Although many of the millions of acres of forest in Arizona are under the direct supervision of the federal government and Indian tribes, state government can and should have a role in looking out for the long-term health of the forests, state legislative leaders say.

To that end, House Speaker Jake Flake, R-Dist. 5, and Senate President Ken Bennett, R-Dist. 1, on Aug. 12 announced the formation of a 13-member task force on forest health that will include lawmakers and representatives for ranching, logging and water as well as Indian tribes and scientists.

Rep. Cheryl Chase, D-Dist. 23, and Sen. Marilyn Jarrett, R-Dist. 19, will serve as co-chairs of the task force. Other members are Sen. Marsha Arzberger, D-Dist. 25; Sen. Jack Brown, D-Dist. 5; Rep. Joe Hart, R-Dist. 3; Rep. William Konopnicki, R-Dist. 5; Mike Anable, former Arizona land commissioner; Wally Covington, director of the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff; Charlie Ester, manager of water resource operations for Salt River Project; Jack Metzger, a Flagstaff rancher; Ben Nuvamsa, superintendent of the Fort Apache Agency in Whiteriver; and Lon Porter of Precision Pine & Timber in Heber.

Mr. Flake said a 13th member of the task force, representing an environmental group, is expected to be named at a later date. The task force was named at the end of an Aug. 12 event dubbed the “Legislative Forest Health Summit” at Northland Pioneer College, a publicly funded community college in Show Low.

Fuel For Fires

One of the primary concerns about the health of the forest is reducing the number of trees, leaf and pine-needle litter and underbrush that have built up over decades and now supply the fuel for fires that have destroyed more than 700 homes and other structures and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage the past few summers, Mr. Flake said.

“We need to find some way to cut through the red tape and get some of these forests cleared out so they’re less likely to go up in flames,” Mr. Flake said. Part of the answer, he said, is getting some commercial uses out of the trees that need to be removed.

Charlie Henderson, an executive with Arizona Public Service Co., said several northeastern Arizona municipalities, counties and tribal authorities are looking into a proposal from Louisiana-Pacific Corp., headquartered in Portland, Ore., to build a plant in northeast Arizona to manufacture oriented strand board — a wood and glue laminate product that can be made from trees much smaller, down to 4 inches in diameter, than traditional plywood.

Mr. Henderson said that a manufacturer such as Louisiana-Pacific could perform tree thinning for nothing, verses the $400 to $800 an acre that fire prevention now requires. In exchange, the company would require a payment of about $150 an acre to go into a capital fund that would only be tapped in the event that the supply of trees was interrupted over 10 years and the company wouldn’t recover the cost of building its plant, estimated at about $100 million.

Once the company recovered the cost of its investment, the money in the capital fund would be returned to the communities that paid into it, Mr. Henderson said.

Get Locals Involved, Expert Says

Diane Vosick, associate director of the Ecological Restoration Institute that Mr. Covington heads, suggested that local communities, and not just the state, need to be involved in reducing fire damage through local codes that require structures be built from fire-resistant material. She also recommended that land around structures be cleared sufficiently to minimize the danger that a forest fire poses.

But creating such “defensible space” isn’t the only thing that needs to be done, Ms. Vosick said.

“Just like an endangered bird species, you have to look out for the habitat, not just the nest,” Ms. Vosick said.

U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., also attended the meeting. He praised the White Mountain Apache tribe for its commercial logging that is part and parcel of a bigger effort to keep the forests on tribal land healthy, so that they will help sustain the tribe through future generations.

“We all need to be good stewards, not exploiters,” Mr. Kyl said. —