Kevin Mason
In looking across the entire forest products space this year, it is abundantly clear that demand is weak across all segments. There is no expectation of an improvement in 2025 as consumption remains poor and restocking efforts are expected to be limited. As such, any hopes of better supply/demand dynamics are going to come down to supply discipline (slowbacks/downtime/closures). We have some thoughts about how this might play out in the various sectors: Timber and Timberland—Timber harvest guidance will naturally follow wood products demand. Finding a home for pulpwood has been problematic for several years and will only become more difficult amid ongoing downstream capacity shuts. New demand is possible over time, but nothing is expected in the near-term.
Solid Wood—A raft of capacity closures in both Canada and the US had brought the lumber market into better balance to begin 2025. However, with demand weakening further through the first half of 20025 (and given a bleak medium-term outlook), further capacity rationalization will be required to restore balance and lift prices (Canada will be the focus, but the US could also see shuts). In OSB, prices are already at cash- cost levels, demand could slip further in the coming months, and new greenfield capacity is slated for late ’25 and early ’26. Accordingly, closures/downtime are sorely needed. For both lumber and OSB, producers may be awaiting the outcome of the Section 232 investigation before making major changes to operations.
After funding 5 million seedlings for 289 projects, in 38 states and 4 foreign countries, the Hardwood Forestry Fund (HFF) has decided to voluntarily dissolve its operations. The Board announced its final distribution of $190,000 to the Arbor Day Foundation and One Tree Planted to implement Hardwood Tree plantings in line with the HFF’s mission and goals. The Hardwood Forestry Fund promoted hardwood timber growth, management, education, and environmentally sound uses of renewable forest resources by providing grant funding to partnering organizations. …The HFF was formed in 1990 by members of the Hardwood Plywood and Veneer Association, which eventually became the Decorative Hardwoods Association. …During its 35 years of operation, the 
CHILLICOTHE, Ohio — Possibly 18 potential buyers have looked at the Pixelle facility before Thursday’s deadline to make offers. And again, the weekly Monday meeting of the ‘paper mill response team’ was in executive session to be free to hash out plans – as reminiscences from employees, as well as rumors about what is happening there and what is being removed, fill the internet. Mill operator Pixelle – based in Pennsylvania, and owned by H.I.G. Capital of Miami, Florida – has been cooperative with corporate tours of the facility that has been largely shut down. …“The deadline set by HIG for purchase offers to be submitted – July 3 – has passed. To date, no information has been shared with local leaders or regional economic development partners regarding a sale or the future of the mill.
Sumitomo Forestry, a prominent Japanese timber and construction firm, completed July 1, 2025, the acquisition of Teal Jones Louisiana Holdings and plans to launch its first timber industrial complex in the US. This complex may also include taking wood waste and turning it into mass timber. …In addition to outside purchasers, Teal Jones-Plain Dealing (TJPD) plans to supply product to its group operations, such as the Fully Integrated Turn-key Provider operations and its residential property and real estate development operations. Furthermore, the company plans to utilize the approximate 40 hectares of unused land on the site to manufacture and sell mass timber and wood products in preparation for future increased demand. “We are also considering processing wood chips and lumber residue generated from the manufacturing process into biomass power generation fuel, bio-refineries and other,” the company said.
Simon Varney pre-ordered extra hardwood from Canada in February when President Donald Trump threatened broad 25 percent import tariffs on goods from that country. The next month, the administration exempted that wood. That left Varney, co-owner of Wells Wood Turning & Finishing in Buckfield, spending more money ahead of time and holding onto extra inventory, eating into cash flow. Ironically, the pearlescent gold pigment the company purchased from its Vermont supplier to make its famous wooden eggs for the White House Easter Egg Roll — a color specifically requested by the president in both of his terms in office — had to be imported from Germany and falls under Trump’s tariffs. “The tariffs were a real concern because they basically would raise our wood costs by 25 percent, which is pretty significant,” Varney said. “The wood manufacturing business is not a high margin or high profitability business.”
This week was supposed to mark the deadline for other countries to strike trade deals with the US — or face tariffs of up to 49% on the goods they sell in the United States. President Trump is still threatening sky-high import taxes, but he has pushed back the effective date to Aug. 1, sowing even more uncertainty. Here’s an update on where Trump’s tariff policy stands, from which tariffs he has in place to which countries are currently affected. A 10% tariff applies to just about everything the US imports. …Higher tariffs on tap for other countries — maybe. …China already has a higher tariff after tit-for-tat retaliations. …The European Union could also face stiffer tariffs. …Mexico and Canada face special scrutiny. …The U.K. and Vietnam are the only two countries with deals in place. …Separate tariffs apply to steel, aluminum and autos. …But tariffs also face a legal challenge.
