Wildfires scorched nearly 1.5 million acres in Oregon, Washington and Idaho this year. And with increased demand for timber from lumber mills, there is a growing market for scorched trees.
Time is of the essence in post-fire salvage. Fungus, bugs and rot degrade dead trees almost immediately explained Darin Cramer, who manages timber sales for the Washington State Department of Natural Resources.
“If you do not salvage those trees within a relatively short period of time, they quickly start losing value,” he said. “They’ve already lost value just by being burned. And the longer they sit out there, the more the value goes down.” Cramer said different types of landowners move at different speeds post-fire. Private timberland owners salvage the fastest. In fact in southern Oregon, one company has already finished logging trees that burned in June.
Cramer said at the state level, Washington has sketched out two salvage timber sales following summer 2014 fires. Idaho’s Department of Lands is likewise preparing an auction of charred trees in the north-central part of the state.
Federal agencies face more stringent environmental requirements and the most outside scrutiny. It will take at least a year for the U.S. Forest Service to nail down the details to log burned trees southeast of Lewiston, Idaho.
From Northwest Public Radio: https://nwpr.org/post/timber-salvage-after-2014-wildfires-begins-fits-and-starts