Read 'em and Weep

When Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz was in Coeur d’Alene on April 7 for a public lands collaborative conference, he emphasized the importance of active forest management — timber harvesting and prescribed burning — in western National Forests.

In tandem, he emphasized the importance of recruiting new capital investments in logging and wood processing.

It may be too late for Montana’s seven National Forests and what is left of the state’s slowly collapsing forest products industry.

Mortality Is Outrunning Growth

Mortality exceeds growth on six of seven National Forests in the state. More than 4.8 billion board feet die annually on about 15 million National Forest acres. This is according to on-the-ground survey data developed by the Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis team in Ogden, Utah.

Annual gross growth on the 2.2-million-acre Kootenai National Forest in northwest Montana is about 363 million board feet. Subtract removals and mortality, and net growth is about 500 million board feet.

Not much compared to the 4.8 billion board feet that die annually on the other six National Forests in Montana.

Meantime, what is left of Montana’s timber industry is on the verge of collapse.

How can this be? Shouldn’t they be harvesting at least some of the 4.8 billion feet that die annually? Maybe even investing their profits in sawmill modernization or more advanced logging systems?

Not a chance.

Timber in Limbo

About 237 million board feet of Forest Service timber are tied up in lawsuits filed by anti-forestry activists. That is enough timber to build about 17,000 average-sized, three-bedroom homes.

Add in 6.4 million acres of National Forest timber in Montana set aside in no-harvest/no-road-building reserves under the 2001 Roadless Rule, and Treasure State mills and loggers are in limbo on between 300 and 370 million board feet of timber.

But who’s counting? Samuel Scott is — and so is his colleague, Lauren Sampson.

It is their job. Scott is a forest economist within the Forest Industry Research program at the University of Montana’s widely respected Bureau of Business and Economic Research. Sampson is a research associate.

Scott focuses on forest industry employment, economic impacts, and statistical timber appraisals. He recently traveled to nine Montana communities with a PowerPoint presentation he developed that quantifies the near collapse of what is left of the state’s logging and wood products manufacturing sectors.

Sampson does similar work, but exclusively for Montana. Scott’s work takes him to several states for which BBER does research and consulting work.

Read Scott’s PowerPoint and Sampson’s latest report:

Read ’em and Weep

Despite Forest Service efforts to breathe new life into the 80-year-old Federal Sustained Yield Act, there will be no new capital investments in Montana’s forest products sector until Congress musters the political courage to deep-six the much-abused Equal Access to Justice Act [EAJA].

EAJA has become a very lucrative feeding ground for litigious lawyers representing anti-forestry activists. An Oregon judge recently handed them $265,000 in taxpayer money in a case involving a proposed BLM timber sale.

Congress needs to replace EAJA with baseball-style binding arbitration:
You bring your best forest management idea, and we’ll bring ours. Three arbitration judges will decide which idea best complies with the current forest plan for the impacted National Forest.

Sue and Settle

Sue and settle is an insult to stakeholder collaborative groups that voluntarily contribute hundreds of hours of their personal time to helping the Forest Service develop project plans that solve environmental problems.

Anti-forestry activists refuse to collaborate because collaboration blows up their sue-and-settle business model.

Until Congress fixes this mess, publicly owned forests will continue to die and burn. The environmental damage to forests, fish and wildlife habitat, and recreation opportunity gets worse every year.

Meantime, the Grim Reaper is fast approaching what is left of Montana’s once-robust forest products industry.

We document this tragedy in Which Montana do you want?- an Evergreen Magazine report we completed last summer.

Survival Mode Is Not a Strategy

The Which Montana? report was intended to be funded by what remains of Montana’s forest products industry.

It was not. Evergreen became the largest funder.

That fact should trouble every mill owner, logger, forester, county commissioner, and community leader who understands what is at stake.

No one needs to lecture people who are already fighting to keep mills running, loggers working, and payrolls met.

But there is no way around the larger truth: survival mode has narrowed the industry’s field of vision at the very moment it needs to widen.

Survival mode is understandable, but it is not a strategy.

If Montana’s forest products sector cannot help tell the story of its own collapse — and the path out of it — others will tell that story for them. And they will not tell it accurately.

Public education is not a luxury. Policy communication is not a side project. Telling the truth before the last mill goes quiet is part of the work.

Because if the industry does not invest in its own future, it should not be surprised when that future is decided by people who have never set foot in a mill, walked a sale unit, or signed the front of a payroll check.

Montana’s forest products industry is teetering on the brink of total collapse.

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Montana and the Senate Power Base

Montana has never had a U.S. senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Currently, 25 Republicans and 19 Democrats serve on the committee. They are the ones who interview presidential judicial nominees — including Supreme Court nominees — and advance approved nominees to the full U.S. Senate.

Floor debate follows and ends via cloture, which requires a simple 51-vote majority and a final confirmation vote. If there is a tie, it is broken by the Vice President, who is constitutionally empowered to preside over the 100-member Senate.

The nation’s balance of power resides in the Senate and Article II, Section I of the Constitution. Article II was modified in 1804 to require members of the Electoral College to cast separate votes for President and Vice President.

The College thus became Ground Zero in the political battle less populous states have long waged against more populous states. It is why Democrats want to replace the Electoral College with a popular vote that would guarantee less populous states lose their means of defending House spending bills that are key to active management of federally owned forests.

James E. Murray and Sustained Yield

The closest Montana has ever come to the 100-vote Senate power base came when the late Senator James E. Murray, a Butte Democrat and staunch labor supporter, chaired the Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee from 1951 until 1961.

The former Butte lawyer served in the U.S. Senate from 1934 to 1961.

It was Murray who killed the Cooperative Sustained Yield Act because it would have killed the opportunity for small, family-owned sawmills to bid on National Forest timber. One such cooperative unit would have made it impossible for small mills in Libby and Troy to bid on Kootenai National Forest timber sales.

Don’t confuse the Cooperative proposal with the Federal Sustained Yield Act the Forest Service is currently attempting to revive in several Montana counties.

The cooperative version would have legalized a federal timber monopoly controlled by the largest postwar industrial timberland owners in the West. Had Senator Murray not intervened, the West’s family-owned sawmills could not have gained a foothold in federal timber sold following World War II.

Senator Murray died in 1961, three months after his final term ended. It is safe to say he would not recognize the political upheaval that divides our nation today.

What Happens Next?

Steve Daines, Montana’s senior senator, has represented Montanans well during his 11-plus years in the Senate. But I suspect the chasm that now separates Republicans from Democrats is one reason he announced his retirement in March.

That leaves Tim Sheehy, whose current U.S. Senate term does not expire until January 2031. He certainly understands why Montana’s National Forests and the state’s forest products industry are collapsing in unison.

Would the Republican Conference Committee advance his name to the Senate Judiciary Committee?

I don’t know.

But Montana needs someone on that committee who understands that federal judges are no longer distant figures in black robes. They are often the final decision-makers in disputes that determine whether timber is harvested, mills stay open, forests are restored, or communities are left to wait for the next fire.

The Judiciary Committee matters because judges matter. And judges matter because litigation has become one of the most powerful forces shaping the future of federally owned forests in the West.

First, Republicans need to strengthen their razor-thin voting margins in the House and Senate in November.

Then they need to ask a harder question: if Montana’s forests, mills, loggers, and rural communities are paying the price for decades of litigation, why shouldn’t Montana have a seat at the table where the next generation of federal judges is vetted?

That would not fix everything.

But it would be a start.