The top ten builders captured a record 44.7% of all new US single-family home closings in 2024, up 2.4 percentage points from 2023 (42.3%). This is the highest share ever captured by the top ten builders since NAHB began tracking BUILDER magazine data on new single-family home closings in 1989. The 2024 share constitutes 306,932 closings out of 686,000 new single-family houses sold in 2024. However, closings by the top 10 builders only represent 30.1% of new single-family home completions, a wider measure of home building that covers not-for-sale home construction. Also of note, the top 15 builders accounted for more than half of all closings (51%) for the first time ever in 2024.
WASHINGTON, DC – Fannie Mae published the results of its June 2025 
Lumber from Canada? That will be another $534. Major appliances from China? Add a cool $445. New homes in the United States are set to get more expensive thanks to President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda, which is expected to raise the costs of a wide variety of materials that go into building houses. An NBC News analysis of building materials and import data found that the total cost of building a mid-range single-family home could rise by more than $4,000 — an estimate that industry experts who reviewed the analysis called conservative. An April survey from the National Association of Home Builders estimated tariff impacts at $10,900 per home. Neither analysis included labor costs. Robert Dietz, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders, said the tariffs have an impact beyond their direct cost as they send uncertainty rippling through the supply chain and leave builders unsure how to plan for the future.
New Zealand has a strong story to tell about free trade, farming and renewable forestry resources. …Given the healthy relationship between the US and New Zealand on the trade front, the temporary relief of tariffs on timber and lumber imported into the US has been welcomed. Though we realise that this tariff exemption could be short lived based on the outcome of the Section 232 investigation aimed at determining the global effects imports of timber, lumber and their derivative products have on the US supply chain. As a small niche supplier of wood products that are needed by the US domestic building market, there is a strong argument for keeping New Zealand timber and lumber imports tariff free to avoid any additional price hikes and further supply chain disruptions. …Like many, we now wait for completion of the section. 232 Investigation.
Congressional Republicans have passed their domestic policy bill that makes sweeping changes to entitlement programs like Medicaid and SNAP, significantly increases funding for immigration enforcement efforts and cuts funding for a number of environmental programs. …In Oregon, the impacts of the legislation will be significant. An analysis …found the state would be disproportionately hit by the cuts to Medicaid. The Senate’s version of the bill would also cut funds to the state’s timber counties, and could reshape Oregonian college tuition and student loans. …Oregon will see more logging, less timber money going to local communities and less support for private forest owners. …However much more is logged, Oregon counties will not get a cut. That’s a change from current practice. Many counties in rural areas rely on a cut of revenues from timber sales on federal public lands to pay for schools, law enforcement and public infrastructure.
Mass timber is transforming how America builds—but supply hasn’t kept pace with demand. A gap in domestic manufacturing has slowed widespread adoption, leaving many developers with few options beyond overseas suppliers or traditional steel and concrete. Through strategic support from the USDA Forest Service Wood Innovations Program, the Forest Service is helping close that gap—boosting U.S. capacity, strengthening rural economies and growing new markets for American wood. One partner answering the call is SmartLam North America. Mass timber products like cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glued laminated timber (glulam) offer a carbon-storing, renewable alternative to conventional building materials. But even as the benefits are clear—strength, fire resistance, design flexibility—developers have faced supply constraints. Limited domestic production has slowed construction timelines, raised costs and stifled innovation.
University of Oregon researchers hope to make wood — often overlooked in health care facilities — more commonplace in those settings. Exposed wood, they’ve found, can resist microbial growth after a brief wetting. During the study, wood samples tested lower for levels of bacterial abundance than an empty plastic enclosure used as a control. “People generally think of wood as unhygienic in a medical setting,” said assistant professor Mark Fretz, co-director of the UO’s Institute for Health in the Built Environment and principal investigator for the study. “But wood actually transfers microbes at a lower rate than other less porous materials such as stainless steel.” Numerous studies support those properties of wood. A UO-led research team including scientists from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego and Portland State University wanted to explore what happens when wood gets wet and then dries. 
