Montanans appreciate locally grown foods, from greens to fresh-picked blueberries, raw honey and grass-fed beef.
Can we say the same about our wood products? Your community would come together to keep a local rancher in business. Wouldn’t you do the same to keep a local sawmill running?
By supporting the local forest industry in Montana, you ensure that wood products come from forests managed with some of the strictest environmental laws in the world.
The Missoula Chapter of the Society of American Foresters (SAF) supports investing in our local forest products industry, especially right now. We are currently facing a land management crisis brought on by two recent factory closure announcements in Missoula County.
Montana’s identity is rooted in our forests, and as forest industry professionals, maintaining active forest management capacity is critical for forest landowners, communities, conservationists, and local governments. We should invest in the fate of our forest industry because many of us are not only users of forest lands, but we are all owners of public forest lands.
As stated in the Montana Forest Action Plan, “…on many acres of certain types of forests, forests have become densely populated, contain excessive fuel loads, and are populated by tree species that are less tolerant of fire, more susceptible to insect and disease outbreaks. and the impacts of climate change.”
Our sawmills and by-product processing facilities are critical infrastructure in Montana. The condition of our forests and the associated natural resources and ecosystem services are directly related to the health of our forest products industry. Management is expensive and, without a functioning forest products supply chain to offset the costs, treatment may not be feasible.
The recent announcement of the closure of Pyramid Mountain Lumber in Seeley Lake will have serious impacts on wildfire mitigation efforts in the wildland-urban interface. Pyramid was one of the last mills in the state with the unique ability to process ponderosa pine logs, a species that is abundant in our homes and communities.
Roseburg Forest Products also announced the closure of its particle board plant in Missoula. Between 10 and 20% of a sawmill’s revenue comes from selling byproducts to residual processors, such as Roseburg. Without a local buyer for sawdust, planing shavings and wood chips, the economic viability of each sawmill and the entire regional wood products supply chain is at risk.
The ripple effect of the loss of these facilities may take years to manifest, but we know the long-term effects of a collapsed wood products industry. Arizona, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming are a few other Western states that have lost their forest products industry and therefore the ability to profitably conduct wildfire risk reduction and restoration work. Montana could be heading down that path.
The benefits of forest restoration and risk reduction can be seen locally at the Pattee Canyon Recreation Area in Missoula. Nearly 30 tons per acre of woody biomass was removed during the Pattee/Blue Ecosystem Restoration timber sale in 2005-06. One green ton of woody biomass is equivalent to 57 gallons of diesel fuel; Imagine more than 1,700 one-gallon cans of diesel fuel spread across every acre.
Projects like Pattee/Blue, Bass Creek, Colt Summit and others also benefit public health by reducing smoke. In a recent Missoulian article, Missoula air quality specialist Kerri Mueller said, “Missoula typically sees the highest levels of ambient PM2.5 during wildfire season.”
Many of our summers have hazardous air quality conditions throughout western Montana and beyond. By reducing wildfire fuel with planned harvesting and burning, the intensity and duration of wildfires is reduced, reducing air pollution.
Fortunately, Montana has many initiatives that promote active management of our forests, including the Forest Service and Missoula Wildfire Adaptive Wildfire Crisis Strategy; Community forest fire protection plans; the Good Neighbor Authority, which facilitates cross-border collaboration.
Wildfire mitigation may be on the cutting edge, but as stated in the Montana Forest Action Plan, our forests face many problems today. However, without a vibrant forest products industry and markets within reasonable proximity to the project areas, forest management would worsen, as would the condition of our forests. With the loss of two key local wood processing facilities, an investment in Montana’s forest products industry is now more critical than ever.
We urge Montanans who depend on the forest for their lifestyle and livelihood to realize that the investment is not limited to monetary value.
The Society of American Foresters is the national scientific and educational organization representing more than 9,000 forestry and related natural resources professionals throughout the United States.
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