IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PRESIDENT'S FOREST PIAN m WtPACinC NORTHWEST Y 4. R 31/3: 104-86 — =^==^= _ .__ :t hearing Inplenentation of the President's F... •^ . ORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL PAKKS, FORESTS, AND LANDS OF THE COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED FOURTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF PRESIDENT CLINTON'S FOREST PLAN FOR THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST, ITS PROGRESS, AND EFFECTS JULY 23, 1996— WASHINGTON, DC Serial No. 104-86 Printed for the use of the Committee on Resources ^933 OCTis U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 26-951CC WASHINGTON : 1996 For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office. Washington, DC 20402 ISBN 0-16-053489-5 IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PRESIDENT'S FOREST PIAN m T^PACinC NORTHWEST R 31/3: 104-86 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ :t hearing nentatioB of the President's F... ^_ _^^ . ORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL PAKKS, FORESTS, AND LANDS OF THE COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES HOUSE OP REPRESENTATR^S ONE HUNDRED FOURTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF PRESIDENT CLINTON'S FOREST PLAN FOR THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST, ITS PROGRESS, AND EFFECTS JULY 23, 1996— WASHINGTON, DC Serial No. 104-86 Printed for the use of the Committee on Resources , . , U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON : 1996 For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office, Washington, DC 20402 ISBN 0-16-053489-5 COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman W.J. (BILLY) TAUZIN, Louisiana JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah JIM SAXTON, New Jersey ELTON GALLEGLY, California JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, CaUfornia WAYNE ALLARD, Colorado WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland KEN CALVERT, California RICHARD W. POMBO, CaUfornia PETER G. TORKILDSEN, Massachusetts J.D. HAYWORTH, Arizona FRANK A. CREMEANS, Ohio BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming WES COOLEY, Oregon HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho LINDA SMITH, Washington GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, CaUfornia WALTER B. JONES, Jr., North CaroUna WILLIAM M. (MAC) THORNBERRY, Texas RICHARD (DOC) HASTINGS, Washington JACK METCALF, Washington JAMES B. LONGLEY, Maine JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona JOHN E. ENSIGN, Nevada GEORGE MILLER, California EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia BRUCE F. VENTO, Minnesota DALE E. KILDEE. Michigan PAT WILLL\MS, Montana SAM GEJDENSON, Connecticut BILL RICHARDSON, New Mexico PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American Samoa TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota NEIL ABERCROMBIE, Hawaii GERRY E. STUDDS, Massachusetts SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas OWEN B. PICKETT, Virginia FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey CALVIN M. DOOLEY. CaUfornia CARLOS A. ROMERO-BARCELO, Puerto Rico MAURICE D. HINCHEY. New York ROBERT A. UNDERWOOD, Guam SAM FARR, California PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island Daniel Val Kish, Chief of Staff Elizabeth Megginson, Chief Counsel Christine A. Kennedy, Chiejf Clerk /Administrator John Lawrence, Democratic Staff Director SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL PARKS, FORESTS AND LANDS JAMES V. HANSEN, Utah, Chairman JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, CaUfornia WAYNE ALLARD, Colorado RICHARD W. POMBO, CaUfornia PETER G. TORKILDSEN, Massachusetts J.D. HAYWORTH, Arizona BARBARA CUBIN, Wyoming WES COOLEY, Oregon HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho LINDA SMITH, Washington GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, CaUfornia JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona JOHN E. ENSIGN, Nevada BILL RICHARDSON, New Mexico NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia BRUCE F. VENTO, Minnesota DALE E. KILDEE, Michigan PAT WILLIAMS, Montana ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American Samoa GERRY E. STUDDS, Massachusetts FRANK PALLONE, Jr., TiNEW JERSEY CARLOS A. ROMERO-BARCELO, Puerto Rico MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York ROBERT A. UNDERWOOD, Guam PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island Allen Freemyer, Staff Director / Counsel Anne Heissenbuttel, Legislative Staff Rick Healy, Democratic Legislative Staff (II) CONTENTS Page Hearing held July 23, 1996 1 Statements of Members: Chenoweth, Hon. Helen, a U.S. Representative from Idaho 79 Cooley, Hon. Wes, a U.S. Representative from Oregon 3 Hansen, Hon. James V., a U.S. Representative from Utah; and Chairman, Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Lands 1 Herger, Hon. Walley, a U.S. Representative from California 4 Prepared statement 74 Richardson, Hon. Bill, a U.S. Representative from New Mexico 2 Riggs, Hon. Frank, a U.S. Representative from California 6 Statements of witnesses: Bendix, Gerald, Hi-Ridge Lumber Company 31 Prepared statement 155 Geisinger, James C, President, Northwest Forestry Association 29, 35 Prepared statement 175 Hayes, Nancy, Chief of Staff and Counselor, Bureau of Land Manage- ment, U.S. Department of the Interior 55 Prepared statement 204 Kupillas, Sue, Jackson County Commissioner, Oregon 9 Prepared statement 83 Lee, Robert G., Professor of Forest Resources, University of Washington .. 14 Prepared statement 112 Lyons, James R., Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environ- ment, U.S. Department of Agriculture 50 Prepared statement 189 Mayr, Thomas M., President, MajT Brothers Company 29 Prepared statement 130 Olson, Bob, President, Local 78, Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers, Portland, OR 16 Philhps, Bonnie, Executive Director, Pilchuck Audubon Society 32 Prepared statement 169 Smith, Joan, Supervisor-elect, Siskiyou County, California 12 Attachments to statement 103 Thomas, Jack Ward, Chief, Forest Service, DOAg 50 Tuchmann, Thomas, Special Assistant to the Secretary, DOAg 50 Additional material supplied: California Forests at Risk: The Impact of the Recissions Act Logging Rider on National Forests in California, by Western Ancient Forest Campaign 243 Devastating Logging Rider Impacts on the West Coast Fishing Industry, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Association 275 Impacts of the Rider on the Northwest Forest Plan, Northwest Ecosystem Alliance 272 Oregon Forests at Risk From the Recissions Logging Rider, by Steve Holmer and Jessica Hamilton 211 Record of Decision for Amendments to Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management Planning Documents Within the Range of the Northern Spotted Owl 237 Washington State Forests at Risk From the Recissions Logging Rider, by Jim Jontz and Steve HoLmer 230 Communications submitted: Bailey, Nadine: Letter of March 11, 1996, to President Bill Clinton 77 (III) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PRESIDENT'S FOREST PLAN FOR THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST TUESDAY, JULY 23, 1996 House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Na- tional Parks, Forests and Lands, Committee on Resources, Washington, DC. The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:08 a.m., in room 1334, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. James V. Han- sen (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding. STATEMENT OF THE HON. JAMES V. HANSEN, A U.S. REP- RESENTATIVE FROM UTAH; AND CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMIT- TEE ON NATIONAL PARKS, FORESTS AND LANDS Mr. Hansen. The Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Lands convenes today for our seventh oversight hearing on Federal forest land management issues. Today, our focus will be on the im- plementation of President Clinton's Forest Plan for the Northwest, also known as Option 9, after the alternative that was selected to guide future management of the Federal forests within the range of the Northern spotted owl. The plan covers 24.5 million acres of national forest and Bureau of Land Management lands in Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. It was developed and adopted after the President con- vened his Forest Conference in April 1993, having made a cam- paign promise to solve the forest management gridlock in the Northwest. The plan calls for a significant reduction in Federal timber sales and allows forest management activities on only 12 percent of the Federal land base. Twenty-one-and-one-half million acres are reserved by the plan in protected status for wilderness, for lakes, successional