Economy Effects Logging In NEK

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Created on Monday, 15 April 2013 17:46
Written by Michael Howard

loggingNORTHEAST KINGDOM - For loggers in the Kingdom, demand in the last 10 years for harvested hardwood has gone down at a dramatic rate due to the nation's housing market. As the demand for hardwood has gone down, prices for just about everything else, have gone up.

Vermont logger Walt Bandy has been logging for over 25 years in the North East Kingdom as well as places in New Hampshire. Bandy is all too familiar with lower prices for hardwood, as well as lower demand, "it's changed a lot in the last 10 or so years" says Bandy, "demand has gone down and the prices I get for wood has decreased."

"Prices that I get for wood are not even close to what I got a couple of years ago" says Craig Owen who works at the East Burke log yard, "it all depends on the housing market because all this wood that sitting here all in one way, shape or form, ends up in a house." 

In the last 10 years, the amount of harvested hardwood in Caledonia County has decreased, going from eleven point three million board feet of hardwood harvested in 2003, to just under 5 million board feet in 2010. 

Caledonia and Essex county forester Matt Langlais says the effects aren't just the economy here in the United States "they depend very strongly on the housing market however, were a worldwide economy nowadays, it's a global market." 

Langlais says housing starts are up which spells good news for the industry but all are "cautiously optimistic" for the future ahead.

You can read the Vermont Forest Industry Comparison here.