[hammock]

My grandfather was a corrugated cardboard box salesman for Container Corp of America back in the day. A lot of the cardboard then was coming from trees in northern Maine. All that paper industry is pretty much gone now. Not because there aren't any trees left, but because it's cheaper to harvest and process wood in other places now

[Ironlikebike]

I recently read a book on managing forests "A Landowners Guide to Harvesting Your Woods" and one of the salient points in the book is the fact that the majority of woodlands in the northeast are now privately held, (relatively) small parcels, that don't get harvested for a number of reasons.

1) Scarcity messaging over the last decades have created new property owners who see tree harvest as a moral outrage. 1a) Property owners aren't managing small private woodlots for harvestable lumber. 2) Harvesting small woodlots does not offer necessary economies of scale needed by harvesting operations, i.e., they're not going to invest the time to harvest < 20 acre plots.

[shagie]

> 2) Harvesting small woodlots does not offer necessary economies of scale needed by harvesting operations, i.e., they're not going to invest the time to harvest < 20 acre plots.

There are small sawmills that don't operate quite in the same economies of scale that the larger ones do. They've still got challenges and your first two points are still very applicable.

https://www.marketplace.org/2021/06/10/small-sawmill-sees-gr...

https://www.marketplace.org/2022/11/07/tough-housing-market-...

The second one is the more applicable one for this case (note: the transcript is abridged - listen to the full version).

One of the things that they specialize in for small lots (home owner) is storm damage.

[bombcar]

It also depends on what the trees were planted for, around here there's lots of pulp trees that are really only used for paper, not boards.

And the amount you "make" with such logging is barely enough to overcome the taxes you pay, even if the land is classified as special tax-reduced forestry land.

[halpmeh]

Trees on small private lots also greatly increase the property value. A clear-cut private plot? Not worth nearly as much as the plot with the 300 year old old-growth.

[ngold]

I just assumed oregon. Apparently the locals tell me, the owl scare of the 80s that killed most lumber companies on west coast, was simply lobbying and scare tactics by east coast lumber companies. And it worked very well. But who knows.

[Mandatum]

Owl scare of the 80s? What?

[klooney]

https://www.nwpb.org/2020/12/03/much-more-than-a-spotted-owl...

[eschulz]

Same in parts of the Upper Midwest. I assume land prices and labor laws/practices are among the primary causes for these shifts.