We are not only logging an artificially high allowable cut set by Congress, porkbarrelling on Forest Service and BLM lands, we are also logging the buyback sales of the 1970's. Through the 1980's, the market for wood products, not judicial constraints, determined the timber supply. 2.0 Economists call that increased efficiency. Mill owners call it increased productivity. Mill workers call it unemployment.
Retailers call it bankruptcy.
Increased employment in sales and distribution have replaced jobs lost in the woods and mills. But most of the sales and distribution jobs are in Portland, Seattle, Tacoma and Eugene. That is cold comfort in Roseburg, Powers, Coos Bay, Forks, Hines and Prairie City. What old-growth timber remains available is much too valuable to be peeled into veneer for plywood. The Spotted Owl has created a timber supply problem sooner rather than later.