| Earlier in the week, a timber industry-friendly economist from the University of Montana's Bureau of Business and Economic Research, claimed that Montana's timber industry will face tough times unless we cut down more of our national forests. While this argument is often trotted out by industry supporters, let's look at the current economic reality.
In case anyone's failed to notice, the overall U.S. economy is in serious trouble. Specific to the timber industry, the collapse of the housing market has resulted in a staggering drop in demand for lumber.
Earlier this year, Stimson Timber Company's vice president told mill workers at their now defunct Bonner mill, "We are in the midst of one of the worst housing markets of our working lifetimes - most producers simply cannot sell the lumber they have made." Meanwhile, the Western Wood Products Association reported, "we're now in the steepest two-year decline in lumber consumption ever. It's left us with way too much lumber on the market for current demand."
Throw in nearly $5 a gallon for diesel - resulting in a doubling of transportation costs - and couple that with lumber prices that are nearly half what they were two years ago, and it's easy to see why this sector of the economy is struggling.
Perhaps these economic realities are the reason that many national forest and state land timber sales are going without any bids. Yet, we should still believe that logging more public land is the answer?
We need look no further than Canada, where the wood products industry in British Columbia has laid off more than 11,000 forestry workers in the past year, despite the fact that Canadian timber companies have nearly unlimited access to cheap, heavily taxpayer-subsidized timber on public lands.
The fact of the matter is that most of Montana's mills were built during a time of (unnaturally) cheap timber, gas and wholly unsustainable logging practices on public and private lands. It's simply unrealistic to think that such large, centralized mills would weather the 21st century's profound economic realities unscathed.
This is especially true given that most of the Montana timber mills ship their finished products all around the country, thereby incurring huge transportation costs, as well as having to deal with the brunt of the housing market collapse that has - so far - largely missed Montana.
Make no mistake, the WildWest Institute supports jobs in the woods and in the mills through a comprehensive, scientifically-based restoration program that would repair degraded watersheds, protect existing wildlands and old-growth and also protect communities from wildfire. However, to think that the existing mills in Montana were somehow built in the 1960s and 70s to restore our national forests is either the height of ignorance or a good example of revisionist history -- perhaps both. |
