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its mills, conservation groups predictably came under siege for their role in litigating timber sales.
Some were quick to push back against the notion that they should shoulder the blame for the chilling e ect on National Forest logging, while others said they were accustomed to being scapegoated for the timber industry’s woes.
Keith Hammer, chair of the Swan View Coalition, said he’s been hearing the same rhetoric for more than 30 years, both as an environmental activist and as a logger.
“Industry tries to paint those of us who are involved in environmental or conservation work as a bunch of grano- la-crunching know-nothings who can’t nd our way around the woods or the in- dustry. And that is not the case,” Hammer said. “A lot of us got involved because we saw a lot of bad stu rsthand.”
Although lawsuits led by groups like Swan View Coalition have stalled timber sales while the U.S. Forest Service ad- dresses environmental impacts, they’ve never stopped a sale from eventually moving forward.
“I’ve never known a single timber sale that in the end didn’t go through in some form,” Hammer said. “You get some adjustments made on the most egre- gious parts of it, but you get the timber sale. Litigation rarely means that a tim- ber sale is dead.”
Other environmental groups said it
was disingenuous for Weyerhaeuser to blame a dearth of available timber on federal lands when neither it nor Plum Creek had been actively bidding on fed- eral timber sales.
Neither Plum Creek Timber nor Wey- erhaeuser have bid on timber sales in Kootenai National Forest for nearly a de- cade, said forest Supervisor Chris Savage.
Chip Weber, supervisor of Flathead National Forest, said there have only been two smaller timber sales o ered in Flathead forest since Weyerhaeuser bought Plum Creek.
“I do know they have emphasized har- vesting o their own lands,” Weber said. However, Plum Creek and, subse-
quently, Weyerhaeuser were culling logs from independent loggers, Weber said, some of whom had contracts with the Forest Service.
In the last 40 years, Montana’s timber industry has downsized considerably as wildlife habitat, recreation and other multiple-use considerations have gained management value.
“There has been an awful lot of legis- lation that e ectively cut the size of our suitable timber base and our ability to produce timber,” Weber said.
Lumber production across the state has dropped from a record high of 1.6 bil- lion board feet annually in 1986 to around 600 million last year. The number of saw- mills across the state, from small opera- tions to large facilities, has shrunk from 150 facilities to less than 30. The industry
employment dropped from 10,695 work- ers in 1994 to barely 7,000 a year ago.
A witch’s brew of misfortune has cast a spell on Montana’s timber industry, cre- ating a multifaceted problem that was re- cently compounded by the expiration of the softwood lumber agreement – the Ca- nadian tari put in place in 2006 to bal- ance out the lopsided endeavor of com- peting with cheaper Canadian lumber, which was expected to ood the market in the United States.
Morgan said despite the predictions of industry analysts, that scenario hasn’t played out as expected, due in part to the e ects beetle infestation has had on Ca- nadian timber stands.
While Morgan did not minimize the role that timber supply has played on the industry’s decline in Montana, he said the recovering construction indus- try still hasn’t caught up to generate the same level of demand.
At Weyerhaeuser, the closures of its lumber mill and plywood mill are ex- pected to take place in late August or early September.
Employees at the two mills were given 60-day notices at 3 p.m. on June 22, as required by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act. Company brass explained that workers would have the option of applying for positions at its lumber and plywood mills in Kalispell or its medium-density berboard plant in Columbia Falls. Those mills could absorb about 130 of the 230 employees
a ected by the closures, while 100 jobs would be eliminated.
Meanwhile, an additional 100 jobs will disappear when Weyerhaeuser closes its administrative o ce in Columbia Falls.
Don Leitz, a block-saw operator who has worked at the plywood plant for 28 years, said he was hopeful to nd an- other job with the company, but hope doesn’t relieve the heartburn of being cast into uncertainty.
“You have a job for a lot of years, and it’s a secure feeling,” Leitz said. “And it’s not so secure right now. Plum Creek was good to me for a lot of years. This job sup- ported my family, so I’m going to keep a positive spin on this and hope that it opens some new doors. I’m going to show up to work every day and do my job.”
Ever since the Weyerhaeuser-Plum Creek merger four months ago, mill work- ers have been anticipating cuts, Leitz said; however, they didn’t expect them to come down the pike this soon.
“We knew it was coming, but we didn’t know it was coming this soon,” he said. “I thought I had a year, so it was a hard thing to hear.”
Roady said laying o mill workers and paring back operations is a gut-wrench- ing decision for mill operators, but in the context of the current climate of forest management, it’s a reality.
“I hope I don’t die before I see some improvement of how we manage our fed- eral lands,” he said.
tscott@ atheadbeacon.com
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A division of North Valley Hospital
Joe Go na, LCSW
JUNE 29, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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