Picture a hospital and you might imagine concrete, stainless steel or plastic. But University of Oregon researchers hope to make wood—often overlooked in health care facilities—more commonplace in those settings. Exposed wood, they’ve found, can resist microbial growth after it briefly gets wet. During their study, wood samples tested lower for levels of bacterial abundance than an empty plastic enclosure used as a control. “People generally think of wood as unhygienic in a medical setting,” said assistant professor Mark Fretz, co-director of the UO’s Institute for Health in the Built Environment and principal investigator for the study. “But wood actually transfers microbes at a lower rate than other less porous materials such as stainless steel.” In a 
Nationwide, women made up 26.4% of the roughly 775,000 people who worked in the paper manufacturing and printing industry in 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. At pulp, paper, and paperboard mills, they made up 14% of positions. That’s what brought the Wisconsin Paper Council and Ahlstrom — a global Finnish company that produces specialty papers and packaging at five plants in Rhinelander, Mosinee, Kaukauna, De Pere and Stevens Point — gifted $20,000 to establish the program in 2023. In 2024, Ashman received $1,000 from the program after graduating from Appleton East High School. Now, at 19, Ashman works as an intern with Thilmany mill in Kaukauna, helping with environmental compliance and coordinating cleanup efforts along the Fox River. The scholarship was used to help pay for her college tuition. She said what was even more valuable was the internship opportunity she landed at the award-giving reception in 2024.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Northland congressmen are pushing for stronger forest management practices in Canada. Representatives Tom Tiffany of Northwest Wisconsin and Pete Stauber of Northeast Minnesota were included on the letter sent to Canada’s ambassador Kirsten Hillman urging better management of forests to help with wildfire risk. In the letter, the lawmakers wrote: “As I’m sure you know, this is not the first year Canadian wildfire smoke has been an issue. …While we know a key driver of this issue has been a lack of active forest management, we’ve also seen things like arson as another way multiple large wildfires have ignited in Canada. With all the technology that we have at our disposal, both in preventing and fighting wildfires, this worrisome trend can be reversed if proper action is taken.” …The letter asked the ambassador to address the issue with key Canadian agencies, such as the Canadian Forest Service.
The hills of Louis Creek Valley are covered in lovely, towering Douglas fir, healthy evergreens climbing from the grassy meadow at the valley floor up to the ridges where the mountains meet the sky. It’s lush, like much of interior British Columbia, where densely packed conifers line the innumerable wooded valleys, the heavy cone-laden branches reaching down to the ground. Joe Gilchrist, a fire steward of Secwepemc people, and a firefighter for more than 30 years, stands on the valley floor and looks at the beautiful trees. But what he sees first is danger. “It’s been over 100 years since it’s been illegal for Indigenous people to use fire on the land, and so in that time, the trees have overgrown the area, and some of the trees have got diseased,” he says. 
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) completed its review of a proposal to permanently protect 53,000 acres of private timberland in Flathead and Lincoln counties, recommending the state purchase a conservation easement that would keep the working forest in timber production while guaranteeing year-round public access and preserving wildlife habitat. The Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission is scheduled to vote on the proposal on Aug. 21 in Helena. …In total, the project would encompass 85,752 acres of private timberland owned by Green Diamond Resource Company. The first phase of the project… received final approval in December. The new easement would encompass forestlands in the Cabinet Mountains between Kalispell and Libby. …If approved, Green Diamond would maintain ownership of the land under an easement owned by FWP [allowing them to] sustainably harvest wood, preclude development, protect important wildlife habitat and associated key landscape connectivity, and provide permanent free public access to the easement lands.
Our many stunning hiking and walking trails in the Columbia-Pacific region offer locals and visitors alike wondrous views of forests of many different stages of succession, from recent clearcuts attempting to come back to life, to ancient old growth stands that somehow avoided the ax and the saw. The beauty of our area is one of its most valuable assets — so it may seem odd to some people that these forests include significant numbers of dead trees. Some call them ugly, while others refer to them as beautiful, but they do in fact have formal names. A standing dead tree is known as a snag, but once it falls to the ground it is a nurse log, so named because its rotting wood nurses young plants and fungi in their first years of life. One could also refer to a decaying stump covered in mosses, lichens, and other green growing things as a nurse stump.
