Timber Industry Does Not Have One Foot Out The Door

One of the great frustrations of the timber industry is the difficulty of explaining its complexities to the public. Recent coverage of our industry by The Spokesman-Review only serves to make the job more difficult, for it was incomplete and misleading. While it had the trappings of professional journalism, it lacked substance. Let’s try, once again, to set the record straight.

Foremost among the implications of The Spokesman-Review stories is the notion that the industry is transitory, ready to up and leave at the whim of some faceless and uncaring board of directors somewhere. Historically, that has been true; mills located where timber was plentiful and available. Is that true today? No.

Timber companies, many family owned and having deep, longstanding roots in the Northwest, depend on logs from public and private lands. The cut-and-run mentality of the past has given way to the science of forest management, a key principle of which is the sustained yield of wood from the lands surrounding each mill. It’s also the reason the volume of timber in Idaho increased by about 15 percent since 1952.

Companies will, of course, look for new opportunities in the South, Mexico and other exotic locales. Meeting the demand for wood products demands such investments. New business opportunities do not, however, mean the industry must inevitably abandon this area. Mills located here can be expected to stay here, so long as the wood they need is available for purchase and harvest. If it is not available, then, yes, the mills inevitably go away. In fact, this is a phenomenon we have seen all too frequently in recent years.

The South has gained prominence as a major producer of wood since mid-century. The myth is that, with warmth and moisture, trees grow so fast that growing and cutting them elsewhere hardly makes sense. As one who spent his formative years as a forester in the South growing those trees, I can agree. Trees grown in carefully spaced “plantations” there do grow fast - just about as fast as trees grow here.

The trick is that trees grown in the South are typically cut when they’re 30 to 40 years old. Here, the age is more likely to be 80. The reason is that the paper-oriented southern industry is geared toward using smaller trees. For the high-quality lumber that is the traditional basis of our industry, we prefer bigger trees, and, hence, tend to let them grow longer. But at age 35, for example, “southern” trees and “northwest” trees are about the same size and growing at similar rates.

Is our industry growing in the inland West? Clearly not, as the Spokesman accurately pointed out. We hope to remain stable, and recognize that, as our areas grows and the economy diversifies, our relative importance will decline. Does that mean we’re unimportant? Certainly not.

We pay the wages of over 30,000 people in the region and that number is actually growing a bit, as new technology creates new logging and manufacturing opportunities.

Idaho timber companies pay private landowners about $100 million for timber each year, and that buys a lot of new cars and pays for a lot of college educations. One-fourth of the value of each log cut in national forests goes to local counties for schools and roads. That offsets millions of dollars in property taxes that would otherwise be levied.

Any way you choose to portray them, timber economic numbers are big and important.

As we approach the next century, we face some given facts as well as some questions. Worldwide demand for wood and paper products will certainly increase. The South will remain important in meeting this growing demand and “new” areas - Siberia, Mexico and New Zealand, among others - will gain prominence as players in the timber business.

But our region is unique in that whether the forest products industry shrinks or remains stable is a matter of public policy, not one of whether the trees exist. They are there, mostly on lands owned by the public. According to a University of Idaho report, this timber’s annual growth volume is double the historic annual harvest volume. The question is whether these trees will be made available for timber management.

Environmental groups, consumed as they are with their no logging is good logging mentality, would have you believe our industry is a dinosaur, a relic with no future and a past that has driven the region to the brink of ecological disaster. If that were true, why, after a century of logging, would we now have clean streams, abundant wildlife and a place so beautiful that many are flocking to relocate here?

How much timber is available, and, thus, the size and structure of our industry in this region, is a question the public must answer through decisions by Congress, state legislatures and agencies such as the Forest Service. We are working for a reasonable answer.

As the question is answered, our commitment is simple. We will remain a part of the region, remain important economically and remain a responsible steward of the lands upon which we operate.

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