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Archive for April, 2010

Timber is rising in the NW

April 29th, 2010

A month ago, we wrote about how things seem to be turning around economically for the timber industry. Of course, there are still many challenges, but now that we’re starting to recover from the recession, timber prices and demand are going up.

And now there are more postive signs. West Fraser Timber Co., one of Canada’s largest timber firms, just reported its first profit in two years, and its CEO, Hank Ketcham, said the prognosis is good for the forestry business, according to a Canadian Press story:

North American lumber prices were up 31 per cent during the first quarter of 2010, Ketcham said, and he expects prices to remain strong during the busy spring building season.

Higher prices are being fuelled by an imbalance between a depleted supply and pent-up demand. Dealers and wholesalers are beginning to restock lumber in advance of the spring and summer construction season, but inventories are restricted because forestry companies shut many of their mills during the recession.

Meanwhile, KGW-TV in Portland reports that Oregon home builders aren’t happy about rising lumber prices. Of course, prices should always be reasonable, but the higher prices are at least an indicator that the state of the industry is improving.

In other news, forestry officials in Mississippi are still trying to determine the exact damage to the state’s forests from last weekend’s tragic tornado. According to this Clarion Ledger story, things aren’t looking good so far.

Snapped at the wrong place. Deeply splintered. Trees damaged by Saturday’s storm may be unusable or damaged enough to fetch less money for investors and school districts that harvest the wood on 16 section land.

State officials will do aerial flyovers today, an attempt to get a better understanding of how much of the $19.8 million in timberland was damaged.

Nearly $865 million worth of timber products were harvested in 2009, making it the state’s second largest agricultural commodity.

“I’ve seen some pictures in the direct damage zone. It’s catastrophic,” said Bruce Alt, executive vice president of the Mississippi Forestry Association.

Incidentally, according to the story, Seattle’s Plum Creek has 665,000 acres in Mississippi but was very lucky to not sustain any damage.

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Posted in British Columbia, Canada, Logging Communities, Mississippi, Oregon, Pacific Northwest

The pain of being a New England logger

April 27th, 2010

Last week we wrote about the radical manuever by state officials in Massachusetts to more than quadruple the amount of state forestland that is off-limits to harvest. Now we are hearing about the consequences of that decision.

The Boston Globe just wrote a compelling story about the plight of Massachusetts loggers now that the new policy has been approved. The forestry industry there is small — 28th out of 50 states — but the state’s decision was drastic and it will have a devastating impact on anyone who makes their living on forestry.

Just the numbers alone tell a sad story. According to the Globe article: “Today, about 40,000 acres, or 13 percent of the forests and parks managed by the (Massachusetts) Department of Conservation and Recreation, are off-limits to logging. Under the new plan, logging will be banned on at least 185,000 acres, or 60 percent of the lands.”

According to the Globe story, the demand for wood products in the state remains high, and yet the timber industry has had to rely on relatively small projects to survive. And this is before the wider forestry ban goes into effect.

The tale of this particular logger and his son is a clear window into how the forestry ban will impact the industry:

Tom King, 61, of Hubbardston, has made his living harvesting DCR lands. But with the slowdown of logging on state lands, he and his son, who works for him, have been out of work for seven weeks. “It’s the first time we’ve been shut down,’’ said King, who has been working state lands for 25 years. “It’s basically a bunch of antilogging forestry people who want no cutting at all.’’

“Governor [Deval] Patrick is selling us down the drain,’’ King said. “He’s promoting things that will create jobs. Well, this won’t.’’

He is struggling now: two pieces of machinery worth $900,000 require a $10,000-a-month bank payment. Health insurance costs are high, as is workers’ compensation, for a job that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ranks as one of the most dangerous in the country.

While things might be better for loggers in the West, the move by state government in Massachusetts is alarming. Certainly if some environmental groups had their way, the forestry industry as we know it in the West would cease to exist, so it’s important for us to keep an eye on any threats to our way of life.

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Posted in Logging Communities, Massachusetts

A tale of two states

April 23rd, 2010

Massachusetts and Oregon both made major decisions this week on how much of their state-owned forests should be open to harvest. What unfolded is an interesting tale of the contrasting perspectives that different states — and different regions of the country — have on the timber industry.

The Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation announced a plan that will quadruple the amount of public forestland in which cutting down trees is banned. That means 200,000 of the 308,000 acres of state forests will be designated as a reserve.

Some environmental groups praised the move, while forestry groups were strongly opposed.

