Fire up the saws!

[sapperJ24]

The answer may vary based on the specifics of the forest or region, so this will be a bit general.

Foresters are generally not on probation as they have usually worked their way up. However, timber crews are entry level and were mostly or completely made up of probationary employees (recent converts from temporary 1039 to perm 13/13 seasonals via the USAjob post you shared). The probationary timber crewmembers were recently (2/14) terminated, however, some have been reinstated in some locations in Region 1.

I'm not sure which positions you're specifically referring to by admin, but I would speculate they could be a mix of perm and recently terminated probationary perm.

No non-fire temporary seasonal (1039) positions were flown or offered due to last year's budget shortfalls.

One things that adds confusion to the discussion is the use of the term 'seasonals'. Historically, temporary 1039 employees referred to themselves as seasonals, but the agency used seasonals to describe non-year-round permanent employees on a 13/13 or 18/8 appointment.

Hope this helps.

Might be worth adding a few other comments regarding what the workforce currently looks like.

The timber crewmembers are the ones out there painting the trees. Maybe the crew lead was past the probation period, but they now have no crew unless they've been reinstated. There's been an ongoing shortage of these folks for a number of years. Wildland firefighters were painting trees last spring to help the timber program out.

Timber sale administrators were generally not in probation status, but were already stretched pretty thin and couldn't inspect ongoing sales as often as they would like.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

 

[Justabirdwatcher]

I agree that it would be nicer if that was not completely cut, but that looks like ideal mule deer and elk habitat next year already to me personally.

Not disagreeing with you, but here is where the danger lurks for sportsmen - to advocate for things that will help game species at the sake of non-game species. Every action we take as humans tips the balance in favor of one suite of species or another. The best we can do is advocate for balance. Otherwise we are no better than the profit-hungry industries that would cut it all and not care one whit about anyone else.

 

[Sytes]

@sapperJ24 , Thanks for your response in #19 and 21 - appreciate the info. Helps to have context related to position status (temp vs perm / probation, etc) and the ongoing staffing issues.

 

[BuzzH]

80% of our national forests should have been logged 30 years ago. I fully support logging and making lumber affordable. I hope the clearcut the CNF by me. I would fully support that. It’s a truly renewable resource folks….and It would actually make habitat for animals to live in.

$6 for a 2x4x8 lmfao

Overly simplistic.

I don't disagree with more cutting on NF lands at all, what I went to school for and absolutely trees are renewable.

Its just flat not true that 80% of NF lands should have been logged 30 years ago, many weren't rotation age then, many still aren't today. You live in the south where trees grow at least twice, if not 3 times faster than our best sites in the Interior West.

The other problem is, nobody is bidding on sales now. The guy I rent my house to is a forester for the local district. He put 2 sales up last year and received....exactly....zero bids. He's going to try running them again this year.

Lots of reasons for that, markets, imports, distance to mills, fuel prices, blah blah blah blah.

While this new idea sounds good on the surface, its just flat not going to happen. For one thing, the administration is at best going to be 4 years. Not sure how many timber sales you've prepped, but I'll just let you know that they don't happen over night. Of course, then there's the little self-induced staffing problem that we have going on, the firing of foresters, likely some early retirement authority causing a lot of institutional knowledge of things like timber, heading out the door.

Anyone want to talk about where the funding is going to come from to administer the sales? Build roads? Required cruising? Marking sales? Boundaries? Site prep/burning after the sales?

There's also the question of how you get sales purchased, like I said, many are not getting bids. If they do get bids, where's the profit in hauling logs hundreds of miles to the nearest mills that still remain when diesel is 3.50/gallon?

With a flood of domestic timber, its no different than a flood of domestic oil, price will go through the gdman floor and make sales even less attractive and tighter profit margins for mills.

I got news, this is going nowhere...unfortunately.

 

[Sytes]

Some additional related to TNC's ongoing operations and vision - as a non government operation that the government *could learn a great deal and have a valued renewable resource with quality trees for present and future timber fulfillment.

BTW - They allow the vast spread of Montana TNC land for recreation purpose, including hunting.

