Whether living in the middle of Portland, the coast of Gold Beach or the plains of Prineville, your community receive benefits from Oregon's forests. Communities rely on maintained forest roads for recreational opportunities, loggers and operators during fire season, robust forest products markets for local jobs and economic activity to fund county services like police and libraries. Working forests help to ensure we have sustainable communities throughout Oregon.

Every day, each of the earth's 7.7 billion inhabitants consumes, on average, enough wood to fit in a 1/2 gallon milk jug.

Collectively, Americans use 10 to 15 billion cubic feet (more than 100 million tons) of wood each year in the form of wood and paper products as well as wood for energy. With more than 313 million people in the US, that translates to roughly 640 pounds of wood per person each year, or 1.75 pounds of wood per person each day. This would be a cube of wood roughly 6.5 inches on each side, every single day.

It now takes one tree every year for every man, woman and child to meet their needs for paper, packaging, fiber compounds, lumber and panel products. Annually, every American uses a tree 16 inches in diameter by 100 foot tall. Your tree, if harvested in Oregon, is logged using the most careful environmental protections in the world. Before advances in forest technology and recycling over the past decade, you used more than one tree.

American manufacturers actually have to import raw material to augment a limited domestic supply. The United States and China import 50% of the world’s traded softwood lumber which is used primarily to build homes.

On average, we have been building more than one million new single-family homes each year for more than 40 years. However, the last 10 years have been a very dynamic period for wood use in the US. With the Great Recession of 2007–2009 and collapse of new home building, the number of homes built and consequently the total use of wood in the US decreased dramatically. The ensuing economic recovery has seen wood products markets recovering at steady pace and growing more rapidly over the last 3-5 years.

Where will our wood come from?

To meet growing demand for renewable building products, emerging markets around biomass and other forest product supply chains, public lands in the US have great potential to meet these needs domestically. Oregon is the number one supplier of softwood lumber in the nation and federal lands in the pacific northwest could be providing much more of this supply to the market.

According to Oregon Forest Resources Institute, on federal lands in Oregon, “only about 8 percent of the annual timber growth is harvested each year.” The remaining growth is retained on our federal lands as either dead or living material.   This material adds to fuel build up and leads to dense and unhealthy stands of timber that could otherwise be harvested, reducing America’s dependence on softwood forest product imports.  

Americans have the option to consume locally. Producing regional fiber to meet the demands of today and the future, limits the carbon footprint from overseas transportation and creates domestic jobs in a growing sector.  The future is bright for wood products in America.  With innovations in tall wood buildings to new markets for biomass such as renewable energy, renewable diesel and biochar, America is vying to be on the forefront of climate solutions in the world.  

Quick Forest and Community Facts

• Oregon is #1 in softwood lumber, softwood plywood and engineered wood production in the U.S.
• Oregon’s wood products sector supports more than 61,000 family wage jobs to Oregonians.
• The average annual wage of someone employed by the forest sector is $56,500.
• Wood products make up 47% of all raw materials used in manufacturing in the U.S.