Ending Logging on National Forests

by Chad Hanson
John Muir Project

Message From Chad Hanson

Detour?
     In 1989, my older brother and I hiked the length of the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. Like many people, we mistakenly believed that national forests were protected from logging, much like national parks. When we reached the Tahoe National Forest in the northern Sierra Nevada, we began to see U.S. Forest Service signs which read, "Trail washed out. Take detour." Dutifully, we followed the hastily-constructed detour trails, which often took us miles out of our way.

     One day we saw two men ahead on the trail who were standing next to one of these signs, and appeared to be writing something on it. As soon as they saw us approaching, they hurried away up the trail and out of sight.

     The sign was the same "detour" sign we had seen for several days, but written on it in felt tip pen was a note which said, "Clearcuts ahead. It's a scam!" We ignored the detour and followed the regular trail. Sure enough, within 100 yards we came upon an enormous clearcut, stretching from horizon to horizon. The trail was perfectly intact, but the forest itself had been devastated completely. Not a single tree remained.

     A half hour later, we caught up with the sign vandals. It turned out that they were Forest Service employees. In fact, it was their job to put up the deceptive signs; but their consciences compelled them to take out their pens and expose the subterfuge perpetrated by their agency superiors.

     This, unfortunately, was not the last time that the Forest Service lied to me. In an effort to get at the truth, I have spent each year since I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail researching the arguments used by the Forest Service to justify the continuation of their timber sales program. Most recently, they have attempted to convince the public that they need to allow timber corporations to deforest vast swaths of national forest land for "forest stewardship" purposes. In reality, this is just the latest euphemism for business-as-usual timber sales.

     I wrote this report in an effort to debunk some of the Forest Service's bogus arguments, especially ones dealing with jobs and the economy. I hope to provide forest protection advocates with powerful tool that can be used to bring about an end to the timber sales program on our nation's national forest system.

Sincerely,

Chad Hanson
Executive Director,
The John Muir Project

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Overview

     This report analyzes the issues surrounding an end to the timber sales program on national forests. Among the findings are the following:

• During a three-year period from fiscal year 1997 through 1999, the national forest timber sale program operated at a net loss to taxpayers of over $3.3 billion.
• If we ended the timber sales program on national forests and redirected the logging subsidies, we could provide over $30,000 for each public lands timber worker for re-training or ecological restoration work -- and still have several hundred million dollars left over for taxpayer savings.
• We don't need to log national forests for our timber supply, given the fact that the timber cut annually from national forests nationwide now comprises less than 3% of our nation's total annual wood consumption and less than 4% of the sawtimber used for construction.
• Timber sales on national forests increase the risk and severity of forest fires more than any other human activity.
• A bipartisan nationwide poll conducted in 1998 found that 69% of Americans oppose allowing timber companies to log our national forests.
• The findings in a previous version of this report were reviewed and verified by the United States Congressional Research Service (CRS). In a report dated March 19, 1999, CRS concluded that "the timber sale receipts deposited in the general treasury in FY 1997 were a small fraction of timber program expenditures. Thus, one can conclude that $1.2 billion is a 'reasonable estimate' of 'net cash loss' from the Forest Service's FY 1997 timber program to taxpayers."

     The same CRS-approved methodology was used to calculate the loss to taxpayers resulting from the FY 1998 and FY 1999 timber sales programs.

ENDING LOGGING ON NATIONAL FORESTS
The Facts in the Year 2000

by Chad Hanson

Methodology
     This report includes a cash flow analysis which assesses the impact of the national forest timber sale program on the federal budget -- using the Forest Service's own figures. The goal is to gauge expenditures associated with the timber sale program (i.e., expenditures which result from the overall timber sale program, including those related to anticipated future sales -- not just current year timber sales), tabulate timber sale revenue, and determine the net effect on the budget -- i.e., taxpayers. This analysis attempts to include all expenditures which would not exist if there were no timber sales program, such as in national parks.

     It therefore includes some expenditures which are often referred to as "indirect" expenses. Where exact figures were unavailable, and a rational means of approximation could be devised, estimates were used.

