SlowP
Just because we're weird around here and think those a state west....well lets just say the joke is that it's always windy here in New Mexico because Texas sucks and Arizona blows.
But, to the points, the last crews I ran down the Gila way was ten year prior to cutting for pulp.
Stone Container liked to cut at 12"DBH, or a little smaller. You can make jokes about lame fellers, I won't argue.
Thinning being on a bit of a slower track from prior disturbance in our drier regions.
Up in the Northwest regrowth tends to want to be tickled sooner as it grows so much faster, as you've observed.
As to deficit expenditure, from treasury to the timber industry, I was speaking broadly. Of course there had to be areas that got close to positive.
The Northwest being the prime example.
Still, to think of little sales I had in 80's, up here in the Pecos, where I was paying $32 the thousand, for a few hundred thousand and I was the only little guy working the hills (in my district) under contract, after roads were built, cruising and the whole nine yards, a timber staff of about 3 and 6, fulltime and seasonal, there sure wasn't anyway the Federales could do anything but hemorrhage greenfrogskins.
A bit during my time, and quite a bit before it, Duke City did have a mill and bought some timber, still, it was all rather piddly in comparison to what you guys had going.
This same model was prevalent throughout the Rockies.
Also important to remember that out in the Northwest there are huge amounts of private, Weyerhauser type, forests in comparison to what's out in the Rockies where there's significantly more federal land, in comparison.
My main point in all the bean counting is that, by my way of looking at things, we can continue to spend massive amounts of cash attempting to suppress what can no longer be suppressed, with only a few jobs going to our brave smoke eaters.
Or we could put some smarter money into restorative forestry and have a whole lot more folks working in the hills.
Should be needless to mention that'd be an investment that won't be obvious right away, but in the long run we have the opportunity to actually have some forests where we will, no doubt, have conflagration, if we don't do some treatments.
On this I'm a bit of a zealot, I must admit, after going back down to the Gila this spring and seeing where the Whitewater Baldy Complex finally laid itself down.
You could still see the blue Rudd paint on the unit boundary of my thinning contract on one side of the Bear Wallow road, 10-20% , mortality in there, the other side of road-100%. Good ol' drop & lop, nothing fancy no masticators or chippers. Stone Container closed up shop right after that work, so, in an ironic twist, what was intended to be Pre commercial became restorative forestry/effective fuels reduction.
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