CHELSEA, Vt. (WCAX) – The warm and muddy winter is leaving many loggers in a lurch.
It’s been two weeks since Sam Lincoln with Lincoln Farm Timber Harvesting could log. “It puts pressure financial pressure on a business,” Lincoln said. Last winter, Lincoln worked for 73 days. This season, he’s only logged for 56. “We’re seeing a shrinking window of opportunity to harvest timber and we typically count on the frozen winter conditions to be when we can access sensitive parts of the forest with our equipment.”
Jack Bell with Long View Forest says his business is down 60% of what it should be this time of year. “I’ve been doing it for 25 years. And never seen anything remotely like the period that we’re in,” Bell said.
The last 18 months have dealt a blow to Vermont’s $1.4 billion forest products industry. Dana Doran with Professional Logging Contractors of the Northeast estimates loggers have lost tens of millions to a soggy summer and two warm winters. “They haven’t been able to operate because if the ground is not frozen and they go in and there’s mud and they create mud, that mud, if there’s a rainstorm, can wash into water bodies. That’s what you don’t want to have happen for contractors,” Doran explained. Mud flow can disturb the natural landscape and lead to soil erosion.
This dip in business extends beyond contractors, impacting employees, businesses that rely on wood and beyond. Many contractors are cutting back on crews or selling additional products, like firewood, to stay afloat. Others are leaving the industry. “Others have shifted pretty much completely to excavation and are thinking about not coming back,” Bell shared.
Once contractors leave, it’s rare to return. “Generally, you won’t see people come back, you won’t see companies reinvest, you won’t see them grow again, you won’t see folks take another chance on working in the industry,” Doran said.
Long-time loggers like Sam Lincoln don’t want to leave but they need solutions. “We don’t want to just quit,” Lincoln said. “We want to adapt and find a way forward.”
Loggers are pushing for H.624 this legislative session, which would fund projects improving water quality and climate resilience on harvest sites.