The forestry industry in the United States has shifted from the Pacific Northwest to the South during the past two decades, all thanks to owls.
Rich Vlosky, director of the LSU AgCenter’s Louisiana Forest Products Development Center, said national forests in the West were traditionally the nation’s top producers of timber. But the Northern Spotted Owl, which is native to the Northwest, was listed as a threatened species in 1990, and logging in national forests was banned soon after.
As processing plants shut down and workers lost jobs, the forestry industry turned to the South, which Vlosky said is the “wood basket” of the U.S. because it is heavily forested, and logging and sawmills have long had a presence in the region. However, the South was never the leader because production in states such as Oregon and Washington took place on a greater scale.
The South’s flat terrain and ports with access to the Mississippi River lowered production costs, Vlosky said. In particular, the region drew producers of wood pellets — compressed sawdust that is used for fuel.
Vlosky said wood pellets’ popularity has skyrocketed in the past decade in Europe, where government energy mandates have made pellets a popular fuel for power plants and heating systems. The U.S. is the largest provider of pellets and the European Union is the largest demander, he said.
Cellulose-based fuels like pellets have been a central part of a federal push for a renewable fuel standard, Vlosky said, which facilitated millions of dollars of grant funding for research.
Vlosky said things were looking good until 2008, when companies perfected and popularized fracking to fracture oil shale formations, slashing the price of natural gas. Because traditional fuels remain more affordable, biofuels simply are not competitive, he said.
“The biofuel sector is in deep, deep trouble … All that investment going into using biomass to make biofuels and electricity — a lot of people lost their shirt,” Vlosky said.
The recent recession also hurt the housing industry, which was bad for the South because it produces softwoods that are used in construction, Vlosky said.
Vlosky said the recession put about 15,000 of Louisiana’s 30,000 forestry workers out of work — a 49 percent drop. The economy is getting better and some forestry operations have resumed, he said, but finding loggers is now a limiting factor. Furthermore, the number of college-level forestry programs and enrollment in them is declining, he said.
Many students who would have majored in forestry in the past are now shifting to environmental and natural resources studies, Vlosky said. At the University’s School of Renewable Natural Resources, 22 students are enrolled in the forestry concentration. The wildlife and fisheries concentration, which houses all other disciplines taught at the school, has 250 students.
Forestry is not as big of an industry as it once was in Louisiana. Vlosky said that in 2004, forestry accounted for more than 70 percent of plant commodities in Louisiana in terms of value. Last year, it was only 25 percent. Forestry — a $5.3 billion industry in Louisiana about 20 years ago — is today only worth $2.8 billion.
Despite that decline and even though newer uses for forestry like biofuels are not always viable, Vlosky said traditional applications — plywood and furniture, for example — maintain a steady demand. The sector is not going to disappear, so a forestry degree remains valuable, he said. He also mentioned the industry must continue to innovate, so involving young people is important.
Plus, forests themselves are not going away. Vlosky said forests are generally well-managed, and companies have incentives to replace what they remove — about four trees are planted for every one cut down.
“The biofuel sector is in deep, deep trouble.”