and riparian reserves, and other administra- tive withdrawals and adaptive management areas where limited management and research is to be conducted following extensive additional planning and analysis. Along with establishing the reserves. Option 9 created a complex interagency decisionmaking process that I hope the witnesses will clarify for us today. Forest supervisors and regional foresters or BLM district managers used to make their own decisions for the Federal land under their responsibility. Now, they must defer to 12 Provincial Interagency Executive Committees, a Regional Inter- agency Executive Committee, a Regional Ecosystem Committee, and an Office of Forestry and Economic Development who all must have a say in Forest Service and BLM decisions. (1) In addition, there are advisory committees to the provincial and regional executive committees and regional and State economic re- vitalization teams called CERT teams, which play a role in this process. Option 9 has now been in effect for over two years and the sub- committee would like to know how it is working. Have the new ad- visory and interagency committees enabled the Forest Service and BLM to get on with their work, and provide the promised results? Has it reduced the cost of doing business? What is preventing the Forest Service and BLM from meeting the annual sale level of one billion board feet that was promised? And how many and what kinds of new jobs are being provided by the retraining programs in these three States? I hope our witnesses will also tell us how President Clinton's plan has affected forest health and ecosystem conditions in the Northwest, but I am concerned that Secretary Glickman's recent direction restricting the use of salvage sales will hinder the Forest Service's ability to meet the goals of the Clinton plan: balancing the needs of forest ecosystems with the needs of local and regional economies. I hope Secretary Babbitt does not intend to issue simi- lar directions to the BLM. Finally, I look forward to learning when we may expect to see this forest plan fully implemented. Even those who criticized the cumbersome management requirements and low planned outputs promised by the plan back in 1994 must now be wishing that even the planned goals could be achieved. The Clinton plan was supposed to solve the gridlock by develop- ing and implementing a process to achieve stable outputs for local economies while protecting the environment in the Northern spot- ted owl region. So far, all the evidence that we have seen shows this is failing. I hope the administration and other witnesses will surprise us by describing how things are improving. We do not want a smoke and mirrors analysis. Instead, we would like to learn how the President's promises could be achieved in the future. I thank our members for appearing before us today. I understand Mr. Dicks will not be able to be here, and I do not see the other members, Wally Herger and Frank Riggs. I will turn to the able gentleman from New Mexico, the distinguished ambassador, Mr. Richardson. STATEMENT OF THE HON. BILL RICHARDSON, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW MEXICO Mr. Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I cannot believe my eyes. It is 10:06. Unless you gave a six- minute opening statement, this is the first time the subcommittee has started a minute late. Mr. Hansen. If I may explain and apologize and repent, I got caught by a TV camera coming over and they just had to talk to me about the armed services bill, so I apologize to all of you. Mr. Richardson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just say that on the President's forest plan, prior to the President stepping up to deal with this issue, there was gridlock in the Pacific Northwest. No trees were being cut. Programs for restoration of the ecosystem were fragmented. I think the Presi- "V dent changed all that and got the forest working again in a proactive way. I think the administration is to be commended for its commit- ment of personnel and money to address a problem. Some may complain about the pace, but we need only to look at where we were to see how far we have come. The biggest single threat to the success of the President's plan has been the timber salvage rider enacted by this Congress, and as we know, in the Pacific North- west, the salvage rider was not about salvage logging. It was about releasing Section 318 sales to allow the cutting down of healthy green trees, regardless of the environmental consequences. Again, Mr. Chairman, the Forest Service, the administration is to be commended for holding the plan together after, regrettably, the plan was undercut by the timber salvage rider. But again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for letting me make this opening statement. Mr. Hansen. Thank you. I appreciate the gentleman's comment. The gentleman from Oregon, Mr. Cooley, is recognized. STATEMENT OF THE HON. WES COOLEY, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM OREGON Mr. Cooley. I appreciate the chairman for having these hear- ings. I think that it needs to be aired on what has exactly hap- pened in the last couple of years. I strongly disagree with the minority leader. I do not think that the timber salvage bill was really a 318 bill. I think it was a real, true effort on the part of the Congress and on the part of the ad- ministration, as well — that is the reason they signed on to it — to go ahead and do a win- win- win, clean up the forest, replant, and produce some productive jobs in the Northwest part of the United States in the timber area. The 318 rider in that section was merely to relieve a bill that had been passed clear back in 1989 and been held up by litigation from that time up until the timber salvage bill. It is too bad it was painted into that corner and that picture that we were logging "without laws", which was absolutely not true. So I think that some of these hearings will clarify and straighten out some of the misconceptions about that particular legislation and I appreciate the chairman's effort on this behalf. Thank you. Mr. Hansen. Thank you very much. Seeing as we do not have our two members who were going to be here to open this, we will start with our first panel and we will take the members following this panel, if they show up. We have Sue Kupillas, Jackson County Commissioner. She was with us in Roseburg. We appreciate her being here. We also have Joan Smith, Dr. Bob Lee, and Mr. Bob Olson. If these four folks would like to come forward, we would appreciate it. We thank you for being here. I point out that we are down to the last few days of this session of Congress. As you know, there are a lot of breaks as it is an election year, and so we are going to hold you to five minutes. Is that all right? Right in front of you, there is a red and green and yellow light. It is like when you are running a traffic light — be careful. We will give you each five minutes. I notice my two colleagues walked in. Stay right where you are. If my two colleagues would please come up here, we are going to put you up here, if that is all right, and give you a moment. These folks do not mind sitting a minute as you come up. All the way up here, Mr. Herger and Mr. Riggs, if you would, right up here close, so we can hear you. We appreciate you two being here, even though you are both late. Mr. RiGGS. If the record would note, we had baseball practice this morning. Mr. Hansen. First things first. I understand the priorities around here. Mr. Herger. It was a charity game that we play here, Mr. Chair- man. Mr. Hansen. Of course. An3rway, if you two baseball players would like to go. We are very grateful to have these two very dis- tinguished gentlemen from California who really have a great un- derstanding of this issue. Mr. Herger, and then Mr. Riggs. STATEMENT OF THE HON. WALLY HERGER, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA Mr. Herger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members, for invit- ing me to join you today. This Subcommittee has worked long and hard to provide over- sight on a broad range of forest management issues. Today's sub- ject, President Clinton's Northwest Forest Plan, or Option 9, as it is commonly called, may very well be the most important forest management subject we will address this year. I would like to begin by welcoming two of my constituents who have joined us today. Supervisor-Elect Joan Smith is with us from Siskiyou County, California. Also joining us is Gerry Bendix of Hi- Ridge Lumber Company in Eureka, California. Joan and Gerry, it is good to have you here and we all look forward to hearing your comments. Mr. Chairman, it is not often that I agree with President Clinton when it comes to forest management. However, I fully concur with a statement he