The saw on a tree harvester operated by Douglas Littlejohn cuts through a tree trunk in northern St. Ignace Township. The harvester can cut down a tree, cut off its limbs, and divide the trunk into eightfoot sections in 20 to 40 seconds, depending on the size of the tree. A story in The St. Ignace News' ongoing series bringing our readers fresh perspectives on the top issues facing the Straits area and the Eastern Upper Peninsula. Russ Nelson, owner of Rextonbased Nelson Logging, has been in the logging business for more than 30 years. In that time, he has watched the logging industry go from crews of about 50 loggers tromping through the forests, cutting down trees with chainsaws in all types of weather, including the bitter cold, to a crew of about three using modern machines to do roughly the same amount of work from temperature-controlled cockpits.

Mr. Nelson has three full-time employees, one to operate a tree harvester to cut down trees and turn them into logs, another to operate a skidder to pick up and stack those logs, and one in a semi-truck to haul the logs away.

View inside the cockpit of a tree harvester used by Nelson Logging. The operator uses two foot pedals, and two joysticks, with 18 buttons each, to control the movement of the harvester. Advances in technology in the last 20 years, combined with the aging of loggers, has significantly lowered the size of the logging workforce, said Michigan Timbermen's Association Executive Director Tom Barnes.

"You can produce a lot of timber with one guy and a machine," he said. "A lot of the guys that were hand-cutters are now sitting in the harvesters and skidders."

The association lobbies for loggers' rights in the state legislature, offers low-cost workers compensation insurance to logging companies, and works to promote the logging industry in Michigan. The group is looking to recruit younger, more technically inclined people to "take over the industry," Mr. Barnes said.

"We're trying to make some changes in Lansing as well as get youth recruitment and awareness of how technically advanced these jobs are," he said. "You have to be very knowledgeable," to operate logging machinery.

The tree harvester used by Nelson Logging. Mr. Nelson likened the hand-eye coordination necessary to operate a tree harvester to using video game controllers. He said a good operator knows the controls by touch and can operate the machine without having to look at the levers.

Douglas Littlejohn, 25, who has operated a tree harvester for Mr. Nelson for the last two years, has used harvesters for more than four years. He said it takes about one year to become proficient at using the controls.

"Hand-eye coordination is a big thing," he said.

An operator in training can learn the controls in about six months, he said, but should really operate the machine in all types of weather, in all four seasons, before claiming proficiency.

What is a tree harvester?

The harvester is the most important piece of equipment in a logging operation. A tracked vehicle with a rotating cab, it looks a little like a steamshovel or crane, but has a hydraulic arm that comes over its back, like a scorpion's tail, and is able to grab trees 30 feet away.

Douglas Littlejohn stands next to a tree harvester he operates for Rexton-based logging company Nelson Logging. One tree harvester can do the work of about 10 loggers with chain saws. On the end of this arm is an eight-foot tall, five-foot wide, automated cutting head that can cut down a tree, de-branch it, and slice the trunk into eight-foot sections in a matter of seconds.

The top of this cutting head has two curved, hydraulic-powered, insect-like, pinchers, that grab onto the tree trunk. The edges of these pinchers are sharpened so that when a tree is forced through them at high speeds, its branches are cleanly cut off.

In the middle of the cutting head are two spiked, foot-wide, steel rollers that dig into each side of a tree trunk to move it through the head.

The bottom of the head has one curved arm, similar to the two at the top, that provides extra grip when the head latches onto a tree. Right below that bottom arm is a chainsaw about five feet long that cuts effortlessly through the trunk of a tree.

Mr. Littlejohn uses two joystick controllers with 19 buttons and settings each to manipulate the cutting head to grab a tree as far down on the trunk as possible and cut it at the base. He then uses the joysticks to twist the cutting head and bring the tree crashing to the ground.

A small computer-controlled roller measures the length of the trunk as it's fed through the cutting head. The computer is pre-programmed to measure eight feet before lowering the razor-sharp saw to cut the tree into eight-foot logs.

