I occasionally see USFS post some "No Firewood Collecting Here" type signs around an active timber sale. There is a busy pulp mill here so some of the stacks of pulp bolts can look a little inviting to people. But at this point, most people who still burn wood here just buy loads from a logger and you don't see too many pickup loads of firewood coming off public land very often.
Meanwhile, my local National Forest is trying to disallow cutting standing dead trees, and seeks to allow collection of only "down" wood. Because snags are good for wildlife of course. But really the non-problem they think they are solving is that the suburbanites they hire these days don't understand that only wood very close to a road will ever be taken for firewood...and there will never be a shortage of naturally created snags beyond firewood-haul-out distance.
And then also on some of their timber sales they leave all of the #1 Aspen mixed into Northern Hardwoods, which will of course all die before USFS can ever get around to doing another entry into the stand as they are decades behind on that idea, everywhere, always. But the Aspen is left to die and rot deliberately, so the stand will "have the correct amount of woody debris" - as if the logging and natural activity doesn't create the "correct amount."
The amount of Hubris and Ignorance inside USFS these days is off the charts, in my opinion.
And sometimes they will open up what “LOOKS “ like a Timber Sale Log Deck to wood cutters
This Log Deck was from trees cut down making fire breaks for the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire, it was NOT from a Timber Sale. Sometimes the Forest Circus has some Unbelievable scores in their weekly wood cutting info sheets, they opened this up to wood cutters in 2019, I WISH that I could have “Claimed” all that for myself
As far as what the Forest Circus Allows, that varies a LOT from one National Forest to another.
In the Mt. Hood NF, we are ONLY Allowed to cut blow down, and only up to 6 cords, at $10/cord,
In the Bend/Fort Rock unit, they are allowed to Fall Standing Dead up to 24” DBH, and up to 8 Cords at $10/Cord
In the Wenatchee NF, they are allowed to Fall Standing Dead up to 20” DBH, and are allowed up to 12 cords, at $5/Cord
It just depends on how much wood is available in a given Forest, and the expected number of people wanting to cut wood there
For a National/Federal Agency, the rules vary quite a bit
One just has to KNOW and FOLLOW the rules, which from what I have read and know, MT Resident DID
Doug.
