State of timber-Tracing history of an industry in decline
By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian
Editor’s note: Over the past three decades, the national forest timber harvest has crashed. Some blame environmental regulation. Others blame overharvest in the 1970s and 1980s. Still others point to supply-and-demand economics, and an emergent international import-export lumber business. But most agree the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Region - where harvest has been reduced from 1.2 billion board feet to just 114 million - could produce far more logs if the market would bear them. How to get at that timber, however, remains a point of considerable controversy. Today, the Missoulian begins a four-day series looking at timber cutting in western Montana.
KALISPELL - About a month ago, a brand-new Bitterroot Valley-based group rallied up in Hamilton, calling for more trees to be cut from national forests.
A whole lot of people turned out.
At the same time, the Flathead National Forest offered up for sale 3.4 million board feet of timber, trees already cut and lying right there alongside a road.
Not one bid was submitted.
That you can get the people to rally but you can’t get the mills to bid “proves that public-land timber management is more complicated than some people think,” said Denise Germann, a spokeswoman for the Flathead forest. “We offered the trees, and nobody came to the table. The mills just didn’t want it.”… [more]