OpinionJournal - Cross Country
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Death of a Sawmill Environmentalists wreck small businesses--and do ecological damage while they're at it.
BY JIM PETERSEN Thursday, December 29, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
EUREKA, Mont.--My friend Jim Hurst auctioned his sawmill in August.
Jim's decision to pack it in after 25 years of beating his head on the wall made big news here in northwest Montana but, alas, not a peep from this newspaper or the New York Times. That's too bad, because the loss of our family-owned mills also signals the loss of technologies and skills vital to our efforts to protect the West's great national forests from the ravages of increasingly fearsome wildfires.
I was in Jim's office a few days before the auction. He told me he was at peace with his decision, but Jim has a good game face, so I suspect the decision to terminate his remaining 70 employees tore his guts out. They were like family to him....
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