The federal timber sale program operates at a loss to U.S. taxpayers of almost $1 billion each year. Indirect costs are incalculable.
	Deforestation leads to soil erosion, river siltation and flooding, loss of species, and global warming.
	Deforestation destroys fisheries, opportunities for tourism and outdoor recreation, and destabilizes rural communities.
	Federal subsidies distort timber value and depress competition in alternative fibers.
	One-third of National Forest trees are used for pulp for which numerous alternatives exist.
	Globalization and exports increase pressure for National Forest logging.

The Effects of Deforestation

The effects of logging go far beyond just the loss of trees. Healthy forests are critical to ensuring clean water supplies, pure air, abundant fish stocks and wildlife — the diversity of species on which all life depends. Forests mitigate global warming by absorbing and storing carbon. Intact forests regulate regional and global hydrologic cycles insuring clean and adequate supplies of water. In addition, intact forests hold soils in place, preserving fertility, and preventing floods, landslides and the destructive siltation of fish spawning streams.

Communities have suffered from boom-and-bust cycles typical of logging, but unlogged and restored forests will serve the sustainable and growing tourism and outdoor recreation industries into the future.

Cities Demand Watershed Protection: During the winter of 1996, siltation from excessive logging so badly damaged the watershed of Salem, Oregon, that its water supply was rendered unusable for a month. Water treatment facilities were unable to process the tons of mud and debris washing down from clearcut slopes. Similarly, the city of Portland, Oregon, population one million, has asked the Forest Service to stop logging its water source — the Bull Run watershed — out of concern for the region’s rapid growth, and the quality and quantity of the water available to support it. Among other considerations, the city does not wish to build an expensive water filtration plant specifically to cleanse logging sediment.

Damaged Fisheries Threaten the Loss of Thousands of Jobs: Logging threatens commercial and sports fishing by destroying fish habitat. Sedimentation smothers spawning beds; erosion and landslides destroy trout streams; and clearcuts raise the temperature of previously shaded streams killing fish. The Columbia River system once boasted yearly migrations of 20 million salmon. The numbers are now down to less than 2 million and 60,000 jobs in the commercial fishing industry have been affected.

Recreation Far More Valuable than Logging: Recreation, hunting and fishing in National Forests contribute vastly more income to the nation’s economy — and generate far more jobs — than logging on National Forests. In fact, an April 1996 Forest Service report predicts that, by the year 2000, recreation, hunting and fishing on National Forests will contribute 31.4 times more to the nation’s economy and create 38.1 times the number of jobs than the existing timber sale program. (USFS, “The Forest Service Program for Forest and Rangeland Resources: A Long-Term Strategic Plan,” Draft 1995, RPA Program, Oct. 1995, pp. IV-2 & IV-3.)

Logging Increases Fire Risk: The Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project summary states, “More than any other human activity, logging has increased the risk and severity of fires by removing the cooling shade of trees and leaving flammable debris.” (Status of the Sierra Nevada, Vol 1., Assessment of Summaries and Management Strategies, p. 62, Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project: Final Report to Congress, 1996.) Forest health requires restoring fire to ecosystems in the form of controlled burns, not logging the forests to save them.

The Federal Timber Sale Program Costs Taxpayers Billions

Recent trade agreements have expanded industrial forestry and global exports worldwide, increasing pressure on U.S. National Forests, too. The agreements have created a secure and enforceable framework of international rules from which global corporations can enter new markets. As corporations search the planet for new markets, they have pushed governments to eliminate trade and investment barriers. The result is further market integration and stiffer competition which allows only those firms that vigilantly suppress costs to survive.

Reducing expenditures for social and ecological safeguards (such as providing safe working conditions or complying with environmental laws) can be an easy way to boost a firm’s competitiveness. In response to heightened competition created by these new arrangements, governments have introduced measures at the national level designed to boost the competitiveness of domestic firms by increasing subsidies, deregulating logging practices, and increasing access to forest resources.

The result is a public lands logging program that operates at a net loss of nearly $1 billion each year. The American people pay for timber sale administration, logging road construction and repair as well as damage from floods, mudslides and forest fires caused by logging. Timber companies’ contributions to these costs are minimal. From 1980 to 1991, the U.S. Forest Service timber program operated at a net loss of $7.3 billion. In fiscal year 1996, nearly $800 million was appropriated from the general fund of the U.S. Treasury and another $532 million was spent from off budget accounts for the timber sale program. None of these receipts were returned to the Treasury, resulting in a net loss to taxpayers of at least $800 million. (Hanson, Chad, “Ending Timber Sales on National Forests, The Facts,” 1997.)

The replacement cost of a forest hundreds or thousands of years old is incalculable. The considerable damage to watersheds, community water supplies, fisheries, and to the tourism and recreation industries are not fully considered in the Forest Service calculus. Some costs, however, can be approximated. Logging is a primary cause of floods and mudslides, and substantially increases the risk of forest fires. In fiscal year 1996, $485 million was appropriated for the Forest Service’s wildfire fighting program and $830 million was spent in fiscal year 1997. As for floods, the preliminary damage estimate of the 1996 winter floods was $538 million for Oregon alone, much of which taxpayers covered through disaster relief appropriations. In fiscal year 1996, $60.8 million was appropriated for “emergency supplemental” expenditures to repair roads and facilities damaged by mudslides.

