September 24, 2026

NORTHEAST — VERMONT

Vermont opens a year-end outlet for qualifying Finch-stranded low-grade wood

Vermont has put a temporary procurement waiver into effect for low-grade wood that had been intended for Finch Paper's discontinued Glens Falls pulping operation. The waiver lets the McNeil Generating Station and Ryegate Power Station buy qualifying wood without the Department of Fish and Wildlife review that would otherwise apply under their Certificates of Public Good.

The relief is deliberately narrow. The harvest must have started by July 31, the wood must have been intended for Finch, and the source land must be in Current Use, independently certified, or covered by a sustainable forest management plan written by a Vermont-licensed forester. A signed temporary-waiver form must travel with the transaction. For loggers and landowners holding Finch-destined material, this creates a real outlet; it is not a blanket expansion of biomass procurement.

Watch: Qualifying wood must be supplied to or procured by McNeil or Ryegate by December 31, 2026.

Vermont Forests, Parks and Recreation →

WEST — WASHINGTON

Pacific Cascade puts 6,629 MBF to bid this morning

Washington DNR closes its September auction cycle today with two Pacific Cascade offerings: Reflection in Clark County at 6,526 MBF and an appraised value of $2.305 million, plus the 103-MBF Belty Sorts 7 & 8 reoffer in Lewis County at $51,650. Together they put 6,629 MBF and roughly $2.36 million of appraised value on the block.

The mix is useful as a market read: one substantial new board sale sits beside a small reoffer. Actual bids will say more than appraisal values about current buyer appetite, but no result should be assumed before DNR posts it.

Watch: Pacific Cascade bids must be in before 10 a.m. today. Washington's next statewide auction cycle is October 26–28.

Washington DNR upcoming auctions → · Auction dates and bidding deadlines →

NATIONAL — FUELS MANAGEMENT

Forest Service refreshes its pre-fire toolkit for fuels planning

Forest Service Research & Development refreshed its Fuels Management page September 23 and added a downloadable summary, How Science Supports Fuels Management and Other Pre-Fire Work. The page pulls together prescribed fire, mechanical treatment and planning research and points managers to tools including QUIC-Fire, which models ignition patterns, fire effects and smoke.

One operational finding deserves attention: in the Forest Service research summarized there, capacity and funding — not air quality — were the barriers most often cited to expanding prescribed fire. For forestry contractors and land managers, that puts workforce, planning bandwidth and execution capacity alongside treatment design as practical constraints.

Forest Service Fuels Management →

NATIONAL — LOW-GRADE WOOD MARKETS

What actually replaces a lost low-grade wood market?

Today's Deep Dive is Business and Market Responses to the Loss of Low-Grade Wood Markets in the United States, a Forest Business School study that assembled 185 project or adaptation records representing 180 companies, organizations or sponsors, plus 26 market-loss or regional-capacity records, and then subjected the strongest candidates to more focused verification.

The clearest lesson is commercial rather than technological: equipment does not create a market by itself. Durable responses connect the right feedstock to repeat customers, distribution, storage, quality control, working capital and dependable delivery. The study separates company-level adaptation, useful local outlets, accessible multi-supplier markets and regional-scale replacement because those outcomes are useful in different ways but should not be confused with one another.

For a forest business evaluating a supposed replacement market, the questions are concrete: What material does it actually accept? Can outside suppliers use it? What volume can it absorb? What haul radius works? Who buys the resulting product? And is the financing structure durable enough to keep the outlet operating? Small firewood, residual or institutional markets can improve treatment economics without replacing the demand of a closed pulp or paper mill.

Read the full Forest Business School publication →