Hill City, SD mill closure

[barbender]

I just read about the closing of the Nieman Enterprise sawmill in Hill City, South Dakota. 100+ employees, looked to be a well run mill when I've been by it. Nieman has 2 other mills in the Black Hills area, one in Spearfish and the other in Hulett, WY. The mill was profitable, the sole reason it was closed was timber supply. 80% of the timber comes off of one land owner, the U.S. Forest Service, and they decided to scale back the timber that will be offered. 

[mike_belben]

Yeah, close another real job then pass more legislation to fund more welfare and  "transitional assistance" 

[barbender]

Part of the reasoning justifying the elreduction in timber sales was the amount of timber lost to the mountain pine beetle. The problem is, the beetle outbreak wouldn't have been so bad if those forests had been properly thinned and harvested in the first place, IMO.

[Southside]

There really should be some weight applied to the downstream impact of such a timber management decision when it is Federal land.  Not that I would expect the "learn to code" mentality of the federal government do actually care.  

[Autocar]

Government figures stop the logging and they get more fuel for for forest fires know common sense !

[mudfarmer]

A very sobering reminder to everyone not to put all or even 80% of your eggs in one basket. RIP jobs.

[mudfarmer]

Looks like they bought a mill in OR the end of 2020 that apparently supports 150 jobs. Well done Nieman

[Don P]

Its been years but my memory was a lot of that Black Hills forest is a doghair thicket.

[stavebuyer]

SD is probably at odds with the federal powers that be. Could be a "thank you" for their non-support.

[barbender]

We've had the same problem up here. While we have a diversity of landowners, the Feds have a huge amount of property. The counties and even the State for the most part, manage for a return on their timber. Not the Feds. We're not quite sure what their management goals are😑 In the Black Hills, the Feds pretty much own everything. Just how it is. It's similar in other areas out West as well.

[stavebuyer]

I used to to buy a lot of sales at Land Between the Lakes when TVA managed it. TVA did an outstanding job and paid for much of their resource management with timber sales income. Exemplary program. That all died the day the forest service took over.

[Nebraska]

No they would rather retroactively tax us while figuring  out ways to redistribute  wealth than manage an income producing renewable resource.

[HandyAndy]

The Feds used to cut more:

"Timber Harvesting on Federal Lands"- Congressional Research Service-

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45688.pdf

50% of the Forest Service budget now goes to fire management:

Forest Service Appropriations: Ten-Year Data and Trends (FY2011-FY2020)
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46557/4

The Black Hills National Forest is consistently in the top five timber producing Forests:

https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/blackhills/landmanagement/resourcemanagement/?cid=fseprd731012

Mill owners have closed up shop and moved elsewhere for the past 150 years of American lumbering history.  Maybe they should receive a government subsidy like specially discounted timber (Canada anybody?) or the industry regulated and production quotas assigned as a strategic resource (WWII)? 

Not all businesses are good at what they do. I know of a billion dollar company that built a pallet board mill in a depressed rural town only to close it a year later for "supply" issues when really they had terribly inefficient mill design, poor relations with the local loggers and neighboring mills/industrial landowners, and no commitment to the community.

[mike_belben]

When you have a government that preaches inclusivity and enforces "equal opportunity" hiring standards... When you have the colleges who produce the future govt workers teaching that industry is unsustainable and that forestry should be about preventing harvests rather than managing to maximize vigor, health, wildlife,  appropriate species diversity and quality fiber per acre...


Well.. It is no surprise that our govt is squishing out the industries that built the free-est nation on earth.

My first experience with this type was when i discovered that the massachusetts DCR guy (gary briere and his partner becky barnes) whom i had to deal with on behalf of the 4wd association i was representing, was actually against motorized access in the very parks designated for motorized access throughout the state. He came right out and told me he got the job to protect the environment from us. In time i learned all his tricks for closing one park after another, and he was succeeding.  mass went from like 25 designated sites when i was born there to maybe 5 or 6 with very strict limitations by the time i left. You still have to register your quads and dirtbikes there under the guise of funding the parks, but a little reading reveals that the money only goes toward buying more vehicles for the game warden to chase people down and ticket anyone without one.  Theyll close a park saying its in disrepair and there is no budget for laborers.  When i call saying i can have 100 laborers there for free, pick a day, the answer is no.


So my point is, the USFS is guaranteed to be chock full of faceless nameless bureaucrats who decided this job was a better way to protect gaia than chaining themselves to a skidder. It is an ABSOLUTE MAGNET for that crowd and all they have to do is take a bath, shave, learn some buzzwords and move up through the ranks with their liberal arts basketweaving degree.

But mike thats a conspiracy theory!  Yeah, an open one. Say the right words and you can go join up yourself. See your nearest "community action center" and tell them you wanna fight for climate justice.  Theyll take you right in. 

[Thomasjw4]

I can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that more FS timber harvesting is shut down by outside "special interest groups" than anything.  I have been part of sales that were held up in litigation by these groups for more than 20 years.  So, yes, it's easy to hate on the FS, and of course I can only speak to my part of the world, but if you want to point the finger at anyone talk to the hippies with money taking the FS to court because they want to save the wolves, the grizzlies or the new big one, the lynx.  

[mike_belben]

Absolutely positively agree. Even more than that, they want to get into the government themselves.

How did all those nearly extinct exotic-ish critters get into these places to need future saving?  The hippy "rewilding" efforts came first.  David foreman of earth first is a name that will reveal who that crowd is and what they have done since the late 50s or so.  Protecting Wolves for instance.  Its political, not ecological. It is every other animal that needs to be protected from fast breeding apex predators or they will be exhausted.  Protecting the wolf guarantees a steady supply of endangered new critters to protect.

[barbender]

Yeah, it's kind of ironic how wolf management is always examined under a microscope, but in MN where Elk were native to many areas of the state, no one has stepped forward (at least, none of the folks that are so adamant about wolf expansion) to push for expanding our less the 200 animal elk herd...
   

[Southside]

Yea - lets increase the Apex predator population - what could possibly go wrong?   :

[ehp]

Its hard to watch sometimes on how the Govt runs things cause it sure seems like none of them have a clue on doing their job , here in Ontario at one time our biggest sawmill guy owned 36 mills I think and no govt in any of them, Everything went smooth , you got paid on time and paid well. He got killed in a plane crash so the Govt stepped in and took over and brought the Govt run mill system from another prov. to run the mills . In no time most mills were closed and no all of those mills are either closed or sold off and China bought more than a few of them , I honestly believe that if that man was still alive his  mill system would be still running strong and alot of families would be doing alot better money wise

[mike_belben]

It is up to us to raise ourselves and our children as hard workers who do honest business and do it well so as to replace those ones before us who inevitably expire.  Thats the only way our great system can continue. Keeping govt literally out of our business.  They are to answer to us, not us answer to them. 

[moodnacreek]

It is up to us to raise ourselves and our children as hard workers who do honest business and do it well so as to replace those ones before us who inevitably expire.  Thats the only way our great system can continue. Keeping govt literally out of our business.  They are to answer to us, not us answer to them.

I tried hard to do this because it was done to me but this type of upbringing has gone out of style. So many today want our gov't to take care of everything so they don't have to worry or do any more work. After the past few days I am starting to think we need a war. I must stop as this forum is supposed to be about wood.

[mike_belben]

i understood doug.  i go through that throught process every single day here.  stick to tree stuff.  stick to tree stuff...