It may feel like March, but bare branches stay safely dormant, forestry experts say
By JAMES RUSK | Globe and Mail
Tuesday, January 31, 2006 Page A9
Although Toronto is having its warmest January on record, the city's deciduous trees haven't been fooled. They have remained dormant throughout the month, which reduces the risk of damage if February turns in its usual frigid performance, says Richard Ubbens, Toronto's director of forestry.
"The concern for us is that you get nice weather and you get a hard, hard frost when the buds have already begun to flush or swell. That's when you can sometimes get quite a bit of damage and a lot of die-back," he said in an interview.
"It's too early to tell if we are going to get that. Right now, though, things are good and dormant still."
Temperatures recorded this month are usually felt in March, and the amounts of snow and rain are more like an average April, Environment Canada climatologist Dave Phillips said yesterday.
Through the first 29 days, the average temperature was zero, half a degree warmer than the record set in 2002, he said. And if today's high is more than zero as forecast, January will have had 26 days in which temperatures were above freezing, Mr. Phillips said.
It has been wet. Until yesterday, Toronto had received 64.4 millimetres of rain, more than twice the average of 24.9 millimetres, and 7.8 centimetres of snow, a quarter of the long-term average of 31.1 centimetres, Mr. Phillips said.
The wetness has been good for trees, Mr. Ubbens said. "Lots of water presence in the trees means that there's less chance of frost damage, because it is more water to freeze."
The wet, mild winter has also reduced the chance of salt damage to trees, he said, and not just because it means that the city and other municipalities use less salt.
The fine dusty salt that ends up on streets after they dry tends to blow onto trees and desiccate them, he said. But the rain has washed it off the trees and the ground, and "that's terrific."
Len Troup, a Jordan Station peach farmer who is chairman of the Ontario Tender Fruit Producers Marketing Board, echoed Mr. Ubbens's assessment of the weather's impact. "To this point, we're just fine. . . . It hasn't been extremely cold, and it hasn't been outlandishly warm. It's just been nice. Nice is okay. The secret is that our trees are still fully dormant.".
He noted that a peach tree has about a 45-day period when it has to be extremely dormant. The trees are in that stage. Once past that by mid-February, they will become more vulnerable to cold, he said.
Jim Gardhouse, a horticulturalist who is Toronto's parks supervisor, said that when he looked last week, some shrubs in city parks were "starting to push out a bit."
"They are still not in trouble," he said. "But if it continues to be warm and warmer and there's more rain . . . they will think it's spring. And they could, all of a sudden, get walloped, which will set them back."
The next few weeks are crucial. "We just need to get through the next three or four weeks and then we'll be okay, once you start getting into March," Mr. Gardhouse said.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Canada must change trade policies to help manufacturing sector, critics say
Sun, January 29, 2006
By ROMINA MAURINO | Calgary Sun
TORONTO (CP) - Canadian companies in the auto assembly, heavy equipment, pork processing and pulp and paper sectors have announced more than 2,300 job cuts in the last week alone, continuing a wave that has battered the blue-collar workforce.
Manufacturing workers will continue to take hits in the coming year - with possibly another 100,000 lost jobs - unless Canada changes its trade policies, critics say.
The high loonie, rising energy prices and increasing competition from China and other low-wage countries have weakened the manufacturing industry, leading to the loss of 112,000 jobs in two years, primarily in the auto, forestry, aerospace, textile and industrial products sectors.
But rather than making plans to help struggling companies, critics say, Canada is supplying raw materials to the United States and allowing China to sell endless quantities of goods without buying much back.
"With some of our resource exports, especially in energy, we are managing to single-handedly put a crimp in our manufacturing industries because of the lack of thought and strategizing about the best interests of Canada," says Keith Newman, research director at the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union.
"No other country in the position of Canada would do what we're doing."
A week ago, Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F) announced 1,200 jobs will be cut its assembly plant in St. Thomas, Ont. On Thursday, tractor giant John Deere said it will close a harvesting equipment factory in Woodstock, Ont., with the loss of 325 jobs, and paper maker Bowater said it will close a shut a 280-job mill in Thunder Bay, Ont.
On Friday, meat processor Olymel said it will shut pork-cutting operations in Saint-Simon, Que., affecting 525 workers, and Industrialex Manufacturing Canada (TSXV:IXC.U) announced the closure of its Windsor plant, which employed about 50 people.
Last year, forestry companies including Domtar, Cascades, Abitibi-Consolidated and Weyerhaeuser - along with auto giant General Motors Corp. - announced thousands of job cuts, many in Ontario.
Overall, the manufacturing cuts are offset by growth in other sectors - especially oil and gas in Western Canada, which is luring many Canadians from the East. Financial services, retail, health care and education are all growing as well.
In addition, industrial giants such as Toyota are expanding, creating job opportunities for laid-off people in Woodstock, for example.
Economists believe a lot of Canada's lost manufacturing jobs will go to China or other low-wage countries such as Mexico, while some companies will consolidate operations in the United States.
Jim Stanford, an economist with the Canadian Auto Workers, expects the manufacturing sector to lose 100,000 jobs in 2006.
"Canadian workers get the downside of globalization but none of the upside," he said.
"Companies will try to do what they can, and the things that make the most sense are investing in more equipment and new technology and trying to make their operations fundamentally more efficient - rather than trying to squeeze the workers that much more," Stanford said.
But without changes to trade and exchange rate policies, he added individual company initiatives "are like spitting in the wind."
CIBC World Markets economist Benjamin Tal says barriers to trade with China are unlikely, because "the momentum is there and it would be very difficult to stop."
He said the outlook for manufacturing is bleak despite an unemployment rate at its lowest level in decades at 6.4 per cent.
A lot of the jobs being created, he says, are "low-quality" service sector jobs, and one-third involve self-employment.
There is also evidence of older men dropping out of the workforce altogether after losing their jobs.
Some laid-off workers, says CEP president Brian Payne, have found work in the Alberta oilsands.
"Alberta is the Klondike of modern-day Canada, so there's certainly job opportunities there," he said. "But it's not a particularly good thing to have everybody move from one part of Canada to another." (*)
By ROMINA MAURINO | Calgary Sun
TORONTO (CP) - Canadian companies in the auto assembly, heavy equipment, pork processing and pulp and paper sectors have announced more than 2,300 job cuts in the last week alone, continuing a wave that has battered the blue-collar workforce.
Manufacturing workers will continue to take hits in the coming year - with possibly another 100,000 lost jobs - unless Canada changes its trade policies, critics say.
