Adirondack Landowners Association

The Foundation of Adirondack Forestry: Private Landowners and the Pulpwood Crisis

In July 2026, Finch Paper announced it would stop producing pulp at its Glens Falls mill and buy pulp from outside suppliers instead. For generations, Finch was a dependable buyer of Adirondack pulpwood: the low-grade, small-diameter wood removed during responsible harvests. Early figures from the Empire State Forest Products Association show the regional low-grade pulpwood market shrinking by roughly 35 percent.

This is not a temporary disruption. It's a structural shock to the region's working-forest economy, and private landowners are at the center of it. Harvesting is constitutionally prohibited on the state Forest Preserve, so private woodlands supply nearly all of the forest products harvested in the Adirondack Park. For many of those forests, a market for low-grade wood is the only way to pay for good management.

What's at risk

Poor harvesting practices. Without a professional forester, more owners may turn to high-grading: taking the best timber and leaving a degraded stand behind.
Pressure on 480-a landowners. Owners enrolled in the forest tax program may be unable to complete required harvests. That could mean penalties, back taxes, or even forced land sales.
Loss of the logging workforce. Loggers and haulers who leave the industry rarely come back. If new markets take years to develop, the workforce to supply them may already be gone.
Forest health. Fighting beech leaf disease, hemlock woolly adelgid and emerald ash borer often depends on having a market for the wood that's removed.

Where we go from here

State agencies, industry groups and counties have begun to respond with market studies, grant programs and flexibility for 480-a work schedules. ALA believes a coordinated, cross-sector response is needed now, before the workforce and the standards of good forest management are lost.

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