Variation and trends in sawmill wood procurement in the Northeastern United States

The sawmill industry in the Northeastern United States is represented by a wide variety of mills with highly variable roundwood requirements and diverse procurement operations. Data collected from 211 sawmills in seven states are used to characterize wood procurement, with an emphasis on quantifying variation in operations among different types of firms. In general, respondent mills procured 90 percent of their total 2005 roundwood supply from within 30 to 70 miles of the mill, but often ranged 200 miles or more to meet requirements. Of the 1.2 BBF of log procurement reported in the survey, gatewood was the most dominant log source (54%), followed by roadside sources (23%) and stumpage (16%). Fee simple lands, leases, easements and all other sources combined made up less than 8 percent of the total reported volume. A majority of mills reported declines in log quality and volume per log between 1994 and 2005. Results are discussed in the context of regional trends in industry concentration, log exportation, forest parcelization, urbanization, and exploitative harvesting practices. In the Northeastern United States, the location of firms in the primary forest products industry is closely linked to their proximity to raw materials (Luppold 1995a, Bowe et al. 2004, Luppold and Bumgardner 2006). Generally, sawmills in this region have well-defined woodsheds to procure stumpage and logs, often acquiring much of their roundwood supply from within 25 to 100 miles of the mill, depending on product requirements and production (Germain 1998). In contrast, pulpmills can have much larger woodsheds, often supplementing local roundwood sources with deliveries by rail or boat from great distances. Despite the importance of local woodsheds in supplying raw materials to this industry, there is very little empirical information available to characterize sawmill procurement operations, evaluate the effects of woodshed attributes on procurement, and assess changes in wood procurement over time. Quality baseline data are especially important in anticipating and adapting operations to the effects of large-scale ecologic, economic, and social changes that can impact the quality and availability of roundwood. Among these changes, the divestment of industrial forest ownerships to institutional investors and the parcelization of nonindustrial private forests (NIPF) have been of central concern in the Northeast in recent years (Decoster 1998, Block and Sample 2001, Butler and Leatherberry 2004, LaPierre and Germain 2005, Germain et al. 2006). In many parts of the country, including the Northeast, urbanization has been recognized as a major threat to the timber supply (Wear et al. 1999, Sampson and DeCoster 2000, Munn et al. 2002, Kline et al. 2004, Nowak and Walton 2005). In addition, past and ongoing exploitative harvesting practices (Fajvan et al. 1998, Nyland 2001, Kenefic and Nyland 2005), as well as changes in landowner objectives in favor of amenity values (Dennis 1989), can have direct impacts on the yield of sawlogs from forestlands. Nonindigenous invasive species (Pimentel et al. 2000), forest-related municipal ordinances (Mortimer et al. 2006), log exports (Jones et al. 1994), and many other factors also have been identified for their potential to affect the timber supply. In general, factors that diminish the potential of a sawmill’s woodshed to supply sawlogs are likely to have negative impacts on the effectiveness and efficiency of procurement operations. Sawmills operating in woodsheds characterized by parcelization, fragmentation, exploitative harvesting, and urbanization may experience a decline in the sawlog resource The authors are, respectively, Research Assistant and Associate Professor, Faculty of Forest and Natural Resources Management, SUNY College of Environmental Sci. and Forestry, Syracuse, New York ([email protected], [email protected]). This paper was received for publication in February 2007. Article No. 10315. ✳Forest Products Society Member. ©Forest Products Society 2007. Forest Prod. J. 57(10):36-44.