Stop the National Forest Timber Rip-off
by Chad Hanson
John Muir Project
What if we no longer had to worry about the timber industry cutting down our
national forests? What if they were protected as John Muir envisioned over a
century ago? We now have the opportunity, in the National Forest Protection and
Restoration Act, to make Muir’s dream a reality. We are not so poor that we must
log our national forests, nor so rich that we can afford to. – David R. Brower
One hundred years ago Congress did a terrible thing. Under industry pressure, an
appropriations “rider” was attached to an Interior Department spending bill,
opening the country’s national forests to logging for the first time. Prior to that,
national forests were completely protected from all forms of exploitation.
A century later, the legacy of that early logging rider can be seen in marred
hillsides, fouled water, floods and mudslides – the loss of our natural heritage.
I have witnessed this destruction with my own eyes. While hiking the 2,700
miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada several years ago, I paused
on a ridgetop in a national forest. There were only stumps as far as I could see:
Not a single tree remained standing on these public lands.
Like many Americans, I thought my national forests were protected. In a state of
shock, I hiked northward through clearcut after clearcut, stump-field after stump-
field. One thought kept echoing in my mind: “Why?”
There are no good reasons to allow logging on our public lands. Only 3.9 percent
of the wood consumed in the US comes from national forests. We can more than
make up this amount simply by being less wasteful. For example, 26 percent of the
hardwood lumber produced in this country is used to make shipping pallets –
pallets that are used once, then sent to landfills.
Perhaps most appalling is the economics of the federal logging program. In fiscal
year 1996, the program spent over $800 million of taxpayer money – and another
$530 million in off-budget accounts – yet failed to return a single dime to
taxpayer’s pockets. In fact, the federal timber program now loses so much money
that if we stopped logging in national forests, we would save over $25,000 per
public-lands timber worker – enough to pay for job retraining and ecological
restoration work, with over $200 million left to reduce the federal deficit.
The US Forest Service’s own figures show that recreation in national forests
generates more than 38 times more federal revenue – and creates more than 31
times more jobs – than logging.
Logging destroys wildlands – the very basis of the recreation economy. Why
hasn’t Congress eliminated the timber sale program in national forests? It would
be good for the forests, the economy, and our children and grandchildren.
The reason is simple: Money talks. The timber barons get fabulously wealthy
felling ancient forests on public lands at the expense of the people since it’s the
taxpayers who pay for logging road construction, clean-up costs, replanting and
administrative expenses.
The battle… for the forests is a part of
the eternal conflict between right and wrong ...
— John Muir, Nov. 23, 1895
To show their appreciation, logging corporations shower millions of dollars upon
members of Congress in the form of campaign contributions. Millions more are
spent on slick advertising to mislead the public. Despite the fact that the Forest
Service’s own polls show that most Americans oppose logging in national forests,
the ecological destruction and fiscal irresponsibility continue.
A Majority Now Supports “Zero-Cut”
A Congressional Research Service study concluded that logging on national
forests increases the risk of forest fires more than any other human activity, due to
logging debris and decreased shade.
The Forest Service’s own nationwide poll found that most Americans oppose
commodity production, including timber sales, on national forests.
A recent nationwide joint-survey by Market Strategies Inc. and Lake &
Associates found that 69 percent of Americans polled were opposed to timber-
cutting on public land. In the western states, logging on public land was opposed
2-1.
The National Forest Protection and Restoration Act (HR 2789) – introduced on
October 31, 1997 by Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and Rep. Jim Leach (R-IA)
– would protect America’s public forests by ending US Forest Service timber sales
inside National Forests, National Wildlife Refuges and BLM Lands. The NFPRA
would: cancel existing timber sales in all roadless areas; prohibit new timber sales
and phase-out existing timber sales within 2 years; save taxpayers $300 million
annually; redirect logging subsidies to fund worker-retraining (giving preference
to training displaced timber workers for jobs in the forest restoration); support a
scientifically-based ecological restoration program for federal public forests; and
subsidize the development of environmentally sensitive non-wood alternative
paper and construction materials.
HR 2789 has been endorsed by more than 200 US environmental, religious,
political and labor organizations.
We are faced with a choice: We can, through our silence, allow the timber
industry to continue picking our pockets and felling our forests; or we can hold
our elected officials accountable and demand that they end the logging program in
national forests.
The outcome will dictate what kind of national forests our children’s children see
in another 100 years. Will they see healthy forests recovering from the abuses of
the 20th century? Or will they see only stumps and lifeless tree farms?
What You Can Do: Please write a brief letter urging the House Congressional
delegation from your state/area to cosponsor HR 2789. Send a copy of your letter
to Rene Voss, Vice-Chair of the Sierra Club’s Forest Campaign Committee at
1025 Vermont Ave., NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20005.
Chad Hanson is the director of the Pasadena-based John Muir Project [30 North
Raymond Ave., No. 514, Pasadena, CA 91103, (626) 792-0109] a project of Earth
Island Institute.
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