Shifting industrial geographies of timber production and processing in the Pacific Northwest

Abstract

U.S. laws and policies have implicitly and explicitly sought to use forests to benefit the nation and adjacent rural communities through a social contract, whereby forest harvest supports community stability. However, the forest industry in the Pacific Northwest experienced a supply shock in the 1990s with the reduction in federal harvest and the creation of the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP), which occurred against a backdrop of changing investments across the forest and broader manufacturing industries. This study gathers, queries, and analyzes data from multiple sources to examine how industrial geographies of timber production and processing have shifted over the last 50 years in the region with attention to outcomes in rural areas. We compare harvest, employment, and mills across rural, urban, and urbanizing counties. Steep declines in harvest occurred in rural counties, while gradual declines in numbers of sawmills coincided with location shifts to more urban or urbanizing counties. Rural and urbanizing counties remain more economically reliant on the forestry sector, but the industry today is more connected with the land base in rural areas through harvesting, and more connected with urban areas for processing. We conclude that the story of the Pacific Northwest timber economy is as much, if not more, a story of capitalist political economy as it is one of environmental regulation. Our findings raise questions about the feasibility of the social contract as well as the adequacy of the workforce and infrastructure needed to support urgent wildfire risk reduction activities on federal forestlands.