Our Roots: A Forest in Need of a Solution

Blanca Forestry Products was established in 2015 out of a need to improve forest and watershed health conditions on Trinchera Blanca Ranch. Located in Fort Garland, Colorado, the ranch actively manages 172,000 acres, 90,000 acres of which are forested.

Over the last few decades, Trinchera Blanca Ranch suffered decades of fire suppression, prolonged drought and insect infestation which led to the recognition that it needed to employ serious stewardship measures to bring its privately held forested lands back to health to improve wildlife habitat and watershed conditions.

Following a 14,000-acre forest fire on the ranch in 2006, the ranch implemented a mitigation strategy that included responsibly logging and thinning areas most in need. Unfortunately, due to a lack of wood processing infrastructure the amount of timber the ranch could annually harvest was limited to roughly 500 acres, which accounted for less than one percent of the ranches’ total forested area. This was a forest in need of a solution.

In 2015, Trinchera Ranch embarked on a venture to build a sawmill with the capacity to properly address the ailing forest on Trinchera and the surrounding area. Blanca Forestry Products opened its doors to operation in 2017, allowing the ranch to proactively manage its forest. Today the mill is processing approximately 20 million board-feet annually, with the majority of the timber harvest coming from Trinchera ranch and the remaining coming from both public and privately-owned forests in the surrounding area.

As a community, we strive to bring our forests back to health. Through partnerships with other private land owners, public parties in the area, and the community, we can see that we do it together.