State logging report shows county falling behind growth rate of remainder of region

Jackson County’s timber producers are lagging behind the rest of Western Oregon counties now better equipped to supply a housing boom that has spurred the region’s highest logging levels since the early 1990s.

Private and government-held forestlands in Western Oregon produced 3.8 billion board feet of timber in 2004, driven largely by a strong U.S. housing market and favorable interest rates, according to a report released Thursday by the Oregon Department of Forestry.

That marks an 11 percent hike from 2003 and the highest total harvest since 1992, when these 19 counties west of the Cascades pumped 4 billion board feet of timber into the wood-products industry, the reports show.

The spike is fueled largely by a 60 percent increase in timber cut from Western Oregon’s smaller, non-commercial private lands, which are taking advantage of demand for construction supplies.

But Jackson County’s small wood-lot owners saw logging increases of less than half that. And there was a nearly 10 percent dip in harvest on the county’s larger industrial holdings.

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The likely reason, timber industry executives say, is that there are fewer Jackson County mills available to increase shifts to boost production enough to meet spikes in market demand.

That appears to be the opposite in Lane County, where more than half a billion board feet of cut timber in 2004 kept its reign as Oregon’s largest timber-producing county.

"We don’t have the facilities to manufacture wood here like we used to," said Dave Schott, executive secretary of the Medford-based Southern Oregon Timber Industries Association. "They do in the Willamette Valley. They can run three shifts and kick it out like spaghetti, and they do."

Former Rogue Valley timber staples such as KOGAP, the Medford Corp. and Burrill Lumber Co. are long gone, but those that remain have fared well in recent years.

"We might not have had the jump in production that other areas have, but I look at last year as a great year," said Russ McKinley, procurement manager at Boise Cascade.

"We had a great year, in terms of product that got on railroad cars and shipped to market," McKinley said.

Last year’s logging levels are detailed in the Oregon Department of Forestry’s Annual Timber Harvest Report, which state foresters released Thursday.

The statewide timber harvest hit 4.45 billion board feet last year, up 450 million board feet from 2003. Logging levels also remain dominated by Western Oregon forestlands.

Only three of Oregon’s 36 counties saw logging declines in 2004, with Tillamook and Clatsop counties seeing slight declines.

Two-thirds of all Oregon logging is done on industrial lands held by timber companies. In Jackson County, however, industrial forests account for three-fourths of all logging.

The 2004 drop in logging on industrial forests could be as simple as a shift after higher salvage logging in 2003, said McKinley, who managed Boise Cascade’s timber holdings last year.

Small wood-lot owners in Jackson County accounted for less than 13 percent of the overall harvest here, but the cut was more than one-fourth higher than in 2003.

The increase in logging on these small private parcels is a "general reflection of the market going up," said Dan Thorpe, the state’s Southwest Oregon District forester.

"That’s everything from someone with two trees in the back yard that are dying to people who harvest a little bit every year," Thorpe said. "Basically, if the market’s good, they sell."

Harvest levels on Forest Service land in Jackson County increased by 38 percent in 2003 while logging on Bureau of Land Management lands was slashed by more than half. However, both levels remain far below their historic logging levels here.

BLM plans forum, field trip to explain thinning project

Bureau of Land Management personnel will talk about their Plantation Thin stewardship project from 10 a.m. to noon at the group shelter at Hyatt Lake recreation area. A field trip to the area will follow, and end by 2 p.m.

Congress created stewardship projects as one way to restore forest health while meeting local communities’ economic needs. Contracts for stewardship projects allow those who perform the work to keep forest products in exchange for the work they perform, such as thinning green trees and removing dead trees.

The Plantation Thin project involves thinning 124 acres of forest land about 14 miles east of Ashland on the Dead Indian Plateau. The meeting will provide potential contractors with an opportunity to ask questions about the project and get information from BLM specialists.

BLM designed the project to reduce fire danger by thinning dense trees. Whoever wins the contract will be thinning dense stands of pine, fir and cedar, planting new trees, and renovating roads.

BLM has created several other stewardship projects in Southern Oregon: Penny Stew and Bobar, both in the Applegate watershed.

Call Mark Freeman at 776-4470; e-mail mfreeman@mailtribune.com