Seems like a long way to drive for a tree that probably took 100 years to grow in this arid climate. In Maine there's a billion to pick from but eh also grow quickly, here not so much.

The BLM is taking two large Cats with a chain between them and just knocking over thousands of acres of pine and cedars  in White Pine county, the same arid climate your worried about Wolfpack cutting one down to use for Christmas.   Your concerns are misplaced.

I respectfully disagree. That's the BLM. What else would we expect from them? They have no use for you or I.

BLM has sold Christmas tree permits for a long time. Doubt there is any adverse effects. Selective cutting, not clear or slash cutting. Just helps prevent over growth and fire hazards.

Look up pinion / juniper encroachment in the West.  We need to get rid of a lot more in my opinion.  Very little nutritional value for wildlife and it turns everything into a bi-culture.  Nothing else can grow and we have a huge fire danger, which then burns down and is replaced with cheat grass...

Very vicious cycle.  

Sorry op.  Can't help with the condition there now.  I imagine there is snow.

I'll have to read up on that issue, and Wolfpack, sorry for the highjack.

And if you go where Bob did, I'll tell you where to look for me trailer keys that I lost.

It's a good thing you don't need a tree  now. My yard.

Holy crap Damascus, that's a lot of snow!
What part of the state are you in?

I am in Pioche.

Not too far away... I am over by Zion Np but lower elevation here

make that pi-snow-che

Keep that stuff up there. I was shaping some white micarta, and just the sight of that white dust in the shop was enough to make me cold ...hehe.

Re: thread hijack facts

1) Pinyon pine are really slow growers, 100yrs is a young'n. Record living single-needle pine is 1250 years old. Most trees in size classes targeted by woodcutting are 200+. 500+ age classes exist in most local populations.

2) There are a gad-zillion of them in the Great Basin, and they propagate like bunnies on the 100 year timescale. They are useful and very renewable (1880's gov't botanist predicted their extinction at the hands of the charcoal producers).

3) Present-day pinyon expansion (read: increased stand density and upper/lower elevation advance) is mostly driven by a post ~1850 warmup in the region, with confounding factors including removal of nut-harvesting natives, 1865-1930s mining-related clearcutting, grazing disturbances, cheatgrass introduction, and fire ignition/fighting activities by people.

4) Previous climatic response of the species is unknown (for instance, previous warm and cool periods), not enough fine-scale evidence. Pre-settlement stand densities and small-tree upper and lower elevation density all not easily quantifiable with available data.

5) The current BLM agenda of finding expensive (contractors) and high-disturbance (high-percentage soil area contact) methods of cutting down pinyon is driven by large amounts of tax dollars shunted towards preservation of a non-endangered game bird, the sage grouse. Many examples of landscape-scale pinyon removal gardening experiments in Nevada by the BLM and USFS are not even located in decent sage grouse habitat. Previous (pre-1990's) pinyon removal efforts were done supposedly to create better graze areas, but that fell out of vogue as the land management agencies finished morphing into special-interest conservation tools.

So yeah, pinyon pine are cool, ubiquitous in their range, not going anywhere in the long run, and a great excuse to spend tax dollars on activities that would land a rancher in prison.