The lack of available timber is the single biggest issue facing the wood products industry in Montana, according to a group of foresters and sawmill managers who spoke with U.S. Rep. Steve Daines during a roundtable discussion on Monday.
Daines toured the Roseburg Forest Products Co. particle board production plant in Missoula before meeting with members of the Montana Wood Products Association for a frank discussion on the challenges facing the industry.
The stop was part of a weeklong tour focusing on reducing the impact of what Daines, R-Mont., called “overreaching regulations” on Montana’s economy.
Daines said the tour is meant to highlight the importance of the wood products industry to Missoula and Montana.
“We need to continue to fight to keep this business growing in Montana,” he said. “We need to turn around the wood products industry in Montana and keep these jobs in Montana. We used to have 30 sawmills in Montana and now we’re down to 11.”
Roseburg fiber manager Dan Daly gave Daines a tour of the plant, including the massive hydraulic press that mashes sawdust and woodchips into particle board and laminate that is used for everything from countertops to stair tread. The company employs 112 people and ships roughly 150 million square feet of finished particle board every year.
“This is an impressive startup here,” Daines said. “They’ve made millions of dollars in investment here. They pay good-paying jobs with good benefits. These are the kind of jobs we need in Montana to raise the per capita income, which is one of the lowest in the country.”
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When Daines sat down with leaders from the wood products industry for a panel discussion, he let them know he was aware of the decline of the logging industry.
“I have distinct memories growing up, I was a Bozeman kid, but the days when you would see the logging trucks going up and down the highways in Montana,” Daines said. “It struck me the other day when I saw a logging truck near Belgrade. And you just don’t see that anymore. The numbers clearly demonstrate what’s happening here. You look by any measure of the decline of timber harvests on our federal lands is somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of where we were in the mid-’80s to early ’90s. Something has to be done, and I hear that all over the state everywhere we go. How do we restore the timber and forest products industry to where it was? It’s one of the great battles we face back in Washington as well as here in Montana.”
Daines said that he has worked on passing legislation to find a solution.
“It starts with the source of getting more timber here,” he said. “Here in Montana, we stare at our hillsides and we see dead standing timber on our federal forests and we have an inability to harvest. So we passed a bill in the House that has comprehensive reforms and streamlines the regulatory process.”
He also referenced testimony by U.S. Forest Service Deputy Chief Jim Hubbard.
“He came before our Natural Resources Committee in Washington and he was talking about litigation and these fringe environmental groups that file these lawsuits that are stopping much of our timber harvests here in Montana,” Daines recalled. “To quote Jim Hubbard, he said they’ve ‘virtually shut things down in our national forests.’ So I’m here to be your advocate back in Washington to increase the supply of timber. When I visit sawmills here in the state and they tell me they have to go 400 to 500 miles across sometimes two states going south to get timber, when you’re staring at national forests in the conference room. They said their biggest constraint right now is timber. In Livingston, they said they could add 100 more jobs if they just had access to timber.”
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Gordy Sanders, resource manager at Pyramid Mountain Lumber in Seeley Lake, gave a summarization of the state of the wood products industry in Montana.
“Right now, lumber markets have been pretty good for a while,” Sanders said. “Everybody’s doing OK. The challenge is there aren’t any of us that are running at more than 65 to 70 percent capacity. We could all ramp up production. It really is all about raw materials, available raw materials. For a lot of the mills, every day it’s a challenge not knowing where the logs are going to come from, whether it’s a month, two months or six months down the road. From an owner’s perspective or corporate boards or financial institutions, some certainty is absolutely necessary for all of us in terms of going forward.”
Sanders said Montana has seen a lot of mill closures in the past few decades.
“All the mills now are about 100 miles apart,” he explained.
Daines interjected and asked about a common objection he has heard to increasing timber harvests.
“One of the things I’ve heard is if we suddenly increase supply, we would not have the sawmill capacity,” Daines said. “I literally have heard that objection from folks, saying if we start harvesting this timber, what are we going to do with it all? Which I’d like to hear from you all, the voice of reason and common sense.”
“We look forward to having that opportunity,” Sanders answered. “Everybody can ramp up. The existing sawmills located in this 100-mile distance have the ability to expand. So you’re not going to have new investment of building new mills in new locations. The bottom line is if you had $100 million, would you go build a mill? The answer to that is no. So it’s the existing infrastructure that needs to remain whole and strategically set up with some type of certainty and log supply down the road to have that opportunity to capitalize on. I’m not sitting here and saying ‘X’ number of mills are going to close. All mills close for different reasons, they make their decisions differently.”
