It seems economic worries are sending more local residents to the hills.
According to officials with the Sawtooth National Forest, the number of people who walked into local ranger district offices this fall to purchase firewood cutting permits just about doubled compared to recent years. Officials believe that more people decided to cut their own firewood to heat their homes because of economic concerns, said Sawtooth National Forest Ketchum District Ranger Kurt Nelson.
"We sold a lot more firewood permits this year," he said.
The cost for a firewood cutting permit at the Ketchum Ranger Station is $25 for two cords. A cord is a pile of firewood four feet wide by four feet high by eight feet long.
All firewood cutting on the Ketchum district ended on Dec. 1.
Another significant change from previous years was which approved cutting areas prospective firewood cutters were purchasing their permits for, Nelson said. In the past, many people asked for free two-cord permits that are offered on forestlands north of Galena Summit in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, he said.
This year, more people were shelling out $25 to purchase a permit to cut firewood in the upper Big Wood River drainage closer to Ketchum. Many of these people may have been trying to conserve gasoline by cutting closer to home, Nelson said.
"I think people are trying to make the most of their dollar," he said.
The same seems to have happened in the past month or so on the Christmas tree-cutting front, Nelson said. Rather than spend upwards of $100 or more for a tree from an in-town lot, it seems many holiday revelers decided to load up the kids and do it themselves.
Each fall, the forest allots just a certain number of Christmas tree cutting permits, said Sawtooth National Forest project leader Jackie Richter.
"This year we issued all of them," she said. "We're definitely up on these."
Richter did speculate that shallow snowpacks may have had something to do with more people deciding to cut their own Christmas trees.
"It was probably a little of both," she said.
Kurt Nelson
