Smoke from Spokane wildfires temporarily cleared Tuesday, giving way to a bluebird morning. Greg Mason, surrounded by luscious mountains near Twin Lakes, maneuvered a giant hydraulic clamp to the base of a white fir.

Amid a symphony of grinding steel and a plume of kicked-up dust, Mason, who had been working since 3 a.m., used this tank-like piece of heavy forestry equipment called a feller buncher to rip the large evergreen conifer out of the earth like a toothpick.

“I freaking love my job,” he exclaimed after exiting the cab, a tattoo of an alpine tree covering his right forearm. 

Mason is a multigenerational logger born and raised in Kootenai County, which hosts annual timber sales. Auctioned off to the best bidder, the Idaho Department of Lands facilitates the harvest of thousands upon thousands of board feet of timber between seller and buyer.

These patches of forest, sometimes infected with invasive insects and disease, are then prescribed and tagged, harvested and trucked to one of several mills dotting North Idaho. In 2022 alone, Douglas-fir bark beetles caused the mortality of over 30,000 acres of Idaho forestland.

“The forest is meant to be managed,” said Jerry Mason, Greg’s uncle and owner of Mason Logging, LLC. “If we don’t manage it, it’s just going to burn up.”

About 150 wildfires have ignited in IDL’s coverage area in recent memory, according to IDL. Some 30 miles east, Spokane is still trying to recover after Washington state’s most destructive fires forced 64,000 people from their homes.

Like an honorary retardant, timber sales act as integrated restoration projects designed to remove dense, unhealthy stands, reduce fuel loads and create strategic fire breaks, according to the U.S. Forest Service. 

“Harvest activities help re-establish more natural forest conditions by thinning overgrown stands, promoting age and species diversity, and reducing the likelihood of large, high severity wildfires,” U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson Megan Bush told The Press.

Idaho, with 21 million acres of forest land, drew an estimated $2.4 million in revenue from timber and paper products in 2020. Including the Masons, an estimated 16,158 people were directly employed in the forest products industry. Total harvest was estimated at 1.1 billion board feet of timber in that same year.

During a visit to Coeur d’Alene last week, Idaho Gov. Brad Little said preventing future wildfires could be the single greatest way for people to help support firefighters who are “currently working around the clock.”

One way to do this includes logging, Little told The Press.

“We need to thin the threat, which is incredibly important,” Little said. “We’re blessed in Idaho that we have headrig capacity to do that. There's other states in the West that don’t have that headrig capacity.”

With up to 28 active sawmills, the Gem State is the fourth largest in lumber and wood production in the Western U.S. Of those manufacturers, Coeur d’Alene-based Idaho Forest Group is one of the top producers of lumber in the entire nation.

Idaho Forest Group Resource Manager Alan Harper said they manufacture Kootenai County’s bark-beetle-infected trees harvested via timber sale into lumber studs. The renewed wood, anywhere from 2 inches by 4 inches up to 2 inches by 12 inches, is then used by building contractors or normal customers. 

“That lumber goes into remodeling, building new homes, people making treehouses,” he said. “Whatever somebody happens to use the lumber for.”

Harper also spoke on how tree harvest affects forest health.

“Our forests, obviously, are continually growing, and if they’re not managed, they’re going to get overgrown, too thick, and they become unhealthy,” he said. “You end up with bugs getting into them and killing the timber. Then you’ve got drought, and next thing you know we ended up in a fire season.”

The lumber industry is no stranger to lawsuits, Harper noted. Environmental groups maintain that logging activities negatively impact surrounding ecosystems by depleting food sources and emitting carbon dioxide.

A 2025 study conducted by Yale, however, reveals that, under responsible forest practices, using mass timber as opposed to concrete and steel in buildings could “significantly reduce global carbon emissions” and spur the “expansion of intensively managed forests.” 

Harper said forests are a lot like gardens. Planting too many seeds can lead to unhealthy produce. With proper management, he said, “you get healthy carrots.”

“The trees are no different,” he added.

    A tree being harvested in forestland near Twin Lakes on Tuesday.

    The rings of a tree freshly cut near Twin Lakes show their various colors on Tuesday.
  

    Timber harvest activities occur near Twin Lakes on Tuesday.