By Lauren Grand, OSU Extension Forestry & Natural Resources, Lane County
Summer came early this year. While that is good news for those of you that are looking for an excuse to spend more time out in your woods, unfortunately, it also usually means lowering log prices. “But Lauren, lumber prices are still breaking records, shouldn’t log prices be high too?” Yes, normally. That’s why we saw such high prices last fall. However, thanks to the Labor Day fires, there is an abundance of wood coming to the mills. This along with our early summer means more access to burned areas that were not salvageable in the winter. With inventories this high, some mills are off the market until they can work through what they’ve already got. For these reasons, Douglas-fir prices have been slowly decreasing to today’s prices.
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