2.7 million acres of beetle kill, up from roughly half that last year.  Next year?  Many more beetle killed forests, some of them maybe nearer to where you live than you’d like.  Beginning soon—forest fires.  Lots of forest fires.

What’s the carbon footprint of a 50,000 acre forest fire?  Last time I checked, fire involving wood was the process of oxidizing the carbon, resulting in carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. Toxic gases on the EPA hit list.  Plus untold tons of incompletely burned byproducts, otherwise known as smoke—hazardous to our health.

Common sense and prudence would suggest that emergency measures should be in motion right now to a) salvage as much of the beetle killed timber as possible before it burns,  b) selectively cut in strategic areas to prevent further spread of the beetles that are killing our forests, and c) salvage logging after the dreaded fires.

But neither a) nor b) nor c) will likely occur, as we’ve allowed our timber industry to be killed off pretty much statewide.  Sawmills are gone, plywood plants are gone, paperboard plant is gone, workforce is gone (although many former timber workers would love to get their jobs back so they could get off the dole).

We can’t cut merchantable timber, we can’t cut beetle kill timber before the fires, and after the forest fires, we won’t be able to cut the fire kill timber.  Seems the boys and girls in charge of our forests have made a royal muck-up of one of Montana’s best renewable resources.

By the way, the ones in charge of our forests that have led us to this disasterous state of affairs are NOT the USFS & State Foresters, but are the enlightened people who have opposed every sound forest management proposal for decades.  Very short-sighted thinking on their part.