Maine Timber Prices Q4 2026

Maine timber prices entering Q4 2026 describe a market that is flat at best, with few products gaining ground. The most recent official figures, from the Maine Forest Service’s 2024 Stumpage Price Report, showed white pine sawlogs slipping to $208/MBF and spruce-fir sawlogs falling to $108/MBF, and nothing since has pointed to a rebound: mills ran on delivery quotas through much of 2025, Woodland Pulp idled for a month that November, and lumber futures closed at $526.50 on October 2, 2026, a two-year low. Softwood pulpwood and biomass still bring $1 to $4 a ton where a buyer can be found at all, and the state is down to five operating pulp and paper mills. Hardwood veneer was the one category rising broadly in the MFS data, and export channels to China have partly reopened this year. Housing remains the drag on softwood demand, with single-family starts running nearly 5% behind 2025 through August. Two other storylines matter for anyone planning a harvest. Drought, which had shrunk to about 8% of the state by late June, returned over the summer and covered all of Maine again by October 1, with extreme conditions along the coast from Casco Bay to Penobscot Bay. In the north woods, meanwhile, a second season of early-intervention spraying appears to have kept spruce budworm from reaching outbreak levels.

Maine Timber/Stumpage Prices: 2026 Q4

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Historical Maine Timber Price Data

How to Estimate What Your Timber Is Worth

These stumpage prices give you the market rates per unit of timber in your area, but they're not particularly useful on their own—you need to know how much wood you actually have standing on your land.

The most accurate way to determine your timber volume is to hire a professional forester to conduct a timber cruise, which involves systematically measuring sample plots across your property. This can cost $1,000 or more depending on your acreage and timber complexity.

For a quicker, DIY estimate, you can use The Timberland Investor's free forestry mapping software designed for small woodland owners. It includes an amateur-friendly cruise system that walks you through measuring your timber and calculating volumes by species and product class.

Once you have volume estimates (in MBF, tons, cords, etc.), you can multiply them by the stumpage prices above to get a rough sense of your timber's market value. For example:

• 50 MBF of white pine sawlogs × $205/MBF = $10,250
• 200 tons of mixed hardwood pulpwood × $7/ton = $1,400

Keep in mind: Actual sale prices vary based on access, timber quality, market timing, and logger availability. These calculations give you a ballpark figure—always consult with a forester before making harvest decisions.

Market factors shaping Q4 2026 prices

White Pine: Maine's Anchor Sawlog Has Stopped Climbing

Eastern white pine is still the sawlog most Maine landowners will sell. It generated 949 landowner reports in the Maine Forest Service's 2024 data, far more than any other species, and at $208/MBF it brought nearly twice the statewide spruce-fir average. What changed is the direction. After climbing to $229 in 2023, the statewide average gave back about 9% in 2024, and we estimate roughly $205/MBF for Q4 2026.

Geography matters, though the 2024 county data points somewhere different than many sellers assume. The highest averages came from western Maine, where Oxford County posted $236/MBF on 193 reports and Franklin $219. The Casco Bay unit (Androscoggin, Cumberland, Sagadahoc and York counties), which is the busiest pine market in the state, fell from $246 to $206. The Capital Area unit averaged $186, Piscataquis $202, and Aroostook just $131 on eight reports. Individual sales tell a wider story: the top reported prices of $445 to $450/MBF came from the southern units, a reminder that well-marketed, high-grade pine can sell for double the average.

Price has been only half of the problem. Two Trees Forestry, which sells timber across central and southern Maine, called 2025 a particularly difficult year in its December market report, citing strict delivery quotas at sawmills as well as pulp mills. Hammond Lumber in Belgrade stopped taking deliveries from late July into September, and Irving's Dixfield mill limited contractors to one load a week for most of the year before suffering a large fire. The firm sold considerably less volume than in 2024 and expected wood demand to stay low heading into this year.

The demand picture explains why. CME lumber futures closed at $526.50 per thousand board feet on October 2, 2026, down 14.5% from a year earlier and the weakest level in about two years. Total housing starts ran at a 1.275 million annual pace in August, and although single-family starts rebounded to 918,000 that month, they were about 4.7% behind 2025 on a year-to-date basis, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Combined duties and tariffs of roughly 45% on Canadian softwood lumber, with a preliminary Commerce Department review pointing toward about 35%, have not been enough to offset weak end-use demand. Acadian Timber said in its second-quarter 2026 report that it expects sawlog demand to hold steady while pricing stays challenged until those end markets improve.

For landowners with mature, accessible pine, the practical advice is to line up a market before lining up a logger. Ask which mills are taking wood, on what quota and to what specification, and consider a competitive bid sale through a forester if the stand has real grade in it.

