Post-wildfire salvage logging has a 6-12 month window before timber is worthless

When wildfire kills standing timber, landowners and the Forest Service have a narrow 6-12 month window to harvest the dead trees before blue stain fungi, bark beetles, and wood borers render the wood commercially worthless. A fire-killed Douglas fir that could yield $400/MBF if salvaged within 6 months may be worth $50/MBF or nothing after 18 months. For a private landowner whose 200-acre timberland just burned — representing potentially $200,000-$500,000 in standing timber value — every month of delay is money evaporating. But the system works against speed at every turn. On National Forest land, even 'accelerated' NEPA review for salvage sales takes 4+ months, compressed from the normal 2-year process. On private land, the bottleneck is contractor availability: after a major fire, every logger in the region is overwhelmed with salvage requests simultaneously, and the specialized equipment needed (feller-bunchers, log trucks) is already committed. When salvage timber does reach market, the surge of supply from everyone salvaging at once depresses regional prices by 15-30%, punishing the landowners who managed to act fastest. The problem persists because there is no pre-approved salvage framework — every fire triggers a fresh administrative process, and the logging contractor workforce has no surge capacity because the industry has been shrinking for decades.