Timber is Viable, Clears Hazardous Trees, Creates Local Jobs
September 29, 2011 – (RealEstateRama) — Today, Mark Udall called on Colorado homebuilders to use beetle-killed trees from our forests to build homes, thus clearing local forests of hazardous trees and creating homegrown jobs in the process. At an event showcasing a home built by New Town Builders, a Denver builder of energy-efficient homes that has pledged to use pine-beetle wood in its homes, Udall touted the economic and forest-health benefits to utilizing our state’s 4 million acres of dead or dying trees felled by bark beetle that otherwise risk potential wildfire or falling on hikers and powerlines.
“Beetles have decimated our forest landscape here in Colorado and the down economy has made it difficult to address the issue of clearing dead and dying trees with public funds. Homebuilders using beetle-killed timber to construct homes is a sensible solution that would not only remove hazardous trees near roads, power lines and trailheads, but it would also boost mountain economies with jobs in clearing, processing and building with the timber,” Udall said. “This kind of outside-the-box thinking puts to good use the timber that would otherwise go to waste or even endanger our communities, and helps us rebuild Colorado’s economy.”
Udall has worked for over a decade to help mitigate the impacts of the bark beetle epidemic in Colorado communities and forests, from working to protect infrastructure from wildfire and other forest health issues to encouraging the production of beetle-killed byproducts like biomass and wood pellets.
In July, Udall sent a letter to the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Department of Agriculture to get help for Colorado’s ailing timber industry by asking for a renegotiation of legacy timber contracts, which were making it more expensive and complicated for sawmills to remove dead trees from the forest. In August, the Forest Service responded by giving timber sale purchasers who are struggling financially, including three western Colorado sawmills and several independent loggers, the option to cancel their timber contracts. If Colorado’s mills close, the nearest mill capable of processing meaningful volumes of beetle-killed trees is 800 miles away in Montana. One of the sawmills, Intermountain Resources in Montrose, has partnered with New Town Builders to provide local wood products for homebuilding.
“Our sawmills employ hundreds of Coloradans in rural communities; a ‘mutual cancellation’ of these contracts makes it more affordable for them to cut down dead trees, improve public safety and keep alive our forest-management industry and the rural communities that depend on it,” Udall said.
