As lumber mills grind to a halt, their saws dulled against the blunt edge of a national housing slump, loggers and log haulers are likewise being forced out of their woods work.
No new home construction means no new need for lumber, and the trickle-down has snapped links in the entire supply chain, from stump to street.
But while millworkers continue to face a bleak future, sawyers and truckers are banking on recent investments in specialty logging - that is to say, thinning projects aimed at reducing wildfire risk, rather than providing boards.
"To tell the truth, that's the sort of thing that's keeping a lot of guys on the job," said Libby logger Wayne Hirst. "The fuel reduction money is putting people to work."
Up in Flathead County, a regional nonprofit just spent the last of a $545,000 grant to thin trees on nearly 1,000 private forest acres. It was part of a $1.4 million package, provided by the U.S. Forest Service and the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, and intended to help northwest Montana homeowners make their lands "firewise."
"Right now, we're the only game in town for some of these loggers," Susan Sutherland said. She's coordinator at the Northwest Regional Resource Conservation and Development office, the nonprofit through which the federal and state money flowed.
The RC&D, she said, is a 40-year-old outfit charged with finding funds for community needs in Lake, Lincoln, Flathead and Sanders counties.
In recent years, she's focused increasingly on fuel reduction projects that keep loggers logging, regardless of the broader lumber economy.
"We're just trying to think of anything we can do to Band-Aid these guys through hard times," Sutherland said.
Since 2004, she said, RC&D has distributed the full $1.4 million to landowners, who in turn have hired loggers and haulers to thin 2,100 acres of private forest. In addition, her group now has nine additional "firewise" grants in the bag, totaling about $812,000.
In Flathead County alone, Sutherland said, the money spent so far has touched about 125 woods workers. And she expects to affect many more in coming months, as contractors who can no longer supply mills are lining up for stewardship jobs.
A week ago, she said, RC&D held a meeting for logging contractors in Kalispell, and more than two dozen showed up.
"We were very impressed with the turnout," she said. "What really struck me was the number of large loggers, who just a few years ago wouldn't have even considered a small thinning job."
Another contractors' meeting is set for Libby at 9 a.m. on May 16 in the local senior center. There, much of the talk is expected to turn on the recent announcement that federal economic stimulus money will be spent on forest-fuel reduction projects.
According to U.S. Forest Service documents, Lake County can expect $987,000 for thinning work; Flathead County, $506,000; Lincoln County, $808,000; Sanders County, $1.06 million; and the Kootenai National Forest, $2.47 million.
"That kind of money is going to make a big difference," Hirst said, adding that the investment not only provides jobs, but also promotes forest health and reduces wildfire risk on private property.
"We're going to need these thinning jobs," Sutherland said, "if people are going to survive until the lumber market turns around."
The turnaround, however, remains a distant unknown, with economists still tracking sharp declines in Montana's wood products industry.
Todd Morgan, director of forest industry research at the University of Montana's Bureau of Business and Economic Research, said recently that "the prolonged economic and housing downturn is clearly having severe negative impacts on the state's industry."
In the Flathead, even large producers such as Plum Creek Timber Co. have been shuttering operations, laying off hundreds of millworkers - and, by association, hundreds more woods workers.
According to Morgan, lumber production at Montana sawmills fell nearly 50 percent from the first quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2009. Current production levels, he said, are 2.5 times lower than they were in 2005, when national housing starts were at their peak.
Employment and wages also are in free-fall, as mills shorten work weeks, curtail operations, initiate pay cuts and close entirely.
"Given the bleak forecast for the rest of 2009, employment and production could go lower as the year progresses," Morgan warned.
The economist added that several Montana mills reported not purchasing any logs whatsoever during the first three months of 2009, causing "substantial impacts on loggers and other workers who harvest and deliver logs."
Those are the folks new thinning projects are aimed at, and without the fuel reduction investments, as Hirst and Sutherland said, many more would be feeling the pinch.
"Projects that keep contractors working, whether or not any timber is harvested, are needed," Morgan agreed, "not only to improve forest conditions but to keep the in-the-woods portion of our forest products industry intact."The Missoulian