Spruce-Fir Sawlogs: Weak Demand, Better News on Budworm

Red spruce and balsam fir sawlogs recorded the steepest decline of any major sawlog in the MFS 2024 report, falling from $143 to $108/MBF, roughly 24%. Studwood, which is how most northern spruce-fir is actually sold, slipped from $25 to $22 a ton. We estimate about $105/MBF and $21/ton for Q4 2026.

The county figures run against the usual assumption that the north is the strongest spruce-fir market. Sawlog averages were highest in Oxford ($154), Franklin ($143) and Somerset ($125) and lowest in Aroostook ($94) and Piscataquis ($76, down from $179 a year earlier). Product mix accounts for part of the gap. Aroostook landowners filed 109 studwood reports against 30 sawlog reports, so the sawlog average there reflects a small slice of the harvest. Irving's acquisition of the Masardis sawmill in January 2025 kept a major spruce-fir buyer operating in the region.

The housing and lumber headwinds described above apply with more force to spruce-fir, which goes almost entirely into framing lumber. ConstructConnect's chief economist projects that single-family starts will fall 5.9% for 2026 as a whole, and builders' sales expectations in the NAHB survey dropped in September to their lowest level in nearly four years.

The more encouraging development is in forest health. The spruce budworm outbreak that has spread across tens of millions of acres in Quebec reached northern Maine in 2024, when aerial surveys mapped about 3,400 acres of damage. The Maine Budworm Response Coalition answered with an early intervention strategy, treating roughly 241,000 acres in 2025, and follow-up monitoring by the University of Maine found about 95% fewer budworms in treated areas. Winter surveys then identified only about 83,000 acres with elevated populations. This year's program, completed June 8, covered roughly 65,000 to 70,000 acres, including 127 small woodlots enrolled at no cost to their owners. Maine Forest Service flights in 2026 found no defoliation outside known areas in the Fish River and St. John valleys, and Congress added $10 million for the effort in the fiscal 2026 appropriations bill on top of $14 million provided earlier. Researchers caution that monitoring and periodic treatment will probably be needed for another decade. Even so, the scenario that worried landowners a year ago, a repeat of the 1970s and 1980s outbreak followed by a flood of salvage wood, looks less likely today.

Softwood Pulpwood: Five Mills and Shrinking Options

Softwood pulpwood remains the weakest corner of Maine's timber market. The MFS 2024 report put spruce-fir pulpwood at $4/ton, hemlock at $3 and white pine at $2, and MFS noted that markets for many low-grade products were tight even where prices held. We estimate $2 to $3/ton for Q4 2026. At those prices pulpwood rarely pays for its own handling, and many harvests treat it as a cost of getting to the sawlogs.

The buyer base keeps narrowing. A Sun Journal review in August 2026 counted five operating pulp and paper mills in Maine, employing between 2,500 and 3,000 people, compared with 35 paper mills in the early 1900s. The loss of the Jay mill in 2023, together with ND Paper's shutdown of its Old Town pulp mill that same year, left a gap in pulpwood demand that has never been filled, and a plan to convert the Jay site into a data center was shelved this summer.

The fragility showed in late 2025. Woodland Pulp in Baileyville, Washington County's largest employer, stopped accepting wood at the end of October, idled its pulp mill and chip plant from November 20 to December 17, and temporarily laid off 144 workers, citing weak global pulp prices. It was one of six mills in the Northeast and Quebec that paused or reduced wood deliveries around that time, according to the Professional Logging Contractors of the Northeast. With Woodland closed, northern Maine pulpwood had to travel to Skowhegan or Rumford, which pushed prices down across the state. One logger told The Maine Monitor simply, “The pulp market is terrible.” The mill restarted on schedule and resumed purchasing fiber in early January.

There are real investments on the other side of the ledger. Nine Dragons has put more than $330 million into ND Paper's Rumford mill since 2019, where about 530 workers produce 430,000 tons of paper and 100,000 tons of market pulp a year, and Sappi reports spending $600 million on its Somerset mill in Skowhegan since 2018. Sappi's outlook carries an asterisk: the company has said it could not operate if the Shawmut Dam on the Kennebec is removed, and The Nature Conservancy is in the process of acquiring that dam with river restoration in mind.

Regionally the trend is still contraction. Finch Paper announced in July 2026 that it would stop producing pulp at its Glens Falls, New York mill and buy pulp from outside suppliers, ending deliveries that had historically run to 55 to 60 log trucks a day. Acadian Timber expects pulpwood demand and pricing in both Maine and New Brunswick to stay at reduced levels until existing customers raise production and new facilities that consume pulpwood and biomass are commissioned. For landowners the planning assumption is unchanged: a harvest has to be justified by its sawlogs.

