Forest Products
Forest Products
Forest products businesses in Colorado face many challenges. Obstacles persist in maintaining supplies and quality of logs, while shortages of skilled workers in timber harvesting, transportation and manufacturing continue to impact the industry.
Despite these challenges, the forest products industry in Colorado experienced new investments and innovations by existing businesses over the past five years, as well as new mills, manufacturers and startups. Colorado has also seen exciting progress in establishing added capacity to produce engineered wood products and products based on their carbon content and carbon sequestration.
Goals and Accomplishments
Select a goal to learn about accomplishments toward that goal for Forest Products.
Goals and accomplishments are connected to national priorities of state forest action plans: Conserve working forestland, Protect forests from harm and Enhance public benefits from trees and forests
Goal 1: Maintain and Develop More Resilient Industry Capacity Required to Meet Forest Management Needs
- The CSFS awarded $500,000 to 12 recipients in Colorado through the Biomass Utilization grant program in 2022 and 2023, offering key financial assistance to small businesses in rural communities. With funding through Colorado House Bill 21-1180, these grants complemented federal programs, such as the USDA Forest Service’s Wood Innovations grants, and provided tangible benefits to award recipients, such as increased capacity and improved operations. For example, Golden West Pine Mills in Ault received a grant from the CSFS to increase its capacity to source biomass from wildfire mitigation projects on private lands to produce engineered wood panels. In 2023, the CSFS featured Golden West Pine Mills in its video Technology and the ‘Small’ Forest Problem to showcase the mill’s adoption of an innovative manufacturing process: Edge-Glue-And-Rip (EGAR).
- From 2020 through 2024, the USDA Forest Service awarded $9.2 million to Colorado businesses and organizations in the forest products industry through its Wood Innovations program. In total, Colorado received 33 awards during that time frame through various Wood Innovations grants. Grant recipients include Table to Farm Compost, a business in Durango that received a $128,070 grant to purchase a chipper to process small-diameter woody waste and support personnel and labor costs for a hazardous fuels demonstration project, and Mesa Verde Pellets, a business in Mancos that received a $495,950 grant to support an expansion and retrofit of its plant with a new biomass utilization system for processing sawdust and other woody waste generated at the company’s two mills.
- Since 2020, the CSFS and its financial partners provided 10 loans to forest products and wildfire mitigation businesses through the Wildfire Risk Mitigation Loan Fund, leveraging $3 million in state funding to sustain harvesting, manufacturing and mitigation startups in Colorado. As a revolving loan fund, this program offers an innovative, sustainable financing mechanism for local industry, while also supporting efforts to reduce wildfire risk to people and communities in Colorado.
- In 2023, the Colorado legislature passed Senate Bill 23-005 to promote and expand the forestry and wildfire mitigation workforce in Colorado. Through this bill, the CSFS created a workforce development program that provides grants to businesses and organizations to help hire and train employees in the timber, forest health and wildfire mitigation industries. In 2024 and 2025, the CSFS awarded $113,000 in grants to 15 businesses to support 26 new positions across Colorado through this program.
- With funding provided by Colorado Senate Bill 23-005, the CSFS partnered with the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education to engage younger generations in forestry and wildfire careers. The CAEE updated information and resources about these careers on its GreenPathways website and promoted them to high school students through marketing materials provided to high school counselors.
- The CSFS maintains the Colorado Forest Products™ Database to highlight businesses that manufacture products from wood sourced in Colorado. With about 80 businesses in the database as of October 2025, this ongoing effort reduces the reliance on imported wood products, promotes local businesses and economies, and strengthens the recognition of the value provided by Colorado’s public and private forests.