made in 1993 at a press conference announcing Op- tion 9. At that time, President Clinton said that, "The Pacific Northwest requires both a healthy economy and a healthy environ- ment and that one cannot exist without the other." It is only appropriate, therefore, that we hold this hearing to de- termine whether the Clinton forest plan is successfully preserving both our environment and our Northwest economies. Perhaps the best place to begin is the health of the environment. I draw the Subcommittee's attention to two photographs taken within two late successional reserves in Northern California. These are two small portions of the 21 million acres permanently set aside under the Clinton plan for little or no human management. The stated pur- pose of late successional reserves is to protect old growth forest ecosystems and habitat for species like the spotted owl. The first photograph is of a burned late successional reserve on Lick Creek in the Klamath National Forest in my district. The sec- ond is of a blow-down in a late successional reserve along the Lone Pine Ridge in the Six Rivers National Forest bordering my district and Mr. Riggs' district. As you can see, pictures truly paint a thousand words. The Lick Creek site burned in 1994 in a fire that covered over 27,000 acres. The Lone Pine Ridge site was part of a blow-down 17 miles long and seven miles wide. Both sites are now eminently susceptible to insect infestations, disease, and wildfire. The local Forest Service believes both are in immediate need of emergency salvage harvest- ing under the salvage law to protect our habitat, begin forest refor- estation, and to provide several million board feet of timber for local mills. Tragically, however, the Clinton administration has forbidden it under a recent directive from the administration restricting imple- mentation of our Congressionally passed timber salvage law. Mr. Chairman and Members, these scenes can be repeated over and over again in the Option 9 forests of Northern California. Washing- ton, D.C., policies which mandate doing nothing are literally de- stroying the health of our forests. Tragedies like Lick Creek and Lone Pine Ridge are the direct consequences of Washington, D.C., dictating local policy under the salvage law. But even without the salvage law, the Clinton forest plan would still prevent local managers from treating these sites. To better ex- plain what I mean, I would like to show the Subcommittee a chart that illustrates the process the Clinton plan requires local man- agers to follow in order to treat areas like Lick Creek and Lone Pine Ridge. By way of explanation, the yellow and red portions rep- resent the additional process required under Option 9 that is not otherwise required under current law. If you find this process unusually complicated or long, you are not alone. So do our local forest managers. I am told by the people on the ground that it is not unusual to take the full three years shown on the chart to treat sites like Lick Creek and Lone Pine Ridge. This is without litigation. Unfortunately, the Douglas fir and Ponderosa pine trees in Lick Creek will be badly, if almost completely, deteriorated within three years. The white fir trees at Lone Pine Ridge will be worthless within 18 months. When and if these sales do go to bid, nobody will bid on them because they will be practically worthless. As a con- sequence, nothing will be accomplished on either site. Lick Creek and Lone Pine Ridge will be a total loss to the forest, to local com- munities, and to the American taxpayer. With impossible situations like these, it is little wonder that the Clinton plan has yielded in 1994 and 1995 combined only one-quar- ter Mr. Hansen. Mr. Herger, maybe the folks in the audience would like to see it. If you would walk up the side of the dias here, I think everyone could see that. But if you are not interested in that, we understand. Gro ahead. Mr. Herger. With these impossible situations, it is little wonder that the Clinton plan has yielded in 1994 and 1995 combined only one-quarter of the two billion board feet that Secretary Babbitt in a July of 1993 press conference promised the administration would harvest in 1994 alone. President Clinton's statement was true. As we lose places like Lick Creek and Lone Pine Ridge, our local economies in Northern California are sure to follow. In 1994, the same year as the fire that burned Lick Creek, the local mill in Happy Camp, only a stone's throw from Lick Creek, closed permanently for lack of timber. Last May, the local mill in Haj^ork, just to the northeast of Lone Pine Ridge, also closed per- manently for lack of timber. Hayfork is the thirtieth mill in my dis- trict to close in recent years. The tragic irony of Hayfork is that the surrounding forests contain enough dead and dying timber to have kept this mill operating for another 15 years. Mr. Chairman, it should come as no surprise that Trinity Coun- ty, where Hayfork is located, has unemployment rates consistently ranging from 15 to 24 percent. It should come as no surprise that 80 percent of the children in Happy Camp Elementary School re- ceive free or reduced meals. President Clinton predicted it would happen. His forest plan and forest management directives issued from Washington are making it happen. Mr. Chairman, to close, I would like to submit for the record a letter to President Clinton I received recently from Nadine Bailey, a former constituent of mine. Nadine tells the tragic story of a promise President Clinton made to her daughter, Elizabeth, in 1993 and the events that have transpired since. Time will not allow me to read the letter, so I encourage every member of the Sub- committee to do so. Nadine and Elizabeth used to live in Ha3^ork while the mill was still operating. Their story puts a profoundly human face on what I have been talking about. [The letter may be found at end of hearing.] Mr. Herger. Mr. Chairman, again, I thank you for holding this hearing. The people of Northern California deserve some answers. The towns of Happy Camp and Ha5^ork deserve some answers. Na- dine and Elizabeth Bailey deserve some answers. Hopefully, we will be able to provide a few today. Thank you. Mr. Hansen. Thank you for your excellent testimony. Mr. Riggs? STATEMENT OF THE HON. FRANK RIGGS, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA Mr. RiGGS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and other members of the Subcommittee. I am sure I speak for my good friend and colleague and neighbor, Mr. Herger, when I say that we both very much appreciate the op- portunity to testify today before the Subcommittee and to sit with the Subcommittee for a short period of time. I probably could sum up my testimony simply by saying that I ditto everjrthing Mr. Herger just said, but at the risk of echoing some of the crucial points that he made, let me just say that this series of oversight hearings is of critical importance to my Congres- sional district. We are very interested in evaluating the short and long-term consequences of this administration's current forest man- agement practices, and for that matter, their whole public land strategy for the Western United States. Without question, the President's policy in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California is in need of in-depth examination, and in my view, drastic reform. The imposition of the Northwest Forest Plan, or Option 9, saw the single most radical shift in management policies of our nation's forests since the creation of the Forest Service in 1897. In the past three years, my district has seen the Forest Service evolve from a producer of domestic wood fiber to an ineffective custodian of Fed- eral forest lands bound by executive decisions, conflict, and court orders. The Six Rivers National Forest, covering over one million acres in my Congressional district, illustrates the unintended but serious consequences of the President's flawed forest plan. Annual harvest levels in the Six Rivers have been slashed from a high of 188 mil- lion board feet ten years ago to just three million board feet in 1994. The Forest Service estimates that annual tree mortality on the Six Rivers alone is 100 million board feet. Furthermore, the Forest Service estimates that the forest is growing by 250 million board feet every year. The massive reduction in harvest levels is primarily a result of over 91 percent of the land base in the Six Rivers being withdrawn from any timber sales or timber harvest program through Congres- sional or administrative action. The remaining nine percent is under administrative directive to be managed to produce old growth timber. Mr. Chairman, I do not have to explain to this Subcommittee that the administration's policies have essentially shut down an important component of our