Montana Forests

With restoration and collaborative community engagement, we are ensuring our forests thrive even in the face of growing threats.

www.nature.org

 

[BuzzH]

Not a clearcut fan at all and they are logging our forests every year.

This was elk habitat but in about 50 years we'll have some timber back.
View attachment 362570

No other way to log lodgepole and it won't take 50 years to have trees. It will take more than 50 years to have mature conifers.

 

[Sask hunter]

Killed many moose out of clear cuts. Thai year I arrowed my spike elk off the edge of a fresh cut. They are the best food around

 

[Sask hunter]

After 3-5 years the clear cuts have grown to so much they become a sanctuary that you could only kill something in if you got lucky and got them standing on the trail

 

[BuzzH]

*serious Q for those, in the know : Is the staffing for foresters, timber crews, and admin based strictly on probationary employees, i.e. less than one year on the job?
If seasonal (maybe some of the *forestry tech INTERN positions?), then these people do not retain SF-50 Permanent status, i.e. benefits towards retirement, etc. However, forest engineers, foresters, procurement foresters, etc, the majority of the staffing maintain "Permanent" status.

I know tensions currently keep people in one trench or the other, so likely challenging to get an honest assessment.

Example: base level Forestry tech are "Permanent" positions.

Forestry Technician

These integrated entry-level Forestry Technician positions coupled with career ladders, provide a sequence of training steps that lead to progressively more advanced jobs and skillsets throughout a Forest Service employee's career. Recruitment Incentives may be offered to qualifying...

www.usajobs.gov

Its a mixed bag really.

Try not to make this a long post, but I think its important for folks that want to know what's happened the past 30+ years.

When I first started the seasonal appointments were 180 day NTE's (not to exceed). No benefits like health or even retirement post 1989. Prior to '89 if you ended up with a career conditional appointment you could buy back your seasonal time. Under the 180 day NTE's the FS and other agencies played all sorts of games to keep people working with no benefits nearly year round. One way was to work 4-10, only 4 days off your NTE for every week.

Then in the early 90's they did away with the 180 day appointments to 1039's, meaning a truly seasonal employee, think seasonal fire crews, trail crews, etc. At the same time, they started term appointments. Terms you could work year round, and the term of the appointment could be up to 2 years and could be renewed one time. After the second renewal, the job either had to be flown as permanent or dropped from the org chart. But with any program, it was gamed. After the second terms expired, lots of managers slightly changed the PD's so the appearance was a different job and flew essentially the same job again, usually going to the same person who had been doing it the previous 4 years.

Didn't take long and HR started catching on and pretty much all the terms were converted to 1039's as the agencies didn't want to hire even PSE 13-13 or 18-8 positions. Some did, and frankly that's the correct way to go. Working as a 1039 is a road to nowhere for both the employee and the agency, in particular on recurring work. The only "benefit" that a 1039 has is non-competitive rehire rights usually limited to the NF or Unit you work for.

For most of the more technical seasonal work, what I currently do, trails, fire fighting, timber, there's a lot of training that goes into it. Hell, even the hiring process is a time suck. So it made sense to convert as many of those 1039's to career conditional 13-13 and 18-8 positions. It makes no sense to put employees through all the required training when they have no promise of a job next year. Most simply don't hang around and find something better, and I don't blame them. Like this year, all the 1039's that have non-competitive rehire rights are f$#@ed, rehire rights to positions that aren't going to be filled or offered.

What the agencies did in the past year is to keep those good employees on that we've invested a ton of money into, by offering them PSE's 13-13, 18-8.

Specific to this new logging agenda, there isn't going to be staffing for it. Lots of Forestry Tech's, Foresters, etc. that were recently hired under PSE's (13-13, 18-8) are toast. One step forward, 3 steps back...what happened recently is a huge mistake, IMO. We're not losing 1 year probationary employees, we're losing long term 1039's that we've invested 10's of thousands of dollars training, that finally got a PSE. I assure you, not one person who made that decision realizes that. I don't think anyone that is tooting their horn about how great of an idea it was to get rid of probationary employees on this board realize that. In fairness they don't know what they don't know and it's impossible to talk any sense into them. The @rjthehunter types of the world are just ignorant to the facts, completely clueless.

