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The New
Pioneers
In this issue, we explore community-level efforts to breathe new life into the Southwest’s forest products industry. Little remains of this region’s once sizeable sawmill industry, which began its implosion nearly a decade ago with the slow collapse of the federal timber sale program.
Our initial investigation – begun in earnest in late October
- finds little if any support for restarting the “big log”
milling industry that was once here. But there is widespread public
support for developing a milling infrastructure that can utilize small
diameter logs.
National forests in the Southwest are in deep trouble – and the
reasons are well known: a near-century of excluding wildfire, prolonged
drought, the onset of insect and disease infestations and early day
logging and grazing practices.
Southwest national forests still hold some very impressive old
growth ponderosa pine stands - and it is these stands that supporters of
thinning hope to protect from the ravages of unnatural wildfires
– fires that are burning well beyond what fire ecologists call “the
natural range of variability.” Unless long-term thinning programs are
implemented soon, these forests seem certain to perish in increasingly
frequent and ferocious stand replacing wildfires. But because so little milling capacity remains in the Southwest, there are no appreciable markets for small diameter logs, wood chips or woody biomass. Worst yet, industry investors are wary of recommitting capital to even small-scale operations that would be dependent on the region’s national forests. Tragically, timber sale appeals and litigation aimed at blocking even modest thinning programs have made the federal government a very unreliable business partner. Despite these problems – or perhaps because of them - community-based forestry programs, funded by various government agencies and non-profit organizations, are gaining footholds throughout rural Arizona and New Mexico. They also enjoy strong support from local environmental groups who have apparently concluded that modest thinning programs that target small diameter trees are environmentally more benign than catastrophic wildfire. But will these groups and the thinning and infrastructure programs they are initiating pass muster in federal court or will judges block their implementation just as they have earlier failed attempts across the West? And if they pass muster, might they serve as models for other such programs in Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming and California? In “The New Pioneers", we look for answers to these questions.
Evergreen
Magazine |
