Private Landowners Help Ease Crisis

Logs from thousands of acres of private land in the Northwest have filled the timber gap left by dwindling federal timber.

But how long this source of timber will continue to keep local mills running depends on who you talk to.

Motivated by high log prices and fear of potential government regulations that could prevent them from harvesting their lands, smaller private landowners have been rushing to cut their timber stands in the last two years, said Doug Bartels, communications director for wood products for Boise Cascade Inc.

“These owners are cutting beyond sustainability, and that source of timber for the forest products industry will dry up,” Bartels said. “That’s when we’ll see more mill closures and unemployment.”

Private timberland is either owned by large timber companies and termed “industrial” or owned by families or individuals and classified as “non-industrial.” The latter is the source of much of the inland mills’ timber today, said David Spores, director of timber and forestry management for the U.S. Forest Service in Missoula.

Developers and loggers have been pressuring small woodlot owners such as Dean Stevens to clear their stands. Stevens receives about five pieces of mail a week from developers wanting to log and develop his 100 acres in Bonner County and 300 acres in Kootenai County, he said.

“Even though prices have been pretty high, I haven’t even been tempted to liquidate my timber like I know a lot of other people have,” said Stevens, an Idaho state representative.

“I know I could make 10 times as much money if I took it all out. (But) I think it’s worth more to my family to maintain the health of the stand.”

Will Pitman of Sagle, near Sandpoint, said he also receives inquiries about his 260 acres of timber. But like Stevens, he has worked with Inland Forest Management of Sandpoint to take a long-term approach to forest stewardship.

“The best thing a small or medium-sized woodlot owner can have is a professional forester,” Stevens said.

Mike Wolcott, vice president and co-owner of Inland Forest Management Inc., said most clients choose to harvest some of their timber in the name of forest stewardship as well as profit.

“We don’t get a lot of people wanting to hit their land hard and run,” he said. “We won’t do a sale if they aren’t interested in practicing professional forestry management.”

Timber from Wolcott’s North Idaho clients usually goes to local mills, though a small portion may go to the lucrative export market, he said.

But with mills from around the region knocking on the doors of virtually everyone with a few acres of timber, many owners are cashing in before they usually would have, said Bob Flynn, a timber industry analyst in Seattle.

Some loggers and timber brokers try to persuade owners to cut all their trees before they are mature. Once cleared, the owner won’t get any benefit from that land for decades.

“By harvesting early, these people are cutting their seed corn,” Flynn said.

Other small private timber owners “fear the government will find some endangered critter near them to preclude their full use of the land,” Bartels said. This short-term outlook could exhaust much of the resource within three to five years, he said.

The industry is headed for a double whammy, said William Street, research director for the Woodworkers of America union in Portland.

First the lack of federal timber under contract will bottom out, and then the private landowners will be unable to meet the demand. The result will be a new wave of mill closures, Street said.

But Ken Kohli of the Intermountain Forest Industry Association said these smaller tracts of private timberland hold more timber than anyone ever thought. New mill technology allows companies to pull more board feet of timber from an acre, and the private timber supply could be logged for much longer, he said.