Questioning economic benefit of harvesting beetle-infested trees
By Science Daily
A recently published study by U.S. Forest Service researchers evaluates potential revenues from harvesting standing timber killed by mountain pine beetle in the Western United States.
The study shows that while positive net revenues could be produced in West Coast and Northern Rockies states with active timber markets, the central Rocky Mountain states of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming — which have the largest volume of standing dead timber — would not generate positive net revenues by salvaging beetle-killed timber.
A mountain pine beetle epidemic in the Western United States has left mountainsides covered with dead pines, especially lodgepole pine, with most of the timber and land affected on national forests.
Policymakers and forest managers are considering increasing timber salvage rates on these lands as a way to address potential wildfire threat, hazards from falling trees, and visual impact, but first need to assess the broader economic ramifications of putting more timber on the market in areas where mills have closed and markets have waned over the two last decades.
Research Forester Jeff Prestemon and fellow scientists with the Forest Service Southern Research Station Forest Economics and Policy unit and with the Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center were asked to evaluate the circumstances under which salvaging pine beetle-killed timber would be cost-effective. The researchers used an economic assessment model to estimate potential salvage volumes, costs and revenues from programs that would encourage salvage of standing dead timber, summarizing findings by state and owner groups.
Firewood…
This particular study is not surprising, given the long-time desired Forest Service policy of including timber sales in most everything they do, if possible . . . to offset the money Congress doesn’t give them to operate in stewardship directions as is becoming increasingly necessary.
Much has been said to include ‘biomass’ as a possible category in our non-existent national Energy policy, but more emphasis is then placed on what to grow (corn as fuel, sugar cane, bagasse, algae, etc.) to make up that category, instead of thinking of forest thinning project residue, or beetle-destroyed forests, as ‘fodder’ – this is ‘folly’ in itself, as most of these infested trees don’t have enough timber to justify their sale, unless of course they are given to the lumber industry for nothing – this would suggest the hurried effort to authorize logging in burned areas (like the Rim Fire, for example) under the guise of “rehabilitation” efforts – anything for a buck. . .
Biomass from forest thinning, etc. has value due to the embedded energy within, hence the interest in including it in national energy plans. . .which could then lead to adequate stewardship policies to reduce catastrophic fire danger, especially in ‘urban interface’ areas closer to people and property interests. . .
That scenario should be seriously looked-at as the subject of a study of this example’s caliber, instead of the continued effort to put a “square peg in a round hole” in finding ways to keep calculating only in “linear-board feet”. . . BTU’s/lb and joules/gram can be an important answer to overall forest health, which includes the forgotten absorption of CO2, which is what a healthy forest does. . .
You could ask someone who has been in the Tree Service industry up here for more than 32 years and has dealt with all of these issues. Forestry workers do not have enough real world experience as they get a guaranteed paycheck based on what they perceive to do. They don’t produce anything tangible and if the economy goes or they can’t sell their products they still get paid whereas contractors do not. There is no money in saving the environment from a contractors point of view, we are only trying to take care of our family.