Streams that wind through Western Washington’s forests are essential habitat for frogs, bugs, and lots of other tiny critters. These streams are also a critical source of clean, cool water downstream. This means these streams are an important part of large watershed ecosystems. For the past 26 years, the timber industry, Tribes, environmental organizations, and Washington State agencies have worked together to address pollution and meet water quality standards through the “Forests and Fish Agreement.” The agreement aims to address pollution that can come from forestry activities like logging and forest road construction and maintenance, while maintaining both a viable timber industry and water quality. This coordination primarily happens through the Forest Practices Board, an independent state agency chaired by the elected Commissioner of Public Lands. Rules adopted by the Board are implemented and enforced by Washington’s Department of Natural Resources.
In the face of a backlash, Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee has revamped his public land sell-off measure to target only Bureau of Land Management holdings while also declaring, “we’re just getting started.” A reconciliation budget proposal revised by Lee’s Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee targets BLM land within five miles of undefined “population centers.” It puts checkerboard BLM holdings back on a priority list for his “mandatory disposal” measure and takes lands under permit for grazing off the auction block. The revision would shift 15% of revenue to local governments and conservation. The bill would appropriate $5 million to carry out the mandatory sales, which are designed to be offered within 60 days of passage and regularly thereafter. …But opposition to Lee’s measure comes from “all walks of life,” said Land Tawney, former president and CEO of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. That includes “Democrats, Independents, Republicans, hunters, anglers, bird watchers, kayakers, ranchers [and] loggers,” he said.
Don Hardin’s hillside was largely cleared of trees killed by the mountain pine beetle. Some of the trees have died in just a few weeks with Ips beetles munching their tops and mountain pine beetles coming through their bark in large visible holes. …Across Colorado, mountain pine beetles also are on the rise in Douglas, Jefferson and Gilpin counties, among other areas, said Dan West, forest entomologist with the State Forest Service. The agency’s annual aerial survey shows the number of infected acres increasing from less than 2,000 acres in 2021 to nearly 6,000 acres last year. …To combat the beetle, the State Forest Service is putting small packets on trees to send the message to mountain pine beetles to seek a home elsewhere, West said. The message will be sent through a synthetic replication of beetle pheromones that sends a “no-vacancy signal” to adult pine beetles looking for a healthy tree to infest.
In the parched summer of 1988, wildfires ripped through more than one-third of Yellowstone National Park during the most severe fire year in park history. Approximately 1.2 million acres scorched by September. …While new forests sprouted in most of Yellowstone’s charred woodlands, recent research has identified that 16 percent of the forests consumed by the fires still have few trees. A recent study found that much of this land has transformed into green meadows full of grasses and wildflowers. Of the roughly 965 square miles of forest killed by the fires, 158 remain unforested, largely due to a lack of available seeds to start the next generation of trees. Seventy square miles of the previously forested land is now open meadow… The forests that [recovered quickly] were full of lodgepole pines with serotinous cones. …Alternatively, the areas that remain unforested were mainly above 8,200 feet in elevation and dominated by subalpine fir, Engelmenn spruce and non-serotinous lodgepole pines.
More than half a million acres of trees spread across Washington were sick, struggling, or dead last year, according to the results of an aerial survey of forests by the state’s Department of Natural Resources. Surveyors identified about 545,000 acres with some level of tree mortality, defoliation, or disease, the department said this week. That’s less than 1% of the total forestland surveyed. The amount of forest with problems is up nearly 30,000 acres from 2023 and more than the 10-year average of 519,000 acres, but well below the acres mapped with diseased or dead trees in 2022, according to the Department of Natural Resources. The Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Forest Service partnered to conduct an aerial survey of 22 million forested acres in Washington state to observe recently killed and damaged trees. They carried out the survey between June and September last year.
Many forests are losing their winter snowpack as global temperatures rise, and that could substantially slow their growth – and reduce the amount of carbon they remove from the atmosphere. Current projections “are not incorporating that complexity of winter climate change, so they are likely overestimating what the future carbon storage will be”, says 
The herbicide ingredient used to replace glyphosate in Roundup and other weedkiller products can kill gut bacteria and damage organs in multiple ways, new research shows. The ingredient, diquat, is widely employed in the US as a weedkiller in vineyards and orchards, and is increasingly sprayed elsewhere as the use of controversial herbicide substances such as glyphosate and paraquat drops in the US. But the new piece of data suggests diquat is more toxic than glyphosate, and the substance is banned over its risks in the UK, EU, China and many other countries. …Despite the risks amid a rise in diquat’s use, the EPA is not reviewing the chemical, and even non-profits that push for tighter pesticide regulations have largely focused their attention elsewhere.
COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Forestry workers could benefit from the use of exoskeletons that support their back and upper limbs, results of a 