New guidelines for national forests

In recent years there has been a growing interest in forestry issues, particularly timber supply and timber management procedures. This climaxed with the 1975 Monongahela decision (lzaac Walton League V. Butz) against cutting other than "dead, mature or old growth," timber in the national forests. Because most timber advertised for sale is less than physiologically mature, this decision had the effect of halting all sales in the jurisdiction of the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It also raised the prospect that unless Congress stepped in, lawsuits in other circuits or an appeal to the Supreme Court would expand the geographical impact of this decision, which was based on a strict interpretation of the U.S. Forest Service Organic Administration Act of 1877.

As both industry and the environmentalists advertised their positions, the issue was clearcutting—and the alternatives were sometimes phrased in extreme terms, such as a 40 percent rise in the price of toilet paper versus aesthetic ugliness everywhere and forever! Even the Monongahela decision, however, allows clearcutting if the entire timberstand is "dead" or "mature"—a not uncommon natural phenomenon. The real issues with which Congress, industry, and environmentalists dealt were the more complex, less spectacular, issues of timber supply, public land management, and timber management procedures. Clearcutting is one aspect of the latter.

Forest Service interests lay in maintaining the prerogative of the manager. Industry interests lay in cost and availability of public timber, including shortrun market responsiveness. Environmental interests lay in long-run supply of timber, environmental protection, and aesthetic concerns.

The new law. The National Forest Management Act of 1976 that finally emerged has four basic provisions governing the sale of timber.

1. Bidding. It virtually bans the use of open bids—with an eye to reducing collusion. Previously, open as well as sealed bids were permitted at the discretion of the Forest Service.
2. Earmarked receipts. A share of timber sale receipts has always been returned to the Forest Service to be spent on reforesting the land on which the sale occurred. The new law permits this share of receipts to be spent on silvicultural, wildlife, maintenance, construction, and possibly recreational facilities, as well as reforestation on the sale area
3. Payments. Counties have regularly received 25 percent of timber sale receipts in lieu of the taxes that would have been paid had the landowner been a private individual. The old law included road building costs as receipts when roads were financed out of the timber budget. Because roads are often required but are not always paid from the timber budget, this resulted in unequal treatment in the payments to counties. The new law requires that road costs always be a part of receipts. This change is expected to benefit most counties with Forest Service land. In one county in Oregon the expected benefit may be $3.3 million a year. Another act of this Congress (Public Law 94-565) sets a minimum level of 75 cents an acre per year for these payments.
4. Timber supply and timber management (the issue of greatest debate). The act overrules the "dead or mature" requirement of the Organic Act by allowing the Forest Service timber harvesting discretion, including clearcutting, within guidelines (recommended by a team of nongovernmental scientists) on watershed irreversibilities, marginal lands, benefit—cost evaluation, and sustained yield.

Controversial issues. The sustained yield issue was especially controversial. In recent years the Forest Service has ever more rigidly interpreted the Multiple Use-Sustained Act of 1960 as requiring a constant annual flow of timber volume. The industry has urged more flexibility, that is, greater response of public timber offerings to market fluctuations and has also pointed out that the public lands can only achieve faster timber growth rates by rapidly harvesting now the stagnant old stands and replacing them with vigorous young growth. Environmentalists have generally approved the rigid Forest Service interpretation of sustained yield, believing that industry overdoes the vigorous young growth argument and fearing industry would too quickly remove the remaining aesthetically pleasing stands of old growth timber. The congressional compromise was to require a constant flow of timber volume over ten-year periods while permitting fluctuations within each period. At the same time, it sought to meet environmental objections by rejecting harvests on any currently unsuitable or marginal lands.

Looking ahead, the marginal lands issue promises to create much confusion. The Senate Agriculture and Forestry Committee report, states that any economic definition of marginal land must exclude carrying costs, a critical item for investments as long-run as timber. In addition, the Forest Service will have difficulty fitting the marginal lands concept with the even more fuzzy concepts of multiple use and community development. In any event, there is some concern that the concept of marginal land may bear grave consequence for the Rocky Mountain timber industry which is so heavily dependent on poorer quality National Forest land. The bright side may be a greater awareness by all of the costs of producing timber. A tradeoff may become apparent between managing vast acreages unintensively, on the one hand, and managing a few acres intensively but efficiently while reserving the remaining acres, on the other hand. The reserved acres, along with being less productive, may coincidentally be those most environmentally risky and often those most attractive to recreationists.