By: James Ronald Skains
Journal Correspondent

Columbus, Mississippi
Loggers from six southern states gathered on February 8 at the Plymouth Bluff Conference Center near Columbus, Mississippi for a "Loggers Crisis Roundtable," sponsored by Mississippi State University School of Forestry. There were plenty of questions and complaints, but no answers were forthcoming.

The Roundtable of Forestry and was hosted by Dr. Bill Stuart and Dr. Laurie Grace. Dr. Doug Richards, Director of the Department of Forestry for the University welcomed some 40 loggers and associates to the Conference Center located on the navigable Tombigbee River. Dr. Grace, who studied the Swedish logging industry in detail during graduate studies while living in Sweden, characterized the southern U.S. logging industry as the `invisible industry.'

"If you are not counted, you don't count," Dr. Grace told those assembled. "That is part of the dilemma facing the American logging industry today. For too many years, the economic impact of the logging and forestry industry has been under-counted in government census and economic reports. The government needs to be aware of the economic impact created by logging."

In a presentation to the loggers at the conference, which included Piney Woods loggers Travis Taylor, Mickey Hawkins, Kevin Hawkins, Tony Lavespere and Clyde Todd, Director of the Louisiana Logging Council, Dr. Grace pointed out that, "Logging is local but the markets are global."

Dr. Bill Stuart, former professor of forestry at Virginia Tech before moving to MSU a few years ago, pointed out, "The logging industry in particular and the forest industry in general is in transition."

"A wall of wood is coming onto the market with no place to go," Dr. Stuart noted. "We already have an abundance of timber growing in pine plantations. What the impact of the U.S. Forest Service plans to begin thinning for fire protection will have on the market, we don't know. There is no expanding market for either wood or logs." In a recent interview with the Piney Woods Journal, Secretary of Interior Gale Norton who is spear-heading the National Wildland Urban Interface Fire Protection Plan said, "We are not sure what impact this influx of timber will have on the forest products manufacturing industry. We are doing an economic impact study on this issue."

"However," Secretary Norton added, "the Bush Administration is committed to preventing catastrophic wild fires in the future by reducing available fuel for fires on federal lands. We are also aggressively looking for new uses for wood through our Forest Products Research Labs. We also believe that wood can be an excellent source of bio-mass for producing energy."

'We are seeing a lot of consolidations of operations, mill closures, land sales with TIMOS, forest re-fragmentation, and significant changes in equipment, insurance, and finance industry that affects our industry," Dr. Stuart explained. "The forces that are driving these changes are outsourcing procurement, inventory management, E-trading, contractor-mill relations, the public perception of forestry, logging and the forest industry."

Bill Jones, a longtime member of the Board of Directors of the Alabama Loggers group and active on the national level with the American Logging Council, echoed the points presented by Dr. Grace and Dr. Stuart by relating the changes taking place in the Alabama logging and forest industries.

"Employment in the Alabama logging industry has decreased by 22% in just the last three years. Alabama, like many other southern states, has seen severe drops in severance tax from the forest industry and all those states are facing dire budget deficits."

"In regard to projected timber coming on to the market from the Forest Service and Department of Interior lands in the western states, this is going to present a very serious problem," Jones added. "There is very little forest industry infrastructure left in those Western states to handle any significant volume of timber. Most sawmills and plywood mils have been closed and scrapped."

At the Logging Crisis conference, Buck Beach, longtime Mississippi logging contractor based in Natchez also pointed out, "We have seen some tough times in the logging industry before but nothing like this. The forest industry manufacturers have no idea any better than we do of how to solve this problem of loss of markets for our products. They have cut their costs and budgets just like the loggers have had to do to stay in business." Beach concluded by saying, "We are going to have to be smart enough to solve these problems or we are all going to be out of business soon. This could be a very positive time for the forest industry if we can find other uses for trees. But to do that, loggers are going to have to change their attitude from, `I ain't got time to help' and being too concerned about the details of life."

Piney Woods logger Travis Taylor, who is also President of the Louisiana Logging Council, told those attending the meeting, "The biggest problem that we have is imported lumber and plywood. It seems that these NAFTA and GATT trade agreements have really devastated the logging industry."

