Trump’s ag boss declares 113M-acre logging ‘emergency.’ Will it keep Wyoming’s timber industry alive?

HULETT—Jim Neiman says that the best-case scenario for his family’s timber mill at the base of the Bear Lodge Mountains is that it doesn’t shutter. 

The Crook County sawmill in 2022 shrunk to one shift to survive hard economic times and a dearth of available timber. Three years later, there are what appear to be major industry tailwinds: a pro-logging presidential order, prospective tariff hikes on Canadian timber and now a U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary’s order declaring an “emergency” to stimulate logging on 112.6 million acres of national forest. The order covers nearly 60% of all national forest lands.  

Collectively, it stands to help, Neiman said. The timber sale approval process, which is run through the National Environmental Policy Act, is likely to go much faster. 

“The old process with NEPA could sometimes take a year and a half to five years,” he said. “This will speed that up to a few months.”

Yet, the businessman and cousin of the Wyoming Legislature’s speaker of the House is not optimistic that he’ll be returning to two shifts at his Wyoming mill anytime within the foreseeable future.   

“I would hope to maintain one shift in Hulett and two shifts at our Spearfish operation,” Neiman told WyoFile. 

That’s the optimistic outlook. The alternative is he has to close. 

“Something’s got to happen fast,” he said, “and it can’t wait three years.” 

Hulett, which houses one of the Equality State’s few remaining large commercial sawmills, is in as good a position as any Wyoming community to benefit from what proponents hope will be a Trump-driven revival of a dying timber industry. Yet, industry insiders, watchdog groups and foresters all say that it’s questionable whether another golden era of timber cutting will return to the Black Hills region, or any reach of Wyoming, soon. The infrastructure that would enable such a boom has faded into history, and in its absence prospective large-scale cuts don’t pencil out for large swaths of the state. And there’s likely too much regulatory uncertainty, or not enough accessible timber, to stimulate new mills in the old logging towns, like Afton and Dubois, that lost them long ago.  

Nevertheless, the Trump administration is attempting to stimulate commercial cutting on national forests all around the country. 

Federal directive

The latest effort comes from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. An April 3 secretarial order from the Texas attorney eliminates the “objection” process and requirements to provide a range of options under the National Environmental Policy Act when reviewing different timber cutting projects. The regulatory streamlining applies to the majority of the federal forestland nationwide and in Wyoming. Forestland that got bunched in includes those rated at “very high” or “high” wildfire risk, and areas at risk of “substantially increased tree mortality” in the next 15 years. 

A map accompanies the order. By some measures, it’s crude. The map shows that Rollins’ emergency declaration extends to areas that are unlikely to ever be logged because of other federal laws and designations. Encompassed by the emergency declaration are large swaths of designated wilderness areas and inventoried roadless areas, the map shows.

“Wyoming’s got about two-thirds of its forested lands in roadless and wilderness [areas], and so only a third of the Forest Service lands are probably even accessible to manage,” Wyoming State Forester Kelly Norris told WyoFile. “But there are still a lot of lands to manage.” 

From Norris’ perspective, Rollins’ order is the latest in a succession of “positive changes” in trying to “make timber more accessible.” Via that order, the agriculture secretary also directed the Forest Service to update its guidance to speed up timber sales, “increase certainty in future timber supply” and boost cutting. 

Forest Service Acting Associate Chief Chris French announced he was acting on that guidance in tandem on April 3, writing in a memo that he’d be completing a national strategy within 30 days. His memo tasks regional foresters with developing five-year strategies aimed at achieving a 25% increase in timber production within two months of the national strategy’s completion. 

Only time will tell whether that’s an achievable goal within the eight national forests that are partially or fully within Wyoming. But it’ll be “tough,” at least in the view of Bridger-Teton National Forest retiree Andy Norman, a wildfire specialist who has a background in forestry. 

“It’s economics,” Norman said. “You can say as much as you want, but it’s still going to be tough.”

‘Timber mining’

Part of the issue is that Wyoming is a substandard state to grow trees. It often takes so long for trees to mature — a century even — that it’s effectively “timber mining.”