The high loonie, rising energy prices and increasing competition from China and other low-wage countries have weakened the manufacturing industry, leading to the loss of 112,000 jobs in two years, primarily in the auto, forestry, aerospace, textile and industrial products sectors.
But rather than making plans to help struggling companies, critics say, Canada is supplying raw materials to the United States and allowing China to sell endless quantities of goods without buying much back.
"With some of our resource exports, especially in energy, we are managing to single-handedly put a crimp in our manufacturing industries because of the lack of thought and strategizing about the best interests of Canada," says Keith Newman, research director at the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union.
"No other country in the position of Canada would do what we're doing."
A week ago, Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F) announced 1,200 jobs will be cut its assembly plant in St. Thomas, Ont. On Thursday, tractor giant John Deere said it will close a harvesting equipment factory in Woodstock, Ont., with the loss of 325 jobs, and paper maker Bowater said it will close a shut a 280-job mill in Thunder Bay, Ont.
On Friday, meat processor Olymel said it will shut pork-cutting operations in Saint-Simon, Que., affecting 525 workers, and Industrialex Manufacturing Canada (TSXV:IXC.U) announced the closure of its Windsor plant, which employed about 50 people.
Last year, forestry companies including Domtar, Cascades, Abitibi-Consolidated and Weyerhaeuser - along with auto giant General Motors Corp. - announced thousands of job cuts, many in Ontario.
Overall, the manufacturing cuts are offset by growth in other sectors - especially oil and gas in Western Canada, which is luring many Canadians from the East. Financial services, retail, health care and education are all growing as well.
In addition, industrial giants such as Toyota are expanding, creating job opportunities for laid-off people in Woodstock, for example.
Economists believe a lot of Canada's lost manufacturing jobs will go to China or other low-wage countries such as Mexico, while some companies will consolidate operations in the United States.
Jim Stanford, an economist with the Canadian Auto Workers, expects the manufacturing sector to lose 100,000 jobs in 2006.
"Canadian workers get the downside of globalization but none of the upside," he said.
"Companies will try to do what they can, and the things that make the most sense are investing in more equipment and new technology and trying to make their operations fundamentally more efficient - rather than trying to squeeze the workers that much more," Stanford said.
But without changes to trade and exchange rate policies, he added individual company initiatives "are like spitting in the wind."
CIBC World Markets economist Benjamin Tal says barriers to trade with China are unlikely, because "the momentum is there and it would be very difficult to stop."
He said the outlook for manufacturing is bleak despite an unemployment rate at its lowest level in decades at 6.4 per cent.
A lot of the jobs being created, he says, are "low-quality" service sector jobs, and one-third involve self-employment.
There is also evidence of older men dropping out of the workforce altogether after losing their jobs.
Some laid-off workers, says CEP president Brian Payne, have found work in the Alberta oilsands.
"Alberta is the Klondike of modern-day Canada, so there's certainly job opportunities there," he said. "But it's not a particularly good thing to have everybody move from one part of Canada to another." (*)
Friday, January 27, 2006
Bowater to close Thunder Bay mill
Jan. 26, 2006. 06:50 PM | CANADIAN PRESS
THUNDER BAY, Ont. — U.S. forestry company Bowater Inc. is shutting down a pulp mill in Thunder Bay, Ont., a move that will put about 280 people out of work.
The South Carolina-based company announced Thursday it is closing the kraft mill at the end of April as part of a streamlining in the wake of a loss of $101.9 million (U.S.) for the fourth quarter
The mill produces about 210,000 tonnes of market pulp a year, but has faced high costs for wood fibre and energy.
"I regret the impact that our decision at Thunder Bay will have on our employees, their families and the community," said Arnold Nemirow, chairman, president and CEO, said in the company's earnings report released early Thursday.
"However, this restructuring is essential for the viability of this site. Also critical is an improved operating environment in Ontario. Although better than 2004, our 2005 financial results were very disappointing, as we continued to face a stronger Canadian dollar, and higher energy and wood costs."
In Thunder Bay, company spokesman Don Campbell said the decision to close the mill, which has been operating for 40 years, was necessary because of high energy and wood fibre costs.
"The issue is costs," Campbell told CKDR, a radio station in Dryden, Ont. "Costs to operate this kraft mill have deteriorated and are at unacceptable levels right now, mainly due to high energy costs, including electricity, but also natural gas, and then the high and unacceptable fibre costs. The company just can't tolerate these levels of costs any more."
The latest closure follows a spate of mill shutdowns that have battered Canada's forestry sector in the last year or so. Major companies such as Domtar, Abitibi-Consolidated, Tembec and others have shut down operations that are losing money because of higher energy costs, a rising Canadian dollar and other factors.
The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada estimates about 7,500 jobs have been cut at mills from Newfoundland to British Columbia in the latest industry downsizing.
In a statement, the union called on prime minister designate Stephen Harper to urgently address what it called a crisis in Canada's forestry sector.
"Just before the election, the then federal government announced a $1.5 billion aid package for forest-based companies and we are asking Mr. Harper to renew that commitment with a firm resolution to tie government aid to maintenance and creation of jobs," said union president Brian Payne.
Meanwhile, the union's Ontario region vice-president Cec Makowski demanded that Bowater reverse the shutdown and join the union in appealing to the federal and provincial governments to find ways to save the Thunder Bay mill and others across northern and eastern Ontario, where more than 3,500 workers have lost their jobs in recent months.
"The solution to this crisis lies with a change in policies at both levels of government," Makowski said. "High energy and fibre costs are crippling the industry in Ontario while trade and monetary policies at the federal level are also hurting.(*)
THUNDER BAY, Ont. — U.S. forestry company Bowater Inc. is shutting down a pulp mill in Thunder Bay, Ont., a move that will put about 280 people out of work.
The South Carolina-based company announced Thursday it is closing the kraft mill at the end of April as part of a streamlining in the wake of a loss of $101.9 million (U.S.) for the fourth quarter
The mill produces about 210,000 tonnes of market pulp a year, but has faced high costs for wood fibre and energy.
"I regret the impact that our decision at Thunder Bay will have on our employees, their families and the community," said Arnold Nemirow, chairman, president and CEO, said in the company's earnings report released early Thursday.
"However, this restructuring is essential for the viability of this site. Also critical is an improved operating environment in Ontario. Although better than 2004, our 2005 financial results were very disappointing, as we continued to face a stronger Canadian dollar, and higher energy and wood costs."
In Thunder Bay, company spokesman Don Campbell said the decision to close the mill, which has been operating for 40 years, was necessary because of high energy and wood fibre costs.
