slowp,
I've been involved in alot of what is going on here with the forest. I talk to the rangers here on a regular basis. And 100% of the blame lies on the Center for Biological Destruction. The A-S forest has tried many times in the past to get thinning projects going only to have the plans shot down by a bunch of enviro's who screamed we were going to clear cut the forest.
While CBD is involved in the White Mountain Stewardship project, they also went after the Greater Flagstaff Forest Partnership for doing the exact same thing the is going on up around Alpine and the like. CBD litigated the GFFP projects based on "unproven" science and techniques. Believe me, CBD has no interest in "saving" the environment, thye only care about litigating everything they can to gain money and power. They have forced the current management policies through litigation and they continue to do so. Right now, some 30% of the A-S budget goes directly to deal with litigation brought about by the enviro's. That 30% would go a long way in cleaning up this forest.
A major OSB manufacturer wasgoing to build an OSB plant here if the USFS would sign a 20 year contract to supply small diameter timber to the plant. The USFS would not sign the contract due to fear of litigation being brought about by the enviro's. This came directly from one of the Rangers. That plant would have needed around 30,000 acres a year to feed it.
There are also quite a few pellet mills coming online around here now. They would need around 5000 acres a year to feed them. There is also a big pellet mill about to start over in New Mexico. It has the capacity to produce 40,000 tons a year. So at a average of 100 tons per acre needing removed right now, that would chew up another 400 acres a year. Demand for wood pellets in Europe right now is exploding.
And add into this the fact that China is building 10 million affordable housing units for their people. Right now they are buying massive amounts of low grade logs from Canada for dimensional lumber. And thye still wnat more. Mature ponderosa pine makes and excellent dimensional product and we could sell everything that is burnt up there in a heartbeat.
The biomass power plant in Snowflake also needs and additional 100,000 tons of biomass to operate, so there is another 1000 acres a year.
We could get this forest cleaned up right quick if we could get the enviro's out of the way. The problem right now is, is that many of these places are afraid to sign a contract or hire any one to clean this up due to the possibility of the enviro's litigating the crap out of everything because they didn't get there own way. Alot of people could go back to work on this and stay employed for a very long time.
The market is there, it just needs to be developed a little. But unfortunately, what we have here is a small group of people who rely on peoples fears and knee jerk reactions to misinformation. And they have become very effective at it. And our forests are the ones suffering the most, to the tune of 40 million acres of National Forest land and an additional 150 million acres of public land. 190 million acres needing thinned to avoid catastrophic wilfires is just mind boggling and makes one wonder how we have gotten to this point.