“You harvest them,” Norman said, “you’re not going to come back.”

The other part of the equation is the scarcity of large commercial sawmills that can enable timber sales to pencil out. Only a few remain, including Neiman Enterprises’ operation in Hulett, a Saratoga mill that relies on standing dead timber and the South and Jones Timber Company mill in Evanston. 

Because cut trees have to be shipped to one of those spots or out of state, the cost of diesel and gasoline can have a lot of bearing on the viability of a logging project, Norris said. 

There are subsidized logging efforts underway in parts of Wyoming a long way from a sawmill. 

Norris pointed to the Dunoir watershed in the Shoshone National Forest, which was designated as a “critical fireshed” during the Biden administration. 

“Funding was given to do the work,” the state forester said. The National Forest Foundation and Mule Deer Foundation, she said, have also assisted in the project by paying for a “Good Neighbor Authority” forester position. 

U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Regional Forester Troy Heithecker said in early March that the bipartisan Fix Our Forests Act could speed up the work in the Dunoir area. The act, which has passed the U.S. House, has been introduced in the Senate and has support even from Democratic lawmakers like California Sen. Alex Padilla.

“We’re ready,” Heithecker told state lawmakers at the Legislature’s annual “forest health briefing.” “We have projects lined up as soon as that bill passes.”

In Hulett, Neiman operates out of a region that’s one of the most favorable for modern-day Wyoming logging. The dominant conifer in the Black Hills is the ponderosa, which is faster growing. And there are still mills in close proximity, unlike many of Wyoming’s other national forests.  

“We’ve got the sawmill capacity, but we don’t have the supply of trees,” said Dave Mertz, a retired Black Hills National Forest staffer who’s now a member of a South Dakota public lands stewardship group, the Norbeck Society. “I would say that the Black Hills National Forest is an outlier because of that.” 

‘Been through a lot’

The Black Hills region’s forests, he said, have “been through a lot,” including the mountain pine beetle epidemic and large wildfires around the turn of the century. Overcutting what’s left, he said, is a concern — and partly for the industry’s sake. 

“The Norbeck Society, and pretty much everybody, wants to see a sawmill industry here for the long term,” Mertz said. “We absolutely realize the value of having that, but we think that the surest way to lose them would be overcutting the forest.”

“Eventually,” he added, “there won’t be enough left there to support them.”

But Neiman simultaneously feels pressure to bring in more timber from the Black Hills National Forest to keep the lights on and his remaining staff employed. Across all his mills, he’s already laid off 200 people in the last five years. At the current rate of timber sales, he’s not going to be able to keep going, he said. 

“They’ve only put 400,000 board feet up,” Neiman said of the current fiscal year. “That won’t run us a week. That’s unacceptable.” 

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Neiman spoke from a family restaurant, the 77 Steakhouse and Saloon, located in the clubhouse of a golf course that he built to help diversify the northeastern Wyoming community’s economy. He brought golf to Crook County, along with an airport, after seeing firsthand what happened to Pacific Northwest timber towns when the floor fell out during the spotted owl wars late last century. 

“Unemployment went to 70%, divorce rates went up, all the social issues just skyrocketed,” Neiman said. 

Hulett’s in a relatively better position if its mill someday becomes a relic. There’s a tourism economy from Devil’s Tower National Monument and an active real estate industry capitalizing on ranchland that’s being subdivided. That, however, is yet another challenging dynamic for commercial timber cutting in the Bear Lodge Mountains. 

Some of the newcomers don’t allow logging, said Doug Mills, who runs Bearlodge Forest Products, a business that includes a pallet-cutting mill in Hulett. Even when it’s available for cutting, subdivided ranchland doesn’t always make financial sense to log, he said.

“You can’t just roll in there and take care of a guy’s 40 acres,” Mills said. “It costs so much to mobilize equipment.” 

Challenges aside, Mills, like Neiman, is hopeful that the storm of federal policy changes “lifts some of the pressure” and provides some momentum to keep going. 

“A lot of the mills are tapering down, or selling off,” Mills said. “Once a business like that … goes away, they don’t come back very soon.”