The Issue
The Issue - By Chris Schimmoeller
Most Americans believe that chainsaws don’t belong in our country’s National Forests and other public lands. Calls for an end to commercial resource extraction on public land have intensified in the central hardwood region as fiscal conservatives opposed to wasteful government subsidies and ordinary citizens concerned about shrinking green space have teamed up with forest activists working for the protection and restoration of functioning forest ecosystems.
Nationwide, the momentum for forest protection has led to the introduction of the first “Zero Cut” Bill before Congress.
Why does talk like this horrify most professional foresters?
Because years of government subsidized access to public resources have created an industry that believes it has an unquestionable right to use public timber (or minerals or grasslands) for commercial advantage. With some of the best timber remaining on public land, it is no wonder that the industry cries when its motherload is threatened.
The challenge for industry is to look, for a moment, from the perspective of an average American. With the following points in mind, who wouldn’t agree that public lands need to be protected?
1. Industrial use of public land is an easy give away for Washington politicians seeking to pay back campaign donations.
Some of the most vociferous supporters of public land extraction, such as Rep. Frank Riggs (R-CA), Rep. Don Young (R-AK), Rep. Rick White (R-WA), and Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R-ID), received hefty contributions from the wood industry. It’s the dirty money in D.C. and the deep pockets of the wood industry – not any constitutional right – that has maintained commercial access to public land.
2. Commercial logging (and other enterprises) cost taxpayers.
While public land logging pads the profit margins of logging companies and the budget of the Forest Service bureaucracy, it leaves the taxpayers to cope with the bill and the miles of stumpland and logging roads. The U.S. General Accounting Office special 1995 study of the Forest Service spending found that between 1992 and 1994, the federal logging program cost taxpayers over 1 billion dollars. (Forest Service Distribution of Timber Sale Receipts Fiscal Years 1992-94 “GAO-RCED-95-237FS”).
3. Corporate welfare is not fair.
Companies that receive bids for subsidized timber on public land artificially skin market prices, unfairly competing with other timber, encouraging bad management practices on private land, and resulting in a wood supply glut. In the 1980’s, when cutting on National Forests increased, lumber prices fell by 15% (Association of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics[AFSEEE], “Timber Crisis Myths” Brochure).
4. Public land logging biases public servants.
The U.S. Forest Service is a public agency with the mandate to serve the interests of the American people. However, in spite of repeated regional and national polls which indicate a majority of people support public land protection, the Forest Service continues to act as if it is the fiscal agent for logging corporations, prescribing logging as the remedy for situations from “poor quality” forests, to endangered species management, to scenic viewshed management.
The Forest Service is wedded to its timber program through the politically engineered Knutson-Vanderberg Act of 1930 which allows the agency to retain a percentage of its timber sale monies for ecological programs. Recent investigative work by AFSEEE has revealed that the Forest Service is illegally skimming off 30% to 50% of timber sale receipts for its own administration and salaries. In Ohio and Indiana, for example, the Forest Service used 33% of its K-V funds for internal maintenance.
5. Public land protection is good for the economy.
Recent studies have found that the ban for the spotted owl in the northwest resulted in a net increase of jobs and had an overall positive effect on the economy (“Economic Well-Being and Environmental Protection in the Pacific Northwest”; “Habitat Protection Doesn’t Hurt Logging Jobs, Univ. of Wisconsin Study Shows”).
The Forest Service’s own figures reveal that recreation creates 38 times more income and 33 times more jobs than logging (National Summary Timber Sale Program Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1994). Recreation based jobs are safer, more sustainable and better paying than one time logging jobs.
6. Ecological services are incalculable.
Functioning forest ecosystems provide for flood control, water supply, waste treatment, climate regulation, pest control, pollination and food production. A recent landmark study found that these values, if quantified, far exceed the value of the Global GNP (World Watch Sept/Oct 1997, pg. 9-10).
Managing the forest as a tree crop cripples its ability to provide for these ecological services.
7. Logging National Forests is not necessary to meet our wood supply needs.
Over half of what goes to landfills is wood fiber, much of which could be reused or recycled. Simple efficiency measures such as reusing one-use pallets, for example, could provide the equivalent of twice the volume of wood currently cut off notional forests in the central hardwood region.
Increased efficiency at sawmills could increase our wood “supply” by 25% - 35% and eliminate the need to log our national forests, which supply only 3.9% of wood fiber in the U.S. (AFSEEE Timber Crisis Myths Brochure)
8. Shrinking green space.
With increased population and development pressures, the opportunities for finding solitude, silence and natural beauty are diminishing. Public lands are one place where these opportunities should be guaranteed.
[Reprinted from the Ohio Woodland Journal, Fall 1997]