You’ve probably seen the high demand for lumber and its skyrocketing prices of late. Or maybe, like folks driving along M-72 between Williamsburg and Grayling in the last year, you noticed a large swath of forest has vanished. With mega South American company Arauco’s opening of a giant plant in Grayling in 2018, and Michigan Lumber and Wood Fiber Inc. of Comins, Michigan constructing a state-of-the-art sawmill on Georgia Pacific’s old campus near Gaylord this year, and local lumber retailers pricing their supply higher and higher we had to wonder: Is there a timber boom on? And if so, can northern Michigan handle it?

In this week's Northern Express, sister publication of The Ticker, writer Todd VanSickle looks into the state of the state’s forest industry — home to more than 1/3 of manufacturing jobs in the U.P. and, at last count, driving $891 million into the state’s economy from U.P. and northern Lower Michigan alone. Lumber prices are currently skyrocketing, especially for soft lumber like pine. Lumber prices are up 67 percent since January and up 340 percent from a year ago, according to Random Lengths, a wood-products-industry tracking firm. It is estimated that the price increase has added more than $35,000 to the price of an average new single-family home and almost $13,000 to the market value of an average new multi-family home, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

Read more about lumber demand and how it could affect our local timber industry in this week's Northern Express, available to read online and at one of nearly 700 spots in 14 counties across northern Michigan.