When people think of Arizona, the iconic saguaro cactus likely comes into focus. But the state is also home to the world’s largest contiguous Ponderosa pine stand, where towering evergreens  stretch across millions of acres. 

The pines grow at higher elevations in contrast to the desert cactus, illustrating the diversity of the state’s landscape, but they also represent Arizona’s vulnerability to wildfire. Devon Suarez, who owns the family-run Suarez Forestry timber company in the state’s rural town of Heber, has a generational understanding of this risk.

His family has worked in Arizona’s logging industry since the 1950s. Suarez Forestry just marked its eighth anniversary.

“We’ve been able to grow as a rag-tag family logging company,” he said, noting they’re among the top three logging producers in the state. “We’re lean but we do a lot with a little, especially right now.”

Federal funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), received by partners that hire Suarez Forestry as a vendor, has allowed the company to grow and reinvest in itself while conducting vital wildfire mitigation projects in areas consistently at risk. Part of that work involves precommercial thinning, which removes understory growth, promotes a healthier forest ecosystem and offers long-term benefits for wildfire risk. 

Ordinarily, that work isn’t included as a payable, line-item on a logging project. But recent projects that received BIL and IRA funding did. And when that work is done efficiently, the company is more profitable. 

“Having that security of those funds, we’re able to upgrade our machines,” he said. “We’re able to grow with these projects and funds. We can bid on projects we could not otherwise. We’re doing extra work but also getting compensated for that work and we’re trying to do it as efficiently as possible.

Suarez said the financial impact of those contracts allows him to consider purchasing equipment with a $2,000 a month payment instead of renting it at $10,000 a month. They also allow the company to add seasonal personnel. When factored together, the scale of the work Suarez Forestry is able to do expands.

“It increases our production and pace and we’re adding more customers and producing more saw logs and treating more acres,” he said. “Before, if we were having 100 acres a month, that was a good month. Now, it’s closer to 400 or 500 acres. It’s a snowball effect.”

What’s good for business is also good for the health of the forest as well as the individuals living in the numerous, rural mountain towns across the state that face wildfire risk every year. The practice of precommercial thinning, strengthens the forest overall and reduces the spread and intensity of wildfires — which not only have the potential to burn homes and pines, but also to char the land, compound land erosion, and create harmful conditions for mudslides and debris-heavy runoff.

“It turns the forest into a tinderbox,” he said of fire practices that allow for understory growth. “All that material can burn up and that fire is burning in the crowns of the trees instead of the forest floor. We’re trying to replicate what a fire would naturally do.” 

That strategic thinning, which Suarez estimates needs to be done across about 2 million acres, also improves the watershed. By removing excess trees, Suarez Forestry is decreasing competition for water and increasing the water available to the reservoirs that are a critical water source for towns and counties. 

In addition to thinning, Suarez Forestry has secured contracts that include a biomass component, providing funding for utilizing every last bit of bark from a tree that otherwise has a lower market value. That type of processing commitment is only economical when funding supports it. Otherwise, Suarez said, it’s a shortfall.

From his perspective, federal funding has provided a sense of equity in the logging industry. 

“We have to deal with the large companies that have the deep pockets and we can’t compete against that but this levels the playing field for us,” he said. “We have a stake in this forest. It’s our backyard. We’re from here.”