White knows it's not coming out of the national forest, and he's busting his butt trying to squeeze a dollar out of whoever he can. In Nicholas County, the National Forest Service sells very little timber anymore, he said. They can't dispute it. And it's all because of their policies. Those policies protect forests, environmentalists say.
Dead trees return nutrients to the soil as they decay.
Nowadays, when loggers harvest trees, they leave even less of it in the forest to rot. Instead, they grind up limbs and other waste to sell as chips, to paper and pulp mills, and sawdust to fire boilers. That thrifty new practice has two consequences. It grates on environmentalists and makes them want to seek even stricter laws. And it boosts companies' revenues, making the timber industry look super-healthy, even when fewer workers might be working.