     However, it must be pointed out that the cash loss estimated in this report may be conservative, since several expenditures associated with logging were not included, either because figures do not exist or because no rational means of estimation has yet been devised. For instance, logging has now been identified as one of the primary causes of floods and mudslides. The preliminary damage estimate of the 1996 winter floods was $538 million for Oregon alone.¹ Taxpayers pay for this through disaster relief appropriations. Further, for fiscal year 1997, $67.4 million was appropriated for "emergency supplemental" expenditures to repair roads and facilities damaged by mudslides. Similar amounts have been appropriated in subsequent years under this heading. Much of this expenditure undoubtedly went to repair logging roads, or to repair damage caused by mudslides which resulted from previous logging operations that destabilized the soil -- though no reliable estimate is currently available.

     Nor are estimates attempted for the logging-related portion of maintenance of facilities (total appropriation of $52.2 million for 1999) or law enforcement (total appropriation of $66.3 million for 1999, a substantial but unknown portion of which is used for timber theft investigations, as well as investigations and arrests of citizens who protest Forest Service logging practices). Likewise, $26.5 million was appropriated for fiscal year 1999 for threatened and endangered species on national forests -- an expense which, in large part, would not be necessary but for the habitat destruction caused by logging -- though, once again, no rational means of estimation has yet been devised to calculate the logging-related portion of this expenditure. Additionally, the "spotted owl payments" appropriation ($124.8 million), though it could have legitimately been factored in, was excluded from this analysis, primarily because it pertains mostly to past timber sales, not current and future sales.

Jobs and Economy
     In fiscal years 1997 through 1999, over $3.6 billion was appropriated from the General Fund of the US Treasury (i.e., from taxpayers' pockets) for expenditures associated with the timber sale program on national forests (see Figure 1). In the same three-year period, the logging program generated a combined total of only $1.35 billion in timber sales receipts (see Note 43); and only $237.5 million of these receipts were returned to the General Fund of the Treasury over the course of those three years (see Figure 3). Instead of going to taxpayers, most of these receipts were funneled back into the Forest Service's various timber accounts for future logging operations (see, e.g., Figure 2). Some were also used for logging-related payments to states.

     Since over $3.6 billion was taken directly from taxpayers' pockets from 1997 through 1999 for expenditures associated with the national forest logging program, and only about $238 million was returned, the net cash loss to taxpayers for the three year period was, therefore, over $3.3 billion (see Figure 4).

     Federal funds are currently used to pay the costs of logging road construction, timber sale planning and administration and replanting and restoration expenses, as well as many other costs. Contrary to the timber industry's frequent claims that the cause of below-cost timber sales on public lands is environmental regulations, the most recent figures available from the Forest Service show that all environmental analysis/documentation and appeals/litigation costs total only about $73 million per year² -- less than 6% of the total annual appropriations for the logging program, according to Figure 1.

     To put the federal timber subsidy in perspective, if we ended all commercial logging on our nation's national forests and redirected these logging subsidies into timber community transition assistance, we would have over $30,000 for each public-lands timber worker, for job retraining and/or ecological restoration work (which is significantly higher than the average current timber worker's salary)³ -- and still have several hundred million dollars left-over for taxpayer savings.⁴

     In addition, recreation, hunting and fishing in national forests contribute vastly more income to the nation's economy, and generate far more jobs, than logging on national forests. And the gap is widening. In fact, the Forest Service itself predicts that, by the year 2000, recreation, hunting and fishing in national forests will be contributing 31.4 times more income to the nation's economy and will be creating 38.1 times more jobs than logging on national forests.⁵

     The timber industry frequently attempts to paint a "jobs vs. environment" picture, charging that environmental protection has caused sawmill closures and job losses. The facts, however, paint a very different picture. A 1997 study by Freudenberg, et al, published in the academic journal Sociological Perspectives (Vol. 41, #1), found that the vast majority of timber job losses and mill closures occurred before logging restrictions to protect the northern spotted owl and other forest species began in the early 1990s. Between 1979 and 1989 -- a period of extremely high logging levels on Northwest federal forests -- timber employment in Oregon and Washington fell by about 20,000 workers.

