West Can Make Forest Economy
Summit Daily News-February 2002
by Tom Wolf
The fires in the West are causing even staunch environmentalists to reconsider their attitude toward cutting trees in our public forests. Careful thinning may well be an option for returning overgrown forests to ecological health while making them less prone to fire.
But even if this year's fires push environmentals, loggers, and public land managers to agree on a timber thinning program, one vexing question remains: is there a market for the wood?
Loggers have long complained no one wants to buy the skinny little trees that have sprung up in the last century due to clearcut logging and fire suppression. Only the increasingly rare, bigger trees are good for lumber and other products, they say. But new studies from researchers Dennis Lynch and Kurt Mackes at Colorado State University now show there is a potentially huge demand for smaller-diameter wood products in states like Colorado. It just needs to be tapped.
One possible way to use the brushy trees now choking many of our forests would be to burn them as biomass energy. But that market is still out of reach, according to the Colorado researchers, because relatively low-cost, high-quality fossil fuels dominate the market. As natural gas prices rise, though-they are expected to double this winter-wood will become more attractive as a fuel.
A much more likely outlet for locally harvested wood in the near future is the home firewood industry. Firewood use in Colorado peaked during the 1970s and 1980s. At that time, 33 percent of the households in the northern Front Range burned wood, while 71 percent of the mountain communities kept the home fires burning.
Since the 1980s, use has plummeted, partly due to a state program that provides both subsidies and incentives for conversion of wood-burning stoves to cleaner-burning heating devices. In 1992, Colorado sponsored a "Great Stove and Fireplace Changeout" to reduce air pollution from open fireplaces and wood stoves. Yes, the air is cleaner these days. But what have we really gained, when our forests around the region are going up in smoke? I'd rather breathe in some extra smoke in the winter if it would mean healthier forests and less smoke in the summer.
Selectively harvesting the West's forests for firewood would reverse the trend toward importing wood from outside the region. According to Lynch and Mackes, one-third of the firewood sold in Colorado is peddled in small bundles at supermarkets and convenience stores. Almost half of these bundles come from Montana and Canada. Cleaner-burning wood pellets come entirely from out-of-state at an annual value of $9 million. Manufactured firelogs all come from out-of-state at an annual retail value of $2.5 million.
We even import Christmas trees in Colorado. Ninety percent of the approximately 530,000 Christmas trees sold in the state in 1999 came from out of state.
Christmas trees and firewood are small potatoes compared to the burgeoning construction industry. In 1998, builders constructed 51,556 dwelling units in Colorado. Most were built with "imported" wood. Floors, wall frames, and roof trusses consumed framing lumber valued at $371 million. Builders use wooden sheathing to cover the floors, walls and roof, often followed by wooden shingles. Coloradans in 1998 used sheathing valued at $164 million. They put on $17 million worth of wood shakes and shingles.
Foreign and out-of-region wood also dominate the mammoth residential home remodeling and repair business, which in Colorado consumed around $260 million in wood material costs in 1998. Interior finishing, including wood paneling, millwork, molding, cabinets, doors, and windows, is also an import business. Almost all of its annual $2 billion value comes from out of state.
In short, the West would reap tremendous economic benefits if native trees could replace even a portion of the out-of-region wood now used in construction.
By not harvesting our western forests, we are exporting our timber-harvest-related environmental problems to places like Canada, where forestry remains relatively unregulated; we are creating dangerous fire conditions; and we are missing a golden opportunity to strengthen our local economies.
It's time for everyone--Forest Service, industry, environmentalists and woodland entrepreneurs--to get together and develop a sustainable logging effort in the West that helps restore healthy, diverse forests and communities.
Tom Wolf is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News. He lives in Taos, N.M., and his new book, "In Fire's Way: A Practical Guide to Life in The Wildfire Danger Zone," will be published in 2001 by the University of New Mexico Press.
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