An ad hoc group of concerned stakeholders, the PJ Partnership, is gathering steam. The groups goal is to establish a landscape-scaled demonstration project in Northeast Nevada aimed at rangeland restoration. The target of this project is the incursive Pinyon Pine and Single Needle Juniper, affectionately known as PJ. There are literally millions of tons of the small trees/large bushes which also bear the classification of “biomass” located throughout the 40,000 square miles that constitute the Great Basin.
There are many problems with the PJ. It’s an incursive species—leaving its natural ranges. Each tree aspires more than 50 gallons of water each day. It’s crowding out sagebrush and affecting the Sage Grouse populations. And it’s one hell of a fire hazard. It catches fire easily. Hundreds of thousands of acres burn, releasing carbon to the air. The list goes on and on.
Solutions? Well, the Federal land managers—mainly BLM and USFS—are using what funds they do have to practice “restoration forestry”—largely thinning out the trees and chipping or grinding them in place. There is no lumber to be had and no market for the chips. We hope that’s soon to change.
You can make stuff out of PJ biomass—mulch, compost, fire bricks—easily enough. There is the potential to haul the chips to a power-plant and co-fire the coal with some of the chips. There is one chip boiler in the state—White Pine school district—but it only uses 500 tons per year. Some scientists are investigating bio-char (charcoal for soil amendment) and cellulosic ethanol products.
Two big questions remain—Will Congress be able to provide the hundreds of millions of dollars to restore the rangelands and watershed? And, more importantly, will the Partnership gain the “social license” to complete the tasks?