Dead trees pile up before being mulched to produce fuel for cogeneration plants at the Placer County Eastern Regional Material Recovery Facility outside Truckee in 2023. 

Walk onto almost any forest wildfire prevention or post-fire restoration project in California right now and you will find the same thing: piles of low-value wood, cut and stacked, waiting for somewhere to go.

The crews did their job. They thinned the overgrown stands and pulled out the dead material. They removed the low-value kindling that turns a manageable fire into a catastrophe.

Then the wood sits there.

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It’s not because the state lacks ambition. California has committed to treating around 1 million forest acres annually to reduce wildfire risk and restore forest health. Reaching that goal entails removing more than 5 million bone-dry tons of woody material annually, and that’s a conservative estimate. Since 2018, California has accumulated 11 at least 1 million bone-dry tons of forest biomass in piles awaiting disposal, with much more likely remaining undocumented.

What exactly is this debris, and why is it not turned into lumber or other products? 

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Simply, these materials are often dead trees that have burned or decayed and cannot be used for lumber or other wood........

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