"The issue is costs," Campbell told CKDR, a radio station in Dryden, Ont. "Costs to operate this kraft mill have deteriorated and are at unacceptable levels right now, mainly due to high energy costs, including electricity, but also natural gas, and then the high and unacceptable fibre costs. The company just can't tolerate these levels of costs any more."
The latest closure follows a spate of mill shutdowns that have battered Canada's forestry sector in the last year or so. Major companies such as Domtar, Abitibi-Consolidated, Tembec and others have shut down operations that are losing money because of higher energy costs, a rising Canadian dollar and other factors.
The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada estimates about 7,500 jobs have been cut at mills from Newfoundland to British Columbia in the latest industry downsizing.
In a statement, the union called on prime minister designate Stephen Harper to urgently address what it called a crisis in Canada's forestry sector.
"Just before the election, the then federal government announced a $1.5 billion aid package for forest-based companies and we are asking Mr. Harper to renew that commitment with a firm resolution to tie government aid to maintenance and creation of jobs," said union president Brian Payne.
Meanwhile, the union's Ontario region vice-president Cec Makowski demanded that Bowater reverse the shutdown and join the union in appealing to the federal and provincial governments to find ways to save the Thunder Bay mill and others across northern and eastern Ontario, where more than 3,500 workers have lost their jobs in recent months.
"The solution to this crisis lies with a change in policies at both levels of government," Makowski said. "High energy and fibre costs are crippling the industry in Ontario while trade and monetary policies at the federal level are also hurting.(*)
Thursday, January 26, 2006
John Deere to close Ontario plant; 325 jobs lost
Last Updated Thu, 26 Jan 2006 15:16:37 EST | CBC News
The company that makes John Deere tractors, lawnmowers, and forestry products told 325 workers at its Woodstock, Ontario plant Thursday that the work they've been doing will be moving to Iowa later this year.
Deere & Company said the closing of the Woodstock facility is part of its attempt to "create more efficiency in its business operations." The plant will close in September. John Deere Forestry is one of Woodstock's biggest private employers.
Deere said an internal efficiency study showed that the closure of the Woodstock operation would "improve product delivery times."
The plant makes forestry products for Deere's construction and forestry division – specifically, log skidders, wheeled and tracked feller-bunchers, tracked harvesters, and knuckleboom loaders.
A feller-buncher is a large logging machine that cuts trees. Knuckleboom loaders grab the trees and put them onto trucks.
Production will be consolidated in existing Deere facilities in Davenport and Dubuque, Iowa.
Deere said it would record pretax charges of about $60 million US over the next 12 to 18 months.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Forecast for Earth in 2050: It's not so gloomy
But people must begin to manage its ecosystems to put the planet on a sustainable path, a new report says.
By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
When researchers scan the global horizon, overfishing, loss of species habitat, nutrient run-off, climate change, and invasive species look to be the biggest threats to the ability of land, oceans, and water to support human well-being.
Yet "there is significant reason for hope. We have the tools we need" to chart a course that safeguards the planet's ecological foundation, says Stephen Carpenter, a zoologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "We don't have to accept the doom-and-gloom trends."
That's the general take-home message in an assessment of the state of the globe's ecosystems and the impact Earth's ecological condition has on humans.
Thursday, officials released a five-volume coda to the UN's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an ambitious four-year attempt to explore the relationship between the environment and human development. Summary reports of the findings as they affected four international environmental treaties were released last year. These new volumes represent the detailed information that underpins the earlier reports.
In the process, it outlines four plausible ways the planet could develop politically, economically, and socially by 2050, and the effect they would have on people and the environment.
The pathways for political and economic development the authors use - ranging from a relatively wide-open global system to a circle-the-wagons, fragmented world - emerged out of discussions with political and business leaders, scientists, and nongovernmental organizations worldwide. The authors then drew on the latest research to estimate the impact of these paths. The assessment was conducted by 1,360 researchers from 95 countries.
By 2050, it estimates that the highly global approach - with liberal trade policies, and concerted efforts to reduce poverty, improve education and public health, yet respond reactively to environmental issues - could yield the lowest population growth and the highest economic growth. But the environmental scorecard would be mixed.
In a fragmented world that focuses largely on security and regional markets and takes a reactive approach to ecological problems, economic growth rates are the lowest and the population is the highest of the four pathways.
Two other paths, which place a greater emphasis on technology and a proactive approach to the environment, yield population growth rates somewhere in the middle, and economic growth rates that may be slow at first, but accelerate with time.
Even under the most environmentally beneficial paths, however, ecological trouble spots are likely to remain - central Africa, the Middle East, and southern Asia.
In the end, Carpenter says, "there is no optimum approach, no one-size-fits-all. It's all about trade-offs."
To put the planet on a sustainable path, he continues, the report makes clear that people must view Earth's ecosystems as one interlinked system, rather than as fragments. People must begin to actively manage those ecosystems in ways that ensure that they will receive the benefits those ecosystems provide - from blunting the surge from ocean storms and filtering water to feeding a hungry world. Indeed, with efforts now under way to develop worldwide observing systems to monitor the oceans, atmosphere, and land use, technology is moving into place to support such broad management efforts.
Unfortunately, humans have "badly mismanaged" the ecosystems that support them," says Walter Reid, a professor with Stanford University's Institute for the Environment and director of the assessment. "We need to manage for the full range of ecosystem benefits, not just those that pass through markets."
For instance, the report holds that to safeguard the availability of fresh water and encourage its more ecologically prudent use, governments could consider replacing their subsidies with a more market-based pricing system. To ensure that the poor aren't priced out of the system, Carpenter says, one could adapt South Africa's approach. It guarantees a minimum allotment per person. Once the meter ticks beyond that amount, market prices kick in.
By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
When researchers scan the global horizon, overfishing, loss of species habitat, nutrient run-off, climate change, and invasive species look to be the biggest threats to the ability of land, oceans, and water to support human well-being.
Yet "there is significant reason for hope. We have the tools we need" to chart a course that safeguards the planet's ecological foundation, says Stephen Carpenter, a zoologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "We don't have to accept the doom-and-gloom trends."
That's the general take-home message in an assessment of the state of the globe's ecosystems and the impact Earth's ecological condition has on humans.
Thursday, officials released a five-volume coda to the UN's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an ambitious four-year attempt to explore the relationship between the environment and human development. Summary reports of the findings as they affected four international environmental treaties were released last year. These new volumes represent the detailed information that underpins the earlier reports.
In the process, it outlines four plausible ways the planet could develop politically, economically, and socially by 2050, and the effect they would have on people and the environment.
