The effort to salvage fire-scorched timber is advancing in Northwest Montana’s forests. Fire-burned trees, called “snags” when dead, can have 75 to 80 percent of living trees’ value. But if they’re left standing more than a year, damage from heat and bugs can render them worthless. The U.S. Forest Service is racing to complete the salvage process before that happens. “Our goal is to have sales completed by next summer with work completed by early fall,” Forest Service Deputy Incident Commander Steve Brown told the Daily Inter Lake. In a press release Wednesday, the agency’s Missoula office announced that salvage operations are currently planned on 11 Montana fire sites. Five of those — Caribou, Cub, Gibralter Ridge, West Fork and Moose Peak — are in Kootenai National Forest.