Communities Want Trees Thinned. Timber Companies Want Contracts. So What’s The Problem?
PAGOSA SPRINGS, Colo. — J.R. Ford’s company removes trees and brush from key areas around subdivisions, power lines and water utility infrastructure in a bid to better protect people from wildfire. It’s work that’s vitally important here in the arid West, where mountains have become overgrown with quick-to-burn trees such as ponderosa pine. But many…