Restoration

Tree vs. Tree: An Aspen Restoration Project

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Lots of spirituality references in this story.. is it the Sunday effect?

“Like a steeple”
“All of a sudden, all conifers in an aspen grove are bad. And if they are not in a grove, you pray to them”
and (not excerpted)
“An aspen grove is a spiritual area,” said Mary Leavell, who ranches with her husband, Tom. “The way the sunlight slants through them – you get into a good grove and get a really nice feeling.”

Here’s a link to the story from the Sacramento Bee and below is an excerpt.

Like a steeple, the Jeffrey pine towers over other conifers and quaking aspen in the Tahoe National Forest north of Truckee.

Nearly 13 feet around at its base and believed to be about 250 to 300 years old, it has weathered every threat to come its way, including wildfire, drought, storms and logging.

Now it is slated to fall to a modern force: environmental restoration.

As part of a Forest Service effort to return Sierra forests to their pre-settlement glory, this tree is one of many conifers – large and small – the agency has designated for logging to help aspen, which its research shows is in danger.

“We need to be doing everything we can to help promote and foster these aspen stands,” said Quentin Youngblood, the Sierraville district ranger for the Tahoe National Forest. “And quite frankly, there are some tough choices.”

But as trees crash to the ground this summer, anger is growing among environmentalists and area residents who say the effort is heavy-handed and environmentally risky.

“I think they are going to destroy more than they are going to restore,” said Tom Leavell, a rancher whose cattle graze on Forest Service land in the logging zone. “Nature put everything together for a reason. As soon as we go in messing with it, something else happens.”

The project is part of a wider pattern. No longer is agency logging just about timber production. Now, it’s often aimed at healing past mistakes and restoring nature’s bounty.

Playing God with nature is often fraught with risk, of course. But what also makes some scientists uneasy about the Tahoe project is that the Forest Service is logging one cherished Sierra icon to help another.

“All of a sudden, all conifers in an aspen grove are bad. And if they are not in a grove, you pray to them,” said Bill Stewart, a forestry management specialist at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s a little bit mind-bending.”

Cutting big trees has long stirred conflict in the Sierra, where the Forest Service limits most logging to trees less than 30 inches in diameter, but has left a loophole for aspen restoration, allowing even large, old trees to fall.

“This is not scientifically defensible,” said Chad Hanson, director and staff ecologist of the John Muir Project, an environmental group. “This is really just a very creative excuse to get some very large old-growth trees to the mill.”

Youngblood said that’s not the case. “We’re not taking any of the larger trees based on economics,” he said.

Note from Sharon: when I was a young sapling in the Forest Service, in the same years, we used wildlife money to remove conifers from aspen stands (not in the Sierra) and timber money to remove aspen from conifer stands. To those who don’t see the world improving through time, at least now there are not countervailing objectives…

More on the Historic Vegetation Ecology Dust-up

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Emily Guerin posted this on the High Country News Goat Blog. Here is an excerpt.

The team from Wyoming rounded out their studies by criticizing common forest management practices. Except where necessary to protect homes, they believe widespread culling of small trees and understory shrubs to thin forests, the doctrine behind projects like Arizona’s ambitious 4 Forest Restoration Initiative, is a bad idea. This strategy, they say, will “move dry forests outside their historical range of variability, rather than restore them, probably with negative consequences for biological diversity.”

I can hardly believe that they are still attached to the concept of HRV; however, I understand if you’re a historic vegetation ecologist, it is difficult to let go of that concept. Why do they care so much (being from Wyoming.. about intervening in Arizona?).

Baker doesn’t disagree with Swetnam’s argument that current climate conditions are likely to make modern fires worse. He and Williams just hope to place the current rash of wildfire in its historic context. Big, severe wildfires are “a natural part of our forest ecosystems; we maybe didn’t know that until recently. But now that we do we just have to figure out how to live with that.”

I agree we have to live with current conditions, but also think we need to be clear in our logic as to exactly why we think the past is relevant. It seems like they are saying “we need to do things that are like the past.”

There were a couple of interesting comments also. like this..