“The Forest Service budgeting process, which allows the Forest Service to keep a percentage of the funds it realizes from timber sales, provides an incentive for the Forest Service to sell timber below cost or at a loss. Also, to maximize its budget, the Forest Service uses expensive timber management and restoration techniques, such as clearcutting. Again, conflicting interests lead to perverse results: clearcutting provides the Forest Service with a higher congressional subsidy because the Forest Service can request preparation and administrative costs. Consequently, decisions may be made, not because they are in the best interests of the American people but because they benefit the Forest Service’s fiscal interest.”

Past Attempts to Regulate Logging Have Failed

“Controversy over federal forest management has prompted investigations by Congressional committees, the General Accounting Office, and the Office of Technology Assessment. These inquiries reveal that the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lack adequate or up-to-date inventories and monitoring programs. Without such programs, the agencies cannot assess the success of replanted tree farms on the public’s forest lands or the quantity of mature timber available. Lacking such information, neither the Congress nor the public can determine whether ongoing federal timber sale programs meet legal standards for sustainable timber management. This report describes how the lack of monitoring and outdated inventories have prevented accurate determination of timber cutting levels, to the detriment of America’s forest heritage.”

In an attempt to evade court-ordered injunctions against illegal logging, the timber industry and the Forest Service fabricated a “forest health crisis.” Despite pointing to a century of fire suppression, heavy logging and road building as the cause of the problem, they called for more of the same as the solution. The western wildfires of 1994 helped the industry persuade Congress that the forests must be “salvage logged” or lost.

The passage of a salvage logging amendment to a fiscal year 1995 Interior Appropriations bill, known as the “salvage rider,” is a dramatic example of Congress, the timber industry, and the agency working in close cooperation to increase the amount of logging on National Forests. It allowed unrestricted clearcutting of publicly owned forests all over the country — including the last ancient forests — under the guise of salvage logging. The bill purported to respond to a forest health “crisis,” but more than 50 forest experts across the country protested, pointing out that clearcutting threatens soil, watersheds, fisheries and wildlife — causing damage that vastly exceeds the impact of insects and fire.

The bill expressly overrode virtually all existing federal environmental laws. It restricted judicial remedies, preventing citizens from gaining relief in court to halt clearcutting — even if its effects threatened water supplies, endangered protected species, caused erosion or imperiled communities that depend on fishing and recreation.

In California alone, nearly one billion board feet of new timber went on sale upon passage of the salvage rider. Some of the last roadless areas in the National Forest System were put up for bid at way-below-market prices, effectively privatizing public assests at a highly subsidized rate. Nationally, 4.6 billion board feet of the most ecologically valuable timber, including healthy, intact stands of rare old growth was sold under the program, exceeding even the 3.8 billion board feet goal that Congress had set. These sales gave rise to new rounds of protests and civil disobedience in forest communities nationwide, resulting in thousands of arrests and new demands for an end to all logging on public lands.

Subsidies Distort Timber Value

The wood chipping industry encourages massive industrial-scale clearcutting on increasingly shorter rotations unlike the solid wood sector which typically uses select cutting on long rotations. Since they cannot compete with the subsidized timber from public land, the solid wood producers are turning to wood chipping. They are chipping the small-diameter trees that would become the sawtimber of tomorrow, if left to grow for another 30 years. Employment is also affected. Studies show the best potential for job growth within the forest products industry lies with solid wood manufacturing, which is more labor intensive than wood chipping.

If the National Forests no longer sold timber, the restricted supply would increase the value of sawtimber. Private landholders would then have the economic incentives to use selection management on long rotations to produce solid wood products. The excessive and unsustainable wood chipping would cease.

Subsidies Depress Competition in Alternative Fibers

Approximately 22 percent of the timber logged in National Forests goes directly into pulp and paper manufacture. Another 10 percent is funneled indirectly into pulp and paper in the form of lumber coproducts (chips, sawdust, etc.). Pulp and paper is thus a major economic force driving logging on public lands. Nonwoods currently make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. fiber supply. By contrast, nonwoods are the dominant source of fiber in such countries as China and India. But farmers and other domestic recycled and nonwood paper manufacturers cannot compete with the virtually free fiber from the National Forests now available.

There is no shortage of nonwood fiber material in this country. U.S. farmers annually generate an estimated 280 million tons of excess agricultural fiber, suitable for papermaking. Generally these sources can be pulped with higher fiber yields than wood and require fewer chemicals to be processed, less water, and less energy.

If the flow of free fiber from the National Forests ceased, benefits to farmers would include: new income from the sale of residues that would otherwise be burned; new opportunities for value-added rotational crops; new uses for over 65 million acres of idle farmland in the United States; and new replacement options for declining industries such as tobacco.

In addition, fiber can be mined from landfills and kept out of them altogether through recycling and conservation. For example, approximately 48 percent of all U.S. hardwood lumber produced in 1992 was used to manufacture shipping pallets. Fifty-four percent of these pallets are used just once, then discarded in landfills. In fact, half the volume in the nation’s landfills is reusable, but wasted, wood and paper fiber.

Conclusion

Zero-Cut