Independently Speaking: Effective Timber Management
By Dan Dockstader
October 25, 2025
Lincoln County Commissioners and other elected officials tour timber sale sites in the Kemmerer Ranger District of the Bridger-Teton National Forest. COURTESY PHOTO
For the first time in decades, I sense that we are prepared to take another look at effective timber management, both at the national level and at the state level.
Dan Dockstader currently serves the residents of Senate District 16 in the Wyoming Legislature. He is also on the board of Lower Valley Energy. He and his wife, Kim, have owned the Star Valley Independent for over 40 years.
For years, I have been frustrated by a preservationist approach to our forests, rather than a multiple use plan.
We have stood by while our forest product ages and we are limited in our access to a process that could provide jobs, improve roads, and revive wildlife habitat and fisheries.
Granted, we seem to have been constrained by budget limitations in forest management in the past. However, now we have the start of a plan on the southern end of the Bridger-Teton that may have found a route to use an aging product while working with and through the budget limitations.
As an example, as 2025 closes out we have two small timber sales, the Big Springs and Squirrel, addressing use of the forest product and restoration work and still another two on the horizon with the Little Springs and Allen Slide Rock projects.
Add the timber and fuels reduction projects that include LaBarge Vegetation and Hams Fork Vegetation plans, along with the Tunp Ridge, the Kemmerer roadside treatments and we see promise of a multiple use approach to management.
All of this is a good start and warrants further support in the coming years.
For those in the Forest Service working to originate and process these sales and vegetation/treatment plans, you are to be commended. Thank You.
You have created a template for success, not only in the Bridger-Teton but forests throughout the Intermountain West.
• The Star Valley Independent welcomes letters to the editor for the Opinion Pages. All letters must have the author’s signature and phone number and be 350 words or less in length. Thank yous are not considered letters. Personal attacks will not be printed. Letters from political candidates will not be published during election years. Letters will be edited for length and content when deemed necessary. Opinions expressed in letters to the editor or guest editorials do not necessarily reflect the view of the Star Valley Independent or its employees.