The pathways for political and economic development the authors use - ranging from a relatively wide-open global system to a circle-the-wagons, fragmented world - emerged out of discussions with political and business leaders, scientists, and nongovernmental organizations worldwide. The authors then drew on the latest research to estimate the impact of these paths. The assessment was conducted by 1,360 researchers from 95 countries.
By 2050, it estimates that the highly global approach - with liberal trade policies, and concerted efforts to reduce poverty, improve education and public health, yet respond reactively to environmental issues - could yield the lowest population growth and the highest economic growth. But the environmental scorecard would be mixed.
In a fragmented world that focuses largely on security and regional markets and takes a reactive approach to ecological problems, economic growth rates are the lowest and the population is the highest of the four pathways.
Two other paths, which place a greater emphasis on technology and a proactive approach to the environment, yield population growth rates somewhere in the middle, and economic growth rates that may be slow at first, but accelerate with time.
Even under the most environmentally beneficial paths, however, ecological trouble spots are likely to remain - central Africa, the Middle East, and southern Asia.
In the end, Carpenter says, "there is no optimum approach, no one-size-fits-all. It's all about trade-offs."
To put the planet on a sustainable path, he continues, the report makes clear that people must view Earth's ecosystems as one interlinked system, rather than as fragments. People must begin to actively manage those ecosystems in ways that ensure that they will receive the benefits those ecosystems provide - from blunting the surge from ocean storms and filtering water to feeding a hungry world. Indeed, with efforts now under way to develop worldwide observing systems to monitor the oceans, atmosphere, and land use, technology is moving into place to support such broad management efforts.
Unfortunately, humans have "badly mismanaged" the ecosystems that support them," says Walter Reid, a professor with Stanford University's Institute for the Environment and director of the assessment. "We need to manage for the full range of ecosystem benefits, not just those that pass through markets."
For instance, the report holds that to safeguard the availability of fresh water and encourage its more ecologically prudent use, governments could consider replacing their subsidies with a more market-based pricing system. To ensure that the poor aren't priced out of the system, Carpenter says, one could adapt South Africa's approach. It guarantees a minimum allotment per person. Once the meter ticks beyond that amount, market prices kick in.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Forestry crisis poses threat to all Ontarians
Jan. 22, 2006. 01:00 AM | Toronto Star
Far from the bright lights of Toronto and the big urban centres of the Golden Horseshoe, a quiet devastation is taking place throughout Northern Ontario's forest industry, killing thousands of jobs and threatening to turn many single-industry communities into ghost towns.
As distant as the crisis might seem to city residents, the demise of the industry — the province's second largest after the automotive sector — threatens the prosperity of all Ontarians.
Last year, a government-commissioned task force determined that 12 forestry operations, such as paper mills, were at risk of shutting down. Five of them were deemed to be at high risk. If all 12 operations closed, there would be a loss of 7,500 direct and 17,500 indirect jobs in Northern Ontario.
But for suppliers and manufacturers in southern Ontario, it would see the demise of 13,000 indirect spin-off jobs. Not to mention government tax losses approaching $1 billion.
The task force report has proven prophetic.
Since its release last June, operations in Kenora, Thunder Bay, Cornwall and Ottawa have shut or are on the way. More closures are likely this year.
The Ontario government has responded with an aid package widely seen as insufficient.
A combination of circumstances at home and internationally have come together to create a near-perfect storm that threatens to turn a once profitable industry into one that could sink into irreversible decline.
Among the external factors are the rising value of the Canadian dollar against the U.S. dollar, making exports more expensive; the protracted and ongoing softwood lumber dispute with the U.S. that has forced Canadian manufacturers to pay out billions of dollars in tariffs; and international competition from new players such as China, Brazil and Russia.
Also, policies of provincial governments past and present have contributed to reducing the industry's competitiveness. A decade ago, the former Conservative government downloaded the cost of building and maintaining logging roads onto the forest industry. These are public access roads used by everyone.
And energy prices set by the province have risen for the industry by 30 per cent or more in recent years. They are set to go even higher this year.
In mill towns like Kenora, much closer to Winnipeg than Toronto, there is even some talk of separating from Ontario and joining Manitoba, where energy is plentiful and half the price.
The Ontario government's 2005 bailout package failed to quell criticism within the forestry industry that Queen's Park was not doing enough to help.
It provided a maximum of $28 million annually for logging roads — a fraction of the actual cost of maintaining the roads — and a three-year $150 million investment fund. That pales alongside the $500 million fund dedicated to the auto sector.
Clearly, the provincial government cannot single-handedly save the forest industry. But the task force report offered sensible ways to mitigate the damage, such as reducing government red tape and speeding up decision-making.
But energy is the key part of the solution. Energy makes up to 30 to 40 per cent of the total cost of getting wood from forest to mill. That's why it is essential for Queen's Park to consider ways to provide relief on hydro costs. Without such assistance, more companies risk closure.
The forestry crisis is real. Towns like Dryden risk losing half their tax base if the local mill closes. Places like Red Rock might become ghost towns.
Forestry is Northern Ontario's economic cornerstone.
It is time Queen's Park redoubled its efforts to bring this vital industry back from the brink.(*)
Far from the bright lights of Toronto and the big urban centres of the Golden Horseshoe, a quiet devastation is taking place throughout Northern Ontario's forest industry, killing thousands of jobs and threatening to turn many single-industry communities into ghost towns.
As distant as the crisis might seem to city residents, the demise of the industry — the province's second largest after the automotive sector — threatens the prosperity of all Ontarians.
Last year, a government-commissioned task force determined that 12 forestry operations, such as paper mills, were at risk of shutting down. Five of them were deemed to be at high risk. If all 12 operations closed, there would be a loss of 7,500 direct and 17,500 indirect jobs in Northern Ontario.
But for suppliers and manufacturers in southern Ontario, it would see the demise of 13,000 indirect spin-off jobs. Not to mention government tax losses approaching $1 billion.
The task force report has proven prophetic.
Since its release last June, operations in Kenora, Thunder Bay, Cornwall and Ottawa have shut or are on the way. More closures are likely this year.
The Ontario government has responded with an aid package widely seen as insufficient.
A combination of circumstances at home and internationally have come together to create a near-perfect storm that threatens to turn a once profitable industry into one that could sink into irreversible decline.
Among the external factors are the rising value of the Canadian dollar against the U.S. dollar, making exports more expensive; the protracted and ongoing softwood lumber dispute with the U.S. that has forced Canadian manufacturers to pay out billions of dollars in tariffs; and international competition from new players such as China, Brazil and Russia.
