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A Raw Materials Nightmare: The Blue Pine Disaster, Part 1

By Rain Noe - October 22, 2012

in Materials

In the early 2000s, tree-heavy Colorado suffered an outbreak of mountain pine beetles, decimating some 70% of the lodgepole pine population. In recent years the infestation spread south as far as Mexico, and north through Wyoming, Montana and Idaho to reach western Canada, where the current outbreak dwarfs the Colorado infestation. Colorado's loss of tree acreage is in the low millions; it's estimated British Columbia will lose some 44 million acres of pine trees.

The mountain pine beetle typically lays its eggs under the bark of dead pine trees, and historically the bugs' population was kept in check by the winter cold. But as North America has recently had warmer-than-normal winters, the MP beetle's population has exploded. With not enough dead trees to go around, the beetles start laying their eggs into live trees.

When that happens, the live tree becomes infected with a blue fungus that arrests its internal flow of nutrients. Its pine needles turn red, its bark starts to turn grey, the internal wood takes on a bluish tinge, and the tree dies. Here you can see dead trees from literally miles away:

Having huge swaths of prematurely dead trees is bad news. It's a forest fire waiting to happen, and dead trees will release all of that juicy CO2 they've been storing their entire lives. Government forest officials in both the U.S. and Canada have determined the trees must be cut down.

A mandatory influx of millions of logs of surplus wood--sounds great for manufacturers, right? In this day and age of not-enough-wood-to-go-around, you'd think that a huge amount of wood that must be cut down would be a positive. Unfortunately, the problem is getting all that wood. There are significant infrastructure problems. Not all of the afflicted trees are on public or easily-accessed land, and a lack of roads coupled with rising fuel costs make it prohibitively expensive to clear.

Then there's a two-part manufacturing hassle: One, the specific type of pine killed by the beetles—lodgepole—is relatively small-diameter and often cracked by the disease, making it difficult and expensive to mill into useful boards. Two, the U.S. timber industry has been declining for years, with one large sawmill after another shutting down. Today there are only a handful of high-capacity sawmills left. To truck dead trees hundreds of miles to a sawmill that can handle them simply isn't cost-effective, in light of the low manufacturing yields.

"Typically you'll find the material is so low value, doing anything with it beyond a 15-mile radius is problematic," forest scientist Mike Eckhoff told Biomass Magazine. As a result, one "solution" has been to throw the stuff into a wood chipper, and dump the resulting piles into landfill. And unfortunately, that is as affordable as it is shameful.

This disaster notwithstanding, a handful of brave entrepreneurs have been trying to turn the blue pine negative into a positive. Next we'll take a look at what they've been up to.

For more on the Blue Pine Disaster
» A Raw Materials Nightmare, Part 1
» What is Blue Kill Pine Good For?
» What Will the Future Bring for Blue Kill Pine? Canadian Innovation FTW
» How You Can Help As An Individual

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Alana Russell

12 years ago

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I am in love with this wood and am using it for to tops of my height adjustable desk design!!!
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dave

12 years ago

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something useful thank god!

can't wait for the next post on this article.
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Dereck

12 years ago

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My memory could be way wrong here but...
I was living in CO in the early 2000s and certain parts of the state had ID'ed the beetle as being potentially devastating to the trees and thus creating extreme fire hazards. The state had several dozen logging contractors come in for supervised and controlled harvesting in the troubled spots to help keep the beetle down. It was then that some environmental groups stepped in and threatened to sue the state and DOI/NPS to prevent any harvesting from occurring in natural areas. This last summer with the fires utterly destroying many acres throughout the state, my contacts out west said this destruction is a result of over protection of the land.
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- Randy Piper
  
  8 years ago
  
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  There is a lot of truth to this statement - see my reply below.
  