Here is what the Massachusetts Forest Landowners Association had to say, according to the Springfield Republican:

Reducing the acreage of (state forest) lands managed to periodically produce forest products means that revenues from growing and harvesting timber will be reduced, and that will result in fewer jobs and less economic activity in the small communities that have a lot of state lands.

The Oregon Board of Forestry, meanwhile, decided to increase the amount of harvestable land in its state. The board voted to allow logging on 600,000 acres that had previously been off-limits, mainly in the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests.

The state of Oregon gives a share of timber proceeds on public land to 15 “forest trust land” counties. Those revenues go to the counties’ schools, governments and other services, but the money has been far less than it was supposed to be, according to the state.

Something had to change, so the state decided to open more public land to harvest. And local counties will benefit, according to the Daily Astorian:

By opening more land up to harvest, economic returns from the forest – which have lagged behind 2001 projections by $38.5 million on the Clatsop and Tillamook forests, according to one recent professional estimate – can now approach 70 percent of the 2001 estimates…

…Clatsop County Manager Duane Cole said it’s hard to know exactly what that means as far as increases to county revenue, but he suspects a 7 percent increase in harvest level will loosely correspond to a 7 percent increase in timber revenue…

…The additional funds could become seed money for a new county jail, Cole said, or it could allow the county to make purchases of items such as sheriff’s cars that have been on hold because of budget constraints.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that Oregon would look at the timber industry in a different light. It has more forestland than Massachusetts, and the timber industry is an integral part of the economy, especially in local timber communities. But it is still heartening to see.

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Posted in Logging Communities, Oregon, Pacific Northwest, State Issues

Timber towns are bouncing back

April 19th, 2010

The current economic state of logging communities across the West varies depending on several factors, but the poor economy certainly isn’t doing any favors. Recently news has come out about two logging communities on the West Coast: the Tongass National Forest in Alaska and Mackenzie, British Columbia.

What is clear from this Los Angeles Times story on a possible timber deal in Tongass is that even when logging jobs may be on the verge of returning, issues about the environment and past timber practices can still bubble to the surface.

Part of the Tongass forest, which the Times calls the “crown jewel of the national forest system,” may be transferred to a corporation owned by several Native American tribes, under legislation currently being considered by Congress. Some environmental groups and local residents say the deal will lead once again to massive clearcutting in the park, which everyone agreed happened in the past, and also threaten the more modest timber operations already underway.

What is clear, though, is life hasn’t been quite the same in the Tongass since large-scale timber operations shut down, according to the Times story.  Thorne Bay, for instance, one of the towns in the forest, used to to be the largest logging camp in the world.

The shift has been dramatic. In 1997, 495 million board feet of timber was cut out of the forest. In recent years, less than 34 million board feet a year has made it to the mills.

Wilderness advocates say the region is beginning to come into its own in a new way with tourism, fishing and small woodworking enterprises — businesses that thrive on a healthy forest. Gradually, the mills are being retooled for smaller, replenishable trees to wean them from their dependence on the massive, old-growth giants.

Yet nothing so far has been able to overcome the loss of the big chain-saw jobs. Over the last 10 years, logging industry employment has shrunk from 4,000 jobs to barely 450. Towns like Thorne Bay and Craig have lost nearly 20% of their populations. Unemployment in some Native villages approaches 30%.

And finally, the Globe and Mail, the national Canadian newspaper, has a heartwarming story about the town of Mackenzie, B.C. Starting in 2007, the town’s six sawmills closed down one by one, but in recent weeks several mills have been bought and will be restarted by large companies.

The story quotes Evelyn Poulin, who moved to Mackenzie with her husband in 1966 to work in the timber industry.

She doesn’t expect the town to fully recover, but hopes the pulp-mill deal will be enough to start bringing home people who left their families behind to go find work.

“It’s just the breed of people that live in small towns,” she said. “They just don’t give up.”

Best of luck to the residents of Mackenzie as they rebuild the local industry that provided their livelihoods for decades.

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Posted in Alaska, British Columbia, Federal Issues, Logging Communities

Biomass gains support in Oregon and Capitol Hill

April 16th, 2010

This has been a good week for biomass.  First, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski voiced his support for biomass in a speech at University of Oregon. And then a bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced the American Renewable Biomass Heating Act, which would create a 30 percent tax credit for industrial-scale biomass heaters.