Also, policies of provincial governments past and present have contributed to reducing the industry's competitiveness. A decade ago, the former Conservative government downloaded the cost of building and maintaining logging roads onto the forest industry. These are public access roads used by everyone.
And energy prices set by the province have risen for the industry by 30 per cent or more in recent years. They are set to go even higher this year.
In mill towns like Kenora, much closer to Winnipeg than Toronto, there is even some talk of separating from Ontario and joining Manitoba, where energy is plentiful and half the price.
The Ontario government's 2005 bailout package failed to quell criticism within the forestry industry that Queen's Park was not doing enough to help.
It provided a maximum of $28 million annually for logging roads — a fraction of the actual cost of maintaining the roads — and a three-year $150 million investment fund. That pales alongside the $500 million fund dedicated to the auto sector.
Clearly, the provincial government cannot single-handedly save the forest industry. But the task force report offered sensible ways to mitigate the damage, such as reducing government red tape and speeding up decision-making.
But energy is the key part of the solution. Energy makes up to 30 to 40 per cent of the total cost of getting wood from forest to mill. That's why it is essential for Queen's Park to consider ways to provide relief on hydro costs. Without such assistance, more companies risk closure.
The forestry crisis is real. Towns like Dryden risk losing half their tax base if the local mill closes. Places like Red Rock might become ghost towns.
Forestry is Northern Ontario's economic cornerstone.
It is time Queen's Park redoubled its efforts to bring this vital industry back from the brink.(*)
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Do trees share blame for global warming?
from the January 19, 2006 edition - Christian Science Monitor
By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Cows burp it, pipelines and landfills leak it, and vast amounts lie frozen beneath the ocean floor. Methane is ubiquitous - as fuel for heating and cooking and as a source of concern for atmospheric scientists. Molecule for molecule, methane packs thousands of times more punch as a "greenhouse gas" than carbon dioxide does.
Until now, scientists tracking debits and credits in the globe's methane "budget" figured they had a pretty good handle on where the gas comes from - mostly from microbes breaking down organic material in places where oxygen is relatively scarce.
Enter Frank Keppler. Working with colleagues from Northern Ireland and the Netherlands, Dr. Keppler has discovered that plants may give off significant amounts of methane just by growing. And the amount they give off appears to rise with temperature. The results have stunned many researchers because no one expected methane to form biologically out in the open air, where oxygen abounds.
It's not that there's more methane in the atmosphere, but that some of it is coming from a wholly unexpected source. The results imply that, at best, this new source of methane may need to be taken into account as nations try to curb carbon-dioxide emissions by planting trees. Would increased methane emissions erase the gains against CO2? At worst, the results imply that thawing tundra in the Arctic is not the only worrisome source of methane in a warming world.
The experiments Keppler and his colleagues performed grew out of the team's effort to measure the gases that plants give off only in tiny amounts. When they looked at emissions from dead leaves, "we saw a pattern of methane" along with other gases, says Keppler, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. Others had detected methane from rice plants, but thought the rice merely acted as a minipipeline for methane formed in the muck in which rice grows.
Keppler put fresh and dried plant materials, as well as young plants, in special chambers. He removed possible sources of contamination - including microbes - and found that from bananas and sugar cane to European ash and Spanish moss, the material yielded methane.
From individual plants, the amounts are small: from 12 to 370 billionths of a gram. (One gram is about .04 ounces - the weight of two small paper clips.) But the collective effect could be large. The team roughly calculates that, globally, living plants may contribute from 10 to 30 percent of global methane emissions.
The phenomenon appears to be connected somehow to the presence of pectin in plants. For humans, pectin is used to set jellies and jams. For plants, it serves as a kind of glue for cementing cells together.
The results, published in the Jan. 12 issue of the journal Nature, have drawn astonished reactions and skepticism from researchers, particularly regarding the extrapolations of global emissions.
"This needs to be confirmed," says Michael Keller, a scientist with the US Forest Service's International Institute of Tropical Forestry in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, and a visiting scientist at the University of New Hampshire. "Until we have the basic mechanisms" for creating methane in plants - "or at least we understand the controls," such as nutrients, heat, or moisture - "it's hard to do reliable extrapolations."
Still, he says, the results may help explain the high methane emissions he and others have found over tropical forests using ground and satellite measurements. Other scientists recently have reported increased emissions over Arctic-river flood plains in eastern Siberia, invoking a variation of the "rice pipeline" hypothesis to explain them.
Given all the scrutiny plants have undergone, one of the open questions is how researchers could have missed these emissions. Keppler speculates that because the methane emissions are so small, they wouldn't have been detected in field studies. Any signal would have been swamped by much larger natural background levels. And microbial sources have been so well established that no one has looked for another mechanism.
For some researchers, the evidence Keppler and his team presents is sufficiently convincing to begin working them into computer models of the globe's greenhouse-gas budget - especially the potential implications for land-use changes. To do that, scientists will need to see how emissions might vary with plant species, says Alex Guenther, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. (*)
By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Cows burp it, pipelines and landfills leak it, and vast amounts lie frozen beneath the ocean floor. Methane is ubiquitous - as fuel for heating and cooking and as a source of concern for atmospheric scientists. Molecule for molecule, methane packs thousands of times more punch as a "greenhouse gas" than carbon dioxide does.
Until now, scientists tracking debits and credits in the globe's methane "budget" figured they had a pretty good handle on where the gas comes from - mostly from microbes breaking down organic material in places where oxygen is relatively scarce.
Enter Frank Keppler. Working with colleagues from Northern Ireland and the Netherlands, Dr. Keppler has discovered that plants may give off significant amounts of methane just by growing. And the amount they give off appears to rise with temperature. The results have stunned many researchers because no one expected methane to form biologically out in the open air, where oxygen abounds.
It's not that there's more methane in the atmosphere, but that some of it is coming from a wholly unexpected source. The results imply that, at best, this new source of methane may need to be taken into account as nations try to curb carbon-dioxide emissions by planting trees. Would increased methane emissions erase the gains against CO2? At worst, the results imply that thawing tundra in the Arctic is not the only worrisome source of methane in a warming world.
The experiments Keppler and his colleagues performed grew out of the team's effort to measure the gases that plants give off only in tiny amounts. When they looked at emissions from dead leaves, "we saw a pattern of methane" along with other gases, says Keppler, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. Others had detected methane from rice plants, but thought the rice merely acted as a minipipeline for methane formed in the muck in which rice grows.
Keppler put fresh and dried plant materials, as well as young plants, in special chambers. He removed possible sources of contamination - including microbes - and found that from bananas and sugar cane to European ash and Spanish moss, the material yielded methane.
