(from KOSU Radio)

Trees are a top priority of Representative Richard Morrissette’s legislative agenda this year. Although they’re often planted for wind breaks and other landscaping uses, eastern red cedar trees are a nuisance and a hazard in Oklahoma. They can spread like wildfire – literally. Morrissette is proposing a bill that would help create a defined market for harvested red cedars and alleviate the growing problem.

The legislation is based on information from state agricultural leaders who say red cedars steal the state’s water supply, overtake pasturelands, cause allergy problems and fuel wildfires carried by Oklahoma winds. According to Professor Craig McKinley of the Oklahoma State University natural resource ecology management department, eastern red cedars populate around 8 million acres in Oklahoma and are spread by birds.

“Birds eat the little cones that look like berries and then transport them all across the country so they can move rapidly,” McKinley said. “It’s not wind transported, it’s not water transported, but birds can fly in a lot of different directions.”

As a result, the invasive trees populate quickly and can grow two feet in height every year. McKinley says one large tree can use up to 30 gallons of water a day as their branches extend and reduce the productivity or rangeland.

“It’s one of those situations that it won’t get better without some type of management. It can only get worse,” McKinley said.

The red cedars are an expensive problem for ranchers and landowners. Whether the property is used for cattle grazing or recreational purposes, clearing the trees is a big job.

Joe Berry owns 40 acres of pasture land outside Stillwater. He’s hired a tree service to come out and remove the cedars. Once they’re cleared away, he’ll use the land for hay and maybe some hunting.

“They were here when we purchased the property, and that was about 10 years ago probably,” Berry said. “And since then, we’ve tried to get them under control and remove some of them because they take up so much room and take so much water and nutrients out of the soil besides being a fire hazard. They just need to go.”

Berry found a small company based out of Oklahoma City called Cedar-Eaters – it’s a two-man operation lead by business entrepreneur Bruce Brown. He started the business two years ago after researching Oklahoma’s red cedar problem.

“I called all the cutters and harvesters I could find, and they all were a month to six months behind so it appeared there was a lot of work,” Brown said.

Brown cuts the cedars with a huge saw that’s connected to a skid steer loader. He can cut up to 60 big trees in one hour. Once they’re knocked down, his one other employee uses a second skid steer loader to gather them up in a pile for burning or other uses. He stays busy five or six days a week - base price for cutting the trees is $700 a day. As the cedar species continues to spread, Brown isn’t the only businessman who’s turned the management of an annoying tree into his livelihood. Landowners and members of the cedar industry like Aaron Newton gathered at a town hall meeting in Stillwater a couple of weeks ago to learn more about the tree’s potential.

“We own Eastern Red Cedar Mulch here in Stillwater,” Newton said. “We go out and clean up pastures. We run the entire tree so we utilize everything – the trunk, limbs, needles.”

Newton is another leader in the market - his red cedar mulch is bagged and distributed to stores such as Lowe’s and Home Depot in the area. Thanks to an abundance of the trees, he’s now shipping Oklahoma mulch to Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas. Interested parties like Stillwater’s Gerald Mraz and a group of his current co-workers wanted to know how they too could get involved.

“We’re all Mercruiser employees currently, and the plant’s going to be shutting down in a couple years as you know and so we’re looking for business opportunities just to get something started – put some of us to work and then maybe even grow to the point where we’re helping put other people to work that are going to lose jobs out there,” Mraz said.

The recent town hall meeting was hosted by Representative Morrissette – more than 100 people attended to learn about potential business opportunities or figure out how to remove the trees from their property. Prescribed burns and mechanical treatment are the two most common ways of removal, but Morrissette is also interested in the trees’ byproducts including cedar oil, plywood, mulch and oil field cover. He says the purpose of his bill is to help create a red cedar market for these products through tax credits and other incentives to landowners.

“We are losing acreages by the hundreds of thousands every year,” Morrissette said. “It’s going to cost us over $400 million a year starting in 2013 to eradicate them with state dollars if we don’t start turning these lemons into lemonade.”

Morrissette says it makes sense to capitalize on an Oklahoma product while reducing the threat of wildfires. He plans to fund his bill with an optional $1 donation on state tax forms and license plate sales. The measure will be introduced this session.