Stars of American Loggers, Swamp Loggers Call For Relief

The Carolina Loggers Association (CLA) and Professional Logging Contractors of Maine (PLC) have released video statements from stars of the American Loggers and Swamp Loggers reality television series calling for action from Congress and the Trump administration to provide pandemic relief to the nation’s struggling loggers and timber haulers.

Eldon and Rudy Pelletier of Maine, stars of American Loggers, and Bobby Goodson of North Carolina, star of Swamp Loggers, recorded the statements in late August following months of market declines and job losses in the nation’s logging industry due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. A recent analysis generated for the American Loggers Council (ALC) shows that this year’s decrease in raw wood material consumption has led to a$1.83 billion reduction in the value of logger/trucker-delivered wood. The report, conducted by the analytics firm Forests2Market, found that raw wood material consumption between January-July 2020 was 6.7% less than the same period in 2019—dropping 21.4 million tons of material. This resulted in a 13% reduction ($1.83 billion) in value of the delivered wood.

The effects of the pandemic have crippled loggers across the U.S., and though separated by hundreds of miles, the Pelletiers and Goodson describe similar scenarios of job losses, revenue losses and unprecedented challenges. They also agree that while loggers never ask for help and have never received any, they need help now like that already provided to farmers and fishermen by Congress and the Trump Administration.

“Logging is farming,” Goodson says, “Loggers in North Carolina, we’re hurting right now, and we need some help. We are farmers, and we’ve never asked for help before, but this is a time that we need it.”

While Eldon Pelletier says, “We’re not asking for handouts but we know the government has helped the maple syrup people, and we feel that being in the logging and the woods industry that maybe there would be something there that could be given to us to help us. Any help we can get would be a big plus…we’ve never needed it more than now.”

While Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have provided relief funding for numerous agricultural categories, they have not yet classified timber within the category that qualifies for COVID-19 assistance. The USDA’s Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) received $16 billion to provide direct support to certain agricultural producers based on actual losses where prices and market supply chains have been affected. The program will assist producers with additional adjustments and changes in marketing costs that result from oversaturated markets and lack of demand for the 2020 marketing year as a result of COVID-19. Maple syrup producers have been granted eligibility for the program, as have producers of wool, cut flowers, aloe leaves and upland cotton. Elsewhere, Congress has yet to act on bipartisan Logger Relief bills introduced in the Senate (S.4233) by Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) and Senator Tina Smith (D-MN), and in the House (H.R. 7690) by Representative Jared Golden (D-ME) and Representative David Rouzer (R-NC). Specifically, the bills would direct the USDA to make economic relief payments to logging and log trucking businesses that experienced losses of greater than 10% in the first two quarters of 2020 (as compared to 2019). The program would be similar to others already enacted by Congress for agricultural producers.

Even though members of Congress from 13 states have co-sponsored the Logger Relief Act—to date, loggers and timber haulers have received no direct federal aid.