From individual plants, the amounts are small: from 12 to 370 billionths of a gram. (One gram is about .04 ounces - the weight of two small paper clips.) But the collective effect could be large. The team roughly calculates that, globally, living plants may contribute from 10 to 30 percent of global methane emissions.
The phenomenon appears to be connected somehow to the presence of pectin in plants. For humans, pectin is used to set jellies and jams. For plants, it serves as a kind of glue for cementing cells together.
The results, published in the Jan. 12 issue of the journal Nature, have drawn astonished reactions and skepticism from researchers, particularly regarding the extrapolations of global emissions.
"This needs to be confirmed," says Michael Keller, a scientist with the US Forest Service's International Institute of Tropical Forestry in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, and a visiting scientist at the University of New Hampshire. "Until we have the basic mechanisms" for creating methane in plants - "or at least we understand the controls," such as nutrients, heat, or moisture - "it's hard to do reliable extrapolations."
Still, he says, the results may help explain the high methane emissions he and others have found over tropical forests using ground and satellite measurements. Other scientists recently have reported increased emissions over Arctic-river flood plains in eastern Siberia, invoking a variation of the "rice pipeline" hypothesis to explain them.
Given all the scrutiny plants have undergone, one of the open questions is how researchers could have missed these emissions. Keppler speculates that because the methane emissions are so small, they wouldn't have been detected in field studies. Any signal would have been swamped by much larger natural background levels. And microbial sources have been so well established that no one has looked for another mechanism.
For some researchers, the evidence Keppler and his team presents is sufficiently convincing to begin working them into computer models of the globe's greenhouse-gas budget - especially the potential implications for land-use changes. To do that, scientists will need to see how emissions might vary with plant species, says Alex Guenther, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. (*)
Friday, January 06, 2006
Forests get green label
Posted on Fri, Jan. 06, 2006
State forests across Minnesota are approved as sustainable, responding to market demand for more environmentally friendly products
BY JOHN MYERS | DULUTH NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Nearly 4.8 million acres of forest managed by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has been certified as environmentally sustainable, Gov. Tim Pawlenty announced Thursday.
The effort, expected for more than two years, is intended to make sure the state-managed forests are in sound environmental shape for years to come.
And it could help make the products manufactured from Minnesota trees more marketable for the state's wood products industry. State officials say that, without acting, Minnesota could have lost a share of the wood products market to regions that have certified their forests.
"Today's achievement is a testament to our long-term commitment to responsible stewardship of our heritage and future," Pawlenty said in a prepared statement.
The state land has received simultaneous certification from both the Forest Stewardship Council, an independent agency, and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, a now-independent group that has its roots in the timber industry.
Both groups have audited the DNR forestry division's books and toured forests and logging sites over the past year before awarding certification. Annual rechecks will be held, and the state must reapply after five years.
Minnesota's state forests are the largest chunk of government-managed land in the U.S. to become fully certified.
A representative of Minnesota's largest timber industry trade group on Thursday praised the industry-preferred Sustainable Forestry Initiative certification.
"The SFI program reflects the market and social realities of the 21st century," said Tim O'Hara, vice president of forest policy for the Duluth-based Minnesota Forest Industries.
"As demand for forest products from sustainably managed forests continues to grow, Minnesota is now at the front of the line to satisfy those demands," O'Hara said. "This is good for the state's forests, and it is vital to maintaining Minnesota's long-running, vibrant forest products industry."
Most of the DNR's forest land is in northern Minnesota, but the land ranges from boreal forests on the Ontario border to oak woods near Iowa.
The sustainable forest initiative has been gaining ground worldwide for a decade, pushed by environmental groups trying to stop the destruction of tropical rain forests.
In the U.S., the effort has been spurred as industry giants like Time Warner, LL Bean, McDonalds and Home Depot have demanded more products for their customers that are certified as sustainable. As big industry demands more sustainable products, more land managers have pushed for certification.
Time Inc., for example, buys paper from the Stora Enso mill in Duluth and the UPM mill in Grand Rapids, both of which get a good share of their trees from state forests.
The certification movement first gained traction in Minnesota in 1997 when county and state lands in Aitkin County became certified sustainable. Last summer, all 319,000 acres of Potlatch company land was certified. Some Minnesota mills, loggers and even truckers who handle the wood have been certified to link the chain of handling the trees.
Exactly what "sustainable" means is often a moving and sometimes unclear target. But most experts agree that sustainable means the people who manage and cut trees, as well as the mills that make trees into paper and wood products, are taking measures to lessen harm to the environment -- especially on birds, wildlife and waterways.
Another common thread is that forestry is conducted with an eye to the future -- that current demand for trees doesn't outweigh future environmental, recreational and social demands on forests.
Sustainable certification requires that land owners and managers use the best available forestry guidelines -- things like avoiding stands of old-growth trees, leaving slash material to help regenerate the soil, keeping away from rivers and wetlands and leaving a lighter footprint from logging equipment.
Some certifications also require that forestry practices be sustainable for nearby communities, meaning that wood products jobs pay living wages and factories don't pollute local waters.
Dave Bubser, regional director for Smartwood, which conducts Forest Stewardship Council certification, said somewhere between 5 percent and 15 percent of forest products in the U.S. now are certified sustainable. Demand is being driven more by industry-to-industry dealings and less by consumers, he said. Demand is increasing as buyers for big companies that use paper are making unsolicited requests for sustainable products for their companies.
"I don't think most consumers even know about forest certification," Bubser said. "But that will change in time."
Of Minnesota's more than 16 million acres of forest, about 54 percent is publicly owned and 46 percent private. The forest products industry in Minnesota is worth some $1.4 billion annually, state officials say, and employs more than 30,000 people -- from loggers and truckers to mill workers and cabinet and window makers. (*)
State forests across Minnesota are approved as sustainable, responding to market demand for more environmentally friendly products
BY JOHN MYERS | DULUTH NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Nearly 4.8 million acres of forest managed by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has been certified as environmentally sustainable, Gov. Tim Pawlenty announced Thursday.
The effort, expected for more than two years, is intended to make sure the state-managed forests are in sound environmental shape for years to come.
And it could help make the products manufactured from Minnesota trees more marketable for the state's wood products industry. State officials say that, without acting, Minnesota could have lost a share of the wood products market to regions that have certified their forests.
"Today's achievement is a testament to our long-term commitment to responsible stewardship of our heritage and future," Pawlenty said in a prepared statement.
The state land has received simultaneous certification from both the Forest Stewardship Council, an independent agency, and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, a now-independent group that has its roots in the timber industry.