     The study found that the culprit was not environmental protections but automation and the loss of old-growth forests due to logging itself. What's more, a December, 1995 study by dozens of the Northwest's most prominent economists entitled "Economic Well-Being and Environmental Protection in the Pacific Northwest" found that between 1988 and 1994, the number of jobs in the Pacific Northwest increased by 940,000 and earnings rose by 24%. The report found that many of the new jobs were being attracted by the prospects of increased environmental protection and quality in the region. Even the most "timber-dependent" counties began reporting a net increase in jobs as logging levels fell. (See The New York Times, October 11, 1994.)

Timber Supply
     The total annual U.S. wood consumption is 100.3 billion board feet⁶ while the annual timber volume cut from U.S. national forests is currently 2.94 billion board feet⁷ -- only 3% of the nation's total yearly timber consumption. (It is important to point out, however, that this level of logging does in fact result in a very serious deforestation rate of 457,848 acres per year,⁸ or nearly two square miles each day, on our national forests -- much if not most of which comes from late-successional and old-growth forests.)

     The total annual US consumption of roundwood for lumber, plywood, and veneer is approximately 50.4 billion board feet⁹ while the total annual production of all sawtimber from national forests is approximately 1.92 billion board feet¹⁰ -- about 3.8% of the total. In other words, of all the wood materials used annually in the U.S. for housing and commercial construction, less than 4% comes from our national forests.

     We simply don't need to log public forests for our timber supply -- especially when so much is being wasted currently. For example, approximately 48% of all US hardwood lumber production in 1992 was for the manufacture of shipping pallets.¹¹ Industry sources estimate that 54% of these pallets are used just once, then thrown away, ending up in landfills.¹²

Public Opinion
     The Forest Service's own 1994 nationwide poll found that 58% of Americans expressing an opinion on this issue oppose any commodity production on federal public forests.¹³ A 1998 poll, which was conducted jointly by prominent Republican and Democrat pollsters and commissioned by Taxpayers for Common Sense, found that 69% of Americans now oppose continuing to allow timber companies to log our national forests.¹⁴

Private Lands
     As two conservative economists pointed out in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, "government 'dumping' of cheap timber makes the market unpredictable for private-sector commodity suppliers, reducing their incentive to manage land responsibly... It's time for the Forest Service to abandon its role as a producer of commodities...."¹⁵ In other words, many private landowners are overcutting their lands to compensate for lost profits, as they struggle to compete with the subsidized public timber that is entering the market.

Logging Increases Risk of Forest Fires
     The 1996 scientific study of the Sierra Nevada forests, which was commissioned and funded by Congress, found that "Timber harvest, through its effects on forest structure, local microclimate and fuel accumulation, has increased fire severity more than any other recent human activity."¹⁶

History of National Forests
     Commercial logging was illegal on national forests when they were first established in 1891.¹⁷ It was not until June 4, 1897 that national forests were first opened up to timber sales -- by an appropriations rider.¹⁸

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Notes:

1 "Counties Tallying Damage Estimates from Flood of '96", Eugene Register-Guard, p. 38, 2/17/96; "Clear-cuts, roads increase rivers' flows, study says," Eugene Register-Guard, 3/13/96.

2 US General Accounting Office, "Forest Service: Distribution of Timber Sales Receipts - Fiscal Years 1995 Through 1997," Table 2.

3 US Forest Service, Timber Sale Program Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1997, p.12 (The Forest Service estimates that 55,535 people are employed as a result of the national forest timber program, including direct, indirect, and "induced" jobs. A general rule sometimes used by Forest Service staff to calculate a very rough estimate of the number of timber workers (i.e. direct jobs) employed nationally as a result of the logging program on national forests is to divide the total jobs figure by a factor of two (i.e., 55,535 divided by 2 = roughly 28,000).

4 There are roughly 28,000 timber workers (loggers, mill workers, log truck drivers, etc.) employed as a result of the national forest timber program nationwide (see Note 3 above). To provide $30,000 for each of these workers for retraining or ecological restoration work, it would cost approximately $840 million per year - far less than the amount currently spent on logging. Additional funds could be used for retraining from the Forest Service's off-budget logging accounts, such as the Salvage Sale Fund and K-V Fund, which, together, typically contain over $300 million at any given point in time.