Rather than surveyors’ reports, I would put more trust in photographic studies such as Yellow Ore, Yellow Hair, Yellow Pine, which compared multiple photos of the Black Hills taken from the same spots in 1874 and 1974. You can really see how much thicker those ponderosa pine forests became over 100 years

And this exchange between Baker and

We appreciate HCN covering this topic, which obviously is controversial, but there is certainly a need for more research and more public discussion. There is much at stake, as these forests are among our most beautiful western forests, they are near many of our communities, fires are burning out of them into our communities, and there is no doubt that they are in need of ecological restoration after a century of intense logging and livestock grazing. Our research differs, however, in providing distinct messages that we hope will be carefully considered by scientists and the public. The evidence we have published shows that these forests historically burned at high-severity, meaning a large fraction of trees were killed. This occurred when fuels were at natural levels, before any of the widespread EuroAmerican land uses altered these forests. The implication is that today’s fuel-reduction programs that promise to restore fuels to their natural levels likely may not work, since severe fires were common when fuels were at these natural levels. Inside or near ponderosa pine forests or dry mixed-conifer forests thus are really bad places to live, even if fuel-reduction has been undertaken. Alternative approaches for western communities to protect themselves are in my book: Baker, W.L. 2009. Fire ecology in Rocky Mountain forests. Island Press, Washington, D.C.

Dr. Brown’s comment about creationists is just sour grapes, probably because he does not like the findings of our research. He knows very well that our research is published in top, peer-reviewed scientific journals, the same kinds of scientific journals where he publishes. These scientific journals do not publish creationism. The journals are well-respected, including Ecological Monographs and Ecosphere, published by the Ecological Society of America. Our research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which have extremely competitive peer-reviewed grant programs. Dr. Brown’s comment is unfounded and also denigrating to the scientific enterprise in general and the many scientists who contribute to these programs and scientific journals.

Also, the dataset is not tiny, as Dr. Brown implied. There are >13,000 records from the surveyors across about 4 million acres of land in three states in the central study, which is published in Global Ecology and Biogeography (see below). Moreover, the records are as good or better than the kinds of data Dr. Brown and Swetnam rely upon. Even in the most heavily sampled area in Northern Arizona (Abella and Denton 2009), the tree-ring data that form the basis for our study (75 trees/ha) are more abundant than in tree-ring studies (69 trees/ha) and much more abundant than government weather data and government forest-monitoring (FIA) data that are considered a sound basis for scientific understanding of climate and forests. Also, the accuracy and validity of the survey data were validated in an extensive scientific trial, which was published in 2011 in Ecological Monographs, one of the top ecological science journals in the world. Moreover, the tree-ring data that Drs. Brown and Swetnam rely upon are very spatially limited, generally from small, isolated studies totally at most thousands of acres, not millions of acres as in our study.

Dr. Swetnam is incorrect. We published new evidence that the size of high-severity fire patches and the rate of high-severity fire is no different now than it was in a comparable period before EuroAmerican settlement, in natural forests. This study is in Ecosystems (see below).

Readers interested in seeing the actual evidence in these published studies can find them using the citations and links below, but may have to access them via subscriptions, or can email me at [email protected]. Bill Baker

and Peter Brown

I would like to briefly follow up on my comments to Ms. Guerin with first an apology concerning my ill-chosen comparison of this recent work from Drs. Williams and Baker to creationists’ efforts: Certainly W&B are publishing their research in peer-reviewed journal articles and are obviously following scientific methods and ethics, in very strong contrast to the creationists. I sincerely apologize to both Drs. Williams and Baker for that comparison.

However, my point was that we have been here before. This new data set is, in my opinion, just one more in a series of approaches that appears from the outside to be part of an agenda to tear down any efforts – however well-meant, however well-documented – at ecological restoration of surface fire regimes in ponderosa pine ecosystems around the western US. So to my follow-up question about the data presented in their work: Even if their model of forest structure based on the GLO data is correct, there is still a grand leap from there to fire behavior. Current fires in ponderosa have contained large portions of active crown fire, with complete tree mortality over 1000s or even 10000s of acres. Tree recruitment into recent fires on the Front Range (e.g, Black Tiger, Buffalo Ck, Bobcat Gulch, Hayman, etc) as well as many other areas around the SW in particular has been either very slow or nonexistent. Considering the lack of seed sources that have occurred across some very extensive landscapes and the relatively large size and lack of mobility of ponderosa seed, how does the lack of recruitment after recent fires fit with their model of past fire behavior, if the current fires are within the HRV according to this model? Most certainly current forests are not coming back as dense stands of even-aged trees. Right there something is incomplete in the model, and strongly suggests that their interpretations of the GLO data – and hence implications contained in these data for ecological restoration efforts – are flawed.

and of course I enjoy a fellow bringing up evolutionary characteristics of forest trees (after all “ecosystems” don’t evolve; species do)

It is in the best practice of science that widely accepted paradigms are challenged from time to time if for no other reason that it forces us to step back and really examine what we think we know. I think the research mentioned here certainly falls into that category as we work to expand our understanding of fire processes in western ecosystems.

