Forestry Employment Outlook for 2002?

[BCCrouch]

I have my ears open for any and all concrete information (not rumors!) concerning legitimate, career-level forestry/natural resource employment in the Great Lakes region.  Any worthwhile information the good people of this board may pass along will be both appreciated and investigated.  

[BCCrouch]

The following is precisely the kind of news none of us want to hear, but all of us need to read.

-----------------------------------------------------------
This article was mailed from The Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011125-9756782.htm
For more great articles, visit us at
http://www.washtimes.com

Copyright (c) 2001 News World Communications, Inc. All
rights reserved.

[John_Boisselier]

Hi BC,
 Tried to look at that article, but couldn't get it to show up with that link.  Try giving us some keywords or something and the gist and date and page of the article and we could possibly search it out anyway.
In what kind of forestry job are you personally interested, and what are your experience and qualifications?  

[swampwhiteoak]

Saw a job posting(s) a while back for the state of wisconsin.  They were looking to fill 20 forester positions on their way to becoming their own department.  Don't know if applications are still being taken.  The economy has slowed state spending, so those many jobs are hard to come by/nonexistent.  Check
www.usajobs.opm.gov  for the forest service.  As far as private industry goes, it sways with the stumpage prices, and right now that ain't looking to hot.

[BCCrouch]

Here's the article in several sections.  The board won't let me post the whole thing at once because it's too long.  As for my qualifications, just click on my profile and go to my web page.

-----------------------------------------------------------

OUT ON A LIMB

Valerie Richardson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

-----------------------------------------------------------

CASCADE, Idaho -- Look in any direction along this stretch of rural Idaho and the first thing you see are the trees. They're everywhere — thousands upon thousands of acres of lodgepole pine and Douglas fir, cascading down hills and blanketing mountains as far as the eye can see.  For a century, the trees of the Boise, Payette, Nez Perce and Clearwater national forests provided the people here with shelter, work, recreation and a way of life.

No longer. As the poet Samuel Coleridge once observed about the ocean, that it has "Water, water everywhere/Nor any drop to drink," the national forests of Idaho are filled with millions of trees that cannot be touched.

For the past decade, timber communities throughout the Northwest have waged a legal and public-relations battle
with environmental groups over how the trees should be used.  By all accounts and on every front, the loggers are losing.

President Theodore Roosevelt's vision of maintaining the national forests as the nation's lumber supply was replaced
during the Clinton administration by the idea that forests should be preserved in their natural state. The amount of
timber that could be harvested was reduced drastically, both by the administration's moratorium on road-building and by the legal system, as environmentalists took to the courts to stop the logging.

That shift has come at a price. There are more trees and more old-growth, but also more disease and dead wood. There are fewer chainsaws in the forests, but also fewer mills, homes and families. And within the small, wooded hamlets whose denizens have cut and replanted the trees for generations, there is poverty, dislocation, anger — and a
sense of disbelief that is slowly turning into resignation.

"It's tough, especially for the kids, because they look around and there are trees everywhere you look," said Dick
Vandenburg, a Cascade City Council member. "They don't understand the politics."

Idaho and the rest of the Pacific Northwest have watched the timber economy plummet over the last decade, taking with it a dozen mills and at least 30,000 jobs. The reasons include automation and greater efficiency at timber mills and
plants; falling lumber prices; and stiff competition from across the border in the form of cheaper Canadian lumber.

"The reason the mills closed is soft prices, imports from Canada, and the timber industry's willingness to move to
other countries because of relaxed environmental standards under NAFTA," said Roger Singer, director of the Sierra
Club's Idaho chapter. "The sudden downturn in the industry is due to market forces, not environmental challenges."

But those in the timber industry say they could have handled those fluctuations without closing the mills. What they
couldn't handle was the political assault they faced from the environmental movement.

"All these mills have been around for almost a century.  They've been through economic upturns and downturns. They
went through the Depression," said Steve Bliss, a former millworker and union representative from Horseshoe Bend.
"But you can't operate without raw materials.

"It has nothing to do with the economy and nothing to do with demand. It has everything to do with the environmental
movement and political correctness," he said.

