JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
President Trump is taking steps to bolster America's timber industry. Right now, about 30% of the lumber used by U.S. homebuilders is imported, mostly from Canada. So the U.S. has enacted new duties on Canadian timber, and new executive orders loosen regulations on cutting down trees in national forests. But it is not a given that those measures bring back timber jobs. Montana Public Radio's Ellis Juhlin reports.
ELLIS JUHLIN, BYLINE: Deer Lodge, Montana, is a small town in the Clark Fork River valley, silhouetted by forested mountain ranges on all sides. Sun Mountain Lumber is the biggest employer here, outside of the state prison.
(SOUNDBITE OF LUMBER MILL MACHINERY)
JUHLIN: On a cold, rainy day at the mill, outreach forester Sean Steinebach weaves through mountains of stacked Douglas fir and lodgepole pine logs. His 6-foot frame is dwarfed by the stacks and the enormous school bus-yellow machinery. A log loader drops its arcade-like claw, plucking up a 10-foot log like it's a twig.
(SOUNDBITE OF LUMBER MILL MACHINERY)
JUHLIN: Steinebach walks over to the mill's massive kiln, where freshly cut two-by-fours are dried. You can feel the heat radiating off of the fresh boards. He stops and inhales.
SEAN STEINEBACH: It smells fresh, and it smells bright, and it smells wild.
JUHLIN: About 200 people work here. Sun Mountain is the biggest company in a five-county radius.
STEINEBACH: So we're a big impact in the whole state, I think. Forest products, in general, is a huge impact in the state of Montana.
JUHLIN: But 36 Montana timber mills have closed since the 1990s. Only six remain. Julia Altemus is the head of the Montana Wood Products Association.
JULIA ALTEMUS: So what we have left, we just cannot lose any more. These mills, all these manufacturing facilities are extremely capital intensive. When you lose one, it is so difficult to get it back.
JUHLIN: The University of Montana says there are now about 40% fewer timber jobs in the state. Altemus says the main reason mills close is a lack of logs and sees new federal policies as the solution. In March, President Trump signed an executive order telling the U.S. Forest Service and Interior Department to increase logging and scale back environmental protections that he says stand in the way of bigger timber harvests.
More logs from public lands will help existing timber mills, says Mindy Crandall, a forest policy professor at Oregon State University. But she says it will take more than just logs to revive the industry. Opening new mills or even reopening a closed one is costly.
MINDY CRANDALL: Before they make a lot of investment in capital infrastructure, a business is going to want to know that that supply is going to be consistent for a longer time frame than just three years.
JUHLIN: Crandall says ultimately, demand for lumber comes from demand for housing, which can drop if there's an economic downturn.
CRANDALL: The biggest hits that we see are during recessions. If we go into a large recession that reduces people's disposable income and impacts the housing market, there's no demand for lumber.
(SOUNDBITE OF LUMBER MILL MACHINERY)
JUHLIN: Back at Sun Mountain Lumber, Sean Steinebach says there's uncertainty beyond the U.S. economy. President Trump has frozen grants the Biden administration put in place to support timber mills, which were helping Sun Mountain. And staff reductions at the Forest Service could mean fewer -ologists (ph) like biologists, hydrologists and other specialists needed to approve new logging projects.
STEINEBACH: Are we going to be right - running back against capacity issues where we don't have the specialists and the -ologists on the Forest Service or on our - you know, in our agency partners to put projects up? But we just - we don't know.
JUHLIN: So exactly how quickly or if loggers will be able to get more timber from federal lands is unknown. But Steinebach says the industry is used to new promises from new presidents.
STEINEBACH: Going all the way back to Clinton, there's always been some issues to navigate with the administration, and it's never an easy industry to be in.
JUHLIN: He says there's no president that's going to fix the logging industry with the stroke of a pen, even if it means they can cut more logs. Since Trump's order to increase logging, his administration has also said it's rolling back environmental protections, including the Endangered Species Act. That worries environmentalists like Arlene Montgomery with Friends of the Wild Swan in Montana.
ARLENE MONTGOMERY: There'll be more clear cuts. And then you need more roads to get back into the areas to log, and roads are very harmful for wildlife.
JUHLIN: She says the Forest Service already lacks the budget to maintain existing roads, and more roads will mean more harm to clean water and wildlife habitat. Trump's environmental deregulation has already prompted lawsuits from green groups.
For NPR News, I'm Ellis Juhlin in Missoula, Montana. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.