5 US Forest Service, The Forest Service Program for Forest and Rangeland Resources: A Long-Term Strategic Plan, Draft 1995 RPA Program, Oct. 1995, pp. IV-2 & IV-3

6 US Forest Service Forest Products Lab, Madison, WI, 1994; see Note 9 below (This figure is measured in terms of raw wood, not lumber or other finished products).

7 US Forest Service, Washington Office (This figure is measured in terms of raw wood, not lumber or other finished products).

8 Ibid, p.11

9 "U.S. Timber Production, Trade, Consumption, and Price Statistics: 1965 to 1994", U.S. Forest Service, Forest Products Lab, Madison, WI, 1997 (soon to be published) (This figure is measured in terms of raw wood, not lumber or other finished products).

10 US Forest Service, "National Summary, Timber Sale Program Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1997" (This figure was derived by adding the regional totals for sawtimber).

11 Robert Bush et al, "Recycling & the Use of Wood Materials," U.S.Pallet Industry, The Proceedings of the 1994 Forest Products Society, Southeast Section Workshop on Environmental Quality in Wood Processing.

12 Dwight R. McCurdy & John E. Phelps, "The Pallet Industry in the United States, 1980, 1985, and 1990", Dept. of Forestry, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, June 1991, p. 3, Table 2

13 US Forest Service, "Forest Service Values Poll Questions, Results and Analysis", Bruce Hammond, Section 3

14 Market Strategies, Inc. and Lake, Snell, Sosin, Perry, and Associates, Inc., June 1998

15 John Baden and Pete Geddes, "Resource Politics Miss the Forest for the Trees," Wall Street Journal, 5/22/96

16 Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project Final Report to Congress, vol. 1, p. 62, 1996.

17 Act of March 3, 1891, c. 561, S. 24, 26 Stat. 1103; see also "Early Administration of the Forest Reserve Act: Interior Department and General Land Office Policies, 1891-1897", by James Muhn, BLM, in the Origins of the National Forests, ed. by Harold K. Steen (Forest History Society 1992) (This historical text discusses the 1891 Act's regulations of 1894 which stated that no one could "cut, remove, or use any of the timber, grass or other natural product" on national forest land; nor could anyone "settle upon, occupy, or use any [national forest] lands for agricultural, proprietary, mining or other business purposes." Livestock grazing on national forests was "strictly prohibited").

18 30 Stat. 35

19 US Forest Service, FY 1999 Budget Explanatory Notes for the Committee on Appropriations, p. 118; U.S. Forest Service, FY 2000 Budget Justifications for the Committee on Appropriations, p. 132.

20 Ibid

21 Ibid, This figure is an estimate (based on Forest Service appropriations for national forest and grassland resource management activities). In fiscal year 1997, $196.0 million was appropriated for timber sales management; $55.8 million was appropriated for forestland vegetation management; $174.0 million was allocated for "salvage" timber sales; $66.5 million was appropriated and allocated for logging road construction; and $194.4 million was allocated for replanting/timber sale site preparation (a total of $686.7 million). During the same period, $35.8 million was appropriated for minerals and geology management (mining), $38.0 million for rangeland management (grazing), and $211.2 million for recreation use. Thus, timber management accounted for approximately 71% of these expenditures. Therefore, we can estimate that the timber-related portion of the land management planning, inventory, and monitoring budget (which totals $130.1 million) was approximately .71 x $130.1 million = $92.4 million. The same percentage (71%) was used to derive the figures for FY 1999 and FY 2000. See U.S. Forest Service, FY 2000 Budget Justifications for the Committee on Appropriations, pp. 83 & 88.

22 US Forest Service, FY 1999 Budget Explanatory Notes for the Committee on Appropriations, pp. 20-25. This figure is conservative. It includes funds allocated for research directly related to timber management, such as silvicultural applications ($16.2 million), quantitative analysis of forest vegetation ($4.9 million), forest operations engineering ($3.7 million), renewable resources economics ($8.3 million), forest products utilization and processing ($16.5 million), forest products safety ($4.9 million), forest inventory and analysis ($24.4 million), and forest health/productivity monitoring ($3.3 million). It does not include research allocations for wildlife habitat and watershed, for instance, or for forest and rangeland management research, since only a portion of these allocations is related to timber management, and exact figures are not maintained by the Forest Service. See also U.S. Forest Service, FY 2000 Budget Justifications for the Committee on Appropriations, p. 33.