According to BusinessGreen, here is what Charlie Niebling, chair of the Biomass Thermal Energy Council, had to say about the legislation:

“It supports biomass thermal with the same incentive that already exists for every other renewable energy technology, including solar thermal and electric, wind, and geothermal,” he said. “Businesses are some of our nation’s biggest consumers of thermal energy, and (the bill) will provide a powerful incentive to switch to biomass fuels that we produce here in America.”

Biomass is also providing some economic hope to Pacific Northwest timber communities where sawmills have shut down, according to the Daily Journal of Commerce (DJC) in Portland.

Times have been especially difficult in Clackamas County, just outside Portland, according to the DJC story .

Dustin Kohls, program manager for Clackamas County’s agricultural investment plan, said that biomass plants could replace many of the lost jobs.

“Our towns are struggling,” Kohls said. “Most of the focus of jobs creation has been on urban areas, but these towns deserve as much attention as the rest of the county. We’re trying to create a new business opportunity to work off of a traditional natural resource base that was once the strength of these towns.”

With the support of the Oregon governor and an influential group of U.S. senators, here’s hoping that biomass continues to see a bright future and provides a stimulus to the communities that need it the most.

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Posted in Biomass, Federal Issues, Oregon, Pacific Northwest, Washington

Another attempt to push out the timber community

April 13th, 2010

Earlier this month, Michael T. Goergen Jr. with the Society of American Foresters wrote a well-argued op-ed in the Seattle Times supporting the idea that Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) wood products should be included as part of U.S. green building standards. And today, the Times ran a response from one of the environmental advocates on the other side of the debate.

The opinion piece from Denis Hayes, one of the organizers of the first Earth Day and now the president of Seattle’s Bullitt Foundation, essentially accuses Goergen of lying when he wrote that the competing Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) wood product certification squeezed out small forest landowners and favored foreign forests over those located in the U.S.

Hayes doesn’t provide any information to back up his assertion that U.S. forests aren’t harmed by the FSC standard. And of small forest landowners, he writes:

Far from harming small family operations, FSC gives them a unique opportunity to command a market premium for careful stewardship.

If only this were true. What Hayes calls a “unique opportunity” is actually a squeeze play that would push many forest landowners into the red. For many landowners, the FSC standard just doesn’t make economic sense. While green building is clearly on the rise, these landowners can’t yet take advantage because the FSC standard doesn’t pencil out. This is why some groups are trying to get the U.S. Green Building Council to welcome other certifications, such as SFI.

Don’t let short-sighted people like Hayes push the timber industry to insolvency by excluding most landowners from the green building boom. Leave your thoughts in the comments section of his Seattle Times op-ed (which stays open to comments for two more days) or send a letter to the editor (no more than 200 words) to opinion@seattletimes.com. Make sure Hayes’ campaign doesn’t go unanswered.

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Posted in Green Building Standards, Logging Communities, Pacific Northwest, Washington

Wall Street Journal doesn't know "green"

April 12th, 2010

The Wall Street Journal today wrote about the financial problems plaguing Sustainable Northwest, a Portland lumberyard that carries mostly Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified wood. Two things, in particular, jumped out from the story.

First, the WSJ reporter, Jim Carlton, fell for the idea from some environmental groups that FSC-certified wood is the only wood that can be called “green” or “sustainable.” Of course this isn’t true. There are several other reputable and respected standards out there, including the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), which is the most widely used standard in the U.S.

Second, the WSJ story brings up some legitimate issues surrounding green building. While the future remains bright, the poor economy has clearly made things difficult for just about everyone in the timber world. What is unclear, though, is whether Sustainable Northwest’s reliance on FSC wood has anything to do the lumberyard’s financial problems.

Here is what WSJ reader Neil Ward had to say in the comments section of the story:

Typical Jim Carlton piece: accepts the claims of the Forest Stewardship Council at their face value and declines to recognize that Pacific Northwest logging–federal or private–occurs under the most exacting conservation rules on the planet in any case and that–even with foundation funding backing it up–the applique of the FSC standard on top of the Washington and Oregon state forest practices acts adds overhead without enhancing conservation values and thus drags at any claim to add real value. If this log yard fails, it won’t be because wood users compromise their “green” values in hard times. It will be because exponents more penetrating than Carlton perceive that buying a brand does not, in itself, buy value.

