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Ecosystems
and Watersheds Ecological Restoration
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Restoration Crux Issue
As
restoration science progresses; as the difficult collaborative
issues are resolved, including the critical issue of old growth
protection and large diameter trees retention; and as consensus
is built between the communities, environmental constituencies,
agencies, industries and utilities toward an all-land, all-hands
collaborative landscape scale restoration of the Northern
Arizona forest toward a fire adapted ecology, funding emerges as
the last remaining crux issue of restoration.
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It currently costs
the U.S. Forest Service approximately $1,000 per acre to implement
restorative mechanical thinning in the Ponderosa pine
forests of Northern Arizona.
The collaborative
group has identified the need to urgently restore at least 1
million acres in Northern Arizona.
At the current
agency cost of $1,000 x 1 million acres, restoring Northern
Arizona forests would cost the U.S. Forest Service at least
$1 billion.
This money is simply
not available from the U.S. Treasury.
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What the
U.S. Treasury cannot accomplish, the economy must undertake,
relying on the market forces rather than government subsidies. This is
the reason why AZFRP promotes the creation of a private
industry, appropriate
size, economically viable, small diameter trees utilization
infrastructure capable of funding the implementation of
landscape scale restoration in Northern Arizona.
In plain
terms, the implementation of landscape scale restoration must be
disconnected from the uncertainty of agency funding, or it
will simply not happen.
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