Starting in the mid-1980s, environmental groups began stepping up their opposition to timber sales in the national
forests. The national forests are distinct from wilderness areas, where trees by law cannot be harvested. In Idaho,
where 68 percent of the state's 53 million acres is run by the federal government, 7.5 percent of the land is
classified as wilderness.

Each year, the Forest Service offers stands of timber for sale as determined under the forest plan, then takes bids
and awards the sale to the highest bidder.

Environmentalists have managed to bring the process to a grinding halt by filing legal challenges, or appeals, to
most timber sales. The appeals are usually based on perceived problems with the sale, such as a failure to take
into account endangered species or sensitive wildlife habitat.

Sometimes the appeals are successful, and a judge halts the sale. "The reason we're successful is because the Forest Service isn't playing by the rules," said John McCarthy, wildlife director of the Idaho Conservation League, which is responsible for many of the challenges.

"They can't account for old growth and how it affects endangered species. We can always find experts on the inside
who will say, 'They're doing it wrong,'" he said.

Even when the appeals fail, the process can drag on for years. That's too much time for small logging outfits and
mills, which can go out of business waiting for a challenge to move through the legal system.

"You have one year to harvest whitewood," said Cascade Mayor Larry Walters. "But as soon as you put a sale up, you get hit with appeals. By the time it's resolved, that wood is no good any more. It's just such a waste."

[BCCrouch]

Mill closes, town struggles

In February, Boise Cascade announced that it would shut down its mills in Cascade and Emmett, laying off 400 workers.  While some critics blamed poor management, Chairman George J. Harad cited lack of raw materials.

The closures came as the end of an era for Boise Cascade, which has seen its mills in Idaho decline from five to none.

"Despite an adequate supply of timber, under the policies of the Clinton administration and pressure from environmental groups, the amount of timber offered for commercial harvest
has declined more than 90 percent over the past five years," Mr. Harad said.

The ripple effect led to the closure of half-dozen other related businesses in Cascade, ranging from a rental
equipment outlet to a flower shop. Soon the modest one-story homes in Cascade's neighborhoods were peppered with "For Sale" signs as families sought jobs elsewhere in the Northwest.

In Cascade, a town of a little more than a thousand, losing even one family leaves a void. After the mill closed, as
many as 70 families moved, including some whose roots in the town went back three generations, said Mr. Vandenburg, the City Council member.

"I don't know what's worse, to leave town or to stay here and watch everyone else leave," he said.

Those fortunate enough to find jobs in Cascade were forced to take substantial pay cuts. Jobs at the Boise Cascade mill paid between $12 and $19 an hour with "the best benefits package in Idaho," said Ron Lundquist, a former millworker.

He now helps manage a trailer park, a job that pays well at $16 an hour but provides bare-bones benefits, not to mention less satisfaction.

"I enjoy this job," Mr. Lundquist said. "But I was raised in a resource family. There's something to be said for making
something from a natural resource. It's rewarding because you're building something."

From resources to rafting

Faced with double-digit unemployment and no second coming of the timber industry in sight, Idaho logging towns are trying to diversify their economies by luring other businesses, starting with tourism. Given the beauty of the forests,
rivers and lakes, spotlighting the area's rafting, boating and hiking opportunities came as a natural move.

When Cascade's mill closed, the town received a series of state grants, including one from the Idaho Tourism Council,
to raise the town's profile. "The governor has been tremendous," Mr. Vandenburg said. "We've received grant
after grant."

Tourism offers its own set of problems. The work is seasonal — strong in the summer but virtually nonexistent in the
winter — and the jobs don't pay as well as mill work. In Riggins, just north of Cascade, the town has a thriving
river-rafting business, but the investment hasn't paid off as well as locals had hoped.

"They're relying on tourism for their funds, and frankly, there isn't any money in that," said Wayne Davis,
superintendent of the local school district. "You get a few backpackers, a few rafters, but there's nothing to sustain
jobs."

Tourism also tends to change the complexion of towns. Locals point to the example of McCall, about 30 miles north of
Cascade, where the town managed to replace a closed mill with tourism, then watched as wealthy retirees moved in,
drove up housing prices and began pushing out the middle class.

"McCall has gone from a working man's community to a rich man's playground," said Dave Rosen, a former co-worker of Mr. Lundquist.

