News in timber

For loggers in Northeastern Minnesota, this has been a very difficult year. First came the closure of Verso’s paper mill in Duluth which slashed demand for several species of wood, and then there was the mild winter which has shortened the prime logging season.

More than 2 years later the aftermath of the storm is still visible and continues to pose a wildfire threat, which according to State Forester Erin Albury could continue over the next five to eight years.

Weyerhaeuser Company today (2/25/21) announced that they had reached an agreement to purchase 69,200 acres of high-quality Alabama timberland from Soterra, a subsidiary of Greif, Inc., for approximately $149 million.

According to Germany’s Agriculture Minister Julia Kloeckner, the condition of German forests has deteriorated to record levels due to a combination of fire, drought, windstorms, and a bark beetle infestation. More trees died in 2020 than ever before and only 21% of trees under observation had an intact canopy, an indication of how healthy a tree is, an annual survey on forests found.

Logging throughout most of Oregon and especially in Douglas County is bustling as logging companies rush to harvest whatever damaged lumber they can from the 131,542-acre burn scar which was the Archie Creek Fire. Log decks at Douglas County sawmills have not been this full since the late 1980’s.

As Colorado recovers from its worse wildfire season on record, many foresters are looking for products that could provide the financial motivation for fire mitigation products, which reduce fuels but also create massive piles of unwanted timber. It is difficult to overstate the size of the problem.

The Woodhead Fire, near Council Idaho, which started from unknown causes on September 7th, 2020, had not even been partially contained before the Idaho Department of Lands forestry team, knowing that for a limited time blackened timber still have a value, began evaluating the potential for selling burned trees as salvage sales.

The decades-old ban on logging trees 21-inches or greater in diameter in national forest across eastern Oregon and southeast Washington was amended on Friday, January 15th, 2021, when U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary James Hubbard signed off on the change.

When originally announced last year, the federal government said it wanted to reduce the spotted owl habitat by 205,000 acres. However, as the implementation moved forward the owl’s habitat reduction increased 17 times above the original 205,000 acres to 3.47 million acres.