Is Southern Oregon still cutting down its old growth / ancient forests?

[Nell Plotts]

Frankly I do not care who buys the logs harvested to thin the forests although I prefer that they be milled locally. If our mills cannot pay as much as other buyers so be it. I want to keep our forests healthy.

[Larry Caldwell]

Originally Posted by PNW-type-gal

Except that there isn't a (growing) domestic market for finished lumber, not with new housing starts barely creeping up. Existing home sales are doing well, but I saw a stat yesterday that there were 5.1 million houses sold last year and 429,000 were new homes. So the upswing in the last year of home sales doesn't really translate to booming timber, particularly not until we work through the shadow foreclosure market supply.

So raw logs are going overseas rather than going to local mills because the Chinese (the main buyer) aren't interested in buying finished product from us, not when they can buy raw and add value THERE, to the benefit of their citizens. And Canada sells raw logs to China cheaper than we do, so we are only the #3 supplier of raw logs to China (Russia is #2).

This is not true. I logged my place in 2013 because they offered $740 per thousand board feet. That's the best log prices we have seen since the '90s. They were trucked three miles to the mill, where they were manufactured into finished lumber. Currently the lumber futures market is higher than it has been in years, and is still rising. I think I heard that Rough 'n Ready has reopened their mill in Cave Junction, probably because conditions have returned that promise a profit.

The export market for Oregon logs has always been a very specialized area. Asians are interested in buying old growth with no knots for finish lumber. Either that, or they want cheap pine for chopsticks, but as you note, the Russians have that market sewed up. Like the USA, most of the rest of the world has switched to engineered wood products for beams and joists. They can be manufactured out of small logs.

[Larry Caldwell]

Originally Posted by leftwinghillbilly

People are not having a million babies anymore. They are putting their resources into fewer, high quality raised children. The only people cranking out babies cannot afford to buy houses, they are on the dole. This is good for the forests of Oregon.

Somebody is having a million babies. The US population was 300 million in 2007, and it's 317 million today. That's 17 million people in just 7 years. They have to live somewhere, if not houses then in apartments and other rentals.

If you look at the demographics, GenX was smaller, but the Millennials outnumber the Boomers. People do reduce the number of children during hard times, but the babies being born today will not be relevant to the housing market for another 30 years, roughly 2045.

The public forests of Oregon are approaching a crisis point. Just on O&C lands, timber is growing seven times as fast as it is being harvested. The national forests are doing even worse, with harvesting there being virtually shut down. Trees are starting to choke out the wildlife and destroy the ecology. Massive wildfires are generally doing wildlife a favor, but the Biscuit Fire destroyed over 30% of all old growth habitat in the state. Active management of federal lands would minimize damages, but the property owner unfortunately lives in Washington DC and has never set foot on the land.

[Nell Plotts]

And they have caved to the theories of environmentalists not science.

[ManiaCat]

Actually, most of Oregon is high desert. Check out eastern Oregon east of the Cascades. Not much there but lots of high desert.

[pdxMIKEpdx]

The public forests of Oregon are approaching a crisis point. Just on O&C
lands, timber is growing seven times as fast as it is being harvested. The
national forests are doing even worse, with harvesting there being virtually
shut down. Trees are starting to choke out the wildlife and destroy the ecology.
Massive wildfires are generally doing wildlife a favor, but the Biscuit Fire
destroyed over 30% of all old growth habitat in the state. Active management of
federal lands would minimize damages, but the property owner unfortunately lives
in Washington DC and has never set foot on the land.

All you bleeding heart "Save the Forest" types ought to listen to this.
It's not old growth natural forests anymore.
Fifty years (or more) ago, all those old growth trees either burned down or were harvested and re-planted.
What Oregon has now is "managed" forests.
Not a bunch of old growth forests that need to be "saved".
It's at the point now where they need to be managed by dedicated forestry professionals, not managed by urban emotions.

Yeah I know it sucks, but that's the cold hard truth.

Get over the Disneyland Bambi koombaya tree hugger crap and face reality.