For the record, I've held positions under ever single authority mentioned since 1987, 180 NTE, 1039, terms, PSE 13-13 and currently 18-8.

 

[Big Fin]

Lots of comments worth noting here. The infrastructure of loggers/mills/skilled labor is currently not there to ramp up timber production in a big way. Canadian softwood lumber subsidy, unless changed as part of the Canadian tariff proposal, still negatively impacts market prices to loggers and positively impacts what consumers pay at the lumber yard, at least in the northern tier of states.

Much of our logged country no longer grows back as great deer and elk habitat. Just too damn many invasive weeds that outcompete native plants following soil disruptions. Until funding is provided for that solution a lot of these logged areas will not be very good wildlife habitat, rather "weed pits." Hopefully funding will be provided and the lands can come back as better wildlife habitat.

I know some think of me as biased towards logging, as that is my family background and my younger brother is still a logger. If we are interested in true forest management, we have to start thinking about how we pay for forestry management. The old model of cruising timber, putting it up for auction, and expecting a bunch of loggers to bid up the price just doesn't work well under these conditions. The markets are too low relative to the input costs. The markets have too much risk for small operators. Private timberlands are more profitable for independent contract loggers, as the price received by the logger is usually contractually agreed to, and private sales require less working capital than buying a large timber sale from a government agency.

I think we will have to start considering forest management contracts that pay loggers. The payment to the logger can be either cash, or the logs (stumpage relief), to do the work needed. This happens a lot on private lands (that are not corporate timberlands) and the results are very impressive. It would be especially effective in the Urban-Wildland Interface. And, since this is a contract, the contractor (logger) does what he has agreed to according to the contract.

A lot of the conifer encroachment is non-merchantable trees and consumes a huge acreage of land, especially in drier/arid locations. There is just not a good market for pinion or juniper species. The trend there is to contract out the management of those areas. The payment is in cash, not stumpage, due to no markets for those species. Yet, when applied, it is yielding some great results for better land management.

Contracted management is how we handle so many other aspects of asset/property/land management, yet the logging/timber management has this legacy inertia that makes change much harder. I would be interested in the USFS increasing those management contracts beyond what they currently are. But, that requires a lot of human resources to administer, something not likely to be available under the current trends.

To the original post, I doubt it is going to make a really big difference across the National Forests. The market forces, the lack of infrastructure, and litigation in the 200 million acres deemed critical wildlife habitat under the ESA are going to negate much of these ideas in many places, with some positive impacts in a few places.

 

[Rie Bread]

182 days until archery opener

 

[Mallardsx2]

Overly simplistic.

I don't disagree with more cutting on NF lands at all, what I went to school for and absolutely trees are renewable.

Its just flat not true that 80% of NF lands should have been logged 30 years ago, many weren't rotation age then, many still aren't today. You live in the south where trees grow at least twice, if not 3 times faster than our best sites in the Interior West.

The other problem is, nobody is bidding on sales now. The guy I rent my house to is a forester for the local district. He put 2 sales up last year and received....exactly....zero bids. He's going to try running them again this year.

Lots of reasons for that, markets, imports, distance to mills, fuel prices, blah blah blah blah.

While this new idea sounds good on the surface, its just flat not going to happen. For one thing, the administration is at best going to be 4 years. Not sure how many timber sales you've prepped, but I'll just let you know that they don't happen over night. Of course, then there's the little self-induced staffing problem that we have going on, the firing of foresters, likely some early retirement authority causing a lot of institutional knowledge of things like timber, heading out the door.

Anyone want to talk about where the funding is going to come from to administer the sales? Build roads? Required cruising? Marking sales? Boundaries? Site prep/burning after the sales?

There's also the question of how you get sales purchased, like I said, many are not getting bids. If they do get bids, where's the profit in hauling logs hundreds of miles to the nearest mills that still remain when diesel is 3.50/gallon?

With a flood of domestic timber, its no different than a flood of domestic oil, price will go through the gdman floor and make sales even less attractive and tighter profit margins for mills.

I got news, this is going nowhere...unfortunately.

