Timber industry decline means higher costs to maintain national forests

Timber is another industry that has been badly hurt by the struggling economy. Another ramification is that taxpayers will have to pay more to maintain national forests. "The years of experience as the industry faded around much of the West — mainly as a result of reduced timber sales in the national forests — has also given people here in Montana a glimpse of what can happen when an industry does go away," writes Kirk Johnson of The New York Times. "In Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico, for example, once-formidable forest industries have all but disappeared over the last decade, leading to higher costs for forest management and fire protection; a recent study at the University of Montana said that forest costs to taxpayers and landowners could quadruple in Montana in coming years if the industry is lost." (Times photo)

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)