James_Nov-Dec_2025_web - Flipbook - Page 60
Georgia’s forestry industry
employs more than 144,000 Georgians. It pumps billions into the
state’s economy every year. When
that industry weakens, small towns
feel it first and hardest. Schools lose
families. Main Street businesses
lose customers. Counties lose tax
revenue. And young people, seeing
no future in forestry, pack up and
leave for Atlanta or beyond.
“We have reached a tipping
point with an issue that threatens
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the health of rural economies all
over our state and region,” Goodman warns.
But the senator is not sitting still.
“I’m working with all my colleagues
in the legislature, the Georgia Forestry Association, our federal partners
and other state leaders as well as
our research institutions to find any
and all opportunities to create new
markets, new trade opportunities
and new uses for Georgia grown
timber and wood fiber,” he says.
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Goodman has even called for
federal leadership. “It’s my hope
that President Donald Trump will…
bring in all the CEOs of the major
timber, pulp, paper and fiber companies, get them all around the table
and seek solutions to this crisis …
He’s done it before with CEOs from
other sectors of the economy and
it’s warranted at this point for the
forestry industry.”
The senator believes it’s an “all
hands-on deck” moment. “The future health, wealth and prosperity
of rural Georgia is on the line and
. . . no stone is being left unturned,”
he says.
And there is hope. Georgia
has the leadership, resources, the
workforce, and the will to adapt.
The pulpwood crisis may be quiet.
But for the families living it, for the
communities watching their lifeblood drain away, it is nothing short
of calamitous. The time to act is not
someday. It is now.
Gary Wisenbaker is a realtor who lives in
Valdosta.
