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> In some areas of the world there's a lot of cheap excess timber after some kind of pest (I'm thinking a beetle?) killed entire forests. Dead wood isn't even
by escape_goat 8y ago
> In some areas of the world there's a lot of cheap excess timber after some kind of pest (I'm thinking a beetle?) killed entire forests.
Dead wood isn't even useful as firewood. You can't just pick dead trees up off the forest floor and saw them up into lumber. Even if you could, no government would let you transport that timber out of the immediate vicinity in which it was found, due to the aforementioned pest.
Perhaps there is a surplus of cheap excess timber in some areas of the world, but there isn't much chance of that having anything to do with any kind of pest.
- hutzlibu 8y ago"Dead wood isn't even useful as firewood" Sure it is. You mean degraded, rotten dead wood .. but "fresh" dead wood is firewood.
- escape_goat 8y agoThat's a fair distinction to make. When a tree is killed by a pest such as the emerald ash borer, it dies because the boreholes allow fungus and bacteria into the core of the tree. By the time the tree is visibly dead, very little of the wood is 'fresh'. It cannot be used as lumber, or even firewood.
- Tharkun 8y agoCLT is being made from mountain pine-beetle infested wood in the US. So not quite as useless as you seem to be implying ...
- escape_goat 8y agoIt looks like you're correct about the mountain pine beetle infestations, which I wasn't familiar with. Not that you can pick trees up off the forest floor, but in some drier areas the pines apparently remain standing and commercially usable for a few years.
- black6 8y agoSnags (dead and fallen trees held up by their neighbors) make excellent firewood and in some cases useful lumber, as it has already been cured!
- Balero 8y agoI think this could also relate to the wood from the trees surrounding an infected tree. These can often also be cut down as a kind of quarantine, and are likely to have good quality wood.