Both groups have audited the DNR forestry division's books and toured forests and logging sites over the past year before awarding certification. Annual rechecks will be held, and the state must reapply after five years.
Minnesota's state forests are the largest chunk of government-managed land in the U.S. to become fully certified.
A representative of Minnesota's largest timber industry trade group on Thursday praised the industry-preferred Sustainable Forestry Initiative certification.
"The SFI program reflects the market and social realities of the 21st century," said Tim O'Hara, vice president of forest policy for the Duluth-based Minnesota Forest Industries.
"As demand for forest products from sustainably managed forests continues to grow, Minnesota is now at the front of the line to satisfy those demands," O'Hara said. "This is good for the state's forests, and it is vital to maintaining Minnesota's long-running, vibrant forest products industry."
Most of the DNR's forest land is in northern Minnesota, but the land ranges from boreal forests on the Ontario border to oak woods near Iowa.
The sustainable forest initiative has been gaining ground worldwide for a decade, pushed by environmental groups trying to stop the destruction of tropical rain forests.
In the U.S., the effort has been spurred as industry giants like Time Warner, LL Bean, McDonalds and Home Depot have demanded more products for their customers that are certified as sustainable. As big industry demands more sustainable products, more land managers have pushed for certification.
Time Inc., for example, buys paper from the Stora Enso mill in Duluth and the UPM mill in Grand Rapids, both of which get a good share of their trees from state forests.
The certification movement first gained traction in Minnesota in 1997 when county and state lands in Aitkin County became certified sustainable. Last summer, all 319,000 acres of Potlatch company land was certified. Some Minnesota mills, loggers and even truckers who handle the wood have been certified to link the chain of handling the trees.
Exactly what "sustainable" means is often a moving and sometimes unclear target. But most experts agree that sustainable means the people who manage and cut trees, as well as the mills that make trees into paper and wood products, are taking measures to lessen harm to the environment -- especially on birds, wildlife and waterways.
Another common thread is that forestry is conducted with an eye to the future -- that current demand for trees doesn't outweigh future environmental, recreational and social demands on forests.
Sustainable certification requires that land owners and managers use the best available forestry guidelines -- things like avoiding stands of old-growth trees, leaving slash material to help regenerate the soil, keeping away from rivers and wetlands and leaving a lighter footprint from logging equipment.
Some certifications also require that forestry practices be sustainable for nearby communities, meaning that wood products jobs pay living wages and factories don't pollute local waters.
Dave Bubser, regional director for Smartwood, which conducts Forest Stewardship Council certification, said somewhere between 5 percent and 15 percent of forest products in the U.S. now are certified sustainable. Demand is being driven more by industry-to-industry dealings and less by consumers, he said. Demand is increasing as buyers for big companies that use paper are making unsolicited requests for sustainable products for their companies.
"I don't think most consumers even know about forest certification," Bubser said. "But that will change in time."
Of Minnesota's more than 16 million acres of forest, about 54 percent is publicly owned and 46 percent private. The forest products industry in Minnesota is worth some $1.4 billion annually, state officials say, and employs more than 30,000 people -- from loggers and truckers to mill workers and cabinet and window makers. (*)
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Death of a Sawmill
Environmentalists wreck small businesses--and do ecological damage while they're at it.
BY JIM PETERSEN | Thursday, December 29, 2005 12:01 a.m. | WSJ Opinion Journal
EUREKA, Mont.--My friend Jim Hurst auctioned his sawmill in August.
Jim's decision to pack it in after 25 years of beating his head on the wall made big news here in northwest Montana but, alas, not a peep from this newspaper or the New York Times. That's too bad, because the loss of our family-owned mills also signals the loss of technologies and skills vital to our efforts to protect the West's great national forests from the ravages of increasingly fearsome wildfires.
I was in Jim's office a few days before the auction. He told me he was at peace with his decision, but Jim has a good game face, so I suspect the decision to terminate his remaining 70 employees tore his guts out. They were like family to him.
Jim's outfit was the economic backbone of tiny Eureka, Mont., a sawmill town since the early 1900s. I have a photo of my schoolteacher great-aunt standing on the front steps of the town's one-room schoolhouse in 1909. Although the town has grown some since then, its rural charm is still very much intact.
Thanks to the nation's housing boom, business has been good for the West's sawmills for the past three years. But Jim faced an insurmountable problem: He couldn't buy enough logs to keep his mill running. This despite the fact that 10 times as many trees as Jim's mill needed die annually on the nearby Kootenai National Forest. From his office window, Jim could see the dead and dying standing on hillsides just west of the mill. They might as well have been standing on the moon, given the senseless environmental litigation that has engulfed the West's federal forests.
Thanks to Jim's resourcefulness, his mill survived its last five years on a steady diet of fire- and bug-killed trees salvaged from Alberta provincial forests. Such salvage work is unthinkable in our national forests, forests that, news reports to the contrary, remain under the thumb of radical environmental groups whose hatred for capitalism seems boundless. Americans are thus invited to believe that salvaging fire-killed timber is "like mugging a burn victim." Never mind that there is no peer-reviewed science that supports this ridiculous claim--or that many of the West's great forests, including Oregon's famed Tillamook Forest, are products of past salvage and reforestation projects.
Jim shared his good fortune with his employees. Each received an average $30,000 in severance and profit sharing: a tip of the hat from him to a crew that set a production record the day after he told them he was throwing in the towel. Such is the professionalism--and talent--found among the West's mill workers. A few Oregon mills tried to recruit them, but most don't want to leave Eureka. I haven't the faintest idea how they'll make a living, but in the 40-odd years I've spent observing forests and people who live in them, I've learned never to underestimate the power of roots.
Although he's still a young man filled with creative energy and enthusiasm, I suspect the government has seen the last of Jim Hurst. Three years ago, I called nearly 100 sawmill owners scattered across the West and asked them if they would invest $40 million in a new small-log sawmill on the government's promise of a timber supply sufficient to amortize the investment. The verdict was a unanimous "No."
The never-reported truth is that the family-owned sawmills that survived the decade-long collapse of the federal timber sale program no longer have much interest in doing business with a government they no longer trust. Most now get their timber from lands they've purchased in recent years, other private lands, tribal forests or state lands. Some even import logs from other countries, including Canada, New Zealand and Chile.
You would think environmentalists who campaigned against harvesting in the West's national forests for 30-some years would be dancing in the streets. And, in fact, some of them are. But many aren't. Railing against giant faceless corporations is easy, but facing the news cameras after small family-owned mills fold has turned out to be very difficult. Everyone loves the underdog, and across much of the West there is a gnawing sense that environmentalists have hurt a lot of underdogs in their lust for power.
