NEW MEADOWS, Idaho — The trees in the forest, that's where it starts. Then it comes here, gets cut, gets dried, gets stacked, and then it's taken down the road to its destination.
Rod Krogh is President of Tamarack Mills, a family-run sawmill on Highway 95 near New Meadows. "So, there's a scanner here, we scan it, and it tells you exactly what that log is. The diameter, the length, everything."
In December, Governor Brad Little renewed and expanded Idaho's Shared Stewardship agreement with the federal government, doubling the current output of sustainable timber from Idaho's forests.
Hear what a sawmill operator has to say about the Shared Stewardship agreement
Krogh says, "We're all on the same page; we all want to be good stewards of the land."
Krogh gave Idaho News 6 Senior Reporter Don Nelson a tour of their facility.
"This is called our edger, so our edger we have all these computers that run this. This actually grades lumber for us."
Krogh says his business has seen better days. "It's tough, tough for the logger, tough for the truck drivers, tough for sawmills— inflation just skyrocketed the cost of everything."
Krogh hopes the new agreement will help not just his mill, but the entire industry.
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"We can always use more timber, especially [since] everyone is more specialized now because there are so few mills. We do sell to the bigger mills."
Lt. Governor Scott Bedke says Idaho has the land to support the increase in output.
"There's always going to be a growth increment out in our forests. We're either going to burn that eventually or harvest that eventually, and harvest is manageable," said Bedke. "Idaho's been doing it right; we have nearly two million acres of timber land that the state owns."
Clear-cutting, removing all trees from an area, remains controversial. Supporters say it can help wildlife and remove diseased trees. Critics argue it can harm forest health.
"Usually they go into an area to clear-cut— a lot of times they want to open that up for deer and elk— so they have more grazing area. Or it's diseased, they want to get the trees out of there, or there's a problem that they want to clear-cut that area."
The expanded production supports President Trump's Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production Executive Order, which calls for an immediate increase in timber harvests.
