Years ago in the Dubois, Wyoming area railroad ties were cut from the surrounding forests. Trees were selected that met size requirements, hand felled and flattened on two sides, put in a damed runoff draw awaiting spring runoff when the dam would be busted and the log "sent" to the lowlands for pickup and use by the railroads. (Heard it was a very fast trip!) By selecting sizes, not too small and not to large, the forest was vigorous and healthy.
What if:
The various forest service's supported mobile sawmills to reduce fuel loads in the forests?
A business plane was developed where a small mobile mill with two people could be set up in a location in the forest where 5 to 10 acres of standing dead, fire killed trees or areas that needed thinning could be harvested with minimal equipment and low ground impact. Say a saw, a 1 1/2 ton flatbed truck to pull it, and another truck to pull a flatbed trailer with a tracked machine for yarding logs and moving sawn logs to the mill and some way to load the flatbeds to haul the processed wood to the market. Maybe add some sort of forklift to load trucks and off load the mill. The mill could be on the ground to ease loading and unloading.
If the forest service marked or specified selected sizes of tree for harvest that was economically viable for the mill and market.
A market was developed for the sawn timber/cants/beams/ties or flitches.
Waste could be stacked for burning or perhaps used as feed stock for a pellet mill depending on distance/cost to get to get it there or even chipped for forest mulch (but that requires another piece of equipment).
Selling points:
Reduce fuel load in forest.
Put people to work.
Support local industry
Forest product production
Sawmill manufacture support
Lower cost building material for the housing industry
Looking for inputs, nays and yeas, additional tweaks, just comments