(Athol, Idaho, April 10, 2018) – Idaho Forest Group (IFG), a lumber producer in the Inland Northwest, has acquired the Merritt Brothers Finger Joint mill located in Athol, Idaho. Erol Deren, IFG VP of Sales and Marketing, commented “This acquisition gives us the opportunity to learn the value-added finger-joint manufacturing process. It will enable further utilization of the fiber resource and compliments our other facilities making the most of the logs that we procure for our mills.  We will carefully evaluate the capital needs of this site and invest accordingly.” Buck and Wayne Merritt started Merritt Brothers Lumber Company in 1968 when they purchased an old sawmill in Priest River, Idaho.  In 1990 they bought the Athol site and eventually sold off their Priest River location. Herb Janhsen, VP of Merritt Brothers, congratulated IFG stating “We wish IFG a prosperous future. We are happy to see the mill continue to move forward and offer employment opportunities to our valued team members.  We are thankful for the hard work our employees have put in over the years.”  

As published in the Idaho Statesman – read full article BY DAVID HIGH March 01, 2018 11:45 AM Updated March 04, 2018 05:15 PM Here’s the bad news for Idaho voters: If you miss voting in the primary election, you pretty much miss the election train. That’s because nearly all statewide officeholders in Idaho are selected in the primary election. Put another way, the primary election is when votes really matter. More specifically, recent history tells us that Republican primary results generally presage general election results for statewide offices. For the past 12 years, 100 percent of Idaho statewide political officeholders were decided in the Republican primary. If you go back 20 years, two Democrats were elected to statewide office: Marilyn Howard, superintendent of public instruction, and J.D. Williams, state controller. Four years later, only one Democrat — Howard — was elected. Since then, it’s been all Republicans. Unless you think Idaho has become less Republican over the last two decades — and with apologies to Democrats – it’s probable that all or nearly all of our statewide officeholders will be selected at the May 15 primary. Yet voter primary participation is inexplicably low. Statewide officeholders are elected every four years, the last time in 2014. The Secretary of State’s Office reports that 37.59 percent of Idaho’s voting-age population voted in the 2014 general election, but only 16.63 percent voted in the 2014 primary. As usual, all statewide office candidates selected in the Republican primary went on to win in the November general election. Think…

Though the president’s critics questioned the administration’s fealty to more inclusion in managing the West’s natural bounty, one place that the president and his aides could look for a model of a “truly representative process” is how former foes have cooperated to manage millions of acres of national forest land in Idaho.

Secretaries Zinke and Perdue Host Inter-Agency Forestry & Wildfire Listening Session with Federal, Congressional and State Stakeholders