Utilization

"If we want to do the work in the woods, the restoration or fuel reduction, whatever you want to call it, or whatever it is; it can't get done unless you have the people to both do it and do something with the raw material. ...You can sit hear and talk about restoration until you are blue in the face, but nothing will happen if we don't figure out a way to use this stuff. ...Otherwise it is just flapping our gums and then we are doing a disservice to everyone.Because then we are just talking and wasting time. We have to figure out how to use it. "

-Brian Cottam, former coordinator Greater Flagstaff Forest Partnership, March, 2004

The whole of community-based forest restoration is dependent on the utilization of small-diameter timber. Unless the American public is going to subsidize forest restoration, ways must be found to successfully move and dispose of timber in an efficient, low-impact manner, develop products, and find markets to buy them.

The utilization story is one in which many FCSFP demonstration grant recipients were actually part of a larger, local context. In each case, the grantee contributed a crucial component to overall efforts, which make the whole thing possible. Conversely, the individual entrepreneurship/small business couldn't make it without a community-wide involvement of other components. The Ruidoso Wildland-Urban Interface Working Group (RWUI) is one example of such integrated cooperation that stems from stump to consumer and has worked rather well.