Arizona Forest
Restoration Products Inc.
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Arizona Forest Restoration Products Inc. |
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Wood Procurement
Arizona Forest Restoration Products is developing a new business model in proposing to operate an OSB plant to be supplied with wood harvested essentially from public forests.
Over the last 15 to 20 years, due to questionable logging practices and due to subsequent pressures from environmentalist groups, large scale wood-based operations have been restricted to private forests in the U.S., such as these found in the Southeast, or to public forests regulated under Canadian law. Incidentally, this explains why Arizona Forest Restoration Products does not have any competitor within a 1,000 miles radius.
One of the unexpected outcomes of these 15 to 20 years of virtually total inactivity in the Southwest forests has been the uncontrolled and exponential growth and accumulation of natural fuels. Simultaneously, decades of aggressive fire suppression policies have contributed to turn the Southwest forests into time bombs ready to ignite in catastrophic and uncontrollable wildfires of a nature to cause serious long-term ecological deterioration and massive loss of public and private values.
In 2002 a total of 88,458 fires burned roughly 7 million acres and caused the deaths of 23 firefighters, and in 2003 a total of 59,149 fires burned 3.8 million acres, destroyed 6,800 structures, and caused the deaths of 28 firefighters (http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/healthyforests/). Comparative statistics from January 1st to August 30th indicate that 2006 is trending to be the worst year since the turn of the millennium with, year to date, 78,948 fires having so far burned 7,599,563 acres. Just on August 30, 2006 when these lines were typed, 7 new large fires have been reported this day, bringing to 40 the number of active large fires currently raging over 747,330 acres (http://www.nifc.gov/fireinfo/nfn.html).
As a reaction to a situation clearly getting out of control, a profound transformation has taken place over the last few years in the public opinion, and all the stakeholders, including all but the most extreme forest activists, now agree that fuel reduction and forest restoration programs need to be urgently implemented, especially in the ever expanding wildland/urban interface areas.
In this very supportive context, Arizona Forest Restoration Products will procure approximately 258,000 ccf (~ 827,000 tons) of small diameter ponderosa pine green logs (with bark) annually from the Northern Arizona and Western New Mexico forests. These logs will be harvested during thinning operations on the 2.8 million acres and 2.3 million acres of sawtimber and poletimber non-reserved Arizona and New Mexico ponderosa pine forests.
While Arizona Forest Restoration Products’s activity will have a very positive impact on reducing wildfire risks since approximately 32,000 acres will be treated annually, this impact will in no conceivable way threaten the ecology of the environment since the area treated annually will only represent approximately 0.7% of the Arizona and New Mexico sawtimber and poletimber non-reserved ponderosa pine forests.
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