Big changes with small wood in Montana

Before the Montana Community Development Corp. hired a small-wood
enterprise agent in 2001, I really didn’t understand "the timber
industry."

Like most Missoula residents, I thought the timber industry was
Smurfit-Stone, Stimson and Roseburg, a few big old plants surrounded by
log yards and belching smoke day and night. I saw the timber trucks
lumbering through town, especially after the fires of 2000, and had a
vague idea of the ancillary business surrounding the manufacturing
plants.

Our job with the small wood agent, I thought, had little to do with the
big plants and the big trucks. The U.S. Forest Service funded us to
encourage use of little trees – the stuff that is clogging the woods and
creating tremendous fire hazard on both public and private forestlands.
I thought, small wood, small business, right? Log furniture. Dog beds.
And maybe, in some distant technological future, engineered 2x4s and
other building materials.

I was wrong.

By ROSALIE SHEEHY CATES

To read the full story click on the following link
http://www.mtinbusiness.com/inbiz-0508/bus09.php