Sawmill closures are stranding timber: when the nearest mill shuts down, landowners within 60+ miles lose their only buyer and forest health treatments become financially unviable

Sawmill closures have accelerated across the United States, driven by weak lumber prices stuck near decade-old lows while operating costs have risen with inflation. In Michigan alone, the sawmill sector lost 273 direct jobs between 2019 and 2023, triggering nearly 820 additional job losses in the broader supply chain and $211.55 million in output decline. In the Pacific Northwest, mill counts continue to fall. In Vermont, mill closures are explicitly described as 'bad for forests' because they remove the economic incentive to manage timber sustainably. When a mill closes, it does not just eliminate one buyer — it can eliminate the entire economic rationale for forest management in the surrounding area. Timber is heavy and low-value relative to its weight, so hauling distance is the primary determinant of whether a harvest is profitable. A pulpwood stand that was marginally profitable with a 30-mile haul to the local mill becomes a money-losing proposition with a 90-mile haul to the next nearest mill. The landowner stops thinning. The stand becomes overstocked. Bark beetles move in. Fire risk increases. The same dynamic cripples public land management: Forest Service stewardship contracts depend on contractors being able to sell removed material. When there is no nearby mill, the material has negative value — the contractor must pay to dispose of it, and the treatment cost doubles. The structural problem is a chicken-and-egg trap between mill capacity and timber supply. Mills close because log supply is unreliable or too expensive. Log supply becomes unreliable because mills close and loggers exit the business. New mills require $50-100 million in capital investment and need guaranteed log supply contracts spanning decades — but landowners will not commit to long-term supply without a guaranteed buyer, and investors will not finance a mill without guaranteed supply. Small-scale alternatives like portable sawmills and micro-mills exist but cannot process the volume needed for forest health treatments. The result is a market failure where economically rational individual decisions (close the unprofitable mill, stop the unprofitable harvest) produce a collectively irrational outcome (unmanaged forests, increased wildfire, degraded ecosystems).