Splintering American Forests

11/29/97
OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
The word is getting around that American National Forests are for more
than subsidized timber harvest. Following is Washington Post coverage
of the struggle to stop over-exploitation of some of the last
remaining climax forests in America.
g.b.

*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

Title: Splintering the Forests
Source: The Washington Post
Status: Copyright 1997, contact source for reprint permissions
Date: Friday, November 28, 1997; Page A26

IN RECENT years, the timber harvest from the national forests has
dramatically declined. The decline may not yet be enough of a good
thing. Congress should change the law to make it harder to cut on
these public lands, particularly in pristine areas never logged
before.

The problem is that the conservation of the forests is not the only
consideration in deciding how much to cut. Nor is the timber industry,
for all its power in the affected regions, the only source of pressure
to cut more. An extraordinary system has developed over the years in
which other groups also have their fortunes tied to an increase in the
cut. The proceeds from timber sales are shared in such a way that lots
of people want to cut more.

A fourth of the revenues, generously defined, go to the counties in
which the forests are found. The funds are earmarked for schools and
roads. The county governments have come to depend on them. In many of
these counties, so much of the land is federal that the local
governments have little else to tax. The timber payments become a
major resource, and the larger the cut, the more there is to divvy up.

Likewise, certain shares of the proceeds are returned, by tradition,
to the regional and local offices of the Forest Service in whose
jurisdictions the cutting occurred. The bureaucracy thus also has a
vested interest in cutting more. Ironically, the larger the cut,
the larger the sum that becomes available for reforestation and other
purposes that the cut itself makes necessary. The process becomes
circular.

The law is also such that some of this money flows automatically,
outside the annual appropriations process. That helps the
appropriators. The larger the cut, the less they need to appropriate
to take care of all the needs associated with the forests, and the
more they have available for other purposes. Members of Congress are
thereby also hooked into the system, and not just those members who
happen to represent districts in which the forests are located.

The pressure to cut is thus strong, and the more so because the volume
lately has been low. To ease it, the administration is debating
something called decoupling. It could show up as part of next year's
budget; the promising new chief of the Forest Service, Michael
Dombeck, is one of the move's advocates. The counties would be offered
fixed payments in perpetuity, independent of the harvest. They no
longer would be dependent on a larger cut and -- an important
consideration in the current climate -- they also would be better
protected against a smaller one.

There were votes in both houses of Congress this year, not exactly on
the question of how much to cut but on the related issue of whether
to build the additional roads in the forests on which further cutting
depends. The road-building program is said to be a subsidy to thaid to be a subsidy to the
industry. Bans on further expenditures for road-building came within
an ace of passing in both houses.

There was a message in those votes, even though the proposals failed.
The instinct in Congress -- even in this Congress -- seems to be
increasingly to conserve the forests. The surrounding localities ought
not be abandoned in the process. A way should be found to support the
localities at other than the forests' expense. If the administration
can separate the two, it will have performed an important service. Error: Unable to read footer file.