Foreign trade incentives, combined with rapidly growing demand for wood products in Asia — China in particular — are dramatically boosting log export activity along the Pacific Rim, from northern California into British Columbia.
Total Chinese softwood lumber imports are expected to double by 2013, with prices growing by five percent each year. In some regions, this emerging market is cause for celebration: When a South Korean ship pulled into the Aberdeen, Wash. port of Grays Harbor earlier this year on its maiden voyage, marking the first full log vessel to leave that port in a decade, it was greeted with fanfare.
Only time and the tumultuous international markets will determine whether the exportation of whole logs from Humboldt Bay is merely a stopgap measure to tide us over until the domestic economy recovers, or something more permanent.