Support the Timberjay by making a donation.

Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

State studies impact of greater timber harvest

Marshall Helmberger
Posted 2/15/17

REGIONAL— The plan by Louisiana-Pacific to build a siding plant near Cook has turned up the heat on a long simmering debate over harvest levels on state-managed timber lands in northern Minnesota. …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

State studies impact of greater timber harvest

Posted

REGIONAL— The plan by Louisiana-Pacific to build a siding plant near Cook has turned up the heat on a long simmering debate over harvest levels on state-managed timber lands in northern Minnesota.

It’s a controversy that had largely disappeared in the wake of the closure of several board plants in the region in the late 2000s. High wood prices combined with the fallout from the 2007 housing collapse precipitated the shutdowns, which reduced demand for the state’s timber resources by about one million cords a year.

But with the new siding plant potentially consuming up to half a million cords annually, state officials and representatives of the timber industry are worried that increased wood demand could cause another spike in timber prices, putting renewed financial pressure on the state’s wood products manufacturers.

According to Wayne Brandt, executive director of Minnesota Forest Industries, many wood manufacturers are already feeling the pinch. “It’s pretty stark when you look at stumpage prices,” said Brandt, who says the average stumpage price for a cord of aspen has jumped from about $25, to $42 more recently. “That gets us very, very concerned again,” said Brandt. “If we’re heading back into an era of high stumpage prices, we’re going to lose more mills.”

Those concerns prompted Gov. Mark Dayton, late in 2016, to quietly order a study of the sustainability of boosting the harvest on state-managed timber lands from the longstanding average of about 800,000 cords per year to one million cords annually. The DNR is in the process of hiring a consultant to conduct the analysis, with a draft expected to be available for public review by the fall. Gov. Dayton wants the final version, along with a recommendation, completed by March 2018.

While the study is underway, the governor has directed the Department of Natural Resources to boost annual harvests to about 900,000 cords per year, which represents about a 12-percent increase from current levels.

There appears to be little disagreement over whether state lands can physically produce that much wood per year— the question is at what cost to other uses and values of the forest. Some DNR wildlife officials and environmentalists fear that the impacts to wildlife, water quality, and other forest values could be significant, and that the push for more production represents a setback, of sorts, for a vision of multi-use forest management that had been gaining traction in the state.

“In the last 25 years, we’ve been making progress in managing for more diverse forest values,” said Don Arnosti, conservation policy chair with the Izaak Walton League. Arnosti has been in the thick of forest management debates in Minnesota since the 1980s, and he serves on the DNR’s advisory committee overseeing the sustainability study on the governor’s proposal. He said he fears that a long-term boost in the state’s harvest levels will be a step backward, considering the progress that’s been made. “It will certainly slow the rate that we return to a more natural balance in the woods,” he said.

Arnosti is not the only one with such concerns.

Tom Rusch, the DNR’s Tower area wildlife manager said the directive on harvest levels came as DNR staff were at work on a new ten-year plan for forest management in the North Superior Uplands region, which includes Cook and Lake counties and much of St. Louis County. “It had been in motion for over two years, and we were moving along pretty good,” said Rusch.

But the directive, which could significantly change management priorities, halted work on the plan and Rusch worries it could set back future forest management planning efforts. “This was the best process I’d been involved with,” he said. “Back in the day, they could be bloody.”

Some DNR wildlife managers worry that the agency’s push to increase harvests will inevitably shorten the rotation age for aspen— and that will reduce forest diversity, particularly with conifers like balsam fir, white spruce, and white pine. “We have a number of species, both game and nongame, that need that conifer component,” said Rusch.

Conifers will repopulate aspen stands as the trees mature and the stand begins to break up. “But a 40-year rotation doesn’t allow for that kind of diversity to develop,” Rusch said.

“I think that’s going to be a big part of the analysis,” said Dave Olfelt, northeast regional wildlife manager. “We put a lot of demands on our forests,” Olfelt said, who notes that the sustainability study will look at more than just the need for fiber for industry. The diversity of stakeholders on the advisory panel overseeing the study may help temper any final recommendation to a harvest level that most interest groups can accept. To date, the panel has met twice with DNR technical staff to begin the review effort. They hope to hire a consultant by April 1 and have pieces of the study available for review by panel stakeholders in June.

“It’s going to look at the sustainability of the proposal,” said Olfelt. “It will try to answer the question, what difference would this make?”

Some DNR wildlife managers fear it could make a significant difference for some species of wildlife, including whitetail deer and furbearers like fisher and marten. “Tower wildlife staff think a lack of old forest, distributed on the landscape, is currently the biggest habitat issue for wildlife in northern St. Louis County,” said Rusch.

DNR-sponsored research indicates that deer subsist mostly on fat reserves over the winter months in northern Minnesota, and that having adequate winter cover, which helps deer to reduce their energy consumption and stretch their reserves longer, is actually more important than abundant browse. Deer rely heavily on mature conifers in northeastern Minnesota for winter cover.

Rusch worries that shorter rotations may also be having an impact on furbearer populations. The DNR has significantly reduced the harvest of fisher and marten in recent years, but Rusch said he’s not seeing much sign of the recovery he would normally anticipate from a harvest reduction. “The places where we are seeing fisher and marten is where good habitat is available,” said Rusch. Good habitat for pine marten, according to DNR biologist John Erb, includes forests with large aspen, since marten rely heavily on such trees for nest cavities for raising young. Erb’s research found that marten require aspen over 18-inches in diameter, a size that simply isn’t available in stands managed on 40-year rotations.

Balancing act

While demand for wood fiber in northern Minnesota has varied considerably over the years, the DNR has been remarkably consistent since the 1990s, putting up its usual 800,000 cords per year, give or take. When demand is lower, as was the case in the wake of the Great Recession, 15-20 percent of that wood might go unsold in any given year. But with the economy improving, and demand rising, there’s less unsold wood these days, and as demand rises for a relatively stable supply, stumpage prices have moved higher. Back in the mid-2000s, when competition for wood was intense among board manufacturers, the price of choice aspen stumpage went as high as $100 per cord in some cases— and that contributed to the shutdown of some board plants.

That’s why industry representatives want to see more wood offered in the future, particularly given the additional market pressure the opening of the Cook siding plant is likely to generate. “The other businesses that are already here are not too interested in increasing the demand for wood while the supply remains constant,” said Patty Thielen, the DNR’s northeast region forestry supervisor.

But Don Arnosti wonders if such a step is appropriate for the state. “They [industry] want more timber on the market to keep the price down,” said Arnosti. “This proposal is a market intervention, that’s what it is. It’s being driven by price.”

Thielen says it’s a balancing act, providing adequate wildlife habitat while meeting the needs of an industry that employs thousands of Minnesotans.

Part of the concern over supply reflects the fact that timber sales on private lands have dropped considerably, said Thielen. With the downturn in the industry a decade ago, both the DNR and the wood products manufacturers reduced their expenditures on consulting foresters, who assist private landowners with managing their timber lands, which often includes timber harvest. As a result, the volume of private wood put up on the market dropped from a 2000 peak of 1.9 million cords, to under 800,000 cords by 2010.

Last year, the Legislature, with the encouragement of Brandt and others, approved an additional $2.5 million in funding for consulting foresters to work with private landowners. Brandt is hopeful the effort will prompt more private landowners to start putting up wood again. In the meantime, he’s hoping a boost in state harvest will help fill the gap. “We believe that the state can safely go above one million cords,” said Brandt. “But we understand there are other perspectives out there.”