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Parker

12 years ago

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There is no existing lumber industry to process this wood in Colorado simply because the wood is such low quality. Colorado is a high desert with low rainfall which creates bad conditions for growing good wood. Ponderosa and Lodgepole pine are our only "Commercial" species, but these trees grow so slow and knotty that the viability of the industry is not possible.
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- Randy Piper
  
  8 years ago
  
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  No offense meant but there is
  a tremendous amount of misinformation regarding our beetle killed forests and
  the processing of this standing dead timber, so I am going to point out an
  inaccuracy here... but first, lest I be unjustly hammered on by the
  environmental activist community, let me state that I am what I describe as a 'sustainable
  environmentalist' and have long supported intelligent utilization of our local
  natural resources since well before environmental activism became popular and
  commonplace as we all come to realize that we have limited natural resources
  and we should darn well make better and more intelligent use of what we have -
  especially in lieu of climate change and a worldwide population explosion that
  will, at the least, strain these resources to the maximum.
  
  As the article points
  out, there has been a tremendous loss to the USA timber and forestry
  industries, and there are a number of reasons for this - but that is perhaps
  for later comments, though 2 are valid here.
  
  We have a lot of
  timber in Colorado, (though our forest are projected to shrink by about 75% by
  2060), and yes, it is small diameter stock located on tough terrain so this
  does make it more expensive to process than many other areas, but the most
  significant two reasons why there is so little processing of forest products
  are; 1.) An extremely active environmental and
  conservationist community that is often misinformed because frequently only a
  part of the story is told in order to gain support to mount lawsuits to stop
  logging, so it costs the forest service’s enormous
  amounts of time, resources, and money to fight in court in defense of their
  position to thin overcrowded and unhealthy forest areas, and
  
  2.) The enormous importation of
  cheap, (often foreign government subsidized), wood products coming into America. We simply cannot compete in a very uneven
  playing field.
  
  In the case of beetle kill
  wood, both Pine and Spruce, with combined losses in Colorado of billions of
  trees spanning over 8 million acres with a 70-90% tree mortality rate, it is
  far more difficult than described with just these two primary conditions...
  
  In short, 4 more major factors
  come into play in Colorado… where I live:
  
  1.) Dead trees have cracks and
  checks that occur throughout the length, and usually to the center of the tree,
  as they dry out on the stump, thus cracked trees = cracked boards, so losses
  are high and often more cost is incurred as re-manufacturing is needed to cull
  and sort stock to provide good quality lumber products,
  
  2.) In the early 1900's, the
  lumber industry determined that blue staining in wood was a defect, and thus a
  downgrade in quality and market price. This still holds true today for it
  is obvious they have no mind for marketing blue pine for what it is; beautiful, unique, and exotic appearing
  Eco-friendly wood that can employ Americans in struggling rural communities
  that also helps reduce the cost of our society in the removal of timber to
  protect our infrastructure from fire and falling trees while storing carbon
  that would otherwise be released to further feed the drought and warming cycle.
  
  3.) Approximately
  55 million acres of British Columbia have been killed by the beetles and the
  Canadian government reduced the cost of timber from about $25 per cubic meter
  to only $.25 per cubic meter to allow the lumber industry to race through the
  forest in massive clear cuts in futile attempts to get ahead of the beetle
  swarms and to remove the timber before it developed cracks. This resulted in Canadian beetle kill being
  dumped on the USA market at prices below the cost of production in the USA –
  and especially at small ‘mom and pop’ mills which cannot compete with mills
  that produce millions or hundreds of millions of board feet of lumber. Small mills are all we have left in Colorado
  because the forest services can not provide a steady and affordable supply of
  timber – even if it all dead. This loops
  back to the environmentalist legal actions…
  
  IN FULL
  DISCLOSURE: Ten years ago I dedicated my life to the utilization of USA beetle
  killed timber and have done thousands of hours of research while educating the
  public and operating a business that exclusively provides beetle kill wood
  flooring, siding, paneling, trim, mantles, and tops that is all Made in the
  USA.
  
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Rob

12 years ago

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In British Columbia this type of wood has been "re-branded" as Denim Pine. A number of woodworkers and furniture designers are working with it.
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/denim-pine-when-life-hands-you-122595

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Dieter Amick

12 years ago

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Forest fires aren't always a bad thing and in this case are a requirement for lodge pole pines to reproduce since their seeds are serotinis, meaning they only open when they become really hot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotiny
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodgepole_Pine
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