Securing Safer Forests by Salvaging Snags
Local Timber Sales Starting this Summer
By Jamie Kingsbury, District Ranger, Hahns Peak/Bears Ears Ranger District
Andy Cadenhead, Forester, Hahns Peak/Bears Ears Ranger District
In the summer of 2009, Routt County will see a full array of logging operations underway on the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests. The Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests will offer house log sales, smaller roadside timber sales, and broader timber sales for larger logging operators. These sales are opportunities for local and regional entrepreneurs. The Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests will continue to offer firewood permits for personal use.
For the foreseeable future, timber harvested on the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests will be the dead and dying lodgepole pine, with some dead and dying Englemann spruce and a small amount of subalpine fir. The resulting lumber is typically used for structural building materials and biomass.
The sales will be offered at various times during the year, with the bulk of the sales occurring during the summer months. Sales will occur at a variety of places in the forest. One is in North Routt County, between Hahn's Peak Lake campground and Columbine. Several sales are being offered along Gore Pass and several more near Walden. Anyone interested in bidding should contact the Forest Service and ask to be added to the bidder's list.
Logging and firewood collection will lower the potential dangers of landscape wildfires and the hazards of falling, weakened and dead trees resulting from the mountain pine beetle epidemic. This work will also help improve forest health and protect watersheds through removal of some dead and dying trees from crowded forests.
Forest Service personnel, contractors and the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps remove hazardous dead and dying trees from campgrounds and other developed sites for public safety. Tree removal projects also enable the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests to keep roads and trails open for recreation, emergency equipment and access to power lines and electronic communication sites.
Locally, most of the cutting will occur in the northern portion of Routt County. Within the next five years or so, between one and two million trees will be salvaged. Congress has allocated the funds to pay for the planning and preparation of these sales. As sales are sold, paid for and harvested, some of this money will be returned to the Treasury.
Once an area is set aside and the trees are sold in a timber sale, public firewood cutting is prohibited. However, the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests are setting aside areas that are accessible and suitable for public gathering of firewood.
These logs can be manufactured into a variety of products, from house logs, to two by fours, to lumber of other dimensions, to pellets for wood stoves. The logs must be manufactured in the US, as exporting of unprocessed logs from this part of the country is not allowed. Smaller wood products operators are interested in milling blue stain wood locally for affordable housing in the form of logs for log-style homes trimmed with other blue stain wood products. Dead lodge pole pine can also be used for landscape timbers, posts and poles, house logs, beautiful spanning beams and a variety of dimensional lumber. Craftspeople also use the wood for furniture, bowls and other novelties.
Prices currently are the lowest in a long time (comparable to the middle 1980's). This spring most timber sales are appraising at a minimum bid of $3.00/ccf (ccf = 100 cubic feet of logs). It takes ten to thirteen ccf to make a full truckload of logs, so a truckload of logs goes for $30 – $40, much less than you pay at the lumberyard.
In the long run, we hope to make recreation in the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests as safe as possible, as soon as possible. Keep your head up while hiking, biking, horseback riding, motor biking and ATVing in the woods, but also keep your eyes on the changing forest floor. We challenge you to see the new lodgepole pines coming up, the different grasses, forbs and shrubs that we have not seen in these places before. Also, give a wave to our timber operators who are making the forest safer for us and assisting nature's needs as well. 
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The Beetle Kill Issue
10 Years Strong
Building Green With Beetle Kill Wood
A Cut Above - Harvesting and Milling
Securing Safer Forests by Salvaging Snags
Stimulus Funding Hits the Ground
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