In Montana politicians, environmentalists, and business leaders are looking for solutions. The real concern is that the decline of the timber industry, coupled with mounting environmental and economic problems, could mean much higher costs to maintain forests. "Climate change, for example — how to manage state and federal forest lands as new diseases and insects threaten them in a warmer future — and the soaring costs of fighting wildfires in the West have both become part of the discussion," Johnson writes. "If the state loses its base of roughly 200 interconnected sawmills, pulp buyers and family-owned tree-cutting contractors, advocates say, who will be left to work in the woods to make them usable, beautiful and safe, and at what cost?"
In Montana "almost 20 percent of the state’s lumber-mill jobs have disappeared since 2005, according to state figures," notes Johnson. (Read more)
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