South Dakota Searchlight
The owner of a Spearfish sawmill is laying off 50 people and alleges the U.S. Forest Service is to blame for not allowing the company to cut enough timber.
The Forest Service, through a spokesman, declined to comment.
Neiman Enterprises announced the layoffs at Spearfish Forest Products in a Thursday evening news release.
“The layoffs are the direct result of reductions to the Black Hills National Forest timber sale program,” the release said.
A Neiman spokesperson said about 150 employees remain at the Spearfish sawmill, and another 15 will stay on at the associated Spearfish Pellet Company.
Neiman also blamed the Forest Service in 2021 when it announced the closure of its other South Dakota sawmill in Hill City. That closure eliminated 120 jobs. Neiman operates additional sawmills in Hulett, Wyoming (where the company is headquartered), Gilchrest, Oregon, and Montrose, Colorado.
The company recently participated in a Forest Service pilot program that brought excess timber from other parts of the company to Hulett by train. The company does not have any further timber rail transit projects, Neiman spokeswoman Sonja Merryman said Thursday, and is pursuing projects closer to the company’s mills in areas that lack a strong timber industry.
Neiman is one of the companies that bids for the right to purchase and harvest Black Hills National Forest timber in areas designated by the Forest Service. The companies make money, but they also help manage the forest by thinning it, which can reduce the forest’s susceptibility to severe wildfires and tree-killing mountain pine beetles. Logging and prescribed burns can help replace the natural thinning historically achieved by wildfires, which are now suppressed by the Forest Service and other modern landowners and managers.
Debates about logging in the forest have intensified since 2020, after Forest Service researchers said severe wildfires and a pine beetle epidemic had drastically reduced the number of trees big enough for logging. They said the forest had only half of the trees needed to sustain the level of timber sales allowed in the forest plan.
Some members of the timber industry dispute the research. Neiman’s Thursday news release included a statement from Ben Wudtke, executive director of a timber industry trade group called the Black Hills Forest Resource Association. Wudtke said “we have more timber now than in the ’70s and ’80s when the Black Hills National Forest was selling twice the amount of timber.”
“History has shown again and again that decisions like that to reduce the Black Hills National Forest timber sale program are dangerous and come with serious consequences,” Wudtke said.
Last month, U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson hosted a forestry roundtable discussion in Spearfish. His office reacted to the Spearfish layoffs with a statement.
“This is tough news for 50 local families. We have logging activity in national forests primarily because it improves forest health, but it also creates good jobs,” Johnson said. “Harvest levels continue to be substantially below what forest inventories can sustain. Working with industry and the Forest Service, we must find a way to do better. Failure to do so will injure the forest and our economy.”
A retired former Forest Service employee in the Black Hills, Dave Mertz, said Friday that those who believe the Forest Service research also need a voice.
“I am sorry people are losing their jobs. I’m sorry that it’s gotten to this point,” Mertz said. “But there needs to be some serious discussion between the various stakeholders on how to move forward for the best future of the Black Hills, and that needs to include everybody.”
The Forest Service measures timber volume in a unit called “CCF,” with 1 CCF equaling 100 cubic feet. Timber sales in the Black Hills National Forest reached a modern high of about 253,000 CCF in 2008 and have declined since then, dipping to a 20-year low of just under 100,000 CCF in 2023.
Neiman was the second-largest purchaser by volume of Black Hills National Forest timber last year, according to Forest Service data obtained by South Dakota Searchlight. The largest was Baker Timber Products, of Rapid City.
In Neiman’s news release, President Jim Neiman said the company will attempt to help laid-off employees obtain assistance and find jobs.
“On behalf of the Neiman family, we want to express our deepest gratitude to the affected employees for their hard work and dedication,” he said.
Spearfish is in Lawrence County, where Eric Jennings is a county commissioner. He said Friday that the loss of good-paying jobs at the sawmill will be felt by the affected employees, the community and the local economy.
“The bigger issue is if we lose our sawmills and our ability to manage the forest,” Jennings said, “we’re eventually going to get hit with the kind of conditions they have in California, where they’ve had all those devastating fires.”
By South Dakota Searchlight