TIMBER MARKET SO BAD IT'S GOOD
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 -- 9:41 AM
The economy is awful, new home starts are way down, so why are tracts of publicly owned forest selling so well this year?As we reported, Clark County is having a record-year for timber sales revenues.
Terry Mace, forest products specialist with the DNR, says it's a complicated situation.
68% of the state's harvestable timber is privately owned. Realizing the market might go south, many landowners decided not to sell this year.
"Timber is not something you have to harvest immediately. They see that housing is down, the mills are having trouble, so they're not putting their timber up for sale," Mace explains, "So, some of the mills are having trouble finding wood to keep their mills running for the orders they have."
Demand is actually way, way down. In fact, Mace expects it's only half of what it was in 2007.
Wisconsin is the top producer of fine-writing paper in the nation.
Two-thirds of the state's harvest is hardwood. Much of that goes to furniture, flooring and cabinets, but Mace says a good chunk goes to firewood?that market is up.
"When gas and oil is cheap and reasonable and everyone is turning up the thermostats, we use about one-million cords of firewood. When prices get high, we use about 2-million cords. I'm expecting about 2-million cords will be used this year," he says.
5-billion board feet of timber harvested every year.
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