- In 2024-2025, Larimer County convened a diverse group of stakeholders and subject matter experts to assess local challenges and opportunities with wood utilization. The Larimer County woody biomass study explored the removal of biomass from wildfire mitigation treatments and developed an actionable strategy for sustainable utilization of this material. Through over 80 stakeholder interviews, workshops and technical analysis, the study identified gaps in infrastructure, markets and regulations, while highlighting a wide range of opportunities to utilize the material that will continue to be generated through forest treatments. A Biomass Processing Network, with satellite collection yards and biomass processing sites, has been identified as a next step to aggregate biomass and make the material available to investors and developers.
- The Colorado-Wyoming Society of American Foresters hosted joint annual meetings with the Colorado Timber Industry Association in Alamosa in 2023 and Granby in 2025. Each meeting brought together around 150 people from forest management, timber harvesting, academia, research and the wood products sectors to exchange ideas and continue to develop shared capacity to manage Colorado’s forests.
Goal 2: Increase the Number of Forested Acres Treated Annually Through Cost Offsets of Increased Utilization
- The CSFS and its partners in Colorado offset costs to conduct forest health, fuels reduction and watershed protection treatments by selling timber generated from these projects. For example, the CSFS worked with Colorado Timber Resources to utilize wood from a project in Breckenridge. Implemented in 2021 and 2022, that project treated 134 acres of lodgepole pine forest on national forest lands impacted by mountain pine beetles and reduced fuels adjacent to a neighborhood. The timber was taken to a sawmill 60 miles away in Parshall, to be made into lumber that carpenters use for framing houses and making furniture. By selling the timber, the CSFS retained $300,000 for the Summit County Strong Future Fund that could be reinvested locally to protect more homes and communities.
- Over the last five years, the CSFS increased the average size of forest health and fuels reduction treatments, which helped to temper higher project costs. The average size of a project designed and put out to bid by the CSFS increased from an average of 56 acres in fiscal year 2021 to an average of 142 acres in fiscal year 2025. Treatment costs also rose during this time due to economic factors, including rising labor, fuel and equipment costs and more expensive access to capital. But the larger projects resulted in lower per-acre bids than smaller projects when these other factors are held equal. Not only does managing forests at scale temper costs, but it also improves efficiency for the CSFS and its partners and increases the pace and scale of critical forest management in Colorado.
- The Colorado Mass Timber Coalition launched in 2023 and now has 400 members. The CMTC supports healthy, resilient forests through a vibrant forest products economy. Mass timber can be used to replace less sustainable building materials, such as concrete and steel, and the CMTC is evaluating the feasibility of sourcing wood and manufacturing mass timber in Colorado. Timber Age is an example of a small-scale mass timber business based in Colorado that can help diversify products to better utilize timber resources.
- Several businesses in Colorado focused on the carbon content of wood and benefits of carbon storage launched in recent years. These businesses include biochar (wood burned down to produce stable, nearly pure carbon that can be used as a filtration medium, soil amendment and much more), a wood vault (burying non-merchantable wood to effectively “lock up” carbon so it can’t burn or decompose) and bio-oil (a stable, high carbon content oil made from non-merchantable wood that can be injected into abandoned oil wells and sealed). In addition, the CSFS highlighted the benefits of transforming wood and slash from forest treatments into carbon-rich compost in the Forest to Farm video.
Impacts from BIL Forest Action Plan Funding
Through Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Forest Action Plan implementation funding, the Colorado State Forest Service boosts the forest products industry in Colorado by supporting non-industrial, private forest landowners. BIL funding enables the CSFS to sustain four lead stewardship foresters based in Boulder, La Veta, Granby and Durango. These foresters provide statewide leadership and technical support to field staff and directly assist more than 750 private forest landowners in the active implementation of professional 10-year Forest Stewardship Plans.
With their guidance, landowners receive technical expertise to manage their forests, improve ecological conditions and contribute to a sustainable supply of wood for local industry. Collectively, these landowners – supported through the Forest Stewardship and Forest Ag programs at the CSFS – are making measurable, annual progress in the stewardship of more than 471,000 acres of private forestland across Colorado.