Tad Weber, The Fresno Bee, https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/editorials/article258186823.html#storylink=cpy

** “The Ecological Role of Fire in Natural Conifer Forests of Western and Northern North America,” Herbert E. Wright Jr. & Miron L. Heinselman, Fire Ecology, https://fireecology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1007/BF03400628

*** “The Park Fire Created Its Own Weather. Stunning Visuals Show How It Happened,” Anthony Edwards,  SF Chronicle, https://www.sfchronicle.com/weather/article/park-fire-california-weather-tornado-cloud-19624154.php