The biggest difficulty I’m having with the conclusions of Drs. Baker and Williams is that it seems counter-intuitive to the evolutionary selection of traits in ponderosa pine — thick bark, fast juvenile growth, and good self-pruning — which seem tailor made for a low-intensity fire regime. As opposed to lodgepole pine — thin bark, early maturation, serotinous cones, poor stem exclusion — which would benefit from an infrequent high-intesity regime. And with mixed-conifer stands the story is more complicated of course, hence mixed-severity regimes being thought of as common in them (with the true firs in areas mostly devoid of fire).

It’s this incongruity that I’m trying to reconcile with the idea that infrequent high-severity fires were the historic norm across a wide array of western forests.

And this historical comment from Clark Stoner:

Although clearly a clever use of GLO notes, I think the GLO survey notes should be read from the point of view of the surveyors who wrote them and in the context of the times.

The GLO surveyors weren’t exactly welcomed guests in those days. The U.S. Government was at war with various indian tribes at various times across the west. There is little doubt that the indians understood the surveyors preceded the western movement of the white man, which they likely considered threatening. The survey parties weren’t exactly all that well paid, and they likely often feared for their safety. So, I would have taken a rather tongue in cheek approach to the reliance of the GLO notes when they were describing the landscape (they most often served future boundary retracement surveyors needs quite well). In my experience with reading GLO notes in California and Nevada, dating back from the 1860s through the 1880s, I find that they weren’t exactly describing forested land in terms of any measurable density. Their descriptions of forested land were actually quite general and subjective. You were taking a gamble if you were a speculator in the GLO office trying to decide whether or not you wanted to buy the land described. So in the study it appears they found quite a number of bearing trees (which is cool), but their existence is no testament to the density of the forest at the time the GLO surveyors marked them.

Also, why is reliance on data from the 1880s so relevant? I seem to recall Lewis and Clark witnessing the indians setting fire to the landscape in 1804, which I believe it is now accepted that the indians were performing their own forestry management practices prior to the arrival of the Europeans, and most agree their practices were to promote fertile hunting grounds. So, as the indians got wrapped up in wars with the U.S. Government, it might be safe to say that their normal forestry management practices were disrupted and in various cases the forests appeared quite different by the time the GLO surveyors arrived. The GLO surveyors in many cases might not have been witnessing the forests in their centuries prior “pre-existing” state (saving the term “natural state”).

There are other interesting comments as well.

Bottom line, many people have interesting perspectives on this and scientific journals and the general press only give us a piece of the story, if left to their own devices. Further, many people’s disciplines and experiences can be relevant from understanding surveyors to tree evolution.

Thanks to Emily for taking this on!

New Age Forestry Project in California

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This is an example of what our thinning projects look like, when completed. As you can see, the stand is still well-stocked, and ladder fuels have been removed. You can also see that the stand will be resilient and that all the logging slash has been removed, as well. In looking closer, I’m not seeing any damaged trees, as well. Additionally, no large trees ( over 30″ dbh ) were cut, unless they could fall and hit the adjacent highway.

This logging was done during this season, and work is continuing in other units. The project is quite visual, being all along a major Sierra Nevada highway. We call this style of project “thinning from below”. Any thoughts?

Opinion on Colt Summit Published

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Here are the actual acreages and treatments from the Colt Summit documentation.

Judge Molloy’s opinion on Colt Summit link here.

Article in Missoulian here.

Here’s an excerpt:

“The plaintiffs in this case insist the Forest Service’s cumulative effects analysis for lynx is inadequate. On this point they are correct. On remand the Forest Service must prepare a supplemental (environmental assessment) that adequately addresses the cumulative effects for lynx, and if necessary after that review, an (environmental impact statement).”