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When asked about the history of large extraction-based companies in Montana creating environmental problems because of lax oversight, such as the Anaconda Co. and Champion International, Daines said people want to find a balance between regulation and industry.
“That’s what people want is to find a balance there,” Daines said. “People in Montana like to work and they like to play. It’s been said that our three greatest exports in Montana are our cattle, our grain and our kids. So we want to keep our kids here with jobs, but we also want to create safeguards that can protect our environment and I think we can do both. I think the pendulum has swung too far right now with some of these regulations that threaten jobs in Montana, and if you don’t have a job you can’t stay in a state that we all love.”
Please Wait…
Do a little research regarding Champions last decade of existence and how it effected Montana's timber industry. Daines understands silvaculture about as well as he understands history...he seems driven to repeat the very worst examples of bad industrial practices.
And to top it all off, Daines wants to remove his proposed timber sales from judicial review. He wants to severely limit citizens' access to the courts. When we, as citizens, give up our court access, all bets are off. Imagine a world where industry and government make all the decisions regarding public lands WITHOUT the scrutiny and review of citizens through the courts. What else are we willing to give away (but continue to be taxed for) to appease some politicians bad idea. Dump Daines. Vote him out of office or pay dearly.
I also have to wonder about Daines's outdated thinking regarding younger generations of workers. Does he really think timber mill jobs would keep them here? With all the opportunities in technology, medicine, research, just to name a few disciplines, why would young people want to stay in Montana for timber or mill jobs? Trends are changing. Gen. X-ers and even their baby boomer parents, are leaving the suburbs and rural areas for urban life and all its attractions - smaller homes, everything within walking distance. The bygone days when timber was king are an anomaly. They won't return, regardless of pandering politicians of lousy reporters. For these reasons, and those stated by Matthew Koehler, I'd say the timber industry has a dim future in Montana. Maintaining the current status quo is about as good as it's going to get for big timber.
In an article from last week there was this quote:
“We’ve wound our way through all the foreclosures and we’ve seen an increase in housing starts and building, and that’s good,” said Julia Altemus, executive vice president of the Montana Wood Products Association.
A 5 second google search exposes the truth about "increase(s) in housing starts and building."
As anyone can clearly see in this chart featuring U.S. Census Bureau information, total U.S. Housing Starts are STILL 60% to 75% BELOW the peak levels from approximately 2004 to 2007. http://www.housingviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Starts.jpg
Put another way, that means that today the U.S. is still building only 25 or 40 new homes for every 100 new homes the U.S. was building a decade ago.
How can it be that this important type of context is never reported - it seems - in these articles about the timber industry's desire for more national forest logging?
I mean, if a car dealership was complaining about not selling enough cars, but U.S. consumers were purchasing 60% to 75% less cars, would the solution actually be to have U.S. taxpayers subsidize the building of more cars?
Also, it may be helpful in future articles like this for the Missoulian to provide a link to readers that takes them directly to federal timber sale program numbers, rather than just relying on timber industry complaints and rhetoric.
I've posted this link on Twitter numerous times, sent it directly to Missoulian reporters and editors and posted it on-line here in the comments section:
http://headwaterseconomics.org/interactive/national-forests-timber-cut-sold. People can search by U.S. Forest Service region, or by state.
At that link there is a chart specific for Montana that shows the federal national forest timber sale program (in terms of logging volume) in Montana has actually been fairly consistent over the past 20 years. What's changed dramatically, however, is the value and price of what's being logged.
Think these economic facts have anything to do with the Montana timber industry?
It would be nice to see these independent, verified sources of information presented in these articles, instead of more whining from timber industry lobbyists for yet more taxpayer subsidized national forest logging.
Why can’t the Missoulian provide readers with these simple facts and links to verified, actual data and information?!?
As a private timber land owner im worried what mandatory cuts will do to the market price of timber. Will it artificially create a glut of timber, putting small timber suppliers out of business?
Will Daines seek buy in from these same groups? Meeting with the mills is a start, let's wait and see.
I'm betting on Senator Testers bill as the best solution for Montanans.