Wood Product Utilization Interviews
2-3-2 Landscape
The Forest Stewards Guild conducted interviews with six wood-processing facilities of various sizes and production logistics in the 2-3-2 landscape to better understand wood product utilization.
Key themes from the interviews:
- The importance of volume from federal lands for long-term stabilization of wood processing businesses. Industry partners described the stability they receive from longer projects and how it’s associated with investments and improvements in processing capacity.
- Challenges related to training and workforce retention. Many partners thought that supporting workforce development programs throughout the 2-3-2 would help subsidize labor costs by decreasing burden on the industry to pay for expensive training.
- Challenges related to timber sale mechanisms. Partners explained that to achieve their timber sales, they essentially being asked to complete a pre-commercial thinning and a thinning at the same time, which does not adequately cover the cost of labor, hauling, and disposal of non-merchantable wood.