The project was heralded earlier this year as the model for a new kind of collaborative forest management, where lumber mills and conservation groups work in concert with the U.S. Forest Service on tasks everyone agrees are needed.

Colt-Summit’s backers included Pyramid Mountain Lumber, the Wilderness Society, Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and two retired chiefs of the U.S. Forest Service.

Molloy’s decision blocked the 2,000 acres of logging and 17 miles of roadwork, but Megan Birzell of the Wilderness Society, a supporter of the plan, told the Missoulian last month that the judge’s finding was not a major setback because of his concurrent finding that the project passed muster under the Endangered Species Act.

“The judge said it won’t have an impact on lynx, but the Forest Service needs to beef up their analysis to better document that,” she said.

The plaintiffs argued that the project area serves as a corridor for lynx that move between the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Mission Mountains. Molloy said this does not appear to be the case.

The Forest Service relies on GPS tracking data that show lynx do not use the project area as a corridor to travel between the Bob Marshall and Mission Mountains, he wrote, but instead cross Highway 83 south of the project.

“This means the project area is probably not an ‘ecologically critical area’ based on its use by the lynx as a linkage corridor,” according to his opinion.

The Forest Service now must prepare a supplemental environmental assessment, and is enjoined from implementing the Colt Summit project while the assessment is pending.


Note from Sharon: I’m going to take a look at the decision because it should be interesting exactly what kind of more cumulative impacts the judge is looking for.

This article says there are 2,000 acres of “logging”; again I have posted above the table that shows the acres. 1200 are “understory slashing with underburning”. Now it’s true I’m not from Montana but usually, where I’m from, “understory” is not merchantable, hence not “logging” as defined in the dictionary. Commercial thinning (selective logging) seems to be on about 600 acres.

One piece of evidence that this is confusing is that the reporter said:

The National Environmental Policy Act has been a regular stumbling block for Forest Service timber projects. It requires a variety of scientific reviews to ensure a project doesn’t hurt the environment.

This isn’t really clear that NEPA “allows” the project to hurt the environment; ESA here is the statute that protects the environment. NEPA requires documentation that you have considered the impacts; it’s a procedural statute. That’s what’s confusing, yet illuminating, about this decision (it seems to be saying, “you have made the case you’re not in violations of any environmental statutes but you haven’t documented as much as NEPA requires”).

It could be that the plaintiffs are hoping that the FS will provide additional documentation so that they can make the case that there is really an ESA violation. Because it seems like it raises the question “is this about not following ESA, or about making people do more documentation, and to what end?”

“An Ecosystem Management Strategy for Sierran Mixed Conifer Forests”

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http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr220/

“Description: Current Sierra Nevada forest management is often focused on strategically reducing fuels without an explicit strategy for ecological restoration across the landscape matrix. Summarizing recent scientific literature, we suggest managers produce different stand structures and densities across the landscape using topographic variables (i.e., slope shape, aspect, and slope position) as a guide for varying treatments. Local cool or moist areas, where historically fire would have burned less frequently or at lower severity, would have higher density and canopy cover, providing habitat for sensitive species. In contrast upper, southern-aspect slopes would have low densities of large fire-resistant trees. For thinning, marking rules would be based on crown strata or age cohorts and species, rather than uniform diameter limits. Collectively, our management recommendations emphasize the ecological role of fire, changing climate conditions, sensitive wildlife habitat, and the importance of forest structure heterogeneity.”

This is a basic scientific reasoning for the marking prescriptions we are using in our current project. In scanning through some of it (it seems QUITE comprehensive!), I found this little gem.

‘How is ecological restoration defined in the GTR? In the face of changing
climate conditions, our focus is on increasing ecosystem resiliency. This focus
is consistent with that described in USDA Forest Service Manual 2020.5,
which defines ecological restoration as: “The process of assisting the recovery
of resilience and adaptive capacity of ecosystems that have been degraded,
damaged, or destroyed. Restoration focuses on establishing the composition,
structure, pattern, and ecological processes necessary to make terrestrial and
aquatic ecosystems sustainable, resilient, and healthy under current and future
conditions.” ‘

Time for litigating forest restoration projects has ended : Editorial from Az Daily Sun

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Here’s a link. Below is an excerpt.