"A lot of people know about the lumber being imported from Canada but few people seem to know about the lumber coming in from South America and Europe," Taylor explained. "Right in the heart of the Louisiana Forest industry, you can buy lumber grown and manufactured in Germany, Austria, and Sweden for about the same money as you can buy lumber from the Piney Woods of Louisiana."

Taylor also noted, "According to my information, about 57% of the lumber used in the United States is imported. That is a real shame. We've had the biggest and longest building boom in our history which should have meant good times for the forest industry, but for the past few years we've had sawmills, plywood mills, and loggers going out of business by the dozens each month."

According to government data, starts on single-family houses in December 2002 were the highest level since 1978. Housing starts rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.835 million units during December from an upwardly revised 1.747 million rate in November. Interest rates are at a 40-year low.

Dr. Stuart of MSU also pointed out, "It seems that the only wiggle room in the forest industry is the stumpage prices, since the mills and loggers have cut their budgets to the bone already just to stay in business."

"However, to drive down stumpage prices further doesn't seem to be a feasible solution to the problem," Dr. Stuart explained. "Although we do know that a significant amount of the wealth in the southern states is in the form of timberland, we don't know the exact amount. However, we do know that forestry is already the lowest economic use of the land."

Danny Dructor, former East Texas logger and now Executive Director of the American Logging Council, echoed the severity of the problems in the logging industry and the supply of timber. Dructor noted, "We are finding that pine plantation owners in East Texas are already having difficulty in finding loggers and markets for their wood."

"We have to go on the offense in every facet of our industry," Dructor emphasized. "Being on the defensive only means that we can prevent some things from happening but we can't solve problems always being on the defense for our logging industry."

Crad James, Executive Director of the South Carolina Loggers Association stated, "We can't do more for less no matter how good we are at logging. There seems to be a real disconnect between harvesting timber and the manufacturing of the timber."

James also noted, "By working closely with the South Carolina Transportation Department we have gotten some relief for loggers. We have emphasized having safe log trucks on the roads and the Department of Transportation has worked with us on that, Dr. Laurie Grace of MSU Forestry School also pointed out the attitude of many Mississippi loggers, "If no one knows I'm here, no one complains. Also, for financial reasons, some loggers believe it is best to maintain a low profile, a `lay low' attitude. Even here in Mississippi, where we have held 430 workshops for loggers, we still don't know who half the loggers in the state are."

"This low profile has resulted in the logging industry becoming an invisible industry and a loss of political power. Loggers would rather talk to trees than reporters or the general public," Dr. Grace explained. "Politically, with the lay low attitude and undercount in government data, no one knows the dollar value of logging to the local economy, state and federal governments. The logging industry is woefully lacking in political activism."

Tony Lavespere, one of the Piney Woods loggers in attendance related a personal experience in regard to Dr. Grace's "lay low attitude." "We have for many years given money to the local school, but we didn't want anyone to know that we did give money. And consequently, since we didn't tell anyone, no one knows about our efforts."

Dr. Stuart concluded his presentation by emphasizing several key points. "The supply chain in the forest industry is rather long, landowners, loggers, manufacturers, products, and customer. The responsibility of every business in the supply chain is to earn a profit for their owners and to protect and grow their equity," Dr. Stuart stated. "However, our markets are out of balance. They will either correct or destruct. This turmoil that we are in can either be the beginning of the end or a new beginning."

Although the Southern State loggers are faced with many challenges, their challenges don't seem to quite reach the severity of the challenge now facing loggers in North Central Maine around the city of Millinocket. Great Northern Paper Company which employed 1,130 people directly at its pulp and paper mills in the area filed for bankruptcy on January 9, laid off 1,100 employees and shut the mill down except for certain key bare-necessity maintenance activities.

Observers say that prospects for anyone returning to work in the foreseeable future are dim. The GNP mill, which provided jobs indirectly for thousands of people in northern Maine, has turned to the State of Maine for financial help. According to news reports, the state is experiencing a period of financial hardship and may not have the resources to fund a bailout.

However, many central and northern Maine loggers are not only faced with a loss of a market for their wood but also staggering losses due to GNP filing bankruptcy. Published reports in the area note that several of the larger logging contractors in the Great Northern procurement radius are out about $500,000 apiece in round numbers for timber they had bought from landowners, cut and delivered to Great Northern Paper but were never paid for. Smaller logging contractors also lost lesser amounts in the GNP January bankruptcy filing.

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