23 US Forest Service, FY 1999 Budget Explanatory Notes for the Committee on Appropriations, p. 143. These funds are used for boundary surveys when conducting timber sales. See Also U.S. Forest Service, FY 2000 Budget Justifications for the Committee on Appropriations, p. 160.

24 Id., p. 69, 150, 227. This figure is an estimate. In FY 1997, $251.8 million was appropriated for timber sales management (including forestland vegetation management); $174.0 million was allocated for timber salvage sales; and $211.2 million was appropriated for recreation use. These figures combined total $637.0 million, of which timber sales account for 66.8%. Since the overall road maintenance expense was $81.0 million, we can estimate that 66.8%, or $54.1 million, of this expenditure was logging-related. See also U.S. Forest Service, FY 2000 Budget Justifications for the Committee on Appropriations, p. 226 (the same percentage (66.8%) was used to derive the figures for FY 1998 and FY 1999).

25 Id., p. 32. This program involves pesticide application and cutting of trees to minimize loss of timber inventory and maximize growth of commercial timber. See also U.S. Forest Service, FY 2000 Budget Justifications for the Committee on Appropriations, p. 37.

26 Report of the Forest Service, FY 1995, p. 123. This figure is an estimate. The Forest Service no longer reports this expenditure. In FY 1994, $36.2 million was used from other appropriated programs (i.e. minerals, soil and water, wildlife and fish, etc.) for timber sales. In that same year, $184.6 million was appropriated for timber sales management. In FY 1997, $196.0 million was appropriated for timber sales management. Therefore, we can estimate that $38.4 million was spent on support for timber sales in FY 1997 (i.e. 36.2/184.6 = x/196.0). Using the same means of estimation, $40.9 million and $44.5 million, respectively, were spent on support for timber sales in FY 1998 and FY 1999. Though the Forest Service claims that, as of 1995, support for timber sales is now included in timber sales management, data exists which suggests otherwise. To wit, the average costs for timber sales management (including salvage) in FY 1995 was $90.90 per thousand board feet (MBF) of timber offered for sale. These costs were 17% lower than the FY 1994 costs of $108.94 per MBF offered - excluding the $36 million ($10.63 per MBF) of support from other programs in FY 1994.

27 Id., p. 207. See also U.S. Forest Service, FY 2000 Budget Justifications for the Committee on Appropriations, p. 222.

28 This figure is an estimate. The National Forest System consistently spends several times more per forested acre than does the National Parks System. Though there are some other relevant differences between the two, by far the biggest distinction is that the national forests have a timber sales program and the national parks do not. The Forest Service's Fire Management program is comprised of two parts: preparedness; and suppression. The National Fire Management Analysis System ("NFMAS") is used by the Forest Service to develop its preparedness budget request to Congress, calculating the "most efficient level" ("MEL") of funding necessary to prevent fire from reducing the economic value of commodities (note: some regions in the National Forest System use an analogous formula known as "DART", which is based upon the same premise). This determination is made by calculating the "net resource value change" ("NVC") that would be caused at different "fire intensity levels" ("FILs") in the various "fire management zones" ("FMZs") into which each national forest is divided. The NFMAS Technical Course manual clearly identifies the effect of fire on the commodity value of "mature timber" and "immature timber" as the two main factors in setting the preparedness budget (p. 76). The other factor listed is "individual non-timber resources". Contrary to the widespread public perception that the purpose of the Forest Service's fire-fighting program is to protect the ecology of forests and wildlife for their own sake, the NFMAS Technical Course manual states (p. 74) that "NFMAS presently has no provision for directly and systematically estimating the economic impact of effects of fire on wildland resource values that do not in and of themselves produce market or commodity outputs. Examples of such values might be scenic beauty, threatened and endangered species habitat, biodiversity, and similar biological or environmental resource concerns for which there are no economic market place transactions on which to base an objective or free-market value." For this reason, the Forest Service's fire management budget requests to Congress, and, therefore, the funds appropriated by Congress, serve primarily to prevent fires from reducing the timber commodity values of forest stands that the Forest Service wishes to sell to logging companies in the present or at some time in the future.