regional economy on California's North Coast, destroying many living wage jobs in my Congressional dis- trict. Unemployment runs in the double digits. There is stable dou- ble-digit unemployment, placing an incredible burden on the social and economic infrastructure of one of the most rural areas of Cali- fornia. In addition, over 30 percent of our land base in the three coun- ties of the California North Coast are publicly owned, resulting in a commensurate loss in the local tax base, not totally made up or offset by payment in lieu of taxes. The change in forest practices imposed by Option 9 in the Pacific Northwest, and specifically in California, endangers the health of the forest, damages rural communities, places increased pressures to harvest timber on private lands, that is to say, to over-harvest or accelerate the harvest on private lands, and leads to a reliance upon foreign imports to meet our domestic wood fiber needs. One of the most surprising results of the Northwest Forest Plan has been the rise in timber imports. One company, one independ- ent mill in Humboldt County, California, the largest county in my Congressional district, is now importing logs from New Zealand, with plans to import additional timber from South America and Mexico. It is tragic and ironic that timber companies in my district must import timber from developing nations when we live in the middle of the most productive forest lands in the world. Timber stands continue to be idle while salvage builds up on the forest floor, awaiting the next devastating fire. The net result is the degradation of timber stands in our nation and in nations that have little or no environmental protections. Here in the United States, we know how to harvest timber in a sustainable manner while providing a healthy log supply to our local mills. The nations we are importing logs from simply do not have comparable safeguards to protect their natural resources. 8 Mr. Herger just a moment ago alluded to the President's timber summit or forest conference in Portland three years ago when he and the Vice President traveled there to promise relief to our tim- ber dependent and resource dependent communities that have been hard hit by the spotted owl injunctions. In the years since, the Community Economic Revitalization Teams have distributed mon- eys to initiatives such as market analyses, economic studies, and recreation centers. Programs such as Jobs in the Woods, which I often hear touted by the environmentalists — I am talking about the militant profes- sional environmentalists — as a substitute for living wage jobs in the timber industry have, in fact, yielded short-term river restora- tion projects without providing any prospects of long-term employ- ment or economic development. In Lake County in my Congressional district, a CERT program has been recently approved to establish a Watershed Information Network on the Internet for acquisition and exchange of informa- tion. In Del Norte County, at the far northern end of my district against the Oregon border, CERT money is now being used to con- struct a welcome center and exhibits to go in that welcome center. Mr. Chairman, while these projects are laudable, the North Coast is still a resource dependent area and service sector jobs pro- vided by CERT will never take the place of the living wage re- source industry jobs which have long been the economic mainstay of my district. The prospect of long-term dependence on Federal handouts results in a de facto form of welfare which only serves to demean our formerly self-sufficient counties. The Federal Government has driven a stake through the proud heart of our timber country. Communities in Northern California are anemic and in urgent need of available timber to rectify the havoc wrought by this administration. Make no bones about it. This administration, while every once in a while making sort of a good faith gesture in the direction of the timber industry, remains beholden, particularly in an election year, to the increasingly mili- tant professional environmental element in this country, like the Sierra Club, which recently came out in favor of a complete ban on all commercial logging on Federal forest lands. We must mend the damage of this failed national environmental policy that has destroyed entire communities and actually wors- ened the health of our national forest. If we truly desire healthy and viable forests, we must put forth a balanced approach to forest management that seeks to preserve our national resources while not destroying our communities, and I am convinced we can do that. We can protect our natural resources. We can conserve and husband them wisely without destroying jobs and entire resource dependent communities. Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your attention to this issue which is of utmost importance to my district and our nation. Mr. Hansen. Thank you very much. Of our Members who were witnesses, Mr. Dicks asked to be ex- cused. We appreciate you being here. We will now turn to the first panel. We will give you each five minutes. Sue Kupillas, we will start with you. If you would all pull the microphone relatively close to you and speak up, we would real- ly appreciate it. STATEMENT OF SUE KUPILLAS, JACKSON COUNTY COMMISSIONER, OREGON Ms. KUPILLAS. Thank you, Chairman Hansen and members of the Subcommittee. I am Sue Kupillas, second term Commissioner serving in Jackson County. The Federal Government exerts an overwhelming influence on our citizens and our communities. The BLM manages 449,000 acres in Jackson County alone and about half of our county budget his- torically has been revenues from timber harvest on Federal lands. These receipts have funded an array of services. The U.S. Forest Service contributed to roads and schools. O&C general fund reve- nues supported the criminal justice system, administrative serv- ices, and small contributions that sustained human service non- profits, as well as things like OSU extension service and 4-H pro- grams, the Water Masters Office, et cetera. The county has downsized, combined departments, eliminated functions, and privatized, anticipating the shortfall with changing forest manage- ment practices. We wrote the book on reinventing government. While Jackson County is putting two tax levies on the September 17 ballot, the amount asked for will not make up for the decline in O&C funds. If the O&C revenue would disappear tomorrow, Jackson County would no longer be able to support a county crimi- nal justice system. Of the $11.4 million of current safety net from O&C, $10.3 million is dedicated to criminal justice. The people of Jackson County voted in support of a criminal justice levy to meet increased demands. As these safety net dollars from O&C are ratcheted down, we must ratchet down the criminal justice system. This is in a county that has one of the highest crime statistics in Oregon and one of the fastest-growing crime problems in the re- gion. Also, in the addendum attached, you will see a list of cuts in services that will happen if the proposed library and general serv- ices do not pass September 17. One model is a family service cen- ter, a model program for the State of Oregon and the nation. It brings together Federal, State, and county services, as well as the local school district. The mission is development of an integrated system to better serve the families, to bring self-empowering serv- ices to people willing to share the responsibility for themselves and each other. It is one of the most successful projects in the State. Many of these families are dislocated timber workers. As a result of the budget cuts and decline in O&C revenues, Jackson County will no longer be participating in this Rogue Family Center pro- gram. Every one of the services listed will have cumulative damaging effects on the social structure and economics of Jackson County. When timber revenues decline, social systems decline, family wage jobs decline, crime rises, and criminal justice systems are reduced. It just does not work. Another impact of the dollars allocated to address problems cre- ated by the President's forest plan on Jackson County and other counties is the Jobs in the Woods program. A memorandum from 10 the Job Council, which I have included, shows the program has six people entering employment with a cost of $6,308 per person in 1995 and 14— actually, it is 13 now— in the 1996 program at $6,857 per participant. We should continue this program as one small component of training for the Job Council programs that give pref- erence for dislocated timber workers. I do not support characteriz- ing this program as having a major impact on displaced timber workers. We have hundreds of them in Jackson County and it only serves 13 in this program. To that end, I