Ski slopes show glyphosate spraying despite 2028 claim

Residents in the Tahoe area were told the Forest Service’s glyphosate spraying connected to the Caldor Fire restoration plan would not happen until 2028. But a reporter visited Sierra-at-Tahoe, found a ski run that appeared doused, and the Forest Service later

For the third morning of a quiet March-like day, there were no skiers on the slope—just a wide, snowless stretch of ski terrain at Sierra-at-Tahoe in California. Standing there, it didn’t look like a place waiting for a plan. It looked like a place that had already been acted on.

The rumor residents had been hearing for months was that the U.S. Forest Service’s glyphosate spraying—linked to the agency’s forest restoration plan for about 75. 000 acres scorched by the 2021 Caldor Fire—had been delayed until 2028. In Tahoe. that claim traveled quickly: a local news site and a major local environmental group. Keep Tahoe Blue. told people some version of it.

But the maps told a different story. Digging through Forest Service documents posted online. the reporter headed to a spot where those maps indicated spraying might already be happening. The scene felt wrong in a way that was hard to explain to anyone who hadn’t been there—plants around the ski run appearing nearly all dead.

What was done at Sierra-at-Tahoe is now colliding with a growing public uproar that has echoed across the Tahoe region since April. when a Mother Jones investigation detailed that. in California. the fastest-growing use of glyphosate—Roundup’s main ingredient—is to spray forested areas. including a massive new project around Lake Tahoe. Since then. environmentalists. an Olympic snowboarder. and a prominent voice in the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement have condemned the Forest Service’s plan.

The pushback moved beyond talk. A petition on Change.org gathered about 10. 000 signatures in less than two weeks. and social media posts generated hundreds of thousands of views. with groups including Patagonia and Greenpeace sharing information about the spraying. “Pesticides have no place in our forests!” Greenpeace wrote on its Instagram.

Snowboarder Hannah Teter—who won gold in the half pipe at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino. Italy. and silver at the 2010 games in Vancouver—voiced her opposition on Instagram. where she has 275. 000 followers. as well as on her Facebook page. “It’s so stupid. Everyone in Tahoe is so bummed,” she told the reporter. “How the heck did they get this approved?”.

The Forest Service’s relationship with glyphosate in the Caldor Fire scar stretches deeper than the headlines. The agency allowed public comment in 2023 on an initially smaller proposal for herbicide use in the Caldor Fire scar—something many people in the area seemingly never heard about. Then a 2025 executive order by President Trump expanded timber harvesting on national forestland. allowing the Forest Service to more than double its proposed herbicide use within the Caldor Fire scar without soliciting public feedback.

In the weeks that followed, some residents believed the agency had pulled back. On social media, people said the plan had been canceled—claiming that meetings, calls to representatives, and public pressure had stopped it.

Yet the reporter’s visit made the argument harder to dismiss.

Down the slope from the point where the reporter stood. hillsides were bright with the lush greens and colored petals of spring. But where the ski run—next to a run called “Marmot”—met the herbicide-treated area, the land looked stripped. The bushes were leafless and brittle, dead by all appearances. Practically the only new growth was what the Forest Service intended: workers had hand-planted baby conifers across the slope.

That devastation sits inside an overall pivot by the Forest Service toward embracing glyphosate to reforest after massive wildfires. The agency’s herbicide use in the Tahoe area is mirrored in Northern California’s Lassen National Forest. where the Forest Service plans to spray about 10. 000 acres with Roundup or a similar product.

This widening use is part of a longer run-up. As the investigation described. deployment of glyphosate in California’s forestlands has been growing for decades. driven in part by worsening fires and the scramble to harvest burned wood and replant trees for future timber sales. The Forest Service says glyphosate is among the effective—and cheapest—methods to get pine trees to grow back faster by killing other plants that might compete for sunlight. soil nutrients. and water.

The numbers show how far the use has already traveled. In 2023. the Forest Service sprayed 14. 900 pounds of pure glyphosate across California. according to an analysis of more than 5 million state records compiled as part of the investigation by the reporter’s colleague Melissa Lewis and the reporter.

As for the Tahoe work. the Forest Service authorized spraying glyphosate over about 75. 000 acres within the Caldor Fire scar at up to the legal limit of eight pounds per acre. Over the next few years, that authorization could translate into more than 584,000 pounds of glyphosate. In a document outlining how to transform the fire-scarred land into an ideal timber-producing forest. the agency noted that “multiple herbicide applications may be required. ” which could further increase the total.

Even if the scale is set in broad strokes, the uncertainty has been its own fuel.

The Forest Service has not said exactly how much of the designated area around Tahoe it plans to spray. Its documents state that spraying herbicides is “the most effective method available for achieving reforestation objectives in the majority of situations.” When asked about how much glyphosate it will use—and whether it still considers the chemical safe for people and the environment—officials did not respond.

