Forest Scene

Vaagen News

Credit Union backs community-owned sawmill
The Boundary Sawmill in the tiny town of Midway has found a solution.
The Boundary Sawmill in the tiny town of Midway has found its saviour.
 
After phone calls from as far away as New Brunswick and a million-dollar offer from Okanagan businessmen, a much hoped-for loan to keep the mill in the hands of the community came Sunday from the Heritage Credit Union in Rossland, a mere 90-minute drive away.
 
“I couldn’t be happier,” said Stephen Hill, a financial planner and key... [Read More]
Midway mill to reopen, villagers meet deadlines
Local investors raise $1 million in 11th-hour deal to revive community's lifeblood
The village of Midway's shuttered sawmill has been saved from foreclosure and demolition after a group of local investors raised $1 million needed to meet a mortgage deadline of Aug. 31.
 
The last-minute deal will give a new lease on life to a mill that has been the community's lifeblood for generations.
 
Boundary Sawmill Inc., formed by local business leaders to buy the mill and pay off its debts, beat the deadline... [Read More]
Forest has ‘too many trees’
Coalition hopes to thin Colville National Forest
Becky Kramer of The Spokesman-Review
Can cutting trees help save a forest? In northeastern Washington, a broad coalition of loggers, environmental groups, government officials and others think so. They’ve put together a forest restoration grant proposal that would step up timber harvests in the Colville National Forest over the next 20 years.
 
The grant request seeks $31 million for extra projects in the forest. The work would create an estimated 530 full- and part-time jobs in Stevens... [Read More]
Vaagen Bros. Lumber and Moxon Timbers Australia
Vaagegn Bros. Lumber and Moxon Timbers have teamed up to supply lumber to Australia.
Mike Beye CVO Vaagen Bros. Lumber
Vaagen Bros. Lumber has, for several years, been a supplier of quality framing lumber to the Australian market through a partnership with ... [Read More]
Boundary Sawmill Opens With Fanfare in Midway

Hundreds turn out to witness official re-opening of the Midway mill
By Mona Mattei - Boundary Sentinel
Photo: BC Gov Photos

Nearly 200 people turned out to witness the official re-opening of the Midway mill and to meet the new operators from Vaagen Bros. Lumber Inc. Officials from local and provincial government as well as a long list of dignitaries... [Read More]

Vaagen Brothers Deal Will Reopen Sawmill in Canada
Deal should help timber workers in both the U.S. and Canada.

Vaagen Brothers Lumber Co. plans to restart a sawmill in Midway, B.C., through a cross-border deal that should help timber workers in both the U.S. and Canada.

The Midway mill had sat vacant for three years before residents in the town of 630 decided to buy it. Boundary Sawmill, the local corporation, has signed a 10-year lease with Vaagen Brothers, which will run a small-diameter log mill similar to its operation in Colville.

Vaagen Brothers expects to employ about 35 workers... [Read More]

Wilderness Areas Designated in Colville National Forest
Plan keeps timber industry and environmental concerns in mind
By Becky Kramer, The Spokesman-Review

A proposal to designate 215,000 acres of new wilderness areas in the Colville National Forest is drawing support from a broad coalition of forest users.

The plan would expand the existing Salmo-Priest Wilderness in Northeast Washington and create new wilderness along the Kettle Crest, protecting six peaks that are each over 7,000 feet tall. The acreage represents some of the most remote, untouched land left in the lower 48 states. It’s home to grizzly bears, lynx and woodland caribou... [Read More]

Vaagen Helps Sustain Jobs & Protect Forests
New public campaign to address threats to wildlife and rural economies
Jul 28, 2010

Conservation Northwest, along with timber industry leaders, recreationists and ranchers announced today a new initiative aimed at addressing threats to wildlife and rural economies posed by overdevelopment and climate change. The Columbia Highlands Initiative, unveiled today at simultaneous press conferences in Spokane and Seattle, seeks to maintain an important habitat connection between the Cascades and Rockies by protecting wild places and sustaining working ranches and jobs in the woods... [Read More]

Vaagen Helps to Better Care for Our Forests
Timber conservation and logging industry agree on common grounds, to protect our forests.
James Hagengruber Staff writer

CHEWELAH, Wash. – An environmentalist and a sawmill owner took a walk in the woods. It sounds like the start of a joke, or maybe the setting of a horror movie with lots of chain-saw action.

But things got even more peculiar on a cool morning earlier this month as the two walked and talked their way through a recently logged portion of the Colville National Forest about 50 miles north of Spokane.

The sawmill operator mentioned the need to stay out of certain portions of the... [Read More]

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