Companies Get Extra Year To Harvest Trees Due To Depressed Lumber Market, U.S. Extends Deadline To Cut Logs

The market for finished lumber is so depressed, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman is giving timber companies an extra year to harvest timber purchased before January 1995.

Those companies also are getting a 12-month break from making payments on the unharvested timber.

Roughly a third of the 300 timber sales that qualify for the break fall in the Forest Service’s Northern Region, which includes North Idaho and all of Montana.

Those timber sales - involving up to 300 million board feet - will be fairly evenly divided among the Idaho Panhandle National Forests, Kootenai National Forest and other national forests in the region, officials said.

It is unclear how much delayed logging there will be in the Panhandle forests under the program, announced last week. Companies have to apply for the extensions.

Last year, Plum Creek Timber Co., Riley Creek Timber Co. and Tricon received extensions on five area sales, said Carl Gidlund, spokesman for the Panhandle forests.

Officials at the Colville National Forest in northeastern Washington anticipate 12 timber sales with about 30 million board feet of timber will qualify for the extensions.

The offer to delay timber harvests, while welcome news to many companies, comes when the Forest Service is under fire for not expediting the sale of timber under the salvage law passed by Congress last year.

That measure suspends environmental laws to allow for logging trees deemed in danger of dying or suffering insect infestation and disease.

Critics contend delays in salvage sales are hurting lumber mills starved for raw materials.

Glickman issued the extensions because logging companies had bought U.S. timber when prices were high.

“The first of 1995, the lumber market fell quite dramatically,” said David Spores, Forest Service regional director of forests and rangelands.

“Our purchasers found themselves in a relatively serious position: They were holding contracts for prices higher than they would get for finished products,” he said.

“This gives them an additional year to play the market.

, DataTimes