Dead & threatened stands of trees could have been harvested, but the gov’t said no, wasting billions of tons of lumber/pulp & leaving a massive fire hazard. Next will come flooding & landslides.
Logging this timber would have provided jobs. Federal timber receipts would have helped with the deficit. The surplus lumber would have been gobbled up by China & others in a building boom, helping our trade balance. And, much of the pollution & human tragedy would never have happened.
Conservationists & environmentalists should both be outraged.
In British Columbia and Alberta the have been very aggressively harvesting this timber for 10 years. They also had devastating fires like this a few years back near Kelowna , BC. British Columbia has harvested most of this dead timber now. The remaining timber has little sawmill value and will most likely end of being chipped for pulp & paper. The BC and Alberta govts. forced the sawmills to take this dead timber to get any green timber too. They basically gave them the dead timber for free just to get it harvested.
In the US , environmental groups ALWAYS file injunctions to slow up timber sales on any state or federal lands. The idea being that this dead timber has a limited shelf life. The longer the sale can be delayed , the less value it has to the sawmills. One of the biggest problems in CO & NM is that there are only 1-2 major commercial sawmills left in this part of the country. Sierra Pacific had even proposed to build a sawmill in this area specifically to process this timber. However, it has been delayed because they were concerned the timber would be tied up in lawsuits.
We are now seeing the result of the delaying tactics of the environmental groups. They got exactly what they wanted. They would rather see it all burn , than be harvested. If your house gets burned too, tough sh*t. You should have not encroached on the wilderness.
The lumber broker.
IIRC, burned trees are of less value than live ones for lumber products and that might be the major sticking point.
No one is going to put out the money necessary to even come close to solving this issue.
I’ve been to Colorado/NM several times over the last few years, am aware of the problem and how widespread it is. A lot of the wood is inaccessible.
Here’s an interesting article about uses fort he dead wood:
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_5500493