Another impediment to drawing tourists is the recent rash of forest fires, which locals blame on the Forest Service's
official reluctance to clear dead and diseased wood.  Potentially more devastating than the area's economic
plight, locals say, is the threat to communities and forest health from fire.

On this issue, the residents are again meeting opposition from environmentalists, who argue that fire clears the
deadwood more naturally than chainsaws. "I'd rather see us use fire as the tool of first choice than chainsaws as the
tool of first choice," said Mr. McCarthy of the Conservation League.

Green groups also have fought efforts to clear the accumulating "fuel" through Forest Service salvage sales,
which allow loggers to clear dead trees and brush. Locals say such sales could have helped keep many of the closed
mills, including Cascade's, in business.

"The thing about salvage is that it doesn't just look at dead trees — it also looks at what's going to die," Mr.
McCarthy said, adding that his group recently stopped a large salvage sale in North Idaho. "And you can't predict
what's going to die and what's not."

Phil Davis, a Valley County commissioner and rancher, argues that the recent fires have been anything but natural,
burning so hot and so long that the land takes decades to regenerate. He noted that 25 percent of the Payette National
Forest has burned in the past few years, while the summer of 2000 fires left blackened an area the size of Rhode Island.

"The reason we're in this situation is that these people in the name of the environment have made it so the Forest
Service cannot manage their lands," Mr. Davis said. "And it's been to the detriment of the environment."

[BCCrouch]

Education and trees

Perhaps the biggest untold story from the timber economy's decline is its impact on public schools. Most schools rely
on property taxes for the bulk of their funding, but in the West, where most of the land is federally owned, there isn't
enough of a tax base to maintain rural schools. As a result, the Forest Service sends 25 percent of its sale receipts
back to the state. Of that, 70 percent goes toward state road projects and 30 percent goes to schools.

Consequently, as timber profits have fallen, so has money for education. Cascade has just begun to feel the pinch, but
in communities whose mills shut down five or six years ago, school officials have been forced to fire teachers,
eliminate elective classes, cut sports and music, even trim the school week down from five days to four.

In Grangeville, where the Ida-Pine Mills closed five years ago, the district has lost 400 students in four years and
seen its annual timber payments fall from $1.3 million to $225,000. The biggest hit came two years ago, when the
district was forced to cut its budget by $600,000.

"In order to make the budget balance, we had to cut all our sports, our extracurricular activities, drama, debate and
our food service," Superintendent Wayne Davis recalled. "It was devastating to anyone involved in extracurricular
activities, just devastating."

Then the community got involved. Unwilling to abandon the football teams, parents from the Booster Club held auctions
and raffles, chopped firewood and solicited donations.  Students in Riggins spent the summer selling bottled water
to highway workers.

Within two months, the families had amassed $350,000, just enough to reinstate the sports programs. Raising that kind of money would have been an impressive accomplishment for any school district, but for the depressed Grangeville district, where some schools have 70 percent of their students on free and reduced-price lunches, it was
"phenomenal," Mr. Davis said.

This year, rural Western schools received a boost from Washington in the form of a funding bill sponsored by Sens.
Larry E. Craig, Idaho Republican, and Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat. Known as Craig-Wyden, the bill sets timber
payments to schools at 80 percent to 85 percent of historic highs for the next six years.

"Craig-Wyden is a wonderful bill, but it's a temporary fix," said Gary Stears, principal of Grangeville High School.
"It's not the answer. Letting people work is the answer. Quit handcuffing them."

With 300 employees, the school district is now the largest employer in Grangeville. The town of 7,226 has had some
success in attracting new businesses, but has yet to lure any company that can approach the mill's payroll. Still,
families are reluctant to leave.

Mr. Davis attributes their loyalty to the community's values. "My guess is if you go into this parking lot, half
of the cars would have the keys in them," he said. "A lady once said to me, 'If somebody was stranded and needed a
vehicle, you would want them to use it.' The value system here is pretty strong. But we've got the second-highest
unemployment in the state, so I worry about that."

Looking for alternatives

Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne has tried to come to the rescue with the Rural Idaho Initiative, a $4 million campaign aimed at helping depressed timber, mining and agricultural counties diversity their economies. Right now, that includes most of the state.

"These communities need a sign that, in fact, there's going to be a future there," Mr. Kempthorne said.

