Logging of national forests costs U.S. taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year, according to one new estimate, as federal land managers try to marry a century-old program that produced lumber to one that squeezes out relatively few products while waging a war on wildfires.
Subsidization of logging continues to grow because congressional spending on the U.S. Forest Service program has held steady, and in some cases increased, while timber harvest levels have fallen dramatically over the past 15 years, a conservation group’s new study says.
The shift from large-scale clear-cuts to commercial thinning of forests and fuel reduction projects has accelerated the government’s losses to an estimated $6.6 billion since 1997, according to Rene Voss of the nonprofit John Muir Project of the Earth Island Institute, author of the new study.
“The bottom line is that on average over the last seven years, the Forest Service has lost what we estimate to be $835 million annually,” he said.
“When it comes to commercial timber sales, it’s just like a big black hole, and they keep throwing more and more money into it,” said Steve Holmer, a spokesman for The Wilderness Society in Washington D.C.
Timber industry officials say the figures don’t tell the whole story because many of the expenditures that show up as costs of timber sales are tied to other things such as clearing brush and bug-infested trees to reduce wildfire threats.
“I’m not surprised they are losing money, but they are not comparing apples to apples,” said Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council based in Portland, Ore.
“Often, the work has more value than just timber sale value. If you are doing fuels treatment as part of a timber sale, there is a net public benefit to doing that,” he said.
Environmentalists and some taxpayer groups long have criticized subsidies of federal logging. But Voss, in a report to be released next week titled “Taxpayer Losses from Logging Our National Forests,” said the practice is more disturbing today because of growing U.S. budget deficits.
“Congress is trying to find all sorts of places to try to cut spending after the hurricanes on the Gulf Coast,” he said. “We have a lot more important national issues we should be spending our money on.”
Congress funds the Forest Service’s logging operation, which includes examining potential ecological effects and preparing logging plans before selling the rights to the wood to timber companies, which in turn cut the trees for their own profit.
Part of what the timber companies pay is reinvested in Forest Service reforestation programs, and part of it is returned to the U.S. Treasury – although there’s been none left for the Treasury the past four years. In three of those years, a net loss was incurred, Voss said.
During the peak years of the 1980s, the agency logged as much as 12 billion board feet a year on national forests, about one-third of that in Northern California, Oregon and Washington.
But national output fell to below 4 billion board feet after the northern spotted owl was declared a threatened species and court battles ensued in the early 1990s.
In recent years, annual harvests have hovered around 2 billion board feet, with the cherry hardwoods of Pennsylvania and pine plantations of the Southeast now rivaling Northwest Douglas fir as the most profitable products.
The Forest Service used to issue an annual report with detailed figures on the expenses, revenues and profits or losses for timber sale programs on each of the 109 national forests, but stopped after 1998.
Even during the early 1990s, when agency officials insisted the government was making money, environmentalists disputed the claims and said the Forest Service was failing to take into account indirect expenses that go into timber harvests, such as road-building and reforestation.
Conservationists gained new ammunition in February 1997 when the White House Council of Economic Advisers concluded that the Forest Service had spent $234 million more than it made logging national forests in 1995.
It marked the first time an administration had formally accepted environmentalists’ claims that Forest Service accounting practices were hiding overall logging costs to taxpayers.
The new study by Voss – and related research papers by the conservation group Heartwood in Illinois and Indiana – suggest the subsidies have grown.
Voss said the Forest Service hides the costs of timber sales by listing expenses under other items, such as road maintenance, thinning and fuels management. He made his calculations by adding varying percentages of those accounts to the overall timber sale budget when the work contributed to producing forest products.
Jim Culbert, a budget assistant for the Forest Service in Washington D.C., said he spoke with Voss several times while Voss was compiling his data and finds most of his estimates to be “reasonable.”
“I’m not surprised to see those kinds of numbers,” Culbert said.
Culbert said it costs considerably more today than 15 years ago to prepare a timber sale due in part to stricter environmental oversight and legal challenges.
“People can quibble with some of the percentages. There’s a levels of gray in there, but what he’s done is not unreasonable,” Culbert said. “He’s making his best guess and I don’t see anything that is way off base.”
Mark Donham, Heartwood’s program director, said he studied the agency’s finances and the Forest Service’s own budget figures – without the adjustments Voss has made – suggest losses of $300 million to $400 million annually in recent years.
“Even using the Forest Service’s lowball figures, it is hard to justify losing our forests and our money at the same time, while a handful of private timber companies profit handsomely,” he said. “But that’s what is happening.”
Culbert disagreed with the call to end logging in national forests.
“There’s some sort of assumption the timber program should be making money. And we were making money – taking in more money than we spent on those programs in the heyday of timber program,” Culbert said. “But nothing in the law says we must do that. Our mission is to manage the lands for multiple use.”
“One could look at it that timber sales are used as a tool that allows us to manage the national forests for all sorts of goals and objectives in terms of treating vegetation. We plant trees for more than just logging. We also maintain roads for public access and our own access,” Culbert said.
West said the conservationists are using “voodoo-Enron accounting practices” to exaggerate the costs of the timber management program.
“They are speaking out of both sides of their mouths, calling for more hazardous fuels projects near communities, but they don’t like the expense of doing that work,” he said.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
