Question: Cape Fear Riverwood is a lumber company that specializes in recovering, cutting, and selling wood from trees discarded long ago, even those that have been underwater or buried in the ground for more than 100 years! Historically, the logging industry used rafts made of wood to transport cut trees to logging pens along the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. Some of the heavier trees sank during transportation. Other trees were intentionally dumped in the river for disposal after being bled for turpentine. The company used side-scan penetrating radar to find large quantities of logs in 30 locations in and around the river. The first two sites the company salvaged contained heart pine and river pine. A more recent site contained a treasure trove of perfectly preserved 38,000-year-old cypress trees buried 30 feet in a sand pit. Scientists have identified these as trees that became extinct more than 20,000 years ago.
1. The cypress trees are 60 to 80 feet long. If there are 14,285 trees at an average length of 70 feet, how many feet of wood will the company have?
2. If the cypress is worth $80 per foot, what are the 14,285 trees worth?
3. If the cost to recover the 60- to 70-foot cypress trees is $375.00 each and the cost to harvest the larger trees is $500.00, how much would it cost to recover all of the trees if of the trees are more than 70 feet long?