State of the Forest Products Industry Report Released

On October 21, 2020, National Forest Products Week, the Pennsylvania Hardwoods Development Council released a report detailing the State of the Forest Products Industry in the Commonwealth. The report is the result of a partnership with the Allegheny Hardwood Utilization Group, the Keystone Wood Products Association, the Northern Tier Hardwood Association, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative Implementation Committee, and the Pennsylvania Forest Products Association.

The original intent of the report was to educate legislators and the general public on the commonwealth's forest products industry. It soon transformed into much more through the collaboration with several other state agencies and industry associations.

This document is a detailed, all-encompassing resource that provides not only valuable statistical information summarized over the last decade, but also includes updates on every portion of the industry, forest products career programs, and information on various other forestry related organizations.

Pennsylvania has the largest hardwood forest resource of any state in the United States. These forests provide a host of benefits — air and water quality protection, recreational opportunities, wildlife habitat, biodiversity, carbon sequestration and wood products that are essential to our daily lives. The industry motto is Pennsylvania Hardwoods Stand for Quality. The quality of our lives as Pennsylvanians who enjoy the benefits of the forest as well as the quality of our forest resource are essential to the commonwealth. The environmental and economic impacts of the industry reach across the state.

There are over 100 tree species that grow in Pennsylvania's forest and are tracked by Forest Inventory and Analysis; however, just 16 species or species groups make up 93% of the forest trees. The most valuable species to the hardwood industry includes the oaks, maples, cherry, poplar, ash and black walnut.

The quality of Pennsylvania's black cherry, red oak, white oak, hard maple, white ash, and walnut is sought throughout the world, especially by furniture manufacturers. Our northern climate and shorter growing season, tighter growth rings, soil composition, mountainous elevations, and diversity of species, make Pennsylvania's lumber more stable, less likely to warp and twist, and superior in color.

Pennsylvania has historically provided about 10% of the nation's supply of hardwood lumber and leads the United States in lumber exports. The state's forest products industry harvests between 1 billion to 1.3 billion board feet of wood volume annually. To put that into perspective – one board food is a piece of lumber 12 inches wide by 12 inches long and 1-inch thick. One billion board feet is a stack of lumber 2 ½ - feet high by 5 - feet wide, spanning from Harrisburg to Houston, Texas.

More than 65,000 Pennsylvanians depend on the forest resources for their jobs at over 2,100 different logging operations, sawmills, secondary wood manufacturers, veneer slicers, flooring manufacturers, furniture and kitchen cabinet manufacturers, and paper mills.

Based on USDA Forest Service data, Pennsylvania has 16,621,968 acres of forest land, or is 58% forested. From 2004-13, the forestland area in Pennsylvania increased from 16.573 million acres to a high of 16.999 million acres of forests. During these years, there was a net increase of forest land due to farmland in northeast and north-central Pennsylvania reverting to forest. This offset the loss of forest land in southern counties due to development.

However, since the peak of 2013, Pennsylvania has had a net loss of 378,000 acres of forested land. The 2019 data shows that 48.6% of the loss can be attributed to forest land being converted for agricultural uses, 43.1% to development, including rights-of-way and gas development, and 8.3% to new wetlands and other natural uses.

Today, 69.2% of the Pennsylvania's forest is privately owned. This includes 2.35 million acres owned by corporations including timber investment management organizations (TIMOs), 559,793 acres owned by clubs, and 136,335 acres owned by conservation groups. The remaining 8,428,507 acres of private ownership is owned by roughly 740,000 Pennsylvanians. In 1980, the average forest landowner in Pennsylvania owned just under 25 acres, today the average ownership is 11.4 acres.

While Pennsylvania continues to have the largest hardwood forest resource in the United States, nearly 90% of 16.6 million acres. It also has the largest volume of hardwoods with over 121.6 billion board feet of sawtimber. Sawtimber is considered trees with a diameter at breast height of greater than 11 inches. Since 1955, the sawtimber volume in Pennsylvania has increased more than five times.

The forest products industry depends on the complete supply chain of the forest resource for not only a healthy industry but also for healthy forests. It has been documented that when the value of the forest resource increases, landowners manage their woods in ways that are healthy for the forest. The United Nations reported in 2010, that the largest threat to the forests of North America is the under-utilization of the resource.

You can read the full 51-page report at the Department of Agriculture's HDC webpage. Please feel free to share this document with anyone you think would benefit from it.