Why would anyone poison trees in Tahoe? Residents and officials are horrified

The pine trees stand like sentinels over Burnt Cedar Beach.

With a small cove for swimming and gently rising swath of sand, the community park has long held a special place in Incline Village’s heart. Residents sun on the sand after a swim in the famed crystalline waters, enjoy a picnic and relax under the cool shade of the towering Jefferson Pines and Douglas Firs.

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And they wonder how anyone could want those trees dead.

In 2022, 2023, 2024 and now three times this summer — in May, July and Aug. 2 — an unknown person or persons infiltrated the beach, presumably at night because no witnesses have come forward, drilled holes into tree bases and poured a poisonous substance around them. Authorities have not identified the substance, but some of the poison sites give off a striking odor of diesel fuel.

A separate unknown substance was found in the holes in the trunk.

“It’s unbelievable,” groundskeeper Artemio Ambriz said.

Ambriz has helped maintained the beach for more than 30 years. Now he was holding a hose steady on the tree bases, a dilution effort that’s part of an expanding and uncertain bid to save the trees. That effort has included suctioning the poisoned soil at their base. Some of the poisoned trees are likely 100 years old, town officials said.

“Just imagine, when would you be able to see a tree grow like this again,” Ambriz said.

Who is targeting the trees, and why, remains a mystery. And it’s one that has punctured both the Tahoe summer idyll and the social fabric of this Nevada town, about 100 miles east of Sacramento. As the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office investigates the case, accusations fly on social media and in the chatter around town. The most common theory is that someone, and probably someone rich, seeks to improve their view of the lake in a monstrous and underhanded fashion, leaving both the trees and the town’s beach-goers as collective victims.

16 trees poisoned

Officials found 16 trees found poisoned in July and August, and have wrapped them in yellow police caution tape. Four stood by the parking lot. Five lined the beach’s sandy edge. Others clustered by a playground. The poisoner even hit two trees that flank, like a living gateway, a set of steps down to the sand.

“We know it’s nice to have a clear view of the lake, but that doesn’t excuse it,” said Geoff Evers, an attorney who lived above town and does have such an obstructed view.

“My girls grew up on that beach,” he added.

If the poisonings turn out to be a case of unethical vista improvement, it won’t be without precedent in high-end American communities. In 2022, a Maine woman (and widow of a former chairman of the iconic Maine clothing company L.L. Bean) suspected and ultimately sued her wealthy neighbors for poisoning her trees to improve their view of a bay. She won a settlement of more than $1.5 million.

In Incline Village, however, the poisoning isn’t on one person’s property but instead on a community resource. That’s not to say Burnt Cedar Beach is publically accessible. It’s not.

Homeowners in the community receive five individual passes to the beach, Incline Village General Improvement District spokesperson Kari Ferguson said, and most owners make those available to any renters they have. The park is fenced, the entrance has a guard in the gatehouse and the beach closes at sunset.

Some have wondered if the poisoner is an area resident feeling left out of the recreation area, the atmosphere of which seems like a cross between a county park and a country club.

But most people living in the town do have access, Ferguson said. The bulk of properties that are outside the district and don’t receive passes are lakeside homes with their own private water access.

‘These deliberate acts are unacceptable’

Some locals framed the poisoning as just the latest sign of a slow decline in the character of Lake Tahoe’s north shore, where people generally identified themselves as part of a quieter, funkier and, yes, better-shaded community than across the lake, where highrise casinos and resorts dominate State Line.

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“It’s all sold out,” said a man who did not wish to be identified because of the controversial nature of the matter. He said he has lived in Incline Village since 1990. “There’s no locals and it’s turned into Disneyland.”

Some residents said they did not think the culprit was a homeowner improving the view, but instead suspected less rational forces were at work, like an overwrought grievance or mental illness. Without an arrest, swirling suspicions were having their own corrosive effects on Incline Village, resident Michelle Pettibone said.

“I’m hoping they put an end to this, the negativity,” she said, referring to law enforcement.

Washoe County Sheriff Darin Balaam has described the case as a priority. He has previously suggested the monetary damage to the park would warrant felony charges if an arrest is made.

“We take these crimes very seriously and will utilize every available resource to identify and apprehend the person or persons responsible,” Balaam said in a news release last week. “The destruction of mature trees in the Tahoe Basin and the environmental damage caused by these deliberate acts are unacceptable.”

The Improvement District’s board holds its regular meeting 4 p.m. Wednesday. Some townspeople are expected to attend and call for increased security at the beach.

On a local Facebook page, commenters have urged the authorities to figure out whose sight line was best improved and to question them. One homeowner has publicly denied any involvement, telling the Los Angeles Times he liked the trees lining the lakeshore.

Sheriff officials have not indicated if they have suspects. A camera captured a brief light near the beach at 2 a.m. the day of the August poisoning, according to an Aug. 3 news release from the department. But even that slight lead now appears to have been fleeting. Upon further review of the camera footage, Sam Gough, a park supervisor for the Incline Village General Improvement District, said the light appeared to be just a bug flitting across the lens.

The town officials have discussed possibly hiring contractors to conduct a technique called air spading, in which workers would use high-pressured jets of air to blow contaminated soil off the trees root systems. Whether the trees will survive is uncertain.

Six trees were poisoned in 2022, and another six in 2023. In 2024, the culprits returned to poison the six trees again, Gough said. All but two have succumbed.

Within a stone’s throw of the latest poisonings are a row of three stumps. Almost like gravestones etched with the years of a life, they were marked with the diameter of the trees that had once stood there. The widest was 35 inches across.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office at (775) 328-3001 and reference case number 26-4225.

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The Bee‘s Hector Amezcua contributed to this story.

This story was originally published August 12, 2026 at 5:00 AM.