Biomass: Down to a Dollar a Ton

Biomass stumpage averaged $1/ton statewide in the MFS 2024 report, down from $2 the year before, across 587 reports that ranged from ten cents to $6. That is the lowest price in the report and effectively a disposal value.

The market has been distressed since 2018 and 2019, when ReEnergy closed its Fort Fairfield and Ashland plants and northern Maine lost its two largest outlets for chips, tops and limbs. Two standalone biomass plants remain in western Maine, at Livermore Falls (39 megawatts) and Stratton (48 megawatts), both owned by ReGenerate Energy Holdings. The company commissioned a biochar project at Livermore Falls in February 2024 and hopes to add one at Stratton, but it has told state legislators that the Stratton plant's future depends on winning a long-term energy procurement.

Policy remains supportive on paper. Maine's 2025 clean energy legislation set a target of 100% clean electricity by 2040, and biomass qualifies. A $20 million federal award for Maine's Forest Bioproducts Advanced Manufacturing Tech Hub, announced by the University of Maine in July 2026, is aimed at building new uses for low-grade wood. None of this changes what a landowner will be paid for chips this winter.

Hardwood Sawlogs and Veneer: Mixed Sawlogs, Firm Veneer

Maine's hardwood sawlog results in the MFS 2024 report were mixed. Red oak edged up to $293/MBF from $285 and red maple was nearly unchanged at $183, but sugar maple fell to $251 from $274, white birch to $223 from $257, and yellow birch to $204 from $259. MFS specifically cited sugar maple among the sawlogs that declined. We carry all five species into Q4 2026 close to those baselines.

Veneer told a different story. Sugar maple veneer jumped from $578 to $757/MBF, red oak from $650 to $736, and yellow birch from $573 to $630, with only white birch easing (to $579 from $621). MFS cautions that veneer prices vary from year to year, but the spread between veneer and sawlog prices, more than $400/MBF for red oak and $500 for sugar maple, is large enough that log sorting can change the outcome of a sale.

Where the premiums are. Western Maine led for most species. Sugar maple sawlogs averaged $314 in Somerset County and $277 in Oxford, against $179 in the Casco Bay unit. Red oak, often thought of as strictly a southern Maine species, averaged $345 in Somerset and $319 in Oxford on 150 reports, compared with $273 in Casco Bay, which remains the largest oak market by number of sales. Oxford County also recorded the state's highest sugar maple veneer average ($886) and its top veneer price ($1,696).

Exports are moving again. Trade policy whipsawed hardwood markets in 2025. China's retaliatory tariff on U.S. goods spiked to 125% that April before dropping to 10% in mid-May, a rate since extended to November 10, 2026, and a ban on U.S. log imports lasting about eight months cut American hardwood log exports to China by more than 77% for the year. Hardwood lumber exports to China fell nearly 15%. The picture has improved in 2026. The American Hardwood Export Council reported that exports to Greater China rose more than 17% year over year in the first half, and oak, maple and birch sawn wood all appear on a tariff-reduction list China published this fall, although the lower duties had not been formally implemented as of early October. On the U.S. side, the Commerce Department was due to update the White House by October 1 on hardwood timber and lumber imports under the Section 232 wood products action, a step that could lead to new tariffs. Trade analysts describe export shipments as moving again without the market having fully recovered.

Hardwood Pulpwood and Secondary Markets

Mixed hardwood pulpwood is the most commonly reported product in Maine, with 1,077 landowner reports in 2024, and it averaged $7/ton, down from $9. County averages ranged from $4 in Piscataquis to $10 in Hancock. Aspen pulpwood, reported separately, averaged $9. Hardwood has held up better than softwood largely because firewood processors compete for the same low-grade stems, and firewood stumpage was steady at $27 a cord.

Deliveries were unreliable through 2025. Two Trees Forestry reported repeated short curtailments at Sappi's Skowhegan mill tied to mechanical problems and a fire, along with swings in the volume and species that ND Paper's Rumford mill wanted, and most mills carried unusually large inventories into last winter. We estimate about $7/ton for Q4 2026.

Pallet logs deserve a second look after the optimism of a few years ago. Hardwood pallet logs averaged $100/MBF in 2024, down slightly from $105, while softwood pallet logs dropped from $92 to $53, a decline MFS highlighted. They remain a useful outlet for logs that will not make grade, at prices closer to $55 than $100 on the softwood side.

Drought: Gone by June, Back by October

Maine has now spent most of two years in and out of drought. Summer 2025 was the state's sixth driest on record, and by late October of that year the entire state was in drought, most of it severe or extreme. The Drought Task Force logged 541 dry-well reports for 2025, and the Maine Forest Service counted 848 wildfires that burned more than 500 acres.

