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Failed Forest Thinning Project
Laurel Morales
4FRI is supposed to prevent fires like the 2010 Schultz Fire from coming dangerously close to burning homes.
Environmentalists have called for an investigation into why the largest forest thinning project of its kind has failed to get off the ground. The U.S. Forest Service announced it's considering pulling the contract to give to another company.
The Four Forests Restoration Initiative, as it's called, is supposed to thin 300,000 acres in Northern Arizona and turn much of the wood into furniture parts. The contractor hired by the Forest Service, Pioneer Forest Products, has hired only 12 loggers to thin a thousand acres and has not yet secured financing for a mill to produce the furniture.
The Center for Biological Diversity has called for an investigation. The organization’s co-founder Todd Schulke was one of the many collaborators involved in the proposal. Schulke said he was surprised at the Forest Service’s choice.
"Their business plan and financial plan have been a joke from the beginning," Schulke said. "Either the Forest Service didn’t look carefully enough at those things or Pioneer misled the Forest Service, we don’t know."
The initiative is supposed to serve as a model for similar forest restoration efforts around the country.
