The U.S. wood supply system is the largest and most highly developed in the world, providing the raw material that furnishes our country’s seventh largest industrial sector: forest products. Overregulation threatens this system’s ability to continue to serve both its economic and environmental goals.

Last year, I wrote about the opportunity to Volunteer to be a Visiting Forester at Philmont Scout Ranch. This is a fantastic chance for foresters to spend a week educating youth from around the country about forests and the forest industry in the mountains of Northern New Mexico.

In early 2019, FRA drafted the Safe Routes Act to improve the safety of hauling raw forest products. The legislation would allow trucks transporting raw forest products access to the safer U.S. Interstate System at state legal weight tolerances and vehicle configurations that are traveling a distance not greater than 150 miles from origin to a processing facility or storage yard.

I recently had the opportunity to tour a southern sawmill that had just gone through a significant rebuild. While there was a lot of exciting new technology, as is the case with most new sawmills these days, the one thing that stood out to me was that the sawmill was air-conditioned.