Weyerhaeuser plans to permanently close its lumber mill and plywood m

[ruffcutt]

http://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/news/w...-mill-shut-down

[Arlin Eastman]

It seems they own or control a lot of land and I am just wondering if they are not replanting trees fast enough or What really is behind it?

[Stwood_]

Not enough supply for the product demand

[AHill]

I wonder if the drought has anything to do with lack of available lumber. Columbia Falls is in an area of Montana that has suffered some drought. Here in California, the drought is epic. Even with moderate rains this winter, we're still crispy and dry. Wildfires are rampant. I spent last week at Yosemite National Park, and the pine bark beetle infestation is starting to kill a lot of pines. It's sad.

[Bob DeViney]

Not as much timber coming off federal and state lands these days, so a lot of consolidation has been going on for several decades.

IIRC, Weyco is buying [some/all?] Plum Creek Timber. Most of the land holdings of Burlington Northern-Santa Fe originated with the Great Northern. When I was still working, BNSF railroad operations was just part of a much larger conglomerate with Plum Creek (timber), Glacier Park Co (non-timber land), Meridian O&G and Meridian Minerals (minerals other than oil & gas) as wholly owned subsidiaries.

I remember when one of those office supply companies bought Boise-Cascade. They started selling off mills and timberland. It was pitiful when they met with us to propose a land trade. All the foresters, who had spent their lives managing timberlands, sat along the back wall while their new young owners talked about trading away their legacy. The new owners thought in terms of quarterly profits; the old timber guys thought in terms of 25-60 year harvest cycles.

The old foresters just slumped in their chairs, silently watching as the bean-counters talked about dividing up and selling off everything they had spent a lifetime creating. And most, if not all, were second or third generation foresters.

[Martin S.]

Bob is right.

The 1960 Multiple Use and Sustained Yield Act mandated that the National Forests be managed for "wood, water, wildlife, recreation, and range".

The Sierra Club, who thinks any tree harvesting (and regeneration) is evil, has successfully sued the USFS nearly every time they propose a timber cut. I was told 30 years ago that soon the Sierra Club would stop all commercial logging on all the National Forests. Well, they have.

This results in forests that are over mature, and densely crowded with too many trees, with a ladder fuel understory.

Over mature trees are more susceptible to bark beetle infestation. All you need is a good drought to stress the trees, and presto, the bark beetles eat everything in sight.

Now you have standing dead trees, thousands and tens of thousands of acres of them. Next, a lightening fire starts, and mother nature regenerates the forests on her terms, instead of a carefully planned regeneration on our terms.

The national parks are another issue. All cutting is evil there, and always has been. I was in Rocky Mountain National Park a few years ago, and the beetles are well on the way to taking out all the trees there. I would not be surprised if all national parks in the west are in a similar state.

Bob is also right about the bean counters and the foresters. Bean counters are worried about the next quarters stock price, so they can get their bonus. Foresters are worried about the health of the forest for the next 50-100 years.

I had a friend who was a forester in East Texas for Kirby. LP, IIRC, bought them out, and then needed to raise cash, so they sold all the Kirby lands. My friend had to stick around and watch his life's work sold off, so he could collect his severance pay. He wanted to cry every day when he went to work.

Short sightedness is foolish.

We need more forester's, and people with long term vision, and they are both few and far between.

Martin, former forester, BSF and MSF.

[AHill]

I was at Yosemite National Park last week. They are allowing commercial loggers to come in and remove trees infested with bark beetle. We saw plenty of standing dead trees, and plenty of fallen ones. Probably 5-10 trucks a day (just the ones we saw) coming down the mountain with logs as large as 5 feet in diameter. Good, old growth stuff. So, at least for now, the Sierra Club hasn't been successful in removing infested trees. At the rate I saw them removing trees, though, the bark beetle is still winning the battle.

[ianab]

Yes. If you change one thing about how a forest is "balanced" then all sorts of things change. Forest fires and beetles are part of the natural balance. So you suppress forest fires. Understandable because they tend to burn peoples houses etc. But that changes the "balance" in the forest. You get a build up of older and over mature trees, which then get stressed and vulnerable to bug attacks. Too much fuel is then in the forest, and once a fire gets started it's impossible to control.

The bugs and fires are really just trying to restore the balance that humans have tampered with in the first place.

If you don't want them, then you need to find a new "balance", If that's harvesting X% of the trees every decade to remove some of the mature trees, reduce the fuel load, and create space for new regrowth, that's a new (and stable) balance that can be established. A professional forester understands this. A lot of conservation groups don't and assume the all chainsaws are evil.

Result is the bugs and fire step in to restore some sort of balance, in a very drastic way.

Of course different climate / forests, different balance. So what works in one area may not apply some place else.

[AHill]

From the University of Arizona:

"Q: What caused the current bark beetle outbreak?

"A: The current level of bark beetle mortality has resulted from a combination of natural factors including, but not limited to: drought, dense forest stands, shallow/rocky soils, and relatively large quantities of bark beetles. Human activities such as fire suppression, past forest management practices, past grazing practices, and ongoing urbanization also have also contributed to current conditions. These factors all influence the amount of water, light, and nutrients available to individual trees in the forest. Trees not receiving enough of these resources become stressed. Bark beetles can detect stressed, susceptible trees and they respond by colonizing it and effectively removing it from the population. This inadvertently makes a larger quantity of resources available for the surviving trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants."

ianab said:

---

Yes. If you change one thing about how a forest is "balanced" then all sorts of things change. Forest fires and beetles are part of the natural balance. So you suppress forest fires. Understandable because they tend to burn peoples houses etc. But that changes the "balance" in the forest. You get a build up of older and over mature trees, which then get stressed and vulnerable to bug attacks. Too much fuel is then in the forest, and once a fire gets started it's impossible to control.

The bugs and fires are really just trying to restore the balance that humans have tampered with in the first place.

If you don't want them, then you need to find a new "balance", If that's harvesting X% of the trees every decade to remove some of the mature trees, reduce the fuel load, and create space for new regrowth, that's a new (and stable) balance that can be established. A professional forester understands this. A lot of conservation groups don't and assume the all chainsaws are evil.

Result is the bugs and fire step in to restore some sort of balance, in a very drastic way.

Of course different climate / forests, different balance. So what works in one area may not apply some place else.

---

[Admiral]

Hate to sound like a socialist, but the quarter to quarter mentality of corporate owners seeking to meet wall street's "expectations" or the company's own "guidance" in certain situations (like this one) contraindicate the proper management of finite resources. This problem is compounded when "tree huggers" oppose rational plans to properly manage natural resources. How this plays out, I don't know, I'm just an observer at this point.