Millworkers seethed when Mr. McCarthy was quoted as saying they should all go work for Micron. "You notice that
Micron's laying off people," Mr. Lundquist said. But state leaders are indeed looking for high-tech remedies for the
ailing economy. Idaho recently became the first state to institute a tax credit for broadband companies that build in
rural areas.

Not long ago, many communities held out hope that the mills would come back. Locals note that demand for paper products and lumber hasn't abated, and that Canadian loggers, aided by a pro-timber government, are growing rich off the American lumber market.

Locals say they're encouraged by what they've seen so far from the Bush administration. Shortly after taking office,
President Bush put the brakes on the Clinton administration's plan to rope off 40 million acres of forest
as roadless areas, a move that would have cut off access to yet more timber.

On Oct. 31, the Commerce Department agreed to impose tariffs of up to 40 percent on Canadian lumber, citing trade
practices that have given the Canadians an unfair advantage.

"I think [Bush officials] want this to change, but they're politicians, too," said Mr. Stears, the school principal.
"Even though they're friendlier to natural resources, they're subject to the same pushes and pulls. But I'm much more optimistic than before."

Others say it's time to move on. "People are resigned to it," Mr. Davis said. "They're making alternative plans. We
don't want to live on the false illusion that it's all going to be OK tomorrow."

Mr. Kempthorne predicts a future in which most logging on national forests is tied to forest health.

"It probably won't be cutting for the sake of cutting — it'll be for clearing the fuel load on the national
forests," he said. "The facts now prove that if we don't reduce the fuel load, we'll continue to see the forests
blackened."

Even if the Bush administration were able to swing public opinion back in favor of logging, override the appeals
process and bring logs back to the mills tomorrow, it might not be enough for some towns.

"The pendulum is probably going to swing back, but for a lot of these towns, it's too late," said Mr. Bliss, the former
millworker and union representative. "There's never going to be another sawmill in Horseshoe Bend or Cascade — it would cost $50 million in today's dollars to build it."

For anyone who lives in these woods, however, it doesn't take much to restore their faith in the forest's ability to
provide for them.

"You drive out five minutes in any direction and you're in forest," Cascade School Principal Bill Leaf said. "My father
logged the same lands that my grandfather was logging with a horse and teams. It's been here for generations and it's
still beautiful land. It hasn't been pilfered."

[Ron Wenrich]

You could have written the same type of article about timbering in the Northeast 100 years ago.  But, the problem was over harvesting.

There are hundreds of ghost towns in the northeast.  Timber created several as well as boom towns in coal and oil.  Vast areas were set to agriculture, and later abandoned as more productive lands were developed in the Midwest.

The reason that most states developed Forestry departments was for fire control.  It was never expected that there would be a timbering industry ever again.  But, times change.

The tariffs on Canadian imports do little to help the situation on either side of the border.  Canadians lose their jobs, or export their wood to Japan, which is in deep recession.  The void of their wood in our markets is filled by Scandanavian countries.  So, no one wins.

Another thing that the Canadians are doing is very long term management.  One guy was talking about 400 year management plans.  The US continues to lag in intelligent forest management.

Charmin has converted all of their mills over to using South American processed pulp.  That has hurt mills all over the US.  It won't change since they own plantations in South America and processing costs are cheaper.

[L. Wakefield]

   Well- I didn't use Charmin before. Don't see any reason here to start, either.

  I like the idea of that 400-year plan. Here I was thinking 50-year was a joke compared to my present age-  Any webrefs on that one?   lw

[CHARLIE]

Note: Duluth is on the shores of Lake Superior in northeastern Minnesota. Grand Marais is also on the shores of Lake Superior about a 2 hour drive from Duluth and about 45 minute drive to the Canadian border.  Superior, Wisconsin is just across the St. Louis River from Duluth, Minnesota.  

