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Welcome to Arizona Forest Restoration Products Inc.
Due to prior unsustainable
overgrazing practices, old-growth logging
practices and aggressive fire fighting policies in public forests, and subsequent pressures from environmentalist groups,
over the last 15 to 20 years large scale wood-based operations
have been restricted to private forests in the U.S., such as
those found in the southeastern U.S.
Consequently 15 to 20 years of forest management neglect in the
public forests of the southwestern U.S. have resulted in the
proliferation of an incredible number of small trees and the
accumulation of an enormous amount of natural fuel in the
forests. This creates the conditions for
catastrophic high
intensity wildfires that consume hundreds of thousands of acres
at a time, destroy private and public property worth billions of
dollars, and
cost the lives of an increasing number of fire
fighters.
As a result of these devastating fires, in the last few years
the USDA Forest Service, ecologists, environmentalists,
conservationists, academics, local communities, and other
constituents with an interest in preserving the heritage and
value of the forests in the southwestern U.S. have come to agree
that a key component to restoring healthy forests is to implement
significant thinning programs of small diameter trees.
However, the high cost of
restoration (typically $1,000 per acre in northern Arizona)
makes it practically impossible for the Forest Service to
implement landscape-scale restoration. In northern Arizona
alone, treating the 1 million acres identified in the
collaborative process as needing mechanical thinning will cost
over a billion dollars! An economically viable funding mechanism
must be integrated in the collaborative work. Appropriately
sized, economically sustainable private industry demonstrably
committed to the principles of restoration and collaboration,
and able to dramatically offset the costs the landscape-scale
restoration is needed to act as an economic engine and the
enabler of the restorative vision.
Located in Flagstaff, Northern
Arizona, at the center of the largest ponderosa pine forest in
the world, Arizona Forest Restoration Products (AZFRP) plans to
construct a state-of-the art OSB manufacturing facility in order
to implement meaningful scale thinning of the forest, and
produce, sell, and distribute high-quality oriented strand board
(OSB) building material to serve a quarter of the entire U.S.
household market within a 500 miles radius, while funding
landscape-scale restoration in northern Arizona.
By manufacturing high value-added
OSB from the low-value small diameter trees harvested during
ecological restorative thinning, AZFRP will create an economic
engine that will serve a very strong regional market for OSB,
enable the restoration of the Northern Arizona forest to a
fire-adapted ecology, and significantly reward investors
interested in seeing their capital produce both a substantial
financial return and a fundamental social return.
Arizona Forest Restoration
Products aims to:
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Serve and protect the forest by implementing forest
restoration programs;
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Respect and promote good ecological science;
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Help protect the community by implementing thinning
prescriptions in the wildland/urban interface areas;
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Help prevent the risk of catastrophic wildfires by
reducing the accumulation of hazardous fuel in the forest;
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Partner up with all local constituencies
and operate collaboratively;
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Make forest treatment economically self supporting;
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Fund the U.S. Forest Service;
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Use state of the art engineering to convert low value
small diameter trees harvested during forest ecological thinning into high value-added oriented strand board (OSB);
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Provide high quality construction materials to the
growing markets of the U.S. Southwest;
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Contribute to Northern Arizona rural development;
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Provide high paying local jobs;
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Reward
investors.
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