We, as in, the sensible residents of the White Mountains! This EVEN has the BLESSINGS of my FAVORITE "radical environmentalist group", Southwest Center for Biological Diversity!" 
http://www.azcentral.com
Contract to thin forests awarded
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Mary Jo Pitzl
The Arizona Republic
Aug. 11, 2004 12:00 AM
Forest officials on Tuesday awarded their largest and longest contract for removing small trees from overgrown forests to a White Mountains-based business.
The 10-year contract to Future Forest LLC covers the greatest amount of acreage of the "stewardship contracts" awarded to date nationwide. It requires Future Forest to thin at least 50,000 acres of the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests over the next decade, although the work could cover up to 250,000 acres.
Work on the first project, 10,000 acres scattered across the Mogollon Rim, will begin soon. The cost of that contract will be $4.5 million. Forest officials could not immediately estimate the total cost to taxpayers for the 10-year effort.
The White Mountains contract has been hailed as a way to break the economic and political gridlock that has helped transform the Apache-Sitgreaves and other Western forests into overgrown fire hazards.
And it is especially poignant playing out in the stretch of eastern Arizona that two summers ago was home to the "Rodeo-Chediski" wildfire, the state's largest.
By guaranteeing a 10-year supply of material, the contracts are designed to give companies the certainty they need to invest in equipment to process the small-diameter trees and brush that have not had much value to date, said Harv Forsgren, regional forester for Arizona and New Mexico.
That material could take on an economic luster if providers know they can count on a steady supply, said Elaine Zieroth, Apache-Sitgreaves supervisor.
"Some of it may be used for creating wood pellets, some will go to creating biomass," Zieroth said as she announced the contract.
Biomass is burned to create energy.
Forest officials don't intend to allow big trees to be cut, although there are no limits on the size of trees that could be removed.
"We want to leave the larger trees and cut the smaller trees that give density to the forest," Zieroth said. She defined big trees as those larger than 16 inches in diameter.
The announcement was praised by officials from eastern Arizona as well as by an environmental group.
"This is exactly the way we hoped it would go," said Todd Schulke, forest-policy director for the Center for Biological Diversity.
The fact that the contract went to local businesses with proven track records of good forest practices is encouraging, he said.
Future Forest won out over three other bidders. The company combines the work of Forest Energy Corp. of Show Low, which makes wood pellets, with W.B. Contracting Inc., a two-brother operation in Show Low that has done a lot of cutting and thinning for the Apache-Sitgreaves.
Officers with those companies did not return phone calls Tuesday.
To local officials, the contract signals a new era in economic development.
"It will put many of our loggers and foresters back to work," said Larry Vicario, mayor of Pinetop-Lakeside. "They've been struggling since the paper mill went (to) total recycle."
No one Tuesday could estimate how many new jobs the contract would generate.
Dennis