Environmentalists also face a problem they never anticipated. Recent polling reveals some 80% percent of Americans approve of the kind of methodical thinning that would have produced small diameter logs in perpetuity for Jim's sawmill. We Americans seem to like thinning in overly dense forests because the end result is visually pleasing, and because it helps reduce the risk of horrific wildfire--a bonus for wildlife and millions of year-round recreation enthusiasts who worship clean air and water.
Many Westerners wonder why the government isn't doing more thinning in at-risk forests that are at the epicenter of our Internet-linked New West lifestyle. I don't. Until the public takes back the enormous power it has given radical environmentalists and their lawyers, the Jim Hursts of the world will continue to exit the stage, taking their hard-earned capital, their well-developed global markets and their technological genius with them.
Fifteen years ago, not long after the release of "Playing God in Yellowstone," his seminal work on environmentalism's philosophical underpinnings, I asked philosopher and environmentalist Alston Chase what he thought about this situation. I leave you to ponder his answer: "Environmentalism increasingly reflects urban perspectives. As people move to cities, they become infatuated with fantasies about land untouched by humans. This demographic shift is revealed through ongoing debates about endangered species, grazing, water rights, private property, mining and logging. And it is partly a healthy trend. But this urbanization of environmental values also signals the loss of a rural way of life and the disappearance of hands-on experience with nature. So the irony: As popular concern for preservation increases, public understanding about how to achieve it declines."
Mr. Petersen is the founder of the non-profit Evergreen Foundation and the publisher of Evergreen Magazine in Montana.
BY JIM PETERSEN | Thursday, December 29, 2005 12:01 a.m. | WSJ Opinion Journal
EUREKA, Mont.--My friend Jim Hurst auctioned his sawmill in August.
Jim's decision to pack it in after 25 years of beating his head on the wall made big news here in northwest Montana but, alas, not a peep from this newspaper or the New York Times. That's too bad, because the loss of our family-owned mills also signals the loss of technologies and skills vital to our efforts to protect the West's great national forests from the ravages of increasingly fearsome wildfires.
I was in Jim's office a few days before the auction. He told me he was at peace with his decision, but Jim has a good game face, so I suspect the decision to terminate his remaining 70 employees tore his guts out. They were like family to him.
Jim's outfit was the economic backbone of tiny Eureka, Mont., a sawmill town since the early 1900s. I have a photo of my schoolteacher great-aunt standing on the front steps of the town's one-room schoolhouse in 1909. Although the town has grown some since then, its rural charm is still very much intact.
Thanks to the nation's housing boom, business has been good for the West's sawmills for the past three years. But Jim faced an insurmountable problem: He couldn't buy enough logs to keep his mill running. This despite the fact that 10 times as many trees as Jim's mill needed die annually on the nearby Kootenai National Forest. From his office window, Jim could see the dead and dying standing on hillsides just west of the mill. They might as well have been standing on the moon, given the senseless environmental litigation that has engulfed the West's federal forests.
Thanks to Jim's resourcefulness, his mill survived its last five years on a steady diet of fire- and bug-killed trees salvaged from Alberta provincial forests. Such salvage work is unthinkable in our national forests, forests that, news reports to the contrary, remain under the thumb of radical environmental groups whose hatred for capitalism seems boundless. Americans are thus invited to believe that salvaging fire-killed timber is "like mugging a burn victim." Never mind that there is no peer-reviewed science that supports this ridiculous claim--or that many of the West's great forests, including Oregon's famed Tillamook Forest, are products of past salvage and reforestation projects.
Jim shared his good fortune with his employees. Each received an average $30,000 in severance and profit sharing: a tip of the hat from him to a crew that set a production record the day after he told them he was throwing in the towel. Such is the professionalism--and talent--found among the West's mill workers. A few Oregon mills tried to recruit them, but most don't want to leave Eureka. I haven't the faintest idea how they'll make a living, but in the 40-odd years I've spent observing forests and people who live in them, I've learned never to underestimate the power of roots.
Although he's still a young man filled with creative energy and enthusiasm, I suspect the government has seen the last of Jim Hurst. Three years ago, I called nearly 100 sawmill owners scattered across the West and asked them if they would invest $40 million in a new small-log sawmill on the government's promise of a timber supply sufficient to amortize the investment. The verdict was a unanimous "No."
The never-reported truth is that the family-owned sawmills that survived the decade-long collapse of the federal timber sale program no longer have much interest in doing business with a government they no longer trust. Most now get their timber from lands they've purchased in recent years, other private lands, tribal forests or state lands. Some even import logs from other countries, including Canada, New Zealand and Chile.
You would think environmentalists who campaigned against harvesting in the West's national forests for 30-some years would be dancing in the streets. And, in fact, some of them are. But many aren't. Railing against giant faceless corporations is easy, but facing the news cameras after small family-owned mills fold has turned out to be very difficult. Everyone loves the underdog, and across much of the West there is a gnawing sense that environmentalists have hurt a lot of underdogs in their lust for power.
Environmentalists also face a problem they never anticipated. Recent polling reveals some 80% percent of Americans approve of the kind of methodical thinning that would have produced small diameter logs in perpetuity for Jim's sawmill. We Americans seem to like thinning in overly dense forests because the end result is visually pleasing, and because it helps reduce the risk of horrific wildfire--a bonus for wildlife and millions of year-round recreation enthusiasts who worship clean air and water.
Many Westerners wonder why the government isn't doing more thinning in at-risk forests that are at the epicenter of our Internet-linked New West lifestyle. I don't. Until the public takes back the enormous power it has given radical environmentalists and their lawyers, the Jim Hursts of the world will continue to exit the stage, taking their hard-earned capital, their well-developed global markets and their technological genius with them.
Fifteen years ago, not long after the release of "Playing God in Yellowstone," his seminal work on environmentalism's philosophical underpinnings, I asked philosopher and environmentalist Alston Chase what he thought about this situation. I leave you to ponder his answer: "Environmentalism increasingly reflects urban perspectives. As people move to cities, they become infatuated with fantasies about land untouched by humans. This demographic shift is revealed through ongoing debates about endangered species, grazing, water rights, private property, mining and logging. And it is partly a healthy trend. But this urbanization of environmental values also signals the loss of a rural way of life and the disappearance of hands-on experience with nature. So the irony: As popular concern for preservation increases, public understanding about how to achieve it declines."
Mr. Petersen is the founder of the non-profit Evergreen Foundation and the publisher of Evergreen Magazine in Montana.
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