As vast as Utah’s wildfire season has been already, there are legions of dead, red trees in the Uinta Mountains quietly waiting their turn to burn.
It didn’t have to be this way, according to Kamas-based logger and lumber mill owner John Blazzard. He believes a stronger commitment to forest management would have slowed the spruce beetles now killing the range’s Engelmann spruce and the mountain pine beetles that took out lodgepole and ponderosa pine before them.
“It’s frustrating,” Blazzard said, “to see our crop — we call it a crop because it’s a renewable resource — just going to waste.”
