compiled by George Draffan, www.endgame.org from data in
U.S. Forest Service Resource Bulletin PNW-RB-266 (July 1997),
Production, Prices, Employment and Trade in Northwest Forest Industries

In the early 1960s, with the establishment of industrial-strength clearcutting operations on the National Forests, corporations like Weyerhaeuser, Boise Cascade, Georgia-Pacific, ITT Rayonier, and Plum Creek began to export raw logs from the Pacific Northwest. Since then, more than 80 billion board feet of raw logs have been exported. The years 1989 and 1990 saw log exports topping four billion board feet. In an average year, more than two billion board feet is exported from the West Coast as raw logs. And that doesn't include chips or other minimally-processed material -- nearly three billion board feet of chips were exported from the Northwest in 1996, as well -- which means that about half the cut in Oregon and Washington, and more than half in Alaska, is being exported as raw logs or wood chips.

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