From the Fields: George Hollister, ​​​​​​​Mendocino County redwood forester

By George Hollister
Mendocino County redwood forester

The weather has been good for the redwood trees. It’s been cool and wet, and they like that. 

The market for logs is tough, and it has been for redwood logs. If you have nicer logs, it’s a little easier, but the lumber market is oversupplied for redwood and Douglas fir. It’s difficult, particularly with the smaller redwood logs that go into fencing. There’s been a pullback from mills buying outside logs, and that started last year. They had excess lumber that they weren’t moving, so they relied on their own logs instead.

There’s a sawmill in Ukiah that I sold logs to this year. The prices weren’t great but average or a little below average over the last 10 years. But logging and trucking costs have gone up, so if you’re getting the same price at the mill, you’re getting less money. 

A big effort that I’ve been putting work into this year and last year is building a redwood house on my property for another residence. We did a lot of milling of old growth logs that I’d set aside over the last 30 or 40 years. The process of getting permits has been long and dragged out—a lot more than is necessary. I’m getting a real lesson on why people are having such a hard time building in California. It’s something that needs to be reformed because it affects lumber demand. 

Even if interest rates go down, even if the zoning and everything on the land is right, it’s very difficult for people to build because of the building permit process. There’s a lot that can be done to make it a lot easier for people to get permits to build, and it would help everybody because we have a housing shortage. It could be reformed if there was some real desire to do that. It’s a good example where government is a part of the problem, not a solution to the problem.

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