The legal and scientific debate around glyphosate has its own weight. and it’s part of why the backlash has intensified. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer has deemed glyphosate a probable human carcinogen. A 2020 report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it likely harms 93 percent of endangered species.

Meanwhile. Roundup’s manufacturer. Bayer. faces more than $12 billion in legal payouts to more than 180. 000 people who say glyphosate made them sick. Bayer is also seeking immunity from some of its liability in a case recently heard by the Supreme Court. In a statement. Bayer said glyphosate products are safe when used as directed and that regulators around the world have approved its use.

That mix—ecology, health claims, and legal pressure—has hardened public frustration into something more personal.

This month. Keep Tahoe Blue sent a message to a concerned local. who then posted it online. saying “no glyphosate has been applied as part of the Caldor Fire Restoration Project. and the USFS has stated the earliest any potential herbicide application could occur is now 2028.” The claim turned out to be inaccurate. The Forest Service. as part of the Caldor Fire Restoration Project. has indeed been spraying outside the Tahoe basin. where officials plan to reforest 73. 000 acres. including work already done at Sierra-at-Tahoe.

Confusion grew in part because the Caldor Fire Restoration Project consists of two separate plans. One involves the Lake Tahoe watershed—referred to as the Tahoe basin—meaning the forest creeks that drain into the lake. That smaller portion includes reforestation and potential herbicide use on about 3,000 acres. It was in relation to this area that the local news site SouthTahoeNow.com reported the Forest Service had held off on spraying until 2028.

When contacted. a Forest Service spokesperson said there had been no delay or change of plans: the agency had never intended to spray in that section—which includes areas near Meyers and Heavenly ski resort—this year or next. But the spokesperson said public documents are unclear on this and do not reveal when or under what circumstances that spraying might commence.

On May 7, the Forest Service posted maps online showing it had sprayed glyphosate around and within Sierra-at-Tahoe in spring 2025. When the reporter called and emailed local officials to confirm. the reply was that they would need to consult colleagues on the “East Coast” before answering. That was the moment the reporter decided to drive out and see.

The Forest Service later confirmed that the area visited had been sprayed. The agency said the maps found online had been posted this month—one year after the spraying at Sierra-at-Tahoe—to “facilitate awareness.” It also released maps showing where the agency is spraying in 2026.

Those 2026 areas were either already treated with glyphosate in April, a government spokesperson told the reporter this week, or the spraying is “ongoing” and expected to wrap up “within the next couple of weeks, weather conditions permitting.”

At least some of the anger now has a name and a face. Kelly Ryerson. known online as “Glyphosate Girl. ” said spraying glyphosate in Tahoe is “ludicrous.” All of the spraying. Ryerson said. has been accomplished by crews using backpack sprayers. The work is often done by contract workers. the story notes. “often Spanish speaking immigrants. ” who may not be aware of potential safety risks.

The reporter said Mother Jones obtained a photo of one work crew that was cited by a county inspector for failure to wear mandated protective gear; exposed skin was purple and covered with the chemical.

The Forest Service spokesperson said the agency posts signs at locations where it sprays herbicides and typically removes them within 48 hours. Several research papers indicate glyphosate can persist in the environment and even plant tissue for months. even years. raising risks to ecology and human health.

The debate is also tangled in how federal agencies explain their own decisions. One Forest Service map shows areas outside the Tahoe basin that it says will be reforested as part of its restoration project and where it says glyphosate and other herbicides will likely be required. The USDA has defended the Forest Service’s use of glyphosate. pointing to its reliance on the EPA’s “use of gold-standard science to assess pesticide safety.”.

Attorney George Kimbrell, co-executive director of the Center for Food Safety, rejected that frame. “It has a well-established toxicity to the environment. And, for endangered species, Roundup is a significant risk,” he told the reporter.

In 2020. the EPA concluded glyphosate was safe for humans when used according to the label. and that environmental concerns were outweighed by benefits. Kimbrell challenged that decision in court. representing a coalition of environmental and farm labor groups who argued the agency did not adequately assess health and ecological risks. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the EPA’s decision. noting that most of the studies the EPA examined indicated that human exposure to glyphosate is associated with an at least somewhat increased risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma. and that the agency had shirked its duty in properly assessing ecological risks. The EPA is expected to announce an update on its glyphosate safety assessment this year.

In Tahoe, those findings have turned organizing into an urgent project. Kelly Ryerson—who visited the White House earlier this year with other members of the MAHA coalition—has promised to reverse the Forest Service’s plan in Tahoe.

Ryerson told the reporter she is now committed to stopping it. “It’s ludicrous,” she said. “To be spraying glyphosate in such an environmentally sensitive and pristine place, where it can get into the water that so many people drink, or swim in, I mean, who thought this was a good idea?”

Her point lands in a place where residents thought they’d been given time—and then found, slope by slope, that the timeline didn’t match what they were told.

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