Characteristics of New York's logging businesses and logging business owners

Abstract

Despite the importance of the forest products industry to New York's manufacturing sector, concerns about reductions in logging capacity, and attention given to logging communities in other states, there has been a lack of systematically gathered data about the state's logging community. A mailed survey, informed by focus groups, key informant interviews, and previous research, was used to solicit information from logging business owners on issues such as occupational choice and prestige, familial attachment, logger training, and barriers to maintaining their logging businesses. Most New York logging business owners cited positive aspects of their work as reasons for becoming loggers, but they sensed both a lack of occupational prestige associated with logging and a lack of understanding among the general public of the logging profession and its contributions to the economy. There were some significant differences between loggers who worked in the Adirondack region and those from the rest of the state, especially related to the effects of forest ownership changes on their businesses. As with similar studies of the logging communities in other states in the northeast, this study provides background information on loggers and logging businesses in New York that may be useful to the state's forest products industry, department of labor, logger training entities, and legislature. In addition, this research represents a reference point from which future studies of the state's logging workforce may be more clearly understood, providing an opportunity to track changes in this important forestry-sector workforce over time. Copyright © 2009 by the Society of American Foresters.