Free Republic

<p>Suspicious fires destroyed three lumber yards in the last week in the Kansas City area, and authorities were trying to determine whether they are connected.</p> <p>The latest blaze leveled the 123-year-old Schutte Lumber Co. in Kansas City early Sunday, and investigators said arson is suspected.</p>

Some U.S. home builders are facing one of the many disagreeable side-effects of the military occupation of Iraq—higher costs of lumber. In a lumber market where shortages were already appearing, the Defense Logistics Agency suddenly ordered more than 20 million square-feet of plywood sheeting for construction in Iraq. Markets for plywood and its substitutes reacted strongly. Prices of oriented strand board (OSB), commonly used in new homes, apartment buildings, and commercial structures, jumped to record highs. According to Random Lengths, a lumber industry publication, the price of 7/16 inch OSB hit $445 per thousand square feet in mid-September, compared with...

MOSCOW (MT) -- Finland's Botnia, one of Europe's largest producers of chemical pulp, is planning to build a sawmill in the town of Podporozhye in northwest Russia, Finnish forestry products company M-real Corp. said Wednesday, Dow Jones reported. Botnia is jointly owned by M-real and UPM-Kymmene Corp. The sawmill will be medium-sized and equipped with modern sawmilling technology, M-real was cited as saying, and production is due to start in 2005.

WTO ruling stands in final softwood report The World Trade Organization made public Friday the final report of an earlier ruling on the countervailing duties the United States has imposed on imports of Canadian softwood lumber. The WTO decision, one of many in the long-standing $10-billion softwood lumber war between Canada and its neighbour, found that the United States failed to prove key elements of its case justifying punitive countervailing duties of 18.79 per cent on Canadian exports of softwood timber. Essentially, the WTO recognized that provincial timber sales programs provide benefits to Canadian producers, but rejected the way the...

Greenpeace ship headed to Juneau, denied dock space By TIMOTHY INKLEBARGER JUNEAU EMPIRE © 2003 Representatives of the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace will stop in Juneau today as part of a public relations campaign against logging in the Tongass and Chugach National Forests. But the M/V Esperanza (Spanish for hope), a Greenpeace ship, will not be allowed to dock at Goldbelt's Seadrome Marina, as earlier planned. Greenpeace representatives are traveling through Southeast on the "Endangered Forests, Endangered Freedoms" tour to document and raise awareness about the impacts of logging. The campaign also focuses on efforts by the Bush Administration to...

Forest Service establishes new timber sale rules By SHERRY DEVLIN of the Missoulian Invoking the danger of wildfire and bark beetle attack, the U.S. Forest Service established new rules Wednesday allowing small timber sales to move ahead without the customary level of environmental review or citizen challenge. And the Agriculture Department undersecretary who oversees the agency urged the U.S. Senate to push ahead with legislation insisting that federal judges balance the short-term impacts of logging against the long-term harm of inaction. "You cannot uncut a tree, but you also can't unburn a forest," undersecretary Mark Rey told a half-dozen timber-mill...

<p>THE STATE Lumber Firm Taking Tree-Sitters to Court In two years, Pacific Lumber has sued more than 110 protesters, who say the lawsuits are an attempt to quash anti-logging activism.</p> <p>EUREKA, Calif. ? While most activists have abandoned their treetop protests, Pacific Lumber Co. has continued its fight against the anti-logging campaign by seeking heavy civil penalties against protesters.</p> <p>In the last two years, the company has sued more than 110 people for trespassing and interference with its "lawful business operations," including an estimated 40 individuals from protests this spring in Freshwater, a community about six miles from here.</p>

Dissenters feel left out of processBy MICHAEL MARIZCO Sun Staff Reporter 03/08/2003 Standing outside City Hall after a congressional panel meeting on forest health, Roxane George, outreach coordinator for the Southwest Forest Alliance, dismissed the entire subcommittee hearing as undemocratic. The Southwest Forest Alliance was not invited to participate at the meeting, despite the 65 member groups the alliance represents, she said. "Not one representative was invited to speak because we weren't going to give lip service to what went on in there," George said. "This was a preview of what we can see when the public is excluded in...

PL tells Freshwater tree-sitters to get out By James Tressler The Times-Standard FRESHWATER -- Pacific Lumber Co. sent climbers up ancient redwood trees here Wednesday to deliver a message personally to tree-sitting activists. The message: It's time to come down. At least 18 activists sitting in PL-owned trees in the Freshwater area were served notice of a hearing scheduled Friday in Humboldt County Superior Court. The timber company is seeking a temporary restraining order which, if approved by Judge Dale Reinholtsen Friday, would order all of the tree-sitters to stay off the company's property. It also would order the activists...

One of the great unknowns following the collapse of Northwest timber cutting through the 1990s was what happened to thousands of loggers, sawmill workers and others who lost their jobs. Researchers mining a decade's worth of obscure state employment records have unearthed an answer, and it's not pretty: From Our Advertiser More than half the 60,000 workers who held jobs in the wood products industry at the start of the 1990s had left it by 1998. And almost half of those who left disappeared from work rolls altogether -- probably moving to another state, retiring or going unemployed. Roughly 18,000...

Differences in the Parties

<p>Students in an Oregon logging town may lose their tuition grants if the school district doesn't get rid of a perceived environmentalist bias that dishonors the loggers who built this town of 4,000.</p> <p>PHILOMATH, Ore. -- Since the early 1960s, a foundation created by a wealthy couple named Rex and Ethel Clemens has fulfilled an extraordinary promise: college scholarships for any Philomath High School graduate who resides in this faded logging town.</p>

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. PORTLAND, Ore. -- Louisiana-Pacific, a maker of lumber, pulp and building products, said it will sell several businesses and shed nearly half of its work force as part of a restructuring effort. The Portland-based company said it would trim 4,400 jobs -- cutting its work force from 9,700 to 5,300. The moves would leave the company with 30 North America mills instead of 60. It is also selling 935,000 acres of timberland in three states -- Idaho, Louisiana and Texas -- and its plywood, industrial panels and lumber businesses. In a...

One of the topics of conversation on my Mexico City trip was the problem of sugar lobbies on both sides of the border. In the United States, sugar producers maintain huge trade barriers, despite opposition from big sugar users like Coca-Cola and from environmentalists who worry about the degradation of the Everglades. The rival corn-fructose producers, notably Archer-Daniels-Midland, also find protectionism congenial, since it keeps the price of sugar artificially high. That's why Coke is made with corn syrup in the U.S. and sugar elsewhere, notably Mexico. (Some trendy restaurants in border states import the real Real Thing, served in...

<p>WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government set tariffs Friday totaling 29% on a popular type of Canadian lumber in an effort to protect American jobs and retaliate for what it says are unfair trade practices.</p> <p>Critics say the move will drive up wood product prices for U.S. consumers and devastate the Canadian industry.</p>