That message Friday from keynote speaker Jim Petersen started a two-day Montana Society of American Foresters conference titled “The Law and Forestry” at the Holiday Inn Parkside in Missoula.
Petersen, of Bigfork, is director of the Evergreen Foundation, a nonprofit forestry research and educational organization.
Many of the shutdowns were the result of a dwindling log supply from federal lands due to appeals and litigation.
“The economic lifeblood of family-owned sawmills is from sales of timber from public lands,” Petersen said.
There are seven family-operated sawmills left in the state that desperately need federal timber, said Petersen. Without it, they'll perish and the infrastructure required to manage forests will disappear, he said.
There has to be a sufficient number of mills with different niches to make a market, he said. The loss of another family mill could push Frenchtown's Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. mill over the edge. And without that Missoula-area mill, Montana's other mills wouldn't have a place to sell their byproducts, said Petersen.
“That's the synergy that holds the state's timber industry together,” he said.
In 2005, there were 475 million board feet of timber under appeal in the U.S. Forest Service's Northern Region. That amount would keep all seven mills running for about a year.
This year, the region's timber sales aren't likely to reach even 90 million board feet, Petersen said. That's slightly less than 10 percent of what's needed to keep the mills running.
At the same time timber supply is being pinched, the need for those products is increasing in this country, he said.
“We want more of it than ever before,” said Petersen. “It just has to come from someplace else, out of sight, out of mind.
“Anywhere but here, any language but English.”
Petersen urged the society's members to start making some noise.
“The organization has been far too quiet,” he said. “It's time to get out in the state and start challenging those who misrepresent or mischaracterize the work that you do.”
Montana Rep. Paul Clark, D-Trout Creek, said the state faces a number of challenges from the potential loss of wood products infrastructure and the tightening supply of logs from federal lands.
For instance, the cost of fighting wildfires in the state over the last six years has bounced back and forth, from $5 million to $75 million.
“We don't know which year this is going to be,” said Clark. “That's a difficult position for the Legislature to be in.”
The state can't afford to lose the infrastructure that's needed to manage overgrown forests, especially around the urban interface, he said.
Counties with lots of federal timberlands, like Sanders County, also worry about the loss of the federal funding they used to receive from timber sales, he said.
Congress is debating whether it will fund the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act, a law that replaced funding counties received as part of timber sale receipts called “the 25 percent fund.”
Sanders County receives about $1.5 million of Rural Schools Act monies. Half of the county's road budget is funded with that money.
“If that act goes away, we'd revert back to the 25 percent fund levels and it wouldn't even be close,” he said. “We could lose 30 to 40 percent of the county's road fund. Sanders County would have to reduce its road management to emergency only.”
Clark said both environmental groups and woods products organizations need to look for the moderate voice.
“There are environmental groups that say zero cut is the only way to go ... and there's loggers with bumper stickers that say. ‘Earth first, we'll log the other planets later,' ” he said. “Both extremes are not going to be part of the solution.”
After a decade of appeals and lawsuits, public land managers spend a great deal of time and energy working through a maze of regulations to justify decisions that will keep them from being sued, said Montana State Forester Bob Harrington.
“Law and its interpretation is beginning to drive the policy of forestry on public lands,” said Harrington. “Active management of public lands is critical to the fate of forestry in Montana.”
U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan of Oregon said foresters should not take anything for granted when they go into court.
To make his point, Hogan related a story about a time when he hosted a meeting of federal judges near the small town of Ashland, Ore. It was August and there was a small wildfire burning up on the hill near the town. So Hogan invited a fire information officer to come down and talk about it.
As the man started discussing some of the efforts the agency was using to ensure sediment didn't get into the creek, he mentioned the words “water bar.” Hogan told him to stop and asked the gathering of judges if anyone knew what a water bar was. None did.
A few moments later, the man showed photographs of areas that had been treated and those that hadn't. Hogan asked again if the judges knew what that meant. No one had a clue.
“You need to explain in terms that someone like me - although I've been around the woods much more than most federal judges - can understand,” Hogan said.
After the fires of 2000, Hogan assisted with the negotiations on the Bitterroot Burned Area Recovery Plan. That experience served him well when two years later an even larger fire burned through a portion of Oregon. Hogan has presided over eight separate court cases that challenged different proposed projects after the fire.
So far, he's been affirmed on all the cases he's ruled on.
“Which frankly is a little surprising to me,” he said.
Hogan said the court's role is a strict interpretation of the law - for instance, whether the agency has allowed the proper amount of public comment or not.
Judges should defer to the agencies on whether their specific plans for a project are right or wrong, said Hogan.
“Courts aren't supposed to care if it's a good idea or not,” he said.
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