A major salvage operation is underway in Denver to recover wood from a 3,600 acre area fire-damaged by the Hayman wildfire of 2002.
Intermountain Resources, which bid US$66,000 to harvest the logs, will remove about five million board feet of timber from the land.
The logging is expected to finish before spring, when beetle and fungus acitivity could start affecting the timber’s value. Wood will be processed into landscape timbers and lumber to be sold in Phoenix, Albuquerque and Las Vegas.
Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir saplings will be planted to replace the blackened trees.
The Hayman fire, started by former US Forest Service worker Terry Lynn Barton, affected 138,000 acres and destroyed some 133 homes.