emphatically support maintaining a timber sale program from Federal lands. I also support transfer of the O&C lands to the State of Oregon, where we are leaders in combining good forestry, good science, and a strong social and economic sys- tem. The President's forest plan and the record of decision require cre- ating a condition that has never historically existed in the forest. One example under the standards and guidelines for the plan, there is a requirement for coarse woody debris of 120 linear feet 16 inches in diameter that has to exist on every single acre for the matrix lands. One sale observed by the implementation monitoring team in the Butte Falls district, which was marked and sold but not logged, the natural condition was that the stand had never been entered, the 90-year-old product of a stand replacement fire in its natural condition. The ground did not meet the requirement for coarse woody debris required by the record of decision and it must be met now by artifi- cially cutting trees and leaving them to meet this artificial stand- ard. The stand should be managed and thinned to release the stand and promote late successional characteristics, which would, in time, provide for coarse woody debris on its own. The conditions in the forest are not uniformly the same, thus, defy this prescrip- tive approach. We cannot assume and create a scenario where every acre of the forest has the same prescription. The AMAs are bound by the same administrative minutiae pre- scriptions and the one that, of course, we have in our area is the Applegate partnership. They also have to deal with concerns of elk thermal cover, big game winter range, visuals, archeological sites, ephemeral streams, wildlife connectivity corridors, and sensitive plants that are neither threatened nor endangered. The Squaw-El- liot timber sale is in the Applegate, where the stand has been iden- tified as a high fire hazard and risk. Under guidelines in both the Rogue long-range management plan and the Northwest Forest Plan, there are all the concerns men- tioned above. Even in the AMA, we cannot accomplish a common sense goal of reducing fire hazard because of regulation and cost escalation. It is recommended that we helicopter logs. Another example of the application of the record of decision for the President's forest plan is the snowdown/blowdown timber in Jackson and Douglas Counties, and I want to give credit to the Rogue River National Forest, which has jumped on this with rapid attention. The Jackson County Natural Resources Committee and Headwaters, the environmental group, have been meeting with the team to look at this. 11 There were several winter storm events that contributed to downing significant amounts of timber in the Butte Falls and Pros- pect and Umpqua ranger districts. Logging contractors have cleared campgrounds and roads and are working on the matrix lands. They have found double the amount of wood estimated, so the amount of downed wood is probably two to three times the esti- mated 20 million board feet. The team is concentrating on what can be done in the LSRs, and I have maps to show you, if I could step away from the microphone for a minute. Mr. Hansen. Go ahead. We will recognize you for a minute longer. Ms. KUPILLAS. This is the Prospect area. The areas of snowdown/ blowdown, they are hard to see but they are little red blips on this. There are about probably 40 to 60 million board feet of timber down. You do not have to take a chain saw to it. These are the late successional reserve areas in brown that cover these. The matrix lands are being cleared. But by the time you put a scenic, which is in the green, a scenic waterway through the middle and then take out all the riparian areas, then you will see that we have a significant problem in re- moving any of this timber. The problem is that we have so many overlays. The etimologists have told us that we will lose three green standing trees for every downed tree that is there, and we have reports that show it could be far more significant than that. The fire specialists tell us that there already was an overburden of wood on the floor of the forest. That could be a fire hazard, and now this has escalated to an ex- treme hazard. We need to remove the wood immediately. The problem that we are having is, I have talked to everybody from all different levels to find out what we can do. The final deci- sion, some people say that we cannot remove any wood from LSRs. Some say that it will be up to the forest supervisors to do it. Some say that the regional ecosystem office has the final say about it, or at least it is a screen that it has to go through. Anyway, it is very confusing, who has the final say, but we are working on this. The Medford BLM district also has downed timber and they will do whatever we decide on this team to do. I guess, in summary — oh, there was also some suggestion that the ecosystem office in the White House might also be involved in this decision. I suggest that this plan should be clarified and simplified, less prescriptive, letting the local supervisors have flexibility necessary to manage and make it clear that wood production is part of the management. As a local elected official, I have devoted two terms to helping empower and strengthen local communities. There is a great deal of mistrust in a top-down prescriptive system heavy with regulation and laced with punishment. The system of local empowerment I am describing is built on trust and confidence and people making right decisions in local communities with their local forest. Surely this is the system we want for the United States. Thank you. [The statement of Ms. Kupillas may be found at end of hearing.] Mr. Hansen. Thank you. 12 Joan Smith, we will recognize you for five minutes. I would ap- preciate it if you folks will strive to stay within your time. STATEMENT OF JOAN SMITH, SUPERVISOR-ELECT, SISKIYOU COUNTY, CALIFORNIA Ms. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Joan Smith and I am a newly-elected county supervisor, Supervisor-Elect for Siskiyou County, California. I am here today to report to you how Option 9, the President's forest plan, has affected my county. The Federal Government controls 64.5 percent of the land in Siskiyou County. In April of 1993, when President Clinton held his Forest Conference in Portland, he promised relief to our depressed forest communities. Those of us who attended that conference were given hope by the President at that time. He promised relief for our long-suffering communities. The relief he promised us has never come. Our communities are still suffering, and some of them, such as Happy Camp, California, have all but died. The only large business in that town was a sawmill. Two years ago, the sawmill closed its doors and laid off all their employees, eliminating $14 million in annual payments to loggers, truckers, machine shops, and local businesses. The town died, businesses closed, and Happy Camp is virtually a ghost town. I do not want to see this repeated throughout our region, espe- cially when it is completely unnecessary. No one wants healthy, sustainable forests more than the rural people who live within them. I am saddened that Option 9 appears to be a public relations facade. The majority of the people hurt by reductions in logging are self- employed loggers or those who work for small family-owned busi- nesses, not greedy multinational corporations. For example, my friends, Lonny West and his partner, Clyde Ashenhurst, in Siskiyou County own a small logging company. Before the Presi- dent's plan, they employed 25 employees and had an annual pay- roll of $453,000 annually. They gave their employees good health insurance and profit sharing. Over 80 percent of Lonny's work is Federal timber sales, making him vulnerable to swings in Federal timber policy. Lonny is cur- rently not working and his partner, Clyde Ashenhurst, has applied for unemployment for the first time in 26 years, since he began in the logging industry. None of Lonny's employees or former employ- ees have gone through the retraining program set up in the Presi- dent's forest plan. Siskiyou County has lost 65 percent of its loggers over the past six years. We have lost half of our high-paying manufacturing jobs due to mill closures resulting from reductions in timber sales due to Option 9. Reducing timber jobs has not resulted in a more diversified and healthy economy. Losses in high-paying timber jobs have been re- placed by increases in lower-paying service sector jobs. Suddenly, displaced middle-aged workers are competing with their own chil- dren for the same jobs flipping hamburgers and waiting tables for minimum wage. 13 The President's response to losing these manufacturing jobs has been the Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative. Originally