Lance Romine, 50, has been building homes and structures with Western juniper for about 20 years in Prineville through his company Line Shack Log Structures LLC.

“There is an endless supply of it,” he said. “So, it’s handy to try and create a use for it.”

Romine is among those commercially using the Western juniper tree, a native species that has spread over much of Central and Eastern Oregon.

Last month, representatives from several businesses involved in sustainable building and design led government officials, students and others on a tour of sites using juniper in Eastern Oregon. They want to promote its use as a way of spurring economic development in the region.

But making a profit off the wood can be challenging. The tree’s small size and limited amount of usable lumber leads to more waste compared to other wood. It also can be more difficult to harvest, mill and make into products.

Commercial uses include: firewood, chips for particle-flake board,animal bedding, decking, interior paneling, cabinetry, rustic furniture and gin flavoring, according to a 2005 Oregon State University report, “Biology, Ecology and Management of Western Juniper.”

But “in most cases,” the report said, “there are cheaper wood fiber substitutes readily available.”

Since 1930, the juniper population has expanded from about 1 million acres to between 6 million and 9 million acres across the state, said KC Eisenberg of Sustainable Northwest Wood, a Portland-based lumberyard whose products meet sustainability standards and come from Pacific Northwest forests.

“Builders wanted to build with (juniper), and mills wanted to cut it,” she said. “But nobody was stocking it, so it was expensive and took a long time to get.”

On May 18, Eisenberg, along with representatives from the Cascadia Green Building Council, Neil Kelly home building and remodeling, and Sustainable Northwest took a juniper educational tour in Eastern Oregon.

She said about 50 people — public officials, environmental nonprofit leaders, students and those within the building industry — saw recently completed installations of juniper, a juniper mill and a grassland restoration and harvest site.

Making juniper wood more accessible, she said, offers an economic solution to an environmental problem.

“Juniper offers a lot of promise for conservation-based economic development in Eastern Oregon,” she said. “We estimate it (creates) between 80 and 100 full-time equivalent jobs east of the Cascades alone, and the industry is still in its infancy.”

Environmentally, she said the overpopulation of juniper trees can be detrimental. It sucks up the water needed by other plants and animals and forces out grasses and sagebrush, which leads to erosion and destroys sage grouse habitat, according to state and federal agencies.

The tree’s explosive growth has been fueled, in part, by the control and management of wildfires, Eisenberg said.

“The wildfires used to sweep across the desert plains pretty frequently and clean out all of the juniper seedlings,” she said. “These days we don’t have the same fire cycle.”

Companies like Sustainable Northwest Wood are creating products out of the material to try to find a use for the overpopulated tree.

“We’ve seen a tremendous increase in demand for juniper as people have become aware of it,” she said. “Our juniper sales have doubled in the last two years.”

Some people have used juniper as a substitute for pressure-treated wood that can leech chemicals, she said. In the past year, she said, the company has supplied juniper lumber for a city-owned garden in Seattle, school gardens and countless residential landscaping and decking projects.

“The most valuable thing about juniper, and the reason why people are going to the trouble of harvesting it, is because it lasts a really long time outside,” she said. “It has oils in it that prevent decay.”

Eisenberg said Sustainable Northwest Wood purchases juniper from mills throughout the Pacific Northwest and transports it to Portland.

“We work with all of the mills,” she said. “In most cases, the mills will buy already-cut logs from logging contractors or restoration workers who are hired by ranchers or public agencies to … remove the trees.”

But logging juniper can be more difficult than most other trees in the Pacific Northwest, she said.

“For us, it doesn’t cost more to get than other wood, (but) for the logging contractors and ranchers, it can be more costly to remove than other types of trees because it is more spread-out on the landscape than, say, a typical Douglas fir forest, which has more trees per acre,” she said. “You get less return for the amount of money you spend cutting and trucking it because of the tree and the distance between where it is being harvested and where the mills are located.”

There are at least five operations milling juniper around the state, she said, including one in Prineville. However, many are one-person operations with portable mills.

That’s how Romine operates his business, Line Shack Log Structures.

He makes juniper log kits that include precut wall logs, log fasteners, purlins — a horizontal structure that supports the roof — rafters, porch posts, railings and accent logs.

Juniper holds nails and screws better than other types of wood, he said, won’t crack and doesn’t absorb moisture once it’s milled. Its characteristics — knots, color and bark pockets — can create a unique product, visually, he said. But working with juniper can be challenging.

“Folks are trying to find a use for it other than firewood by using it for flooring and cabinet stock,” he said. “But it’s a little harder to deal with because of the length of the wood and the substantial taper of the tree.”

It’s also traditionally a short tree, he said, which produces short logs. The size and shape of the tree result in about half of the tree going to waste when milled.

Romine said juniper shouldn’t be a substitute for other wood because the cost to millit and the amount of waste involved is higher. In industries such as flooring, he said it should be marketed as a stand-alone product to make up for the loss in the production process.