A Eulogy for Teakettle

Justice William O. Douglas, in his dissenting opinion of the Supreme Court’s decision in Sierra Club v. Morton, said “Contemporary public concern for protecting nature’s ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation.” His opinion goes on to state that corporations are given personhood and so should natural systems. In the absence of a voice, my friend and colleague Craig Allen likes to say that our job as ecologists is to tell the story of natural systems. We do this by asking questions, measuring things to answer those questions, interpreting the results, and writing it up to share with people. Today I want to give voice to the Teakettle Experimental Forest, a place that burned in the first few days of September 2025.

I have been working at the Teakettle Experimental Forest since 2002. I did part of my dissertation research here, including a tree-ring climate reconstruction and an experiment to understand how climate change, nitrogen deposition, and fire would impact understory plant diversity. I have great attachment to this place. I spent months every year camped-out to collect data.

I skied into the site during the winter and shoveled snow to manipulate snowpack for my understory plant experiment, spending a week at a time in the snow. I wish I had some photos to post, but these were the days of film cameras and I was always bad about taking photos. I also worked tirelessly with my collaborators, whom are also friends, to maintain the built infrastructure at the site that is property of the USFS so that it didn’t crumble and we still had a place to work from.

I watched as what I like to call the Teakettle skyline (the really big trees) changed because of the 2012-2016 drought, which killed approximately 30% of the trees. Most of the mortality happened in the largest trees, which was heartbreaking because I love to hang out with big trees and in big mountains.

Needless to say, I have significant attachment to this place.

We have known for a long time that this forest, like many across the western US, faced substantial risk from climate change, insects, and wildfire. As we worked to understand the effects of management activities on forest process at Teakettle, all of us scientists worked to make sure that knowledge was not locked up in the scientific literature, that it was made available to forest managers and stakeholders. You can see the results of this work in documents meant to synthesize the science and inform management. I have participated in field trips for the Dinkey Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Project (CFLRP). I have responded to numerous requests for information from stakeholders in this area. And, I was on the federal advisory committee when the Dinkey CFLRP was up for review and made the argument that the project was worth additional investment (more on that shortly). Needless to say, I, along with many colleagues at Teakettle, have worked damn hard to make sure the research we did was accessible and useful for informing management decision-making. 

In 2005 a small fire started downslope of Teakettle. Harold Zald, a friend and collaborator at Teakettle, and I were asked to evacuate the site. We pulled equipment, grabbed documents and data sheets, and loaded everything we could in our trucks and pulled out of there wondering if this would be it. Had the site burned then, before the drought-caused mortality, it may have been better for the forest.

In 2015, the Rough Fire, burning from the south, threatened Teakettle. We did not have anyone working at the site that year. The two cabins we use for cooking/bathroom and office space were wrapped as firefighters prepared for potential fire growth. Fortunately, they were able to hold the fire and Teakettle escaped.

In 2017, with the support of a CALFIRE research grant, we implemented a second prescribed burn on the original Teakettle experiment in collaboration with managers on the High Sierra Ranger District. Adam Hernandez, a wonderful fire manager with a can-do attitude, threw his support behind the project because he knew the value of the work we were doing, and he ensured our experimental burns were implemented.
Even as we were planning this burn, we knew that we needed information at a larger scale. We were working in research plots that are 10 acres in size and it is difficult to study a process like fire at that scale because it commonly burns over a much larger area. So we got to work.

In 2019 we applied for another CALFIRE research grant and were awarded funding to burn the majority of Teakettle. We wanted to understand how reintroducing fire into a fire-dependent forest that hadn’t seen fire since 1865 was going to influence tree mortality, smoke production, and alter carbon storage. Of course, the dysfunction in Washington, DC meant the government was shutdown while we were writing this proposal, making it impossible to consult with Sierra National Forest leadership while writing our proposal. Once funded, we immediately reached out and the idea was warmly received and we were told by the District Ranger on the High Sierra Ranger District that the Teakettle burn was being added to their work plan. Of course, it was now 2020 and everything was in chaos. As we all grappled with the global pandemic, we tried to continue planning for the burn.

