News

Skinny trees may be boon for sawmills – Tree-thinning effort could bring needed volume, conferees told

The Inland Northwest timber industry is hoping for a second wind from the millions of young, spindly trees expected to be cut in a massive federal fuels-reduction effort.

There’s technology to make money out of the small tree trunks and a growing economy hungry for wood products, according to industry and government officials attending a conference on the topic in Coeur d’Alene this week.

James Hagengruber
Staff writer

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/business-news-story.asp?date=040204&ID=s1505460&cat=section.business

All that’s needed now is the logs.

"This area is better set up for small-log conversion
than anywhere in the world," said Duane Vaagen, president of Vaagen Bros. Lumber in Colville. "The facilities are ready to do it, yet we’re starving."

Vaagen and other sawmill operators worry the Healthy Forest Restoration Initiative is just a mirage. The act was signed in December and focused on reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire on federal lands.

"We’re hearing talk, but until we see sawdust it’s not going to mean anything," Vaagen said.

In the Colville National Forest alone, managers hope to receive enough funding to thin 10,000 acres of forest each year near communities. This is double the current amount.

All the thinning is going to result in countless small trees being cut, said Tom Tidwell, associate deputy chief of the U.S. Forest Service.

"They’re either going to burn up or we’re going to haul them out. It’s just that simple," Tidwell told the audience of about 150 attending the Small Log Conference.

Environmentalists have expressed concern the rules allow the harvest of too many large, fire-resistant trees. But most groups support the notion of thinning smaller trees from vast tracts of land surrounding communities.

Three mills in North Idaho and Eastern Washington have invested in specialized saws to cut lumber out of logs no wider than a lumberjack’s forearm. A fourth mill in Bonners Ferry closed last year, in part because not enough timber was available, Vaagen said.

The three remaining mills have the capacity to process an extra 300 truckloads of logs each day, Vaagen said.

Profit margins are thin with skinny timber, but the mills can be successful with enough volume, said Todd Brinkmeyer, owner of Plummer Forest Products, which employs 80 people.

"The market’s there, we just need the logs," Brinkmeyer said.

Small logs are actually prized for their strength and lack of large knots, Brinkmeyer said. Leftovers are turned into wood chips or transformed into energy at on-site biomass power generation plants.

New technology is being developed to squeeze even more value from tree parts that were once left behind or burned.

A mobile wood-pellet machine invented by a Spokane entrepreneur is being tested this year in a national forest in Oregon. Heavy equipment from Finland has been developed that quickly rakes up leftover tree parts and ties them into neat bundles to be burned at biomass generators.

A New Zealand company represented at the Coeur d’Alene conference has developed a special starch-injection process to strengthen lumber from low-grade species, such as ponderosa and jack pine. Logs that once had little value are now being turned into roofing trusses and flooring, said Catherine Mater, an engineer and senior fellow at the Gifford Pinchot Institute for Conservation in Washington, D.C.

Businesses are coming up with new ideas, but they are frustrated by years of lawsuits and bureaucratic foot-dragging, Mater said. The Healthy Forest Restoration Initiative will only succeed if it can offer mills a stable supply of small logs, he said.

The stability will allow mills to secure the financing they need to retool to deal with "the wall of wood" that’s going to come out of the forests, Mater said.

A new program that allows the Forest Service to trade timber for restoration work might be the grease needed to unjam the industry, said Jim Doran, executive director of the Colville Community Forestry Coalition.

The stewardship contracts allow for more local control and provide greater incentives for private contractors, Doran said.

In Oregon, the contracts resulted in fuels-thinning projects that cost $25 per acre, instead of the usual price tag of $300 or more per acre. The contract has also been used on the Lakeface Lamb Fuel Reduction Project near Priest Lake.

The Colville Community Forestry Coalition met with the Forest Service Wednesday to discuss beginning a stewardship contract by the end of the year, Doran said.

"We’ll find out if the Forest Service is going to seize the moment," said Doran, a resident of Twisp, Wash.

At best, the contracts and the new federal emphasis on fuels thinning projects might someday rekindle a bit of Twisp’s lost timber economy. The town’s mill once supported 180 unionized jobs.

"Maybe we’ll get half that back," Doran said.

If all the talk turns out to be mere political rhetoric, Doran has another idea. He will use his skills as a lawyer to sue the federal government for what he called "negligent resource management."

"It would be a nasty fight," Doran said. "It would make the salmon lawsuits and the spotted owl lawsuits look pale in comparison."

Posted in:

Sorry, we couldn't find any posts. Please try a different search.

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.