http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/TimberCouncil.mp3
The state has appointed a new group to give advice on how Michigan's forests can create more jobs. It's composed mainly of people who work in forestry related businesses, which raises a red flag for those who think trees will be cut more aggressively.
State officials say that's not the intention.
Disagreement
For years lawmakers and parts of the timber industry have been pushing to cut more state forest land. They say that will boost an industry that's been in decline. But there's been a push back by those who want to protect forest lands for other uses such as recreation and wildlife.
Just recently the Department of Natural Resources Director Rodney Stokes appointed a timber advisory council. It's made up mainly of people connected to the industry and Stokes says they were telling him their voices weren't being heard in the DNR.
"To me that's unacceptable," he says. "They play a major role in this state. And so I needed to hear from them just like I hear from people who are on the trails in our state forests."
Competing Values
In announcing the timber council Governor Rick Snyder says there's a lot of potential to use natural resources to bring in more revenue, and Stokes and several members of the new council say they want to create more opportunities for forest-related jobs in rural parts of the state.
But they're not ready to address the question of whether that will mean cutting more trees. What they are willing to say is that the state can provide a clear set of rules and assurance that there will be an available supply of wood and they insist there's a way to keep both industry and all the others users happy while maintaining the health of the forest.
Marvin Roberson of the Sierra Club has been embroiled in this debate for more than a decade. He says the DNR already is at maximum capacity for taking wood off state land and he thinks this new timber council is unnecessary.
"It's not that the timber industry isn't being promoted or that they're not having feed stock fed to them or that timber isn't being cut," he says. "It's that they don't like the idea of managing for any other values."
Overly Protective
The timber industry and environmentalists aren't the only voices that matter. That's because the DNR has signed up to have independent outfits take a look at their forestry operations. It's called forest certification and it means state foresters have to show they're managing forests responsibly for the wood to be accepted in the marketplace.
But some in the industry feel that managers of public lands are being overly protective.
"You can't protect living systems. They're very dynamic. Things are happening all the time. Things we have control over. Things we do not have control over," says Warren Suchovsky, with the Michigan Association of Timbermen that represents loggers.
The Timbermen say they don't have a quarrel with forest certification. But they think it's possible to increase the amount of wood taken from the forest without harming it.
In fact, Suchovsky says, by not harvesting some tree species in a timely way wood is being wasted, and that's hurting forest health.
"The feeling of some of us is that some of our timber stands are being held too long, too late in maturity," he says. "And we're losing volume because of rot, insects, disease what have you."
One Man's Rot, Another Man's Compost
When it comes to the forests, one man's rot is another's compost, and a certain amount of decay is necessary to regenerate forest life from microbes in the soil to insects to woodpeckers.
The question is: How much is too much. Roberson, with the Sierra Club, says at a time when mills have closed and jobs have gone away, it doesn't make sense to be talking about cutting more trees to feed industry.
"There's no job lost, no plant closed, nobody's out of work because of a lack of feedstock in Michigan. Demand is going down significantly. So cutting more timber isn't going to create a single more job," he says.
But the timber industry isn't monolithic and supply and demand isn't always a simple equation. Forester Bill Cook says prices and markets differ from region to region in the state. He's with MSU Extension in Escanaba.
In some parts of the Upper Peninsula, markets for pulp and paper reportedly are rebounding. In the Northern Lower, those markets are dwindling. And in most parts of the state, Cook says, demand for logs to produce high value products such as hardwood flooring or fine furniture has remained pretty strong.
"When the state owns property in areas where this demand is particularly strong, the state, to the limits of the forest capacity of course, could increase timber output to meet those demands," he says.