The Forest Service helped its cause by finally releasing its rationale for picking the Montana company for the initial 300,000-acre contract.

— Pioneer would hire about 500 people,

— It could get started just seven to eight months after contracts were signed

— It would make a variety of products (furniture parts, molding, flooring mimicking hardwoods) that would be diversified enough to sell consistently during recessions.

— It would have the advantage of stable fuel costs in turning branches and fine matter into biofuel as proposed.

That didn’t convince Pascal Berlioux of AZFRP, who sent out a three-page single-spaced email on the day that administrative appeals were due listing the reasons he thought his company would be a better choice. Whether it was price, risk, technical expertise or marketability, Berlioux insisted his was the better proposal. Personally, he noted, he had put six years of his life into the project, and some of his fellow board members had put up their life savings.

But in the end, Berlioux did not appeal, saying the Forest Service had made a nebulous “best value” judgment that it was unlikely to overturn. For the forest’s sake and the health of its host communities, Berlioux did the right thing by not appealing, and we in northern Arizona owe him a big thanks.

That still doesn’t rule out possible legal appeals by the Center for Biological Diversity, Grand Canyon Trust and others with objections to the contract. Their main concerns appeared to be a fear that Pioneer would not be as collaborative a partner as AZFRP (it didn’t offer to pay for monitoring) and that it lacked relevant local experience. Also, its plan to convert biomass into cellulostic biodiesel fuel was untested, they said.

Those objections, however, amount to speculation. The reality is that both companies would have been good choices, but only one could win — there isn’t enough wood to support two wood processing mills over the next 20 to 30 years.

Each year of delay is another year that catastrophic crown fires could wipe out much of the forest resource and devastate local ecosystems. As it is, the Pioneer mill won’t be up and running for at least a year or more. There are no more legitimate excuses for delay, and we urge conservation groups to stay in the 4FRI process and see it through to a successful conclusion.

Note from Sharon: So what interested me was this statement: “The reality is that both companies would have been good choices, but only one could win — there isn’t enough wood to support two wood processing mills over the next 20 to 30 years.” Maybe not around Flag, but lots of other places there is. This seems to be one of the few places where there is more capacity than material.

Too Little of A Good Thing? Early Seral in the Pacific Northwest

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Sitkum Valley, on the East Fork Coquille River; Bob Zybach took about this photo around this time in 2011

Bob Zybach is bringing this draft review article to our attention.

The article is by Mark Swanson, a professor at Washington State University.
Here is the abstract

Abstract
Early seral forest is attracting increasing attention from scientists and managers. This literature review, produced under contract to the United States Forest Service, addresses basic questions about this important seral stage in the forests of the Pacific Northwest (west and east of the Cascades Range). Generative processes, historic landscape abundance, ecological value, associated species (and their ecological adaptations and conservation status), landscape-scale considerations (including patch size), and issues relatied to forest management are central topics. In general, naturally structured early seral forest in the Pacific Northwest is important for many ecosystem services and species (including obligates and near-obligates), but has declined from historic landscape proportions.

And the Conclusions:

Conclusions
While the public is not necessarily predisposed against early seral forest (and in some cases may favor certain types), there is still greater public concern over late-successional types (Enck and Odato 2008), likely due to widespread policy and media emphasis on old-growth forests and their relationship to management. However, specific values associated with early seral habitats, from big game production to huckleberry harvesting, are attracting increasing attention from the public. Managers concerned about maintaining rare species are increasingly acknowledging the value of early seral habitats for a substantial portion of the biodiversity of the Pacific Northwest. Potential management responses may include:
 Deferring salvage and dense replanting across all or parts of major disturbed areas (Lindenmayer and Noss 2006, Lindemayer et al. 2008))
 When salvaging, practice variable retention to retain significant structural elements such as large-diameter live trees, snags, and down woody debris (Franklin et al. 1997, Eklund et al. 2009).
 Avoiding reseeding with exotic plant species such as perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) following fire or volcanic eruption (see Dale et al. 2005b).
 Attempt to incorporate elements of natural disturbance regimes into landcape-scale management (Lindenmayer and Franklin 2002)
 Deliberate creation of large, early seral areas via silviculture (Swanson 2010).
Researchers have an important role to play in facilitating changing attitudes. Much of the excellent research done on seral dynamics in Northwestern forests (e.g., Ruggiero et al. 1991) was focused on biota associated with young, dense forests, mature forests, and late-seral forests. The pre-canopy closure stage component of succession was either not measured (as in Ruggiero et al.), or clumped together with stem exclusion (sensu Oliver and Larson) stands in analysis. While there is an increasing amount of research on true early seral forest, and management responses to these advances (King et al. 2011), much remains to be done in most temperate forest regions both in terms of research and management (Swanson et al. 2011b). It is hoped that the diversity and value of early seral conditions, from clearcuts to structurally and compositionally complex early seral habitat, will come to be recognized and widely incorporated into contemporary land management.

