Sawmills and pulpmills in the US Northwest have been struggling to build log inventories for the winter season because of the unusually long fire season this year and increased competition for small-diameter logs in the four states of the US Pacific Northwest has resulted in a higher share of logs being consumed by sawmills, thus leaving many pulpmills with low log inventory levels going into the 4Q/17, reports the North American Wood Fiber Review. …Unlike BC and its large provincially-owned commercial timber base, the loss of burnt timber on US federal forests has had little impact on the availability of timber with the exception being Montana, where regular timber sales from federal lands have proven crucial to selected sawmills. In general, however, the US Forest Service timber sale program provides minimal sawlog or pulplog volumes to the forest industry in Western US.