<\/p>\n
FORT COLLINS \u2013 There is life after death for Colorado\u2019s forests.<\/p>\n
But to get there, the people who manage them must solve an economic quandary.<\/p>\n
Colorado\u2019s 834 million dead trees can start anew as your favorite rocking chair, the mulch in your garden, heat for Front Range cities \u2013 you name it. The problem is: The cost of removing and transporting them can dwarf the worth of their wood.<\/p>\n
Dead standing trees make up about 1 in 15 standing trees on Colorado\u2019s 24.4 million forested acres, according to 2016 data from the Colorado State Forest Service. And in 2017, invasive pests like the spruce beetle continued to whittle away the state\u2019s forests. The spruce beetle infested 206,000 acres last year, bringing the pest\u2019s toll to 1.78 million acres since 1996.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t remove dead tree material at this scale,\u201d said Seth Davis, an assistant professor of forest and rangeland stewardship at Colorado State University, referring to trees killed by the spruce beetle. \u201cIt gets to be such a significant event that there\u2019s really no way for management agencies to deal with this material.\u201d<\/p>\n
But forest workers and landowners say they have to: In a state where overcrowded forests exacerbate wildfire risk and threaten devastation to key watersheds, dead standing trees are everybody\u2019s problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a way out of this,\u201d Colorado State Forester Mike Lester said. \u201cBut it\u2019s not going to be easy, and it\u2019s not cheap.\u201d<\/p>\n
Colorado is home to 102 sawmills, about one-third of which use beetle-killed trees to create lumber and other products, according to the Colorado State Forest Service\u2019s 2017 Report on the Health of Colorado\u2019s Forests. But the state\u2019s larger mills tend to be farther from the supply of trees, which makes transportation more costly. Add in the high costs of extracting trees from high-elevation and rocky terrain and you end up with a steep bill for wood that generally isn\u2019t worth much to begin with.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere, if you want to sell timber, you\u2019re probably going to have to pay someone to take it off your hands,\u201d Lester said. \u201cThat\u2019s unique to the interior Rockies.\u201d<\/p>\n
New mills in strategic locations could be the answer, but Lester said capital for those projects can be elusive because of uncertainties about supply. Some would-be lenders or operators might worry that the supply of trees could dry up in a few decades, which isn\u2019t exactly a recipe for long-term success in the milling business.<\/p>\n
Simply leaving trees alone can lead to fires that burn more intensely in beetle-killed stands and spread more rapidly through overcrowded areas with dangerous jackstraw patterns. That\u2019s not a risk foresters are prepared to take in Colorado, where more than one-third of residents live in what\u2019s known as the wildlife-urban-interface, Lester said.<\/p>\n
Tempering the risk of overcrowded forests can run the gamut, from cutting down and selling trees to burning piles of them or starting controlled fires in forested areas. Faced with limited funding and a small workforce, though, forest agencies have to be strategic.<\/p>\n
That means focusing their efforts on areas more prone to fire with highly erodible soil \u2013 forests that can be especially damaging to rivers and reservoirs if set ablaze, Lester said. The Colorado State Forest Service, U.S. Forest Service and private landowners have also gotten better at working and planning together across property lines and partnering with nonprofits, water districts and other stakeholders, he said.<\/p>\n
One example is the recent release of a document designed to help agencies prioritize their efforts to remove dangerous fuels from Front Range forests and guide restoration of damaged areas. The paper\u2019s 17 authors, who work for a range of government agencies, nonprofits and schools, set out to define best practices for a unique part of the country where priorities can sometimes conflict with each other, lead author Rob Addington of The Nature Conservancy said. What\u2019s best for the ecology of a forest might not be best for the concerns of the people who live near it, for example.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are invariably trade-offs,\u201d Addington said. \u201cIn a lot of ways, it comes down to what\u2019s most important in a given landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n
Efforts to fend off the spruce beetle \u2013 Colorado\u2019s most destructive forest pest for six years running \u2013 must be similarly strategic. Treatments exist to combat the spruce beetle, but on a grand scale, they can be expensive, labor-intensive and bad for the environment, Davis said.<\/p>\n
But a researcher in Davis\u2019 lab, CSU graduate student Andrew Mann, is studying the biological makeup of an insect-slaying fungus that could eventually be used as a preventive tool on a small scale. Workers could one day use it to prevent infestation in particularly vulnerable stands where winds have knocked over trees, Davis said.<\/p>\n
Still, challenges persist: Changes in drought patterns and rising temperatures are expected to increase fire risk and alter the makeup of forests. The U.S. Forest Service spends more than half of its budget fighting wildfires, leaving little money for management efforts that could prevent fires.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a losing situation,\u201d said Lesli Allison, executive director of the Western Landowners Alliance. \u201cThe less we can invest up front to reduce the threat of fires, the bigger the fires become and the more we have to spend suppressing them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Various congressional proposals could address the U.S. Forest Service budget to allow more money for management, Allison said. If the Forest Service had more money to remove trees, the resulting wood supply could incentivize new mills \u2013 and more mills would make management efforts cheaper, she said.<\/p>\n
But she also called for the support of private landowners, who oversee 7 million acres of Colorado forests and face economic challenges similar to those that hamper government agencies.<\/p>\n
Managing overcrowded forestland can cost anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars an acre, Allison and Lester said, and grant money covers a fraction of landowner costs. Allison said she\u2019d like to see more money in the federal Farm Bill to support forest stewardship, which could include tax incentives for new mills.<\/p>\n
Colorado\u2019s residents and government need to invest in the state\u2019s forests, Lester said. Colorado forests were largely unscathed last year as historic wildfires raged across the West. But that\u2019s because we got lucky, he said, not because our forests are in fighting shape.<\/p>\n
Lester doesn\u2019t want to rely on luck.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a lot of things we need to do in this state, and it\u2019s really easy to put the health of our forests in the background,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think we can do that forever. If we\u2019re not careful, there will be a time when we\u2019ll wish we\u2019d done the work we needed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he hopes it doesn\u2019t come to that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope we have enough vision to say this is something we need to pay attention to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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