A wet spring and early summer brought real relief. By late June 2026 the drought footprint had shrunk to about 8% of the state, mostly along the coast. The reprieve was short. More than half of Maine was back in at least moderate drought by mid-August, and when the Task Force reconvened on September 3 its members concluded that the state had never fully recovered from last fall. Groundwater is the lingering problem: some monitoring wells along the I-95 corridor between Augusta and Kittery are at their lowest levels in 30 to 40 years of record, and 40 dry wells had been reported across 15 counties by early September.

As of October 1, all of Maine was in at least moderate drought, with roughly 20% of the state in severe drought and about 5% in extreme drought along the coast from Casco Bay to Penobscot Bay. A late-September nor'easter delivered substantial rain without changing those classifications, and the National Weather Service expects drought to persist through the fall.

For harvest planning the effects cut both ways. Dry ground lets crews work sites this fall that would normally have to wait for freeze-up, and the Forest Service reported low wildfire concern in early September, a contrast with 2025. The longer-term cost is stress on the trees themselves, since consecutive dry years slow growth and leave stands more vulnerable to insects and disease. Landowners on shallow or droughty soils should ask their forester whether that changes the timing or intensity of a planned cut.

Fuel, Equipment and Logging Capacity

Fuel was the cost shock of 2026. Maine's average diesel price jumped about 33% in a month to $5.82 a gallon in early April as conflict in the Middle East disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, according to AAA figures reported by Mainebiz. The spike arrived just as contractors were hauling the last of the winter harvest, and the Professional Logging Contractors of the Northeast warned that sustained prices at that level would keep some crews from starting back up after mud season. Acadian Timber reported weighted average selling prices up 19% in New Brunswick and about 16% in Maine in the second quarter and attributed part of the increase to fuel surcharges and longer hauling distances, a reminder that higher delivered prices do not necessarily mean higher stumpage.

Equipment is the other squeeze. Tariffs on imported machinery and parts have raised the cost of replacing logging equipment, much of which is imported, and contractors interviewed by The Maine Monitor in late 2025 described holding off on both purchases and new hires. Between 2019 and 2024, Maine's forest products sector lost nearly $1 billion in economic output and about 7% of its workforce.

The practical result for landowners is that logging capacity and mill capacity are both tight, and they do not always line up. A contractor may be available when the mill is on quota, or the reverse. Starting conversations six months to a year ahead of a planned harvest is reasonable in the current market.

What This Means for Landowners

For Maine woodland owners, Q4 2026 is a flat market in which the quality of the sale matters more than its timing.

Owners of quality white pine, red oak and sugar maple still hold the most marketable timber in the state. Averages in the low-to-mid $200s per MBF for pine and maple and near $290 for oak are respectable, and the best logs sell for more than twice those figures. The gap between average and top prices is where a consulting forester and a competitive bid earn their fee, particularly for stands with veneer potential.

Owners whose stands are mostly spruce-fir face soft sawlog and studwood prices but a meaningfully lower risk of budworm salvage than a year ago. Where trees are healthy and growing, there is little financial penalty for waiting on housing markets to recover.

Owners counting on pulpwood or biomass revenue should plan as if it will not materialize. Harvests of predominantly low-grade wood make sense when they serve a silvicultural purpose, such as improving the stand or addressing a health problem, and any income is best viewed as an offset to that work.

Whatever the stand, confirm markets first. Ask which mills are buying, at what quotas and through which contractors before signing anything. The prices in this report and the interactive table above are statewide and regional averages built on 2024 transactions and our reading of conditions since. What your timber actually brings depends on species mix, log quality, access, haul distance and the logger's costs on your site, and a licensed Maine consulting forester with current mill contacts is the most reliable guide to all of them.

Sources: Maine Forest Service 2024 Stumpage Price Report (Dec. 23, 2025); Two Trees Forestry wood markets report (Dec. 2025); Acadian Timber Q2 2026 results (Aug. 5, 2026); CME lumber futures (Oct. 2, 2026); U.S. Census Bureau and NAHB new residential construction data (Aug. 2026); Maine Forest Service, Maine Forest Products Council and Maine Budworm Response Coalition spruce budworm updates (2026); Maine Emergency Management Agency Drought Task Force (Dec. 2025, Sept. 2026); U.S. Drought Monitor and National Weather Service (Oct. 2026); The Maine Monitor; Sun Journal (Aug. 27, 2026); Portland Press Herald; Bangor Daily News; Mainebiz; Professional Logging Contractors of the Northeast; USDA Foreign Agricultural Service GAIN reports (2026); American Hardwood Export Council (Aug. 2026).