Timber industry in tough times by Craig Lincoln
DULUTH, Minn.- Dave Johnson runs his logging equipment as much as possible these days, but it's getting tougher and tougher to earn enough to pay for it.
    The warm weather lingering into December didn't help--his most profitable logging comes off frozen ground--but that may be one of his smaller worries as the winter wears on.
    A bigger problem is the price of trees to cut. Aspen, for example, costs four to five times as much as it did a decade ago.
    And the mills he sells to are selling their paper and chip board for as much as 15% less than last year.
    They're trying to cut the prices they pay for wood, Johnson said, as he tries to keep his 7 person operation afloat.
    "In these conditions, it's a struggle," he said.
    He isn't alone. The entire timber industry is in a squeeze between higher prices for logs and lower prices for paper, lumber and boards.
    That squeeze is making the future of northern Minnesota's wood products companies---from loggers to mills to their suppliers--more uncertain than at any time in recent years.
    "This is certainly one of the most significant economic downturns we've seen in the last 10 or 15 years," said Wayne Brandt, executive vice president of the Minnesota Timber Producers, an industry organization.
    The impacts have been visible.
    Hedstrom Lumber Co., based in Grand Marais, closed a mill in Two Harbors that employed 40 people. Georgia-Pacific Corp. will close its hardboard plant in Superior (Wisconsin)  where about 120 people were employed.
    Mills, including Potlatch Corp. and Louisiana-Pacific, have announced shutdowns this year to reduce bloated inventories.
    Howard Hedstrom, president of Hedstrom Lumber Co., said the industry's problems aren't unique.
    "We're facing, and have faced, the same issues as mining," he said.
    The U.S. dollar has been stronger than other currencies, making U.S. manufactured goods more expensive.
    In turn, timber companies in other countries have become more efficient.
    Finally, the U.S. industry says it has to comply with more regulations than in other countries and has seen its supply of logs cut back as environmental regulations have become stricter.
    "When it's all said and done, our cost structure is higher than next door," Hedstrom said. His company, based in Grand Marais, competes with Canadian lumber.
    The United States recently imposed tariffs on Canadian wood, saying the country unfairly subsidizes logging.
    But international competition isn't the only problem.
    The price of aspen in the woods has increased from $7 per cord in the early 1990s to about $30 per cord, according to statistics from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the St. Louis County land department.
    Prices for plywood and chip board have gone down about 7% in the past year, according to ForestWeb, a Web site that tracks the forest industry. Paper prices have gone down as much as 17%.
    "We can't continue very long like this where big companies aren't showing any profits, and little companies are losing money," said Chris Hegg, vice president of finance for Hedstrom.
    The stakes are high for the northern Minnesota economy. Timber is one of three industries generally recognized as the biggest in the regional economy, along with taconite and tourism.
    A study earlier this year by the University of Minnesota Duluth and the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs concluded that the industry employs about 8,000 people in Northeastern Minnesota. Its businesses accounted for about 10% of the region's economic output--about twice as much as the national average.
    The industry's problems couldn't  have come at a worse time, Hegg said.
    "The last thing the industry needed was a recession, especially a winter recession," he said. "There's lots of little guys being squeezed out."
    Industry officials see even more changes ahead.
    Neil Nelson of the Natural Resources Research Institute said it's likely companies will keep open bigger mills that they've invested lots of money in.
    But it's also likely the industry will continue to merge and consolidate-- and become more international.            

[Ron Wenrich]

I've read that the biggest problem that will the timber industry will have to face in the near future is the loss of their loggers.  Many independents wil go away, and then mills will have to put on their own crews.  

LW  The guy I talked to was from British Columbia and did lots of work on Crown lands.  They were managing for old growth.  Every 10 years they will go in and do a new inventory and tweek the management plan.  Harvesting is allowed, as well as clearcutting.  Much more intensive than what is done in the States.  

For your neck of the woods, I would imagine 100 year rotations would be the norm for sawtimber.  Down here they talk 75 year rotations, but I think that is too short on high quality sites.

The Germans actually manage different layers of the forest.  They manage the overstory for sawtimber and veneer, and the middle forest layer for fuelwood.  They look at long rotations for the overstory and 20 year rotations for the middle forest.

[L. Wakefield]

snip

    He isn't alone. The entire timber industry is in a squeeze between higher prices for logs and lower prices for paper, lumber and boards.

snip

  OK, my (theoretical) gut feeling here is- if there is a squeeze, step out of the middle.

  What I can't figure out is- how do you do it without going out of business? That's one way to step out, but not the way you want.

  The only thing I can think of is- eliminate the other guys. Do it all yourself. And that takes some kind of megabucks.