A few other interesting news items:

  • A Sacramento company, ECO2 Forests Inc., is planning a large kiri tree plantation north of Reno, Nev. The kiri tree is a broad-leafed hardwood that regenerates from the stump after harvesting and is native to China. The tree could go a long way toward helping slow deforestation and sequester a lot of carbon along the way, according to the company, but the Northern Nevada Business Weekly has also raised some doubts about the Reno project.
  • The Society of American Foresters held its annual meeting last week in Oregon and the speakers had plenty of interesting things to say, according to a story in the Albany Democrat-Herald. One of the highlights, according to the paper, was an appearance by legendary forester W.D. Hagenstein, who wrote in his book: “Live without wood or wood fiber in your life for a year and then come talk to me. Talk is cheap. Life isn’t.”

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Posted in Carbon Sequestration, Climate Change, Green Building Standards, Oregon, Pacific Northwest

Fried chicken enters the fray

April 9th, 2010

The battle by some environmental groups to eradicate the timber industry continues this week with the news that a North Carolina group called the Dogwood Alliance is taking the unusual step of pressuring Kentucky Fried Chicken to stop using Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) paper products and use Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) products instead.

First off, we should note that while this campaign is comical on the surface, it should be taken seriously. The Dogwood Alliance seems to be focusing on KFCs in the South, but it’s really pressuring Yum! Brands, which owns not just KFC but Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver’s and A&W Restaurants, among others, for a total of 36,000 restaurants around the world.

The Dogwood Alliance’s Kentucky Fried Forests campaign continues the PR effort by some environmental groups to try to denigrate the SFI standard for sustainable forest products. In fact, SFI is an independent and respected standard that has certified 186 million acres in North America, far more than FSC.

And Dogwood may not even have its facts straight. As this Triple Pundit story points out, the company that KFC uses for its paper products, International Paper, is in fact using FSC products overseas and possibly in the U.S. as well.

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Posted in Green Building Standards

Protecting the forest economy

April 6th, 2010

Michael T. Goergen Jr. with the Society of American Foresters had a nice op-ed in the Seattle Times over the weekend. He makes the point that the U.S. Green Building Council, for its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, should allow wood certified by other groups besides the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) because it would support all the products that come from well-managed forests in Washington.

From the op-ed:

There are important economic reasons for LEED to open the standard. Forest Stewardship Council-certified lumber is not as prevalent in the U.S. as it is overseas. The American Tree Farm System and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative are standards designed with American forests in mind.

Green builders trying to gain LEED certification may be forced to buy from the limited amount of Forest Stewardship Council-certified forest products here or make their purchases from Stewardship Council sources located overseas, which are often certified to lower standards.

With our nation suffering from a recession and high unemployment, the last thing we want to do is hurt Americans who make their livelihood from our forests. Opening LEED to the other standards will be good for our economy.

Goergeon also makes another point that doesn’t always get as much attention:

Expanding demand for forest products certified to other standards will also benefit forests. As green building grows, demand for forest products from certified forests will also increase. That will provide an incentive to owners of forestlands to get certified, bringing even more acres under broader environmental requirements.

Fact is, many forests need to be economically viable to survive. But if FSC is the only standard allowed under LEED, then many forest landowners will be cut out of the green building boom and will be forced to sell their land to developers. Then those forests will be gone forever, a fate that even the most diehard supporter of an FSC monopoly would have a hard time stomaching.

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Posted in Green Building Standards, Pacific Northwest, Washington

Environmental groups side with FSC

April 2nd, 2010

The SFI vs. FSC forest certification debate continues, with news that many environmental groups have signed on in support of the Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC) effort to cut the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) out of the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED standard.

According to a post at Treehugger, the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and other groups signed a letter that says SFI engages in “greenwashing.”

Here is part of the letter:

The Sustainable Forestry Initiative, the Canadian Standards Association’s Sustainable Forest Management certification, and other industry-based forest certification programs engage in greenwash precisely because they certify as “sustainable” forest practices that are the most environmentally damaging allowed by law…

It’s unfortunate that these environmental groups have decided to wage war on an industry that is part of the lifeblood of the West and has provided jobs and livelihoods for several generations.  They appear to be similar to Peter Goldman and the Washington Forest Law Center, whose goal is clearly to decimate the entire forestry industry as we know it.

Fact is, these groups don’t want the U.S. Green Building Council to provide choices for its LEED certification. FSC has thrived on its monopoly with LEED standards for years, but if there was a fair market, it would suddenly have to compete. SFI and FSC are both worthy and independent choices for sustainable wood, and consumers and builders should get to decide.

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Posted in Green Building Standards