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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Splintering American Forests

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

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.

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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 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.

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