Silverthorne – Hoping to find opportunities amid a massive pine-beetle outbreak, U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar’s office has organized a forum for Friday that will pull together forest officials and private industry to consider uses for millions of dead trees.
Anticipating new environmental priorities in a Democratic- led Congress, the Colorado Democrat intends the meeting to be a discussion of funding to cut the trees and spotlight potential uses for the wood in industry such as construction and biomass-fuel creation.
“Whether or not it’s solvable or a stoppable issue can be debated, but if we’re all on the same page we can make some progress,” said Salazar’s spokesman, Cody Wertz, who noted the risk of catastrophic wildfires if the issue is ignored.
The forum will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday at the Frisco Recreation Building, 110 S. Third Ave.
The meeting will feature discussions with U.S. Forest Service regional director Rick Cables; Christopher Risbrudt, the head of the agency’s Forest Products Laboratory; and researchers, representatives of private industry, property owners and local government officials from across the state.
Pine beetles, about the size of a grain of rice, burrow beneath the bark to lay their eggs, and the larvae consume the inner bark, choking off the tree’s ability to distribute water.