in- tended to help displaced timber workers find jobs, the money has been spent on community development, feasibility studies, and in- frastructure, instead. The majority of the money allotted Siskiyou County has been spent on city water and sewer extensions and a new hospital. One of Option 9's programs to help displaced workers is known as Jobs in the Woods. This program created in Siskiyou 2,775 per- son days of employment in fiscal year 1994, which sounds impres- sive. However, 2,775 days is only one year's employment for 11 peo- ple. This type of government assistance program has been tried be- fore. Because dislocated workers move away, training programs must be implemented quickly or program officials will lose contact with the dislocated workers. This is happening again. According to a GAO report, Dislocated Workers: A Look Back at the Redwood Employment Training Program, "Efforts to provide retraining can- not sustain workers or the communities in which they live without the creation of new jobs." According to a Region 5 Forest Service Community Coordinator, "If we took $800,000 and put it into wages, the money would be spent and the jobs would be over, whereas if we take the money and invest it to make communities a better place to live, it is a bet- ter long-range investment. That is really hard for some people to swallow who are currently displaced." In other words, the people most affected by the change in forest policy will be the least likely to receive help. This kind of arrogance in the face of such hardship and misery is unconscionable. As a member of the Klamath Province Advisory Committee, I have been attending meetings throughout Northern California and Southern Oregon for the past 14 months. As you can see by the at- tached flow chart, trying to get our recommendations to the admin- istration through the three or four levels of bureaucracy created by the President's forest plan is nearly impossible. Of the 28 people on this PAC, two- thirds are agency representa- tives, and there are also four tribal representatives. The head of the PAC is also the head of the RIEC. Therefore, she makes rec- ommendations to herself or her committee, most of whom already sit on the PAC. The efforts of this redundancy were quantified by a Forest Service employee who stated, "If I did not have to spend so much time on this committee, I would be able to complete the environmental reviews necessary to offer an additional 20 million board feet of timber each year." Clearly, the President's forest plan is more concerned with process than results. The Klamath National Forest grows 438 million board feet of timber each and every year. So far this fiscal year, the Klamath has sold 30 million board feet, nearly all of it due to the salvage rider. Secretary Glickman, under the direction of the President, re- cently rescinded authority and placed restrictions on the implemen- tation of the salvage rider. This will result in a loss of timber of- fered by 50 percent for the remainder of this fiscal year on the Klamath. With current imports from Canada accounting for one- third of U.S. consumption — that is one in three boards — this ad- 14 ministration favors Canadian workers at the expense of American jobs. I would like to conclude today by quoting from a letter written to President Clinton by my good friend, Nadine Bailey, several months ago. Nadine has spent the last four years of her life fight- ing for her community of Ha5rfork. Nadine and her family have been forced to move out of the town that she grew up in, the house that her parents built and that she has lived in all her life, to find work outside the Pacific Northwest. Nadine wrote, "I read a press release where you said that the salvage rider is undermining the healing process that Option 9 has produced. Do you actually believe this? Do you even remember the workers whose wounds were not healed, whose pain and loss was simply swept aside? Grants from Option 9 do not make their way to unemployed loggers. Nothing I have done over the last four years seems to have made a difiierence. Families are starting to leave the area. For the first time in my life, I have no hope. All I wanted was to keep our families together. When that hope died, I guess a part of me did, too." On behalf of Nadine and the rest of my friends who have lost their jobs, homes, businesses, and way of life to the President's plan, please make the tough decisions to give reason to hope for ourselves and our children. Thank you. [The attachments to statement of Ms. Smith may be found at end of hearing.] Mr. Hansen. Thank you. Dr. Bob Lee? STATEMENT OF ROBERT G. LEE, PROFESSOR OF FOREST RESOURCES, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON Mr. Lee. Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, my name is Bob Lee and I currently serve as Professor of Forest Re- sources at the University of Washington. My comments today re- flect my professional opinion and do not reflect the College of For- est Resources, University of Washington, nor any other persons or institutions. My testimony will summarize answers to six questions contained -in a 1995 socio-economic study of 72 Washington, Oregon, and Cali- fornia counties in the spotted owl region. Because there have been no systematic social or economic evaluations of Option 9, these data, although dated, will provide essential background informa- tion for looking at the accomplishments and potential contributions of Option 9. The first question: how have wood products employment and earnings been affected by the decline in the sale and harvesting of Federal wood between 1988 and 1992 (the most recent data for which we could get all the information)? Losses in wood products employment and earnings have been greatest in the 15 rural coun- ties most reliant on Federal wood. Federal wood reliant counties exhibited the lowest rates of growth in total employment and em- ployment earnings during this period. Job losses have continued to accumulate since data were collected. Question two: have counties reliant on Federal wood supplies faced a greater challenge in revitalizing their local economies? In- 16 dustrial wage jobs averaging about $30,000 were replaced by serv- ice sector jobs at one-half to one-third the earnings (see Table 2 in the written testimony). The emplo3rment multipliers of these indus- tries providing service jobs were less than half of those in the wood products industry. Six of eight highly or moderately challenged counties relied most heavily on Federal wood supplies. Challenges are faced increasingly by scores of communities within counties and were not revealed by this study because only county-level data were available. Question three: has reduction in wood supply required by the President's forest plan affected the ability of counties to meet these challenges? The President's forest plan, exclusive of court injunc- tions, would reduce Federal sales in the owl region by about 600 million board feet, translating into an additional 5,600 jobs. Six al- ready highly challenged counties, including four counties heavily dependent on Federal timber, were projected to lose between two and 20 percent of their total emplo3anent. Question four: could recreation and tourism growth help counties meet these challenges? Tourism growth occurred in only one of 15 counties facing the challenge of economic revitalization. Ten of the 15 challenged counties exhibited tourism employment decline of ten percent or more. Tourism is a poor substitute for family wa^e in- dustrial jobs lost to the decline of the wood producing industries. Work in tourism establishments is generally seasonal, unstable, low paying, lacking in benefits, low skilled, does little to train peo- ple for advancement in careers, and is generally limited to second- ary employment for spouses or primary employment for individ- uals, especially single women, living in poverty. Question five: would secondary manufacturing help counties meet these challenges? Secondary manufacturing is generally low- est in counties facing the greatest challenge of economic revitaliza- tion. Table 4 in my written testimony shows the limited potential for secondary manufacturing emplo3rment to substitute for the loss of logging and sawmilling jobs. Question six: would allocation of future Federal timber harvest to small businesses help counties meet these challenges? Small mills have been disproportionately impacted by the sudden reduc- tion of Federal timber sales, and those counties most reliant on Federal wood supplies are now most challenged to replace family wage jobs provided by these small mills (exhibited in Table 5). Re- sults from another study show that the wood products industry is a relatively stable source of employment when compared with other manufacturing