A Tahoe progressive: an "accidental" silviculturist brings new thinking to a national forest.

Gary Cline grew up in the city. And he never really intended to do forest work. "I went to school majoring in environmental science, and I took some classes in forestry," Cline, 44, says. "I just kind of stumbled into it."

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It's lucky that he did, because Cline's impact on the California forests has been a big one. His accidental career choice eventually led to his current position as a silviculturist for Tahoe National Forest, one he's held for the past 14 years. In his tenure there, he's been a key player in a number of projects with AMERICAN FORESTS.

One he talks about with pride is Buckeye Diggings, the reclamation of an area degraded to "moonscape" by hydraulic mining. "The area covers close to 200 acres in which they basically blasted away the hillsides with water cannons," Cline explains.

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The mine reclamation was a joint venture between Tahoe National Forest and AMERICAN FORESTS' Global ReLeaf campaign, which aims to improve the local and global environment by planting and caring for trees. Even though the Buckeye Diggings mining activity occurred in the late 1800s, nature, left to its own devices, had only rebounded enough to restore sparse vegetation and what Cline describes as "low-vigor trees."

The challenge, he says, is to restore the vegetation and to redevelop and improve the hydrology of the soil. "It presents an opportunity not only to rehabilitate the site, but to utilize methods that incorporate things like the recycling and reusing of materials, so you're not only benefiting the forest, but you're benefiting the community as well."

It is this outlook that has helped win Cline many admirers among his day-today coworkers. "He tries to integrate all aspects of the ecosystem for a piece of land, so that you're doing weed prevention, you're working on erosion control or adding organic materials to the soil," says Kathy VanZuuk, the Yuba River Ranger District community liaison and ecologist on the Tahoe. "And that's what we need. We need people who can look at all different aspects of an ecosystem and pull that together."

Carol Kennedy, watershed program manager and forest soil scientist with Tahoe, agrees. "I've found him to be very progressive. I've always been impressed with his ability to think outside the box."

Recently Cline helped establish a "Tree of Life Grove" in Tahoe's Onion Valley. The idea came from a partnership between AMERICAN FORESTS and Gahl Sasson and Steve Weinstein, authors of the book A Wish Can Change Your Life, which explores metaphorical and literal trees as a means of wish fulfillment. Each tree planted in the grove serves two goals: reforestation and the anchoring of one's spiritual work in a living tree--a living wish. The book mentions the reforestation project, and the grove boasts a placard with an excerpt from the book. A portion of the book proceeds go to maintaining and reforesting the site.

Cline continues to look toward future restoration projects, and is exploring the feasibility of constructing composting facilities in rural counties in California. Because the state mandates that counties reduce the amount of refuse materials produced, the opportunity arises to take things like yard waste, construction waste, and even food waste and compost it for rehabilitating degraded sites. "That's what we're trying to do with Buckeye, and then hopefully, in turn, that will progress onto other sites as well."

Cline acknowledges he is only a small piece of restorations that will take more than his lifetime to accomplish. Buckeye will probably take centuries to fully recover, he says, "but it will certainly be a far shorter period of time than if it was left to come back on its own."

And in the end, that's what it's all about.

Kate Ashford writes from New York City.