We may not always think about it, but we all depend on products made from wood. For some, our relationship with wood fiber starts every day when we drop a paper coffee filter into our coffee pot. Of course, it doesn’t start and end there. The truth is wood continues to be an integral part of our lives and even our identity. We use wood to construct our homes, our kids’ use it to take notes in their school notebooks, and wood energy warms the hearths of millions of Americans during the coldest, most unforgiving winters.

How we get the wood to make these products is important. This summer, I joined with members of the American Loggers Council to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the nation’s largest association of professional loggers. The MOU illustrates a shared vision of strong markets for local, sustainably sourced wood, building on several essential projects during the past few years.

For starters, during the pandemic, the Forest Service forged a partnership with American Loggers Council as we worked with the Farm Services Agency and other partners to launch the Pandemic Assistance for Timber Harvesters and Haulers program, also known as the PATHH program. This extraordinarily successful program delivered $200 million in direct financial assistance to loggers and log truckers adversely impacted by the pandemic.

More recently, ALC administered the $5 million Biomass Transport Incentive Pilot project with the National Forest System, six biomass power plants and one wood products facility. This was a novel approach to financially incentivizing the haul of biomass from hazardous fuels treatments that otherwise would not be removed from the landscape. BTIP resulted in 56,613 bone dry tons (113,226 green ton equivalent) of hazardous fuels removed and 4,152 acres treated with at least 75% coming from priority landscapes and high-hazard firesheds identified in the National Wildfire Crisis Strategy.

This is just the start of our partnership with loggers. We need to work together to support hazardous fuels reduction and other forest restoration treatments, improve transportation and logistics and strengthen markets that promote utilization of all types of timber products derived from management of our national forests and other public, tribal and private lands. We need to find ways to support the logging workforce.

This MOU with the American Loggers Council is vitally important. Sustainably harvesting wood to make products is a key part of the puzzle to improving the health of our nation’s forest and making them more resilient to a changing climate. Logging can reduce wildfire risks to communities, combat destructive invasive species, support healthy ecosystems and wildlife habitat, and preserve the aesthetic value of forests.

We recognize that to ensure healthy forests for future generations, we need to increase the pace and scale of forest restoration work, like thinning overgrown stands and removing dead or diseased trees that could fuel a catastrophic wildfire. Strengthening our partnership with loggers is going to help us get there. I wish the American Loggers Council luck as they meet in California this year to think through some of the challenges and opportunities facing the community of forestry professionals and land managers alike in the months and years ahead.

Reflecting on signing this MOU, I am proud to have sat at the table with hardworking men and women who lace up their boots every day to go to work in the woods. Whether they are working on a ten-acre parcel managed by a family or a 10,000-acre national forest, loggers are indispensable partners to private landowners and federal land managers alike. Build on this MOU locally by engaging with local loggers and state logging associations.

Please join me in celebrating the American logger and finding ways to work together, forest by forest - The People: American Loggers. 

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