In order to derive a reasonable estimate of the timber-related component of the fire management program, first an estimate must be made of the timber-related portion of the preparedness appropriation. This portion, which can be expressed as a percentage, was then applied to the suppression appropriation, making the assumption for the purposes of estimation that fire suppression activities follow the same reasoning as preparedness (i.e. to prevent fire from reducing commodity values). There are, however, some likely exceptions to this assumption. For example, it is widely understood that the national forests which interface with urban or suburban areas operate under a somewhat different set of factors/principles, since fires originating on these national forests could harm lives and/or property in communities adjacent to the forest (e.g., Mt. Hood N.F., Arapahoe-Rosevelt N.F., Tonto N.F., Coronado, N.F., Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie, N.F., Angeles N.F., Los Padres N.F., Cleveland N.F., and San Bernardino N.F.). Also, Regions 8 and 9, the Eastern regions, not only have significant urban/suburban interface, but, forest types which do not burn as readily as some forests in the Western regions. For these reasons, both the preparedness and suppression appropriations for these forests and regions were removed from the calculations (i.e. when the timber-related percentage of the fire management program was determined, instead of multiplying this fraction by the entire amount appropriated for fire, the funds appropriated for these forests and regions were first subtracted. For this reason, the overall estimate of the timber-related component of the fire management program may be conservative, since there are substantial timber-related fire appropriations going to those forests and regions which were subtracted).

The specific method of estimating the timber-related component of the fire program was actually suggested by the Forest Service itself. Forest Service NFMAS/fire staff in Region 6 (Pacific Northwest) prepared a worksheet which estimated the timber component of the NVC. This was done simply by consulting the NFMAS (or DART) worksheets which calculate, for each FMZ, the NVC for each commodity (e.g. timber-mature, timber-immature, forage, commercial fish, recreation facilities, etc.) at different FILs. At each FIL in a particular FMZ, the total estimated resource value damage for timber (both mature and immature) is reflected as a negative number; and the total estimated resource value damage for all commodities is reflected as a usually somewhat larger negative number (except in circumstances where the only commodity value affected was timber, in which case the timber-related percentage calculated for that FMZ at that FIL was 100%). Such worksheets were only available for Regions 1, 5, and 6. Therefore, the timber-related percentage for these three regions was calculated, averaged, and then applied to the other Western regions. For Region 6, the Forest Service's calculations estimated that 94% of the fire program is timber-related. The agency did not make such calculations for Regions 1 or 5, so these estimations were made by the author of this report, using the methods developed by the Region 6 Forest Service NFMAS/fire staff. The estimations for Regions 1 and 5 may be conservative, since FMZs which contained only designated wilderness (and, therefore, listed no timber commodity damage from fire since no logging is allowed in wilderness areas) were included in the calculations, which significantly reduced the timber-related percentage for several forests in each region. Indeed, the Forest Service's NFMAS expert for Region 5 said in a Fall of 1998 interview that, aside from the forests in Southern California which have essentially no timber sales program, the fire management program in Region 5 is based "at least 90% on timber." The final timber-related percentages for Region 1 and Region 5 were 84% and 75%, respectively. Therefore, the average of Regions 1, 5, and 6 was 84%, or .84.

The appropriated sums for FY 1997 for preparedness (pre-suppression) and suppression were $319.3 million and $210.7 million, respectively, for a total of $530.0 million (see U.S. Forest Service, FY 1998 Budget Explanatory Notes for the Committee on Appropriation, p. 128). Subtracting preparedness and suppression for the urban/suburban interface forests and Eastern regions from the total appropriation of $530 million leaves a remainder of $442.8 million. Multiplying .84 by $442.8 million yields the final figure of $372.0 million, which is the estimated timber commodity component of the FY 1997 Forest Service fire management program.

