Dead-wood supply an opportunity

Over the past few decades, the mountain pine beetle has devastated a fifth of all Colorado forestland. Summit, Eagle and Grand counties were among the hardest hit, with thousands of acres of forest wiped out. But opportunity has arisen from their ashen remains, as local lumber and alternative energy industries have been able to make good use of wood from these blighted forests.

The Colorado State Forest Service estimated that the beetle killed an eyepopping 3.4 million acres of forest. That’s about 800 million dead trees standing as potential fuel for the next wildfire to hit the state.

Ryan McNertney, a forester for the CSFS Granby District, said that the dead trees have ironically given a new lease on life to living ones.

“These dead trees,” McNertney said, “have provided a large supply of available timber that these local mills utilized to sustain their industry that typically would have come from green, or live, trees until this epidemic came through.”

The CSFS estimates that a third of Colorado’s roughly 100 sawmills use beetlekilled trees for wood products. That lumber is used in a variety of different wood products, such as furniture, flooring, house frames, fencing material and as fuel for wood-burning stoves. The beetle-killed lumber is the same quality and just as useful as “live” lumber.

“Beetle-killed lumber is fine to use,” McNertney said. “Some people see blue staining, which is a fungus, as a negative, but it has no impact on the structural viability of the wood product.”