Commentary: What’s at play in drop in timber harvests

By George Winters / For The Herald

The Herald’s Jan. 6 article, “State timber plan worries biggest employer in town,” includes an interesting graph with data from American Forest Resources Council. The graph shows U.S. forest timber sales planned, awarded and sales not bid on.

There is no comment on this data in the article, but the information in the graph seems to counter the stated premise that not enough timber is being offered for local mill needs. Why is it that almost half the timber sales have had no bids? The amount shown, 50 million board feet, could possibly offset the 1.3 percent reduction in state timber harvest projections. Why would companies decide these offered sales are not affordable? Are there Washington Department of Natural Resource timber sales that have not gotten bids? Locally I have heard that the U.S. Forest Service in Darrington has had timber sales that received no bids because road work was too expensive.

I formerly had a great job in another state working in a small-town lumber mill. I firmly believe that forestry is an excellent sustainable and beneficial resource. ”Sustainable” is never going to be a one factor calculation. It seems to me as I read and hear about about the current timber industry problems, all the focus is blaming environmental planning and a wish to go back to a mythical past while not realistically looking at a host of additional factors that need solving.

Here’s one small example: The company I used to work for actually made money off the road building part of timber sales contracts. Today I hear that timber sales go without a bid because the road work is too expensive.

What factors play in to that calculation of whether a timber sale is affordable to the mill? Modern mills have re-tooled to be very efficient at milling smaller and more uniform logs. The logging companies rely more on mechanical tree falling machines that work best in less-difficult terrain, and small timber forests. A mill like the one I used to work for, in a small isolated mountain town, still has to compete in a worldwide market.

Labor and Industrty insurance is very costly for jobs like timber falling and this rising cost relates to our national failure to control health care costs. Wide ranging social trends are pulling workers and young people away from small towns and into cities. At the same time, wealthy people are building into forested land where the norm used to be yearly controlled burns which today are not possible. Firefighting challenges get focused on protecting forest homes, and in the process losing money that never gets allotted for controlled burns and thinning projects. Are seasonal wet and dry spells becoming more extreme, further limiting the short window for controlled burning?

If the state DNR joins the overseas competition in a race to the environmental bottom, that will hardly make a dent in the challenges facing the timber industry, all it will do is push back a very small bit against a tide of world trade negotiations, rising health costs, changing climate, mechanized logging which uses fewer people, and the fact that all of us want to live and play more in the forest.

The U.S. Forest Service used to subsidize the timber industry and small town schools, now it is crumbling in to insolvency trying to sell timber that does not even get a bid. Local districts are scraping recreation projects to put money into timber sales projects that don’t even get a bid from the local mill. Even if DNR puts that 1.3 percent projected harvest back in to the plan, that won’t solve the problem of having affordable logs, and the fact that the U.S. Forest Service is being strangled as over half its budget goes to firefighting.

I wish the federal government would dedicate money to roads and schools instead of giving trillion-dollar tax breaks for Wall Street stock buybacks and a trillion dollar forever war economy.

I see a lot of promises in the great way that Hampton Mill has invested in modernizing the Darrington mill. I see a lot of promises in the way the state DNR is trying to balance their timber plans with physcal obligations and environmental expectations.

It gives me a lot of satisfaction to buy lumber that came from a local mill. If I pay a bit more for that lumber I know it is going into a town that helps me. If I pay a bit more to the state, I know it is going to a forest that enriches me, too.

George Winters lives in Darrington.