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3.3 Forest related sectors

We focused attention on four forest related sectors that are referred to as the "primary wood products sector", the "secondary wood products sector", the "pulp and paper sector" and the "forest-related recreation and tourism sector". The primary wood products sector includes subsectors: (1) forest products (stumpage, pulpwood, fuelwood, Christmas trees and fenceposts), (2) logging camps and logging contractors, (3) sawmills and planning mills, (4) hardwood dimension and flooring mills, (5) special products, and (6) veneer and plywood. The secondary wood products sector includes sub-sectors: (1) millwork, (2) wood kitchen cabinets, (3) structural wood members, (4) wood containers, (5) wood pallets and skids, (6) prefabricated wood buildings, (7) wood preserving, (8) reconstituted wood products, (9) wood products not included elsewhere, (10) wood household furniture, (11) wood TV and radio cabinets, (12) household furniture not included elsewhere, (13) wood office furniture, (14) wood partitions and fixtures,(15) furniture and fixtures not included elsewhere, (16) paperboard containers and boxes, (17) paper coating and laminated packaging, (18) coated and laminated paper, not included elsewhere, (19) paper bags, (20) die-cut paper and board, (21) sanitary paper products, (22) envelopes, and (23) stationary products. The pulp and paper sector includes the subsectors: (1) pulpmills, (2) papermills, except building paper, and (3) paperboard mills.

The forest-related recreation and tourism sector is more difficult to define than the other forest-related sectors because the attribution of recreation and tourism activities to use of the forest is not straight forward and data are not available to directly link recreation and tourism to forest-based activities. Prior studies that attempted to identify recreation dependent areas used arbitrary dependence thresholds (Ross and Green 1985) or more sophisticated criteria (Beale and Johnson 1998). One study demonstrated a statistical linkage between a number of variables, including public and private forest land, and export employment in tourism-related sectors (English and others 2000). However, none of these studies provides a means of identifying specific areas in the South that have forest-related recreation and tourism employment. Consequently, it was necessary to construct data that were consistent with the objective of identifying such areas.

For purposes of this Chapter, the recreation and tourism sector is comprised of four subsectors: (1) hotels and lodging, (2) eating and drinking, (3) amusement and recreational services not included elsewhere, and (4) sporting and athletic goods not included elsewhere. A linkage between forests and recreation and tourism activity was then specified by imposing the criterion that forest land, as a percent of total land area, must equal or exceed the average for the South (58 percent). Admittedly, the 58 percent threshold is arbitrary. A second criterion was included to exclude metropolitan areas from the forest-related recreation sector. Imposition of these two criteria excluded areas such as Disney World, Myrtle Beach, metropolitan areas and developed areas along interstate highways from the analysis of forest-related recreation and tourism.