■ TO OUR READERS: The Chronicle aims to spotlight key policy issues affecting life in our communities. We’ll utilize subject-matter experts to help readers better understand the complexities and options around key policy decisions. Read Joseph’s last column here.
On March 1, the U.S. President issued an Executive Order calling for increasing domestic timber production from Federal lands to support American manufacturing, create jobs, help reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, and lower the price of lumber to build homes.
Does that sound like a national policy you can support?
The U.S. is the largest consumer of wood products in the world. Collectively, Americans use 10-15 billion cubic feet of wood each year in the form of wood, paper products, and wood energy. This means, on average, every person in the U.S. – you and me – uses about 640 pounds of wood per year or 1.75 pounds per day.
The U.S. is also the largest importer of wood products in the world. We import 30% of our wood product needs each year – about $25 billion worth – from dozens of countries worldwide, primarily Canada, China, Brazil, and Mexico. We also import wood products from Russia.
One common misconception is that most of America’s wood fiber, and thus lumber, comes from our national forests managed by the U.S. Forest Service.
In reality, while the Forest Service is the largest land manager of forests in the country (the American public is the largest land owner), our public forests produce a fraction of our wood fiber and lumber needs.
Most of our wood products come from privately managed forests.
Here are the numbers:
• The U.S. has approximately 800 million acres of forestland.
• About 145 million – or 19% – of those acres are managed by the U.S. Forest Service.
• Of that 19 % of U.S. forestland, only one-third of our national forests is available for timber harvests.
• In comparison, 65% is designated for non-timber uses, such as wilderness and other areas set aside for protection.
A small fraction
According to the Forest Service, one-half of 1% of national forest lands is harvested for timber each year. The logging in this minuscule percentage of national forests is the focus of protests and lawsuits by anti-forestry groups.
Over the last decade, Oregon “environmental” groups have been responsible for more than 40% of all forest management lawsuits in the country. The Forest Service is one of the most litigated agencies in the federal government. Lawsuits often add years to any forest management and logging projects.
On average, the Forest Service takes 3.6 years to complete necessary environmental paperwork before beginning mechanical treatments on national forest lands. This includes critical thinning and fuel reduction projects to reduce wildfire risks to communities and infrastructure. The timeline increases to 5.3 years if a more extended analysis (called an Environmental Impact Statement) is required.
Focusing on Oregon, half of the state is forested (30 million acres), and the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management manage 60% of Oregon’s forests (18 million acres). The Northwest Forest Plan, which was designed and implemented in the 1990s, restricts sustained-yield timber harvests to less than 15% of our national forests in Western Oregon.
Incredibly, Oregon’s Federal forests grow 1.5 billion cubic feet per year.
To visualize this, it is the amount of wood you could fit in 1.3 million shipping containers. Currently, the Forest Service harvests 8% of Oregon’s annual forest growth. Mortality offsets another 35% of annual forest growth.
On Oregon’s Federal lands, we harvest less than a quarter of what dies in the forest yearly. This does not include the impact of wildfires.
Oregon’s struggles
During the Labor Day fires in 2020, more than 1 million acres of forests burned. More timber was burned in the Labor Day fires than was sold by the Forest Service over a decade.
Yet Oregon is still the country’s No. 1 producer of lumber and plywood. Oregon produces more than 6 billion board feet of lumber annually, or 17% of the U.S. production. We also produce about 2.3 billion square feet of plywood, or 28% of the U.S. production.
Despite managing 60% of Oregon’s forestland, Federal lands contribute only 14% of the fiber used to achieve Oregon’s preeminence in wood-product manufacturing.
Private forestlands provide the rest.
It is also important to note that logs from Federal lands cannot be exported by law. They must be processed domestically.
Logs from private forestlands can be exported.
Common-sense goals
The Executive Order is strongly supported by the forest products industry, loggers, and forested communities. Groups like mine believe it provides common-sense goals and policy priorities that, if implemented, can be a net positive for the American worker, our forests, and our conservation values.
Oregon is positioned to be a national model for expanding American manufacturing, creating American jobs, and producing renewable American wood products under the world’s strongest environmental and labor laws. By doing a better job of stewarding the 18 million acres of Federal forests in Oregon – including reducing the size and costs of catastrophic wildfires – we can limit our reliance on foreign countries to meet our growing demand for wood products and help address our housing crisis.
The Order prompts important environmental questions about our Federal forests. For some, these questions are uncomfortable: Where should our wood products come from, and who should make them?
Travis Joseph is a Springfield resident and the president and CEO of the American Forest Resource Council. He contributes to The Chronicle on timber inudstry policies. Contact him at: [email protected].
