U of I Extension Needed for Logger Education

I appreciate the difficult decisions that the clerk and commissioners are making with regard to what Kootenai County spends annually on both mandated and non-mandated programs. I would not want to be in their shoes right now. There are many good and deserving programs throughout the county that add value to our region.

I am writing to educate people on the importance of continuing to fund the University of Idaho Extension field office, and related 4-H programs, here in Kootenai County. I am pleased that we have some time to figure out what all of the options are for maintaining the level of service that the Extension currently provides to our area and, specifically, for the Timber Industry.

Few non-mandated programs offer as many benefits to northern Idaho in general, and to Kootenai County specifically, as the University of Idaho Extension office does in terms of economic development, workforce training and job creation.

Specific to the timber industry, the Extension office in Kootenai County provides many unique forest owner training and logger education programs throughout the region that forest owners and timber workers cannot get anywhere else in Northern Idaho. Kootenai County forest owners are an essential source of supply to local forest products companies, particularly over the last two decades as harvest levels from federal forest lands have dropped dramatically. Forest owners in Kootenai County alone provide an average harvest of 55.6 million board feet of timber annually. This level of harvest is worth over $22 million, and it assists wood products harvesting and manufacturing businesses in providing more than 750 living wage jobs here in Kootenai County alone.

According to the Idaho Department of Labor, every one job in the forest products industry creates more than 3 additional jobs in support service industries. The average annual wage in wood products manufacturing in Kootenai County is $31,970. This is higher than all other manufacturing jobs in Kootenai County ($26,499 annually) and much more lucrative than the average tourism/service industry job here ($19,162 annually). The timber industry in Kootenai County is a major economic driver, and the University of Idaho Extension is a major contributor to this success.

Furthermore, the Extension offices throughout northern Idaho provide logger education and forest owner training sessions which assist Idaho companies like Idaho Forest Group in our efforts to increase Idaho's ability to market certified wood products throughout the nation and around the world. A growing number of timber companies want to sell forest products that can be certified as having been harvested from sustainably managed forests. The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), the forest certification program that most Idaho mills participate in, requires loggers to be trained in forestry Best Management Practices, and the U of I Extension office is one of the few entities that can provide these programs to our forestry professionals locally.

Last year, 456 people attended 10 Extension workshops and field days held for forest landowners and forestry workers in Kootenai County alone. The majority of the participants in these programs indicate that they will improve specific forest management practices to more sustainably grow wood and woody biomass, which supports Kootenai County jobs and economic development, reduces fire risk in wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas, and reduces the incidence of forest insect and disease issues. All of these actions provide benefit to Kootenai County, not only in terms of the obvious benefits of sustaining a healthy resource, but also in resultant cost savings for the county.

Let me state for the record that I am deeply grateful that the Kootenai County Board of Commissioners is interested in receiving feedback from the public on this issue, and I do hope that the facts I have laid out here with regard to the importance of the University of Idaho Extension office will assist them in the difficult task they face of prioritizing funding for all county programs.

Alan Harper is a Resource Manager with Idaho Forest Group in Chilco, Idaho. Idaho Forest Group employs 230 people in Kootenai County.