Ya I suppose if we hired a few thousand more than useless government workers Monday we could get the paperwork rolling by 2030 and be cutting trees sometime in the late 2040’s.

By then the price of a 2x4x8 will be $15….

 

[BuzzH]

Ya I suppose if we hired a few thousand more than useless government workers Monday we could get the paperwork rolling by 2030 and be cutting trees sometime in the late 2040’s.

By then the price of a 2x4x8 will be $15….

I think the bigger issue is getting sawmills up and running...that doesn't happen over night either. Finding investors, purchasing equipment, yada yada.

 

[mtmuley]

I think the bigger issue is getting sawmills up and running...that doesn't happen over night either. Finding investors, purchasing equipment, yada yada.

But if I understand it correctly, at least near me, the mills shut down because of lack of timber. One big thinning project near me is at least four years in the planning process. It has been plotted a long time. And Pyramid shut down. mtmuley

 

[Rie Bread]

It’s gonna be easy to find sawmill equipment for sale from all those bankrupt Canadian lumber companies.

With all those unemployed federal workers and Canadian loggers; with a wicked strong dollar, it’ll be EASY to find cheap labor and pay them nothing.

 

[jryoung]

182 days until archery opener

132 here.

We need contract work here on the coast ranges and Sierra foothills. Lots of chaparral, manzanita and foothill pine all of which have no market.

 

[INMT]

But if I understand it correctly, at least near me, the mills shut down because of lack of timber. One big thinning project near me is at least four years in the planning process. It has been plotted a long time. And Pyramid shut down. mtmuley

If I remember the articles correctly, supply wasn’t even an issue. Pyramid higher ups stated the reasons for shuttering as: severe labor shortages, a lack of affordable housing in the area, high cost of living, declining lumber prices, and an aging work force. A helluva lot more factors at work than delayed logging projects.

 

[Rie Bread]

132 here.

We need contract work here on the coast ranges and Sierra foothills. Lots of chaparral, manzanita and foothill pine all of which have no market.

My math was off 187

July opener on the coast?

 

[INMT]

Ya I suppose if we hired a few thousand more than useless government workers Monday we could get the paperwork rolling by 2030 and be cutting trees sometime in the late 2040’s.

By then the price of a 2x4x8 will be $15….

Blah blah blah. Same old boring false talking points. Please post more, they’re pretty entertaining.

 

[Kaitum]

I'll add from my perspective. I plan timber sales and thinning projects in the Southwest. We don't produce the volume or size of trees that other parts of the country do. What can I say, we're darn near in the desert. We don't offer large diameter trees in most of our sale areas. Those areas were cut in the 50s - 70s. There are plenty of 70 yr old large stumps but not an abundance of large standing trees.

What we do have is an over-abundance of small diameter trees. Ponderosa pine, pinyon, and juniper. We can't give it away. The one operating local mill we have is not tooled to process small diameter logs. The mill much farther away that can use it can't justify the haul distance given the price of diesel, even if the logs are free. Then there are the acres that have decent volume but they're on ground that skidders can't operate. No one is going to cable yard timber for the marginal sales we offer. More often than not we rely on service contracts to do the thinning for us. That takes funding. One successful type of treatment we've done is to have hand crews fall and buck up the small diameter trees, then open the area up to fuelwood harvest. The juniper disappears in days. The ponderosa pine just lays there, no one wants to burn it even after you've done the hard work. Those service contracts run around $1,000 / acre.

As Buzz mentioned, logs have to come out on roads. We've tried for four years to hire a transportation engineer, we still don't have a single engineer on our staff. Our skeleton road crew is too busy with the main arterial roads we have to divert time prepping roads for a timber sale. So we have the timber contractor do the road work, which further chips away at their profit.

Our biggest bottleneck is getting the heritage clearances done before any ground disturbance takes place. It's the Southwest, most of our grounds have potential cultural resources to address, especially the flat ground that we tend to log. We hire seasonal archaeologists to help with the heritage survey backlog. The same seasonals we did not hire this year. We use funding to hire contractors to do heritage surveys. The same funding that's currently frozen.

There are a lot of factors that go into pulling off a timber sale. Just wishing it to happen doesn't get you very far.