Arizona forest deal winner now taking heat: Arizona Sun

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I got this from the Forest Business Network here.

Here’s the link to the story in the Arizona Sun.

Below is an excerpt:

COVINGTON LIKES CHOICE

The only real question is who should do it.

Wally Covington, head of the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University, said he likes the choice and that it’s time to get to work.

“I think we’ve got it together pretty darned well here,” he said. “… We’ve got to get the excess trees off the landscape before the outcomes that are worse than the very worst clear-cut can propagate across the landscape.”

So does Paul Summerfelt, a longtime city of Flagstaff firefighter and president of the Greater Flagstaff Forest Partnership, which has successfully pressed for less dense and healthier forests around Flagstaff.

“It’s a win in that we finally have a contract, which has been a long time coming. It promises to bring a lot of wood-related jobs into northern Arizona irrespective of who the contract winner was, and it restores the forest,” he said.

And so does Steve Gatewood, who has worked elbow by elbow with Summerfelt for years to try to thin forests here.

Environmental groups do have a case history to stand on when thinking the agency won’t do the minimum it promises, he said.

But this is a big departure from past thinking for the Forest Service, in his view.

“They’re actually talking about interspaces and openings and savannas and that kind of stuff,” Gatewood said.

SOUR GRAPES

Opponents are guilty of sour grapes, says the main person planning the Four Forests Restoration Initiative, as this big thinning idea is called.

“Obviously, several folks aren’t happy with the selection. And to be honest, there’s a lot of misinformation being spread by those folks,” said Henry Provencio, head of the implementing the project for the Forest Service.

The Center for Biological Diversity was first in denouncing the decision earlier this month, saying the U.S. Forest Service went with the bidder offering to send a lesser amount of money to the U.S. Forest Service for reasons that aren’t clear.

“On the one hand, they’re saying they can’t afford to monitor endangered species, such as the spotted owl … and on the other hand, they’re saying they’re going to reject $5 million for monitoring. It makes no sense,” said the Center’s Taylor McKinnon.

The Forest Service hasn’t released any of the bids to the public, but it has released its criteria for winning.

A business’ willingness to remove limbs and fine matter, its past performance, references from others, its business plan, its impact on local communities and the amount of money per acre it offered to the Forest Service were all considerations, according to documents sent to bidders.

EXTRA SCRUTINY

Among Pioneer’s partners is Marlin Johnson, a former administrator in the U.S. Forest Service who retired from that agency a little more than four years ago, Johnson said.

That was before bids for this project were submitted.

The Center for Biological Diversity faced him in court sometimes, and it asserts that he intends to log big trees from other areas and use them to feed a big mill.

Johnson says otherwise: His mill won’t be able to accept trees bigger than 16 inches in diameter, he said.

He or any other winning business would have to cut whatever trees the Forest Service wants removed, he said, and sell the bigger ones to other businesses.

“We won’t legally be able to tell the Forest Service: ‘Oops, you want that 20-inch tree cut? We won’t do it,'” Johnson said.

The project triggered extra scrutiny within the Forest Service.

“As soon as we knew that Marlin was a participant, I asked for a review by our ethics branch …” and then also one in Washington. “I knew that would come up,” said Corbin Newman, regional forester for all national forests in the Southwest.

BIGGER PICTURE

He says the debate over who got the contract is obscuring the bigger picture.

“I want folks to realize: Let’s have a little concern about who got it and who didn’t, but let’s also have a little concern about restoring Arizona’s forests,” Newman said.

The other three bidders have until the end of Friday to appeal the bid decision.

Arizona Forest Restoration Products did not respond to phone calls on Tuesday or Wednesday.