Thinning the Blog Stew

Trees burned in the 2010 Schultz fire.Image: Flickr/Coconino National Forest

• Coloradans: your fishing licenses explore on Sunday. And big-game hunting applications are due Tuesday night. Time to make some choices!



• A piece from the Colorado Springs Gazette's blog on Colorado's official sport of burro-racing with quotes from Hal Walter. You will find his too-occasional blogs in the sidebar: Farm Beet and Hardscrabble Times.



• Scientific American describes big forest-thinning projects in the White Mountains of Arizona.

The Forest Service hired Pioneer Forest Products last May to cut and process the trees from the thinned forests. Pioneer will recycle the small-diameter timber into wood products -- for cabinetry, for example -- and wood laminate. Nearly 40 percent will be feedstock for a 30-million-gallon-per-year biodiesel plant run by Western Energy Solutions/Concord Blue USA. The processing plant in Winslow, Ariz., will employ about 500 people. The firm is still waiting to receive financing to begin operations in a budget-strained environment, said Marlin Johnson, a consultant for Pioneer.