"I find a similar situation in Yosemite where the park service continues to remove lodgepole pine seedlings from Tuolumne Meadows as fast as they colonize," she continued. "Every time the meadow is cleared (i.e., clear-cut) of the young pines, they re-seed rapidly."

Western junipers' proud history

Junipers might bounce back for another reason, too.

"We are talking about trees that are regenerated by seeds dispersed by animals, by birds that eat the fruits and excrete the seeds and also by coyotes," said Lanner, author of "Conifers of California" and an authority on junipers.

"So as long as you have junipers around, you are going to have a source of seed. And unless you eradicate the animals, you are going to get junipers back again."

Jade-green, burlier than a sumo wrestler and 15 to 60 feet tall, western junipers thrive in the arid reaches of Nevada, eastern Oregon, northeast California and parts of the Sierra Nevada.

They are known for their hardiness and longevity – some live to be 2,000 years old. Near Carson Pass, junipers flourish "in great beauty and luxuriance," John Muir once wrote, adding:

"Two of the largest, growing at the head of Hope Valley, measured 29 feet, 3 inches and 25 feet, 6 inches in circumference, four feet from the ground. The bark is of a bright cinnamon color, beautifully braided and reticulated, flaking off in thin, lustrous ribbons that are sometimes used by Indians for tent-matting. Its fine color and odd picturesqueness always catch an artist's eye."

According to a 1996 article in the Journal of Range Management, their expansion across the region over the last century is hardly unique.

Thousands of years ago, "the range of western juniper expanded and contracted several times in response to increasingly (wet and dry) conditions," the article states. "Western juniper therefore should not be referred to as an invasive weed that is threatening natural communities."

Some see 'juniper desert'

Nonetheless, that is much the way federal officials see it. Bouncing down a gravel road in a government vehicle, Edith Asrow looked out at a stand of younger junipers and did not appreciate the verdant view.

"I see a sort of wasteland," said Asrow, an ecosystem staff officer for the Modoc National Forest. "As the junipers thicken, we lose all the grasses and flowering plants. So all you have left is one species. It's a juniper desert."

Up ahead was a stand of junipers that had been heavily cut for firewood, leaving a snarl of rust-colored branches, stumps and other woody debris.

"Seeing this to me is beautiful because we are on the path of balancing an ecosystem," Asrow said. "I look at this as my kid in braces. In other words … this is a temporary state."

Lanner scoffed at her assessment. "Junipers are part of our biodiversity, as much as sagebrush," he said.

Like all trees, they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it as carbon, helping combat global warming. Nationwide, forests sequester 200 to 280 million tons of carbon per year, offsetting up to 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

"The wholesale removal of trees can only result in the loss of a lot of carbon sequestration capacity," Lanner said.

Federal officials disagree, saying grass and sagebrush actually store more. "For us to trade off an intellectual concept about carbon sequestration … and leave juniper trees to turn into a monoculture doesn't make any sort of prudent sense to me," Asrow said.

Such carbon quarrels are bound to become more common as California scrambles to shrink greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 – as mandated by its 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act.

"For every ton of wood consumed to make power, you have at least a 1-ton net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to natural gas," said Steve Brink, vice president of public resources with the California Forestry Association.

Turning wood into megawatts

Two years ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the executive order requiring that 20 percent of renewable energy purchased by public utilities be generated by "biomass" – a catch-all term for trees, sawmill waste, construction debris and so on. Currently, California gets just 1 percent of its power – 550 megawatts – from such sources.

In a state blanketed with crowded, unhealthy forests, many say turning spindly fire-prone conifers into kilowatts makes sense.

"If we can produce domestic energy and restore an ecosystem and stabilize a local economy all at the same time, that could be a win, win, win," said Sean Curtis, a resource analyst for Modoc County.

One thing on which all sides agree is that old-growth trees should not be a part of the mix. But on the cut near Bayley Reservoir in Modoc County, they were toppled anyway.

A contract for the job, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, states that only younger junipers were to be harvested. "Junipers containing … old-growth characteristics will not be cut," it says.

When Hall – the government forester and contract officer – toured the area this spring, he discovered that instruction had not been followed. "When cutters finished … the project, there were no old growth left," he wrote in his project diary.

"There was a break in the communication between the contractor and the cutters," Hall told The Bee. "It's definitely a black mark on his record."

No fine was assessed because the contract had no teeth, Hall said. In fact, the government paid the contractor $76,000 to cut the area, a common practice for forest products with low economic value.

Today, Hall said, new contracts contain penalty clauses.

"We really don't want to cut any old growth juniper," he said.

Many remain skeptical, including Glenn Fair's 84-year-old father and fishing partner, Jay, who said: "If we're not careful we're going to do everything we can to get energy and just destroy the planet."

Call The Bee's Tom Knudson, (530) 582-5336.