Kaniksu Lumber - It’s all about the community
Pine Street Woods isn’t all about the trees. But, there’s a lot in the name. When severe winds wreak havoc on the forest or pests and disease dull its vibrance, we, as a community and as the forest’s stewards, yearn to shepherd the natural healing process.
When Pine Street Woods was initially purchased, a committee of community foresters developed a sustainable forest management plan in order to adhere to the mandate to preserve it as a working forest and public access property. A significant wind event in March of 2020 inspired the purchase of a portable sawmill in partnership with Bonner Soil & Water Conservation District. KLT now has the ability to process windblown trees on site at Pine Street Woods and offer the resulting lumber to the community for purchase.
This partnership does more than transform forest damage into a product that benefits the local community. It also serves as a vital educational resource that aligns with the original intent of the mixed use forest. It is one thing to manage a working forest, and quite another to do so on a public access property.
Rapid growth of our rural communities, largely derived from urban areas, is fueling a widening disconnect between local residents and the natural world around them. Rural communities such as ours, established a century ago to serve a forestry-based economy, are increasingly filling with residents who neither recognize commercial tree species nor understand the value of sustainable timber management and the ecosystem services derived from healthy forestlands. There is a growing awareness of the importance of supporting local foods and farms, but scant attention to how commercial timberlands are cared for beyond those who are directly employed through the forest products industry.
Kaniksu Lumber has the potential to reconnect our community, which once lived and breathed natural resources and forest products, with the process of growing and sustainably managing healthy forests and milling wood products that benefit the community. The initiative is built upon a foundation of education, innovation, and partnership, reconnecting members of our community with the forest around them.
We envision milling everything from custom beams to lumber for backyard building projects, all sourced from sustainably grown timber from Pine Street Woods Community Forest. Future goals dependent on funding include hosting workshops and guest lectures on relevant topics such as milll operations, forest health, and fire mitigation. We hope to eventually offer byproducts such as wood shavings and offcuts as firewood and chicken coop bedding thus providing alternative energy sources to vulnerable members of our community as well as local sourced animal bedding and vegetable storage.
More than just a portable mill, the vision for Kaniksu Lumber is a suite of projects that will benefit our community full circle. Now that the mill is operational, future plans include the construction of a mill shelter, educational experiences, and interpretive signage on the property to explain the role of the sawmill and the importance of sustainable forest management. All of which depend on future funding. The long term vision is for proceeds from Kaniksu Lumber to create a fully sustainable initiative of KLT.
“If successful, our initiative will cause a large proportion of these visitors to pause to reflect in a new way upon the forest around them.””
— Regan Plumb, Conservation Director
The communities of Sandpoint, Dover, Ponderay, Kootenai, and Sagle will be directly served by this initiative. We also foresee residents of Boundary County, Idaho and Sanders County, Montana participating in associated educational programs.
The communities of Sandpoint, Dover, Ponderay, Kootenai, and Sagle will be directly served by this initiative. We also foresee residents of Boundary County, Idaho and Sanders County, Montana participating in associated educational programs.
Kaniksu Lumber creates a permanent site for the sawmill at Pine Street Woods and lays a foundation for diverse educational programs serving both the adults and youth in our community. The site already serves such groups as the Idaho State Forestry Contest and Sandpoint High School forestry classes, and may potentially benefit the Idaho Forest Owners Association, Bonner County 4H, and the University of Idaho Extension Master Forest Stewards program.
By establishing Pine Street Woods as a community forest in the truest sense, meaning that forest products are distributed directly to the community, we will be recreating a historically significant lifestyle on a micro scale while simultaneously demonstrating the effects of forest management and stewardship that prioritizes forest health and sustainability. Educational opportunities will be infused at every step, from the harvest and processing of logs to the development of model projects at Pine Street Woods that incorporate these products. KLT will endeavor to partner in outreach and education with community groups, viewing this as an investment in forest-based educational offerings.
KLT's Pine Street Woods Community Forest, acquired in 2019 for purposes of conservation, education, and recreation, now receives an estimated 20,000 visits annually. These visitors come to attend programs provided by KLT and our community partners and to engage in non-motorized recreation and quiet nature enjoyment. They come from our community, surrounding towns and counties, and other states near and far. Few of them realize that they are hiking, walking, biking, and cross-country skiing through a working forestland, nor do they stop to reflect on the values that this forest delivers to the public beyond a setting for recreational pursuits and youth after school programs. If successful, our initiative will cause a large proportion of these visitors to pause to reflect in a new way upon the forest around them, the need to provide sound stewardship into the future, and the many ecosystem benefits provided at no cost by this landscape.
The initiative stands to develop an alternative revenue source to support upkeep and maintenance of the community forest property through sales of milled lumber cut from salvaged and culled trees. KLT’s community authored and sustainable Forest Management Plan for Pine Street Woods prioritizes forest health, sustainability, wildlife habitat, public benefits, and wildfire mitigation. It will guide timber removal operations.
Pine Street Woods and Kaniksu Lumber are not all about the trees. Rather, this innovative program is an example of how KLT’s core values of conservation, connection, and community guide everything we do to the benefit of those we serve.
Kaniksu Lumber is open for business! To view and shop our current inventory of wood products produced by Kaniksu Lumber, visit our online store at https://www.kaniksu.org/kaniksulumber or reach out to us at (208)263-9471.
