No doubt, the United States needs our wood!
As of 2024 there are 2,500 sawmills in the U.S. and 850 in Canada.
However, these numbers have to be looked at in context of housing starts in both countries.
The interesting part is the planned housing starts for the year 2025 with 250,000 new houses in Canada (as per Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation) and 1.5 million houses planned in the U.S.
An interesting number: The rebuilding of 16,000 houses that burnt down in California require 4,300 fully loaded eight-axle trailer trucks with dimensioned lumber.
To have a truly competitive forestry economy the following has to happen: Production costs must come down, stumpage fees must come down, and taxes must come down.
Policies must change, and cutting approvals must be faster, more options of working together with our indigenous people must be provided, an economic strategy must be developed, BCTS (BC Timber Sales) must be more active, confidence and predictability is required, efficiency must be improved.
We must be innovative and need more skilled workers. We should have a few smaller mills and/or machinery producing metric size timber for Europe and Japan.
Mass timber, as well as post and beam construction should be added to the value-added timber portfolio.
We cannot change what is happening in the US, but despite an executive order from higher up, many mills in the US are suffering from a steady lack of timber supply and do not have the manpower or loggers required to steadily feed some of the mills.
In Montana for example, 36 mills have closed over the last years because of a lack of timber supply, as well as a lack of loggers.
Trump issued an executive order to the Department of Agriculture and directed federal personnel to increase timber quotas by 25 per cent in nearly 113 million acres of national forests across the nation which includes large swaths of California.
A federal judge recently ruled that the Bureau of Land Management had illegally authorized the logging of old growth forest lands within protected areas called “successional reserves,” created specifically to protect old growth forest ecosystems!
It means the special orders from Trump do not necessarily result in an increase of available wood, certainly not on a short term!
Yes, the U.S. definitely needs our wood south of the border!
Albert Koehler, P.Eng., is a former Prince George city councillor.
Albert Koehler, P.Eng., is a former Prince George city councillor.
