Forest Service proposes sustained-yield timber unit to shore up Montana logging industry

The U.S. Forest Service has proposed creating a Tri-Forest Federal Sustained Yield Unit that would direct three Montana national forests to supply local businesses with at least 35 million board feet of timber per year, invoking an 82-year-old federal law in a bid to stabilize the state’s faltering logging sector. The agency unveiled the proposal last month, citing the recent closure of the Pyramid Mountain Lumber sawmill in Seeley Lake and the shuttering of the Roseburg Wood Products facility in Missoula as evidence of the industry’s vulnerability. The proposal drew mixed reactions at a Forest Service public hearing in Helena.

The plan would bind the Helena-Lewis and Clark, Beaverhead-Deerlodge, and Custer Gallatin national forests to a 22-county supply commitment covering roughly 925,000 acres of designated timber land, raising questions about whether preferential timber access under a 1944 law is the right instrument to sustain rural economies — and what consequences it could carry for wildlife habitat, watershed protection, and public recreation.

The 1944 law and what the unit would do

Congress passed the Sustained Yield Forest Management Act in 1944 to provide timber towns near national forests with a continuous supply of lumber. The Forest Service is pitching its Montana proposal as a tool to sustain local economies and encourage investment in the lumber industry.

Under the proposal, outlined in a 12-page document, at least 35 million board feet of sawlogs and other material felled from the unit area would be delivered and processed at facilities within the 22-county boundary each year. Twenty-five businesses are listed in the unit; about half are mills, with the remainder including fencing companies and construction businesses that work with smaller-diameter material.

Chelsea Pennick, a University of Idaho professor who authored a policy analysis titled “Revisiting Sustained Yield Units,” wrote that the framework has demonstrated shortcomings in the decades since the 1944 law passed, including a “monopoly effect” and a reversal of the Forest Service’s historical orientation toward supporting competition and maximizing returns to the federal treasury. Pennick also noted that development of sustained yield units has historically stoked concerns that private companies would gain greater influence over national forest management.

Industry reaction: support tempered by skepticism

The Forest Service and industry representatives said the proposal would not dramatically change the volume of timber coming out of the three forests.

Chiara Cipriano, a spokesperson for the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest, said the three forests currently supply between 40 and 50 million board feet of commercial timber per year. The proposal would restrict who is authorized to submit a bid in initial timber sales and require that wood be processed within the unit boundary, but the how of harvesting would not change significantly, according to Nick Horn, outreach forester for Sun Mountain Lumber.

Horn said Sun Mountain currently sources between 35 and 40 percent of the federal sawlogs it processes at its mills in Deer Lodge and Livingston from the three forests included in the unit. He said the company appreciates the agency’s intention but is skeptical the volume floor is adequate.

“We spoke with them and they’re having a hard time moving on that number,” Horn said, referring to the agency’s commitment to the 35-million-board-feet figure.

Horn described the unit as a “landscape-level directive” that is “not enforceable by anyone,” noting that wildfire and litigation remain variables that could prevent the agency from meeting its targets. He said stabilizing supply to keep mills open and fully staffed would also require assurances that litigation or fire will not derail planned timber sales and increased agency staffing to prepare units for bid.

Environmental concerns

Environmental groups expressed a range of views at the Helena hearing and in written comments.

Hilary Eisen, federal policy director with the nonprofit Wild Montana, said she was cautiously optimistic the unit would be a “big nothingburger” that will not dramatically alter the Forest Service’s timber extraction process. But she said it could lead the agency to prioritize the timber program over competing objectives, and she placed the proposal in a broader context of simultaneous regulatory changes.

“We also have all of the changes that are happening to NEPA, we have the repeal of the roadless rule, and executive and secretarial orders saying we’re under a timber emergency and we need to cut as many trees as possible,” Eisen said. “This isn’t happening in a vacuum.”

Michael Garrity, executive director of Alliance for the Wild Rockies, wrote in comments to the proposal that he anticipates it will have a “significant individual and cumulative impact” on wildlife habitat, water quality, climate resilience, and the spread of noxious weeds. His group called on the Forest Service to prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement.

Clint Nagel, president of Gallatin Wildlife Association, said he was concerned the Forest Service would use the proposal to circumvent the National Environmental Policy Act. He also argued that watershed protection and other benefits intact forests provide have historically been “corrupted by the timber industry.”

The Forest Service has said the unit and individual timber sales within it will be managed consistently with the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, and the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. The agency’s proposal does not specify how employees will apply the Endangered Species Act and NEPA with respect to wildlife habitat for threatened and endangered species such as grizzly bears and Canada lynx.

The agency also said the proposal will not authorize logging in wilderness areas or wilderness study areas, or pave the way for new roads in established roadless areas — though the federal government is in the process of revoking the roadless rule, leaving that assurance’s durability unclear.

What happens next

The Forest Service anticipates adopting a final decision in the coming months. If authorized, the unit would remain in effect for 10 years, after which the agency could dissolve it, make adjustments, or reauthorize it for another decade.

Cipriano said there are no regulatory mechanisms that will “increase or enforce program outputs” under the proposal, describing the unit instead as designed to “demonstrate the Forest Service’s long-term commitment to a sustainable supply of timber for local processing infrastructure.”