Resource Management Service (RMS) completed a like-kind exchange with Rayonier Inc. on August 5, sending roughly 57,000 acres of timberland in Alabama and Texas to Rayonier in return for about 36,000 acres in southwest Washington, including acreage in the Grays River Basin. Rayonier valued the Washington sale at $145 million and the Alabama and Texas acquisition at $146 million, figures subject to standard closing adjustments. The deal is RMS's first entry into the Pacific Northwest and gives its Evergreen U.S. Forestland Fund a species mix built around Douglas-fir and western hemlock rather than the Southern yellow pine that dominates its existing U.S. holdings.
RMS manages roughly $5.8 billion in timberland assets across the United States and Brazil, and the fund gave up more acreage than it took on. Acreage totals alone do not establish relative value in a swap like this one, and the two companies structured the deal as a tax-efficient exchange rather than a cash sale specifically to defer gains on both sides. What the trade does establish clearly is exposure: Rayonier now holds more Southern acreage, and RMS now owns timberland in a region that grows, harvests, and sells on an entirely different clock than the rest of its portfolio.
Douglas-Fir and Southern Pine Are Entering 2026 on Different Tracks
MetLife Investment Management's 2026 agricultural outlook expects Southern pine sawtimber prices to stabilize as recent sawmill investment supports regional demand, even as pulpwood markets stay pressured by mill closures and a growing supply of residual wood chips. The Pacific Northwest picture is more mixed. MetLife expects Douglas-fir log premiums to keep narrowing as domestic end-use and export demand both soften, but it still projects Pacific Northwest log prices to trend upward through 2026 on improving housing and lumber markets set against a tight regional timber supply. For RMS, owning both regions means its returns will now track two separate sets of supply and demand signals instead of moving with a single Southern market.
Grays River Timber Comes With Port Access and Existing Commitments
The Washington acreage carries a practical advantage beyond species diversity: proximity to the Port of Longview and the Lower Columbia River shipping corridor. According to the Pacific Northwest Waterways Association, Longview and its neighboring terminals handle 62% of Washington's log exports, moving roughly 2.2 million tons of wood products in 2023, with China as the leading destination. That combination of domestic mill access and a working export gateway gives a timberland owner more ways to sell wood as conditions shift, though export markets carry their own cyclicality and the Association's own data shows overseas demand for Northwest logs has been softening rather than accelerating.
RMS said it will keep the acquired acreage under third-party Sustainable Forestry Initiative certification and will continue an existing salmon habitat restoration partnership with the Cowlitz Indian Tribe on the Grays River property, so the fund inherits active stewardship obligations along with the timber inventory. For institutional investors watching the deal, the more durable takeaway may be less about acreage and more about how deliberately RMS chose to trade scale for a fundamentally different risk profile, betting that owning two timber markets moving on separate cycles beats concentrating in one.
