Seeding the future: Tree farmers are turning to majestic redwoods for long-term investments
By Diane Dietz, The Register-Guard, November 15, 2009 [here]
Imagine the Coast Range around Noti and Veneta becoming the land of the giant coastal redwood — the tallest tree on earth, the one you can drive your car through.
Some tree farmers are doing more than imagining. They’re planting at least 20,000 coastal redwood trees a year in Lane and Douglas counties, according to the Cottage Grove seedling grower Plum Creek.
They’re driven less by fancy, or the awe the big trees inspire in many people, than by what they see as the best return on their investment in 30 or 40 years, when the trees are harvested.
Coastal redwoods put on volume three or four times as fast as Douglas fir, said Doug Wolf, a Douglas County forester. They can produce a “phenomenal” 5,000 board feet per acre per year. Plant them in blackberries, they shoot up through the fir-killing shade. Cut one down, and the stump will sprout a half dozen new trees. Let a deer or elk eat the tender tops, it can still grow up to 350 feet tall.
“They are quite the rejuvenator,” forester Dick Rohl said. “If you got any mass there, they’ll just take off like the dickens.”
“Like a weed practically,” Wolf added.
But the most compelling fact for those tree farmers planting coastal redwoods this year: Redwood logs are selling for $800 to $1,300 per thousand board feet compared with less than $250 for Douglas fir, according to Random Lengths, a wood products trade publication based in Eugene.
The Lane and Douglas tree farmers planting coastal redwood are betting that time will only widen that price gap.