industries, that employment stability is greatest in small places of work (Figures 1 and 2), and that smaller establish- ments are more stable than larger establishments. In summary, counties most reliant on Federal wood supplies are generally the most challenged by the need for economic revitaliza- tion. Tourism is unlikely to be of much help for these counties fac- ing economic challenges. Secondary manufacturing may help some of these challenged counties but will mainly be concentrated near urban areas where transportation modes and markets are acces- sible. And finally, small wood products businesses engaged in pri- mary manufacturing provide the best opportunities for challenged 16 counties to develop a stable and sustainable economic base. Thank you very much. [The statement of Mr. Lee may be found at end of hearing.] Mr. Hansen. Thank you, Doctor. Mr. Bob Olson? STATEMENT OF BOB OLSON, PRESIDENT, LOCAL 78, ASSOCLV- TION OF WESTERN PULP AND PAPER WORKERS, PORTLAND, OREGON Mr. Olson. Good morning. My name is Bob Olson. I am a ma- chine operator at the James River Corporation in Portland, Oregon. I am also President of Local 78 of the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers, AFL-CIO, and am an active member of the Pulp and Paper Resource Council, It is on behalf of the more than 200,000 members of the AWPPW and the PPRC that I appear before you today, and it is on behalf of these men and women that I tell you today that Option 9, the Clinton administration's forest management plan for the Pacific Northwest and Northern California, is an unmitigated failure for the working men and women of the forest products industry, our communities, and our families. I have worked in the pulp and paper industry for more than 28 years. When I first started as an employee of Crown Zellerbach Corporation, I thought I had a pretty secure future. I thought I had a job that would allow me to provide for my family and help my kids have the things that I could not have when I was their age. Sure, we had our scrapes with management, some of them pretty bad, but together, we learned how to take care of our forests so that we would be able to harvest trees for generations to come and protect wildlife at the same time. Then everjrthing went horribly wrong. All around us, mills are closing, good men and women are losing their jobs, and commu- nities are dying, and why? Simply because some men, or some peo- ple— excuse me— do not like or understand what we do. They do not believe in balance. They do not see that we understand the im- portance of protecting wildlife and our environment, and they do not see that we know we can balance these concerns with the eco- nomic needs of working people and communities. When President Clinton announced Option 9, most of us thought, well, it does not provide much volume of timber only roughly 20 percent of what we harvested a few years before, but at least it is something. The truth is, the volume promised has not come through and it is good working men and women who have suffered for it. Since 1989, we have lost more than 23,000 jobs in our industry as more than 280 mills have closed due to a lack of the timber sup- ply throughout the Pacific Northwest, Northern California, Mon- tana, and Idaho. Now that number, 23,000, may just be a figure to you, but to me, it represents people I know, friends of mine who thought they had a secure future one day, only to wake up the next and find themselves on the unemployment line. I am lucky. Our plant is not directly impacted by the timber har- vest reductions that have resulted from Option 9, but I can see the storm on the horizon. Our brothers and sisters at the James River 17 Corporation mill over in Camus, Washington, who supply us with paper, have been hearing rumors that their operation will soon shut down. As paper mills close up and down the coast, we will have to purchase our paper supply from further and further away. At some point, it will not be cost effective and our management will have to make some tough decisions. Already, our plant is going through a serious downsizing in which we will reduce our workforce by about 40 percent. Some may say it is just part of the corporate trend, but most of us know that the workforce reduction is due in no small part to a tight timber supply and a fear of the future. I do not know if people back here understand what it means when a mill shuts down. In Washington, D.C., you may not notice it if a few hundred people lose their jobs. It may not have much of an impact on the economy. But in many of the small towns where timber workers live and try to earn a living, a loss of even 100 jobs can be devastating. In most cases, the entire economic and social fabric of the community revolves around the mill, and when it dies, there are few employment opportunities left. At least, there are not many that come at a decent wage. I have seen the ghost towns that are created when the mill goes down. I have seen fami- lies torn apart. I have seen good men and women turn to alcohol abuse. I have seen them reach the depths of depression. I ask the men and women here today to think about that when they tell you that the administration has done a great job in pre- paring timber sales and moving some volume through Option 9. And I ask the men and women here today representing the envi- ronmental lobby what they would say to a young girl who is watch- ing her family struggle to put food on the table because daddy has lost his job and cannot find a decent job. It is a true shame. We have heard the administration praise their worker retraining and economic support program, but the truth is, the package falls well short of what is actually needed. First, most of the jobs pro- vided under the package fall under the category of ecological in- vestment. While these jobs are important — they include forest and watershed restoration — most of them are seasonal and do not pay sufficient wages to take care of a family. Second, when millions of dollars have been spent to help timber workers move into other jobs and trades, reports, like a story that appeared a couple of years ago in the Bellingham, Washington, Herald indicate that Federal, State, and local agencies do not know just how much money actually makes it into the hands of those workers seeking assistance. WHiat is certain is that the total sum of money allocated for these programs does not reach the men and women who have lost their jobs to the timber supply crisis. Instead, the funding gets lost in a bureaucracy of more than 160 agencies and organizations overseeing the implementation and funding of the programs. The other problem is that most of the retraining and economic adjustment programs do not work. Tens of thousands of dollars are spent on programs, such as self-confidence seminars and economic impact studies, that do not produce a job once completed. There are a lot of people who entered the retraining program only to find they could not find a job when they completed the training, and I 18 know some who started the program but had to quit when their unemployment benefits ran out. I have heard a lot of stories like the one about a guy named Larry Lynch from Southern Oregon. He was retraining to be a nurse, but when his benefits ran out, he ended up working on a road crew. He and his family had to abandon the place they called home and move to Alaska to find work, but the government says that Larry was successfully trained. In our facility, some of the downsized workers have started the retraining programs but they do not know if they will be able to get jobs when they finish the program. Some of our members are finding out that no matter how they are being retrained, they cannot find anyone who will hire them because they are in their 40's and 50's. These are people who are hard working and could be productive. They cannot afford to retire, but they cannot find work, either. The bottom line is. Option 9 is not working and union workers are hurting. We need a balanced solution that protects our jobs and communities as well as our environment. We know that we are going to lose a few jobs along the way, so we need a retraining and economic support package that includes the participation of work- ers in the design and implementation of the programs. And we need retraining and support programs that are specifically tailored and available to timber workers prior to being offered to other workers in need of assistance. We do not want handouts. We do not want more empty promises. We simply want to be able to pursue the American dream. Thank you. Mr. Hansen. Thank you, Mr. Olson. I will now turn to members of the committee and I would appre- ciate it if the members would stay within their allotted time in questioning the panel. Mr. Cooley? I will take you in