Then, the Creek Fire started on September 4, 2020. Like many other people, I was working from home. I would anxiously await the next satellite overpass so I could see what the fire was doing. For some time, we thought Teakettle was at risk. Fortunately, Teakettle was spared, but the Creek Fire showed us exactly what happens when drought, insects, and fire all join forces in this climate changed world. The fuel load from dead trees was huge and we estimated the influence of high temperature on the availability of those big dead trees to burn. High temperatures made much more fuel available and, as a result, our operational fire spread models could not predict the spread of the fire. The same fuel problem in the Creek Fire existed at Teakettle and this was in the front of my mind when I drove into the Creek Fire footprint on my way to Teakettle during spring 2021.

When I entered the fire footprint near Tollhouse, I was amazed at how far down the fire had burned. As I crested the top of the climb out of the valley where I used to drive into a wall of green and got my first look at the widespread impacts of the fire, I cried.

I’m not prone to much emotion, let alone emotional display. This one hit hard and I knew Teakettle could easily face a similar fate. Us researchers at Teakettle, Malcolm North, Harold Zald, Marc Meyer, Brandon Collins, decided that while the research we proposed was important, the most important aspect of our project was to burn Teakettle in a prescribed fire so we could reduce the fuels and decrease the chance that any wildfire would kill the remaining trees.

Unfortunately, the same fire that drove us to ensure Teakettle got burned under our terms caused the Sierra National Forest to go into emergency recovery mode and neglect projects on ‘green’ forest in favor of working to reforest the ‘black’ forest and the Teakettle burn became something to push off. We began to face resistance from the High Sierra Ranger District about Teakettle burn planning. Every time they brought up a limitation and we provided a solution, they presented another limitation.

In hindsight, I should have expected this. The Dinkey CFLRP proposal that the forest had submitted 10-years prior included thinning and prescribed burning important tracts of forest land in the project area to protect communities, infrastructure, and habitat for several wildlife species. Some of the thinning was completed over the 10-years, but little of the prescribed burning. The renewal application that we reviewed on the federal advisory committee identified all of the challenges – drought and insects causing tree mortality, fire recovery, etc – and a plan to get back on track with the treatments. I made the argument to the committee that these were real challenges and that the forest had been dealt a bad hand. What I’m now confident of is that the forest was dealt a bad hand when leadership was selected. Real leaders recognize when they are facing a pressing challenge and rise to the occasion with a sense of urgency. They don’t make excuses.

Over the past several years, we have continued to work to get Teakettle burned in a prescribed fire. Malcolm North wrote a CALFIRE forest health proposal to pay for the burn and it was funded and is being administered by the Climate Wildfire Institute. The last real remaining constraint – a lack of financial resources – had been removed and the leadership on the forest would state their support of the project while digging in their heels to slow progress. Finally, it looked like the dam of resistance was breaking. There was lots of work underway this summer and we were hoping that by fall 2026 we would have the weather window necessary to conduct the burn. Enter the Garnet Fire.

Most of Teakettle burned on September 1 (all maps from CA IMT 10).

Here is the fire perimeter as of September 2, with Teakettle delineated with the dashed line.

Given the fuel loads, the behavior described in the daily reports and the amount of area that burned on September 1, we expect that much of the burn area will be high-severity. Marc Meyer had been leading an effort to remove the pine needles and branches from the base of the big sugar and Jeffrey pines to try and decrease the number that died during the prescribed burn. We can only hope that this spared some of them when the fire ripped through the majority of Teakettle.

I cried again on September 1. I am sad and angry. I am sad because this old-growth forest is no more. I am angry because this outcome was a choice. The choice was inaction by forest ‘leadership’. They chose doing nothing instead of working to prepare these incredible trees that are hundreds of years old and some as much as 9 feet in diameter. The unfortunate circumstance we are in is that this agency has selected for individuals who will not rock the boat. People who do not take risks are rewarded and promoted. Those that do take risks are only rewarded and promoted if they are successful and even then… This is professional malpractice. When OUR national forests are facing multiple risks, when OUR national forests are turning into national shrublands and grasslands because of insects, fire and climate change, we need forest leadership that understands the urgency of the situation. These are OUR forests and the people responsible for leading the managers of these forests need to create the conditions where forest and fire managers are supported in making hard decisions and acting based on data. There are many fantastic land managers, but we need the US Forest Service to appoint leadership at the forest level that understands the urgency and supports their people to make difficult decisions and take risks. Some forests are already run by this type of leader, but they are rare. Our public lands are one of the crown jewels of our country and I hope that we can act with enough urgency to help prepare them for the changes that are coming.

I leave you with some images of the forest that was Teakettle before the Garnet Fire.