The whole process takes about 20 to 40 seconds, depending on the size of the tree and skill of the operator.

Mr. Littlejohn quickly moves from tree to tree, leaving piles of logs to be picked up by a skidder.

A skidder is a large, tractor-like machine outfitted with a hydraulic grapple and a "basket" to move the logs around the job site. Logs are stacked in piles, depending on the type of wood, before being hauled away to the mill on a semi.

The Nelson Logging crew produces an average of about 35 cords of wood a day, a volume of 128 cubic feet, before sending the logs off to a mill.

They are harvesting aspen, spruce, and balsam fir on their current job site, which will be sent to five different mills, St. Marys Paper in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Louisiana Pacific in Newberry, Verso Quinnesec Mill in Quinnesec, New Page Paper in Escanaba, and Timber Products in Munising. Other types of tree species harvested in the EUP include jack pine, red pine, and white pine.

The process to harvest trees from public forest land takes a couple of years, said Martha Sjogren, Timber Sales Forester for the U.S. Forest Service at the Hiawatha National Forest station in St. Ignace.

The Forest Service performs a series of environmental impact surveys for rare plants and animals, which can take about a year to complete, before selling the trees to logging companies. The companies are allowed time, sometimes up to five years depending on the contract, to process and remove the timber, she said.

"That gives the purchaser time to plan their own work" and work around their own schedules, she said.

The need for wood and loggers decreases as trees continue to grow

A lot of money is required for a logging company to purchase a new harvester or skidder. Mr. Nelson's harvester, which is about a year old, cost more than $450,000, and the skidder cost about $200,000 several years ago.

This high cost of new equipment is dissuading new logging companies from forming and new loggers from entering the industry.

"Most of the loggers out there are seasoned veterans, there's not many new ones," Mr. Nelson said. "It's hard to make that kind of investment in the business."

Even though the Timbermen's Association is trying to attract younger loggers to the industry, Mr. Barnes said, the flagging national economy is finally catching up with Michigan loggers.

Bill Cook, forester and biologist with Michigan State University Extension in Escanaba, said the downturn in the housing market is slowing the demand for wood to build new homes.

"When building materials aren't being bought, they're not being made, and they're not being harvested," he said.

Mr. Nelson said his company had not felt the effects of the economy until early last month, when the demand for logs from pulp mills and processing centers decreased.

"For the first time in years, the pulp mills are putting individuals on quotas," he said. "That's devastating to any new loggers out there."

Pat Hallfrisch, unit manager of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in Sault Ste. Marie, also said pulp mills and wood processing centers are cutting back on orders for logs, which also decreases the need for new loggers.

"Right now at this moment, with the economy the way it is, they're contracting," he said.

Forest-based industries, including logging, milling, transportation, and manufacturing businesses, make up the third largest sector of Michigan's economy, behind the automotive and agriculture industries, Mr. Cook said. He said Michigan's forest-based industries are historically a $12 billion annual industry, employing more than 200,000 people, including about 2,000 in the EUP.

"It's even more important in northern and rural areas because we don't have the cars and agriculture up here," he said.

The DNR sells about $2 million to $3 million worth of timber every year off state-owned land in the Eastern Upper Peninsula, Mr. Hallfrisch said.

Each year, for every 1,000 trees in Michigan forests, 39 new trees take root, eight die naturally, and 12 are harvested, according to the Web site for Michigan Forest Management, a forestry consultant group in Shelbyville. Fifty-three percent of Michigan is covered by trees, about 19.3 million acres in all.

"The notion that our forests are disappearing is incorrect," Mr. Cook said. "Trees are growing both in terms of volume and total number of acres."

The U.P. is growing more trees than are being harvested, and not as many new trees need to be planted in Michigan as in other parts of the country, said Ms. Sjogren.

"In Michigan we have a lot of tree species that do a pretty good job to replenish themselves naturally," she said. "We have pretty diverse ecosystems here."