Interesting—thanks. The Sandia Mountains, where I live East of Albuquerque are similarly overgrown and ripe for a devastating fire, with massive drought and beetle kill. It’s why I joined our local VFD shortly after 9/11, worried that those a-holes might set one off on purpose.
Sounds like we’re on the same page. But, what is CTL, please?
I had to look that one up, too. Found this....
...To illustrate the potential already being realized, one tangible and spreading example in mechanized harvesting is the cut-to-length (CTL) system, which overcomes several drawbacks of conventional logging. Traditionally, tree felling and log manufacture are carried out by an operator with a chain saw; tree trunks (“stems”) are extracted with wheeled skidders or cable systems to roadside and then sawn into logs. Trunks are connected to cable systems manually by operators, climbing over piles of debris and wary of runaway trunks—a dangerous job called “breaking out.” Ad hoc decisions on what log grades to make from each tree trunk are made mentally by chainsaw operators, guided by a few basic log specifications and prices....
The average costs for CTL vs whole tree logging is right around a grand less per day.