The Yampa Valley has had a damp summer, which has been great for postponing, and hopefully avoiding, fires this season. However, it might have a negative effect on leaves changing color this fall. “The moisture.
The 7,586-acre Morgan Creek Fire in north Routt County that started in July 2021 may have been scary and smoky for local residents, but the silver lining is contributions to improved forest health.
While wildfire mitigation may not be at the top of Routt County residents’ minds as snow begins to fall and the winter sports season kicks off, the Routt County Wildfire Mitigation Council is still working…
Colorado looks to logging to help re-balance forests capitalpress.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from capitalpress.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Colorado looks to logging to help re-balance forests
By BRUCE FINLEYDecember 13, 2020 GMT
GOULD, Colo. (AP) Stunned by unprecedented megafires, Colorado is embracing logging mowing holes up to 140 acres in beetle-infested lodgepole pines in an effort to revive out-of-balance forests.
This for-profit mechanized tree-cutting, concentrated between the blackened Cameron Peak and East Troublesome burn scars, has been clearing 3,000 acres a year.
And state foresters propose to clear more.
At two cutting sites west of Fort Collins recently, hulking red and yellow tractors equipped with whirling hot saws sliced through 12-inch trunks of the towering pines, then as they thumped to the ground raked them into bunches. De-limbers stripped off branches. Hooked pinchers hoisted the logs into bus-sized loads for diesel-belching trucks. Drivers hauled these along icy mountain roads to sawmills at Saratoga and Parshall, where workers convert logs to lumber as a surging national wood-produc