To subtract the Eastern regions and urban/suburban interface forests from the FY 1998 and FY 1999 fire appropriations, a simple proportion was used. For FY 1998, the total fire appropriation was $584.6 million. Therefore, 442.8/530 = x/584.6, and x = $488.4 million. Since the total appropriation for FY 1999 was $560.2 million, 442.8/530 = x/560.2, and x = $468.0 million. Using the same percentage calculated for FY 1997 (84%) to estimate the timber commodity component yields $410.3 million for FY 1998 (i.e., .84 times $488.4 million), and $393.1 million for FY 1999 (i.e., .84 times $468.0 million). See U.S. Forest Service, FY 2000 Budget Justifications for the Committee on Appropriations, p. 182.

29 U.S. Forest Service, FY 1999 Budget Explanatory Notes for the Committee on Appropriations, p. 169 (This figure is an estimate. The sum listed for suppression is $510.7 million, which includes the $210.7 appropriated for 1997 suppression, plus an additional $300 million to cover 1996 program overspending: $98 million to cover FY 1996 fire program costs and $202 million to repay Knutson-Vandenberg ("K-V Fund") borrowings (See U.S. Forest Service, FY 1998 Budget Explanatory Notes for the Committee on Appropriations, p. 128, note 2). Since this additional $300 million was appropriated in the FY 1997 appropriations package, it must be included in this analysis. The timber commodity component of this appropriation was estimated simply by setting up a proportion calculation: 372.0/530.0 =x/300.0. Solving for x yields $210.6 million.

30 Id. p. 69 (This figure is an estimate. The General Administration appropriation covers the National Forest System, Forest Research, State and Private Forestry, Wildland Fire Management, Construction and Reconstruction, and Land Acquisition. The total amount appropriated for all these programs for FY 1997 was $2.43 billion (excluding the $300 million for FY96 fire overspending) The logging-related portion amounted to $0.96 billion (again, excluding the logging-related portion of the $300 million to cover FY96 overspending), or 39.3%. Therefore, we can estimate the amount spent on logging by multiplying the total General Administration appropriation ($259.4 million) by 39.3%, which yields $101.9 million). The same percentage (39.3%) was used to derive the figures figures for FY 1998 and FY 1999. See U.S. Forest Service, FY 2000 Budget Jusfications for the Committee on Appropriations, p. 174.

31 Ibid, Table I.1

32 Ibid

33 Ibid

34 Ibid

35 Ibid

36 Ibid

37 Ibid

38 Ibid, Table I.2

39 Ibid

40 Ibid

41 Ibid

42 Ibid

43 US Forest Service, Fiscal Year 1998 Statement of Receipts, ASR-04, 12/17/98; U.S. Forest Service, Computation For Distribution of Moneys Received From National Forests, Fiscal Year 1998; U.S. Forest Service, Fiscal Year 1999 Statement of Receipts, ASR-04, 12/28/99; U.S. Forest Service, Computation For Distribution of Moneys Received From National Forests, Fiscal Year 1999. Timber sales receipts are distributed into three accounts: the K-V Fund; the Salvage Sale Fund; and the National Forest Fund. Gross timber sales receipts are calculated by simply adding together the monies distributed into the K-V Fund and Salvage Sale Fund, plus the remaining receipts under "timber". This sum was $455.6 million for FY 1998. A total of $132.1 million was distributed into the General Fund of the Treasury from all receipts that year - most but not all of which was from timber. After distributions to K-V and Salvage, remaining timber receipts are distributed into the National Forest Fund, along with receipts from grazing, mining, recreation fees, etc. After numerous other distributions, the remaining receipts are deposited into the General Fund of the U.S. Treasury. In FY 1998, $204.8 million from remaining timber receipts were deposited into the National Forest Fund. Total funds from all sources deposited into the National Forest Fund was $267.5 million. Therefore, since timber receipts comprised 76.6% of all receipts deposited into the National Forest Fund, we can estimate that 76.6% of the receipts distributed into the General Fund (i.e., $101.2 million) were from timber.

For FY 1999, total receipts deposited into the National Forest Fund were $216.8 million, of which 73.0%, or $158.2 million, was from timber. Thus, of the $93.2 million that was distributed into the General Fund from all receipts in FY 1999, 73.0%, or $68.0 million, was from timber.