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COVER
TIMBER CUTS
Weyerhaeuser’s Columbia Falls facilities. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
Mill Closures ‘Heartbreaking,’ but Not Surprising Citing log shortage, Weyerhaeuser will close two mills while workers remain hopeful
BY TRISTAN SCOTT OF THE BEACON
The June 22 announcement that tim- ber giant Weyerhaeuser Company was closing two mills in Columbia Falls and eliminating 100 positions is a gruesome testament to the agging timber indus- try’s struggle to regain footing in the market after decades of decline.
Blaming the closures on the ongo- ing lack of available log supply, company o cials said the decision was di cult but necessary, and denied that it was part of a blueprint for consolidation drawn up when Weyerhaeuser absorbed Plum Creek earlier this year.
But timber executives and forest man- agers say they are not surprised by the cuts for a host of reasons, including an over-re- liance on logging private parcels, a soft market, and the constraints foisted on the beleaguered wood products industry, with the most pointed barbs aimed at a ham- strung National Forest System and the persistent litigation of timber sales, which can stall a project for three to ve years.
“Given the short timber supply and the litigation mess, Weyerhaeuser had to make the decision they made and it did
not surprise me,” Julia Altemus, execu- tive vice president of the Montana Wood Products Association, which promotes the state’s logging industry, said. “It is unfortunate, and I hope it won’t hap- pen to other mills, but without signi - cant changes in forest management it is always a possibility.”
In Northwest Montana, 80 percent of the forests are federal land, while accounting for just 12 percent of the state’s lumber production.
“When you source 12 percent of your wood from 80 percent of the ownership, there is de nitely a problem,” said Chuck Roady, director of F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber in Columbia Falls. “Private lands represent for 20 percent, so they are bear- ing a hugely disproportionate share of the timber harvest. It’s only a matter of time before that catches up to you, and that is why the mills are closing.”
Stoltze is no stranger to cutbacks, and in 2014 was forced to reduce production and lay o employees due to the log-sup- ply shortage, the most signi cant reduc- tion it had incurred in years.
“I am sitting here facing the exact same decisions [as Weyerhaeuser],” Roady said.
“We haven’t run at full-throttle since last year, and these mills are not designed to run at half-throttle. It’s just not e cient, but we don’t have the logs. And what’s most frustrating is that we are sur- rounded by trees. They are everywhere.”
Still, other factors have gured prom- inently into the industry’s decline state- wide and nationally, and forest manag- ers say blaming the mill closures on a shortage of federal timber sales is overly simplistic.
At Plum Creek, an emphasis on liqui- dating its land as real estate and a legacy of unsustainable harvesting practices combined to create a de cit of available timber.
“Certainly we had indicators that these were not sustainable harvesting operations occurring on Plum Creek lands,” said Bob Harrington, forestry division administrator for the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. “They were harvesting far in excess of what was sustainable on those landscapes.”
A decade ago, Plum Creek held 1.3 mil- lion acres of land in Montana, but as a real estate investment trust, the company
also sold or traded more than 500,000 acres for housing, recreation and conser- vation if it was not productive for timber.
“That change in the land base has de - nitely impacted the timber availability. It’s not just the federal issue,” said Todd Mor- gan, director of Forest Industry Research for the University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research.
The company realized signi cant prof- its from land sales as it liquidated prime pieces of real estate, which were subdi- vided for coveted second-home getaways.
Harrington said “a complex sequence of events” combined to stagger the indus- try, and cautioned that rooting out a sin- gle cause or searching for a silver-bullet solution is a fool’s errand.
“Even though the prospect of people losing their jobs is heartbreaking, a lot of us in the profession have seen these indi- cators for a long time, and we’ve known that at some point, something was going to give,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking, but a lot of us saw this coming.”
Immediately following Weyerhaeuser’s announcement that it was closing two of
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JUNE 29, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM