Forest health and the politics of expediency.

• Author: Axline, Michael
• Position: Salvage Logging: Point & Counterpoint

1. INTRODUCTION

   In 1995 Congress attached to an Emergency Appropriations Bill(1) a "rider"(2) creating an Emergency Salvage Timber Sale Program."(3) The sponsors of the timber salvage rider asserted to their colleagues in Congress that the rider would protect the health of our national forests from an "emergency fire, insect and disease situation on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands."(4) The rider, however, has little to do with any forest health emergency requiring special legislation.(5) Under the National Forest Management Act (NFMA),(6) the Forest Service has ample authority to protect forest health and conduct salvage sales,(7) and has done so for years. Federal regulations also authorize BLM to permit salvage harvesting of damaged timber.(8) In reality, the timber salvage rider is a vehicle for suspending environmental laws and increasing timber supplies(9) to a relatively small group of mills that depend on federal timber (as opposed to private or state timber) to stay in operation.

   To increase timber supplies for mills that depend on federal timber, the rider suspends the applicability of the nation's environmental and fiscal responsibility laws for most Forest Service and BLM timber sales, and orders the Forest Service and BLM to increase the volume of timber sold from federal lands, regardless of the fiscal or environmental impacts.(10) The rider also orders the Forest Service and BLM to sell off some of the nation's healthiest and most ecologically valuable ancient forests at bargain basement prices.(11)

   There are a number of ironies surrounding the salvage logging rider. First, one of the primary threats to the "health" of the national forests is the very timber cutting and road building ordered by the rider.(12) Past road building and timber cutting in many cases have increased fire risk in national forests and made these forests more susceptible to disease and insect infestation.(13) Ordering more of the same may well decrease, not increase, the health of the national forests. At the same time a true threat to forest health - the importation of raw logs carrying pests that have few (if any) natural enemies in the national forests - is being ignored by the sponsors of the "forest health" rider.(14)

   A second irony arising from the salvage rider is that the rider was promoted in part as a "jobs" bill,(15) but the rider actuary threatens the very qualities that attract jobs to areas with intact national forest lands.(16) During the last seven years, the Forest Service and BLM have decreased the amount of timber sold from federal lands in the Pacific. Northwest area and increased the amount of environmental protection provided for federal forests.(17) Over the same period, the overall number of jobs in the Pacific Northwest expanded by 940,000, or 18%.(18) The salvage logging rider reverses this dynamic by threatening the qualities of the national forests that generate more new jobs and income by providing the natural-resource amenities - water and air quality, recreational opportunities, scenic beauty, and the fish and wildlife - that make the Pacific Northwest an attractive place to live, work, and do business."(19) Logging not only harms the natural forest qualities that attract employers and jobs to the Northwest, but also threatens jobs, such as those related to sport and commercial fishing, outfitting, and outdoor guiding, that depend more directly on the preservation of forest ecosystems. Thus, although touted as a jobs bill by its sponsors, the rider actually sacrifices jobs in other sectors of the economy to support a limited number of jobs at mills dependent on federal timber.

   A third irony of the salvage rider is that its sponsors claimed it was necessary to offset job losses within the timber industry caused by reductions in federal timber supplies.(20) But fluctuations in the federal timber supply have little impact on overall jobs in the industry when compared with other market forces. For example, technological advances in the industry caused a 17% reduction in timber jobs in the Pacific Northwest during the early 1980s(21) - a time when the federal government was selling near-record amounts of federal timber. Since 1992, however, while federal timber sales have been at historic lows, the number of timber industry jobs in the Northwest has grown by over 14,000.(22) The fact that there is currently an overabundance of timber from nonfederal sources(23) highlights the fact that the salvage logging rider is not truly intended to offset a loss of overall jobs in the timber industry, but rather is specifically targeted at helping only those mills that depend upon subsidized federal timber - to the detriment of mills that operate using private timber.

   The final irony of the timber salvage rider is that it rides, on an appropriations bill that was touted as reducing the deficit,(24) yet the rider orders the Forest Service and BLM to sell salvage timber regardless of cost to the government.(25) Federal timber sales are subsidized by the federal government when the costs of the sales are greater than the revenues generated by the sales.(26) The Wilderness Society conservatively estimates that the salvage logging rider will cost taxpayers $330 million.(27) A number of salvage sales already offered pursuant to the rider have failed to attract bidders,(28) notwithstanding the riders direction that salvage timber may be offered without competitive bidding(29) and at prices that are lower than the government's costs of offering the sales.(30)

   Part II of this Article considers two topics. First, it examines the historic role of the federal government in supporting the timber industry and factors other than the federal timber supply that affect employment in the industry. Second, Part II notes the benefits provided by intact forests and the costs of providing subsidized federal timber to mills. Part II concludes that using subsidized federal timber to create or maintain jobs is inefficient and may actually result in a net job loss.

   Part III analyzes the claim that there is a forest health emergency, and without immediate and extensive salvage logging, the national forests face serious threats from fire, insects, and disease in the coming summer. Part III also examines the underlying assumption that preventing fires promotes forest health and concludes that intensive management, including salvage logging, frequently increases rather than decreases the risk of fires and insect infestation. Part III explains that intensive logging also harms forest health by magnifying the impacts of natural disasters, such as the flooding that recently occurred in Oregon and Washington.(31)

   Part IV examines the three categories of timber sales authorized by the salvage logging rider, only one of which involves "salvage sales," and compares the actual effects of the salvage rider with the rhetoric used by the rider's sponsors to sell the rider to their colleagues in Congress. It also analyzes how the legislative process was manipulated to produce legislation that is having impacts quite different from those claimed by its sponsors. It reviews the judicial interpretations of the rider that have been issued to date, and how those interpretations have favored the post-adoption, rather than pre-adoption, statements of the riders sponsors. Part IV concludes that there is a need for stricter enforcement of the House and Senate rules prohibiting the attachment of substantive riders to spending bills because, as was the case with the salvage logging rider, the appropriations process does not provide legislators with sufficient opportunity to discern the true impacts of riders containing substantive legislation unrelated to spending.

   The Article concludes that there is no need for legislation mandating salvage logging and that the Forest Service and BLM currently possess adequate authority to conduct salvage sales that are buy necessary to promote forest health. To the extent that the salvage logging rider is an attempt to support jobs at mills that have become dependent on federal timber, it is well-intentioned but ill-considered. Destroying forests and the habitat they provide in order to subsidize mills is simply not good policy.

   The federal government has historically been a reliable source of timber for a number of mills. Following World War II, the depletion of private timber supplies, exacerbated by the post-war housing boom, increased demand for national forest timber. As the Forest Service constructed a vast network of roads to gain access to this timber,(32) the amount of timber national forest managers were permitted to sell surged from 5.6 billion board feet in 1950 to 12.8 billion by 1968.(33)

   Although national forests were not the only source of timber, many mills became dependent upon federal timber because the federal government subsidized the costs of federal timber. Federal subsidies come in several forms.

   First, the price of federal timber frequently does not reflect the administrative or road costs of selling and removing the timber.(34) In fact, below-cost timber sales cost at least $250 million to $500 million dollars per year.(35) In fiscal years 1992 through 1994, the costs of Forest Service timber sale preparation and administration exceeded timber sale receipts by nearly one billion dollars.(36) The salvage rider alone may cost as much as $330 million taxpayer dollars.(37)

   Second, the federal government subsidizes the price of federal timber through laws that restrict the export of raw logs from federal lands.(38) These export restrictions allow domestic mills to bid for federal timber free from foreign competition.(39) Although the price of private timber is determined in a global market, the price of federal timber is set exclusively in the domestic market. The federal government is willing to forego higher global market prices in order to support domestic mills...