More than 1 billion cubic feet of beetle-killed
trees could be pulled from Utah forests, but harvesting the timber is
not economically viable since the state lacks the mills and markets to
absorb this resource, according to a new assessment by the U.S. Forest
Service. Even so, at least one Utah mill owner sure would like to try. John Blazzard, owner of Blazzard Lumber, concedes that much of the bug-bitten wood isn’t worth pursuing. "Those trees have been dead so long they are
cracked open," he said. "It’s hard to make anything out of them other
than firewood." But Blazzard would like to have greater access
to the Engelmann spruce, which are succumbing to beetle infestations in
the Uinta Mountains. He said he could double the output at his Kamas
operation to 3 million board feet without any upgrades at his mill. Across Utah, though, clearing thousands of
acres choked with dead timber would require a massive public investment,
states the Forest Service report released Monday by its Southern Research Station. Same goes for Wyoming and Colorado. "Salvage doesn’t always pay off. Sometimes the
cost of removing the wood, getting it to the mill and administering the
sale is greater than anything you could get for that wood, so it is out
of reach economically for people who want to cover their costs," said
lead author Jeff Prestemon, a forestry economist based in North
Carolina...more
Everyone knows it will cost too much if you have the gov't do it. Let the timber industry bid on tracts to decide what is commercially feasible.
As for lack of mills and infrastructure, you can thank the Forest Service for that. They killed off the industry years ago.
During the past decade, a native pest, the mountain pine beetle, has devastated forests across the West, chewing through more than 40 million acres.
Nearly 20 billion cubic feet of standing dead timber could be salvaged
on 20 million acres in 12 Western states, according to Prestemon’s
assessment. About 88 percent of this wood, a disproportionate share, is
on national forests...
88 percent on gov't land, what does that tell ya?
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