  But- it's their squeeze. To get out of it, you kinda have to take over the game.   lw

[Frank_Pender]

That is exactly what I think is happening between Weyrhouser  and Willamette Industries. One trying to eliminate the competition from the other.  And, when it happens watch out for the closures and cutbacks.  For us wee little guys (one  or two Person operations)  I do not see me trying to buy either of them out not trying to buy out other one man operations.    What I do see is a "stepping out" into the  world of creative thing and imagination.   Value added types of actions or very special kinds of markets for special kinds of cut dimensional lumber.  

[Tillaway]

Frank,

I've heard The Weyco top executive has it out for Willamette.  Seems he used to work for them and thinks he was unfairly let go.  Now he is in a position to get some payback. I think that is part of lunacy going on between them.

California has more area in forest land than Oregon, I belive, and I can only think of 15 different companies operating saw or veneer mills down here now with a total of about 25 to 30 more or less actual mills.  The only paper mill in the state shut down about 3 or 4 months ago.  There is still one pulp mill operating on the coast.

Two companies own the bulk of them so it has always been tough to get good competitive bids for your logs.  Now they are able to meet their demand for logs off their own lands which means that we haven't been able to sell a log profitably for over a year now.  Most of the owners we work for have been filing extensions for their current timber harvest plans and no one interested in any new ones.  This means that I haven't been real busy this year and boy does the bank account show it.

[Frank_Pender]

  You are correct about the hard feelings.  And too, for use in this area feel that the competition will cease even more if the takeover occurs.   the Big Boys will be better able to call the shots on what the prices will be from private land owners.  that is where people like myself are beginning to have some inroads for our services.

[Tillaway]

Hey Frank,
I was wondering how a small milling operation such as yours fared back about 5 or 6 years ago during that hot export market.  The big domestic mills were scrambling for wood and all the small land owners were selling to the exporters ( camp run at $900+ ).  

[Frank_Pender]

Tillaway,  During that time I was cuting on two separate house jobs. I was BUSY to say the least.  I have been as busy as I want to be most any time.  

[BCCrouch]

I'd venture to say that most of you have more first hand experience in the ups and downs of the forest products industry.  If you had your druthers, what would you do to rectify the rather miserable situation faced by our industry?  The schools keep on churning out foresters year after year--how would you orchestrate things to ensure thatCAREER-quality employment opportunities do not go the way of the mammoth? :-/

[Ron Wenrich]

We need a more pro-active professional organization.  The SAF just doesn't cut it.  They have allowed the forestry profession to be sold out.  Areas that are in the realm of the forester has been allowed to be taken over by engineers, real estate appraisers, and just about anyone who wants to be called a forester.  They have done a poor job at showing the difference between a forester and a logger.

We need an organization that is sensitive to the demands of private landowners, at least here in the east.  Schools continue to churn out foresters that are geared to government services.  The trouble is, governments haven't been hiring for a number of years, and when they do they get non-foresters to handle many of the roles.  Schools also need to get a few foresters in the system that have actually done the work.

Foresters have been pushed down to the technician role.  Basically, there are two types of jobs for foresters - cruise timber or find something else.  In some areas, foresters also get to plant trees.  

Foresters are capable of doing a lot of planning.   There should be a forester at every county level to handle some of the planning and zoning problems.  Forest managment and cutting techniques are better handled at the local government level, rather than the state or federal government setting policy.  Most local governments use their engineers to set zoning standards.  Consultants could really fill the void.

We have to get beyond the point of how many board feet and what's it worth to how do we grow good quality wood while preserving community values.  Then, we may stand a chance of getting some quality oversight of forest management.

[Tillaway]

Amen... I was working on a USFS contract where the inspector had a degree in Recreation and Natural Resource Management.  She had never had anything to do with Forestry before being our inspector.  We needed some Forest Engineering input regarding some unit layouts and she had no idea what we were talking about.

Out here in Kalifornia you have to be a Registered Professional Forester to sign Harvest Plans.  This means you have to pass a rather nasty written test to get a license.   The trouble is with the way things are set up, you act more as a Paralegal than a Forester.

The Forestry schools out West are seeing declining enrollment and have been for years.  Forestry is now considered a dying occupation.