order of your appearance and back and forth. Mr. Wes Cooley, do you have a question for the panel? Mr. Cooley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am glad to see that Dr. Lee is here. I have read your book and it is very good and I appreciate your coming to this meeting. I would like to ask you a question that I think is kind of interest- ing. I know your history and background in studying the economic conditions that are created by the downsizing process. Could you give me maybe one or two or three important unintentional con- sequences of the President's forest plan? Mr. Lee. When I say they are unintended, they would be unin- tended by the planners. Mr. Cooley. I am sorry. What? Mr. Lee. The unintended consequences really are unintended by the planners, perhaps. There may have been people who are not engaged in Option 9 who saw these things coming but were not in- cluded in the process, and hence, that information was not avail- able to those who formed the plan. But I would say one of the major ones is on stewardship of lands; stewardship of lands in this country and other countries. There has been a major decline in the treatment of forest lands abroad as we have displaced supply to other regions: Southern Chile, the Rus- 19 sian Far East, and other places in the world as the world markets have begun to deliver wood that we were not producing here. There was a tremendous impact on small non-industrial owners, who due to the regulatory insecurities and the increase in price, adopted a fire sale mentality where they went out and cut lands; there has been very, very poor stewardship on a lot of that land. Those are all unintended consequences. Also unintended would be a lot of the social consequences. We have heard a little bit about it today, the unemployment growth in small communities, poverty, substance abuse, family disintegration, loss of resources for local government to deal with these issues, and basically the creation of a lot of welfare-dependent communities throughout the Pacific Northwest. This is a very expensive way to implement a plan because it creates problems that draw, then, more on State and Federal resources. I think maybe a third one that is equally important is the kind of political alienation that takes place in these communities, where people do not look at their government with trust anymore. As a sociologist, one of the key indicators of the health of any society has to do with small events. It may not seem like a big deal that a few people are put out of work in a few scattered communities in the Northwest, but these small events cumulate into movements, into social movements. It is very important we understand that we are all one national family and we look together as one national family and it is not possible to simply exclude people from the process and not have consequences. I think that is one of the major unintended consequences. Mr. COOLEY. Thank you very much. Dr. Lee. Do you really believe that the planners or the government, the people who are responsible for implementing these programs, really do not understand this? Do you not think these people have more farsightedness to understand the implications of when they shut down the ability for sustained yield or for growth in the industry? You see, I cannot understand how they could not know what was going to happen when all of a sudden they just adopted a policy of no cut. Mr. Lee. It is a matter of record that in the Option 9 plan, only certain kinds of information were considered to be acceptable. So the kinds of consequences that we are beginning to see now were simply not on the table during the planning process. They were ex- cluded. So it was not an open process with free flow of information. That is why I say it is unintended. Maybe it was intended to keep the information out, but certainly, they never thought through a lot of the consequences. Mr. CoOLEY. Ms. Kupillas, you are a Commissioner in one of my counties and I know how active you have been and how supportive you have been in trying to do something with the administration about production of wood for the people you represent in your dis- trict, and I think you should be commended on that. Ms. Kupillas. Thank you. Mr. CoOLEY. What I find really strange about the President's Northwest plan is it is a sort of radical departure from previous policies of other administrations for the last 100 years of cutting back the requirements that we had and sort of the guarantees we 20 had at the time when the O&C lands were first developed, of look- ing at sustainable yields. We find it hard here, and I know you must, too, but have you found any reason why the administration has found any statutory authority into what we have witnessed through the period of the last three or four years, when you question the administration on the statutory authority of all of a sudden developing these pro- grams? Ms. KUPILLAS. They have successfully done it, and so I think they changed the regulation process. I guess the biggest concerns that I have — I am not going to second-guess the administration, but the biggest concern that I have is throughout Option 9 and the record of decision, there is discussion about economic and social stability of communities and how this is going to address it, and I guess my big concern is that all of the analysis and interpretation and the emphasis is spent on ecosystem management but very lit- tle time and effort on the social and economic constraints that are placed on our communities. Dr. Lee has really underlined this and I think that that is the important issue to remember, that that is the message that we are bringing here, is that we need to divert our attention a little bit and spend as much time on the social and economic effects as we have on the ecosystem effects. I guess that would be my concern, that in this abrupt change that has happened, that we have not adequately addressed this, and I think even though the court sys- tem, the courts have not addressed the issue of what happens. The O&C Act mandates that we address community stability and the sustained 3deld, and we know what that is. I think the courts have not paid attention to that and I do not believe that the rules and the standards and guidelines that we are using right now pay attention to social and economic stability. So I guess that would be my concern. Mr. Hansen. The time of the gentleman has expired. Mr. CoOLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hansen. The gentleman from Oregon, Mr. DeFazio. Mr. DeFazio. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am not a member of the committee, but I appreciate the Chairman yielding some time to me. I just wanted to follow up on some of the issues raised by Ms. Kupillas. I was reading ahead in the testimony and I see Mr. Lyons, I do not think he is here yet, but he raised something, Sue, and I am curious. The trouble you are having, and I am having the same problem, ascertaining whether or not salvage can go forward in these areas of extreme blowdown/snowdown and have directed a letter to the regional forester and forest supervisors regarding that. He says in here, with respect to timber management activity, thinning and salvage activities are allowed in the reserves. What are you hearing from people on the ground? If his statement, and I hope to be here later when he testifies, is so definitive, I am curi- ous as to what the confusion is. Ms. Kupillas. That is why I raised the issue, because in talking with the forest supervisor and the Medford BLM manager, they are thinking that it would be very restricted in the late successional re- 21 serve areas. The REO director was sitting with the committee, the team, as we call it, when we started addressing the issues here in the LSR with the blowdown and he seemed to think that we would be able to salvage timber out of it. But there are very mixed reviews. I included a letter from the Medford District Manager, Dave Jones, and he had 80,000 board feet that had been removed and we know that there are several million board feet down, and said that it would be difficult to get them out of the LSRs. Another person I talked to Mr. DeFazio. That was the BLM person? Ms. KUPILLAS. That is the BLM, the Medford BLM. Mr. DeFazio. Do you think it is a difference in interpretation be- tween the BLM and the Forest Service? Ms. KUPILLAS. Yes. Everybody seems to scratch their heads and think that it is going to be extremely difficult to take much timber out of the LSRs. The maps that I showed you are the reason why. Yet, when I read the record of decision, I can see that there is plen- ty of opportunity to do it, but the interpretation is such that I do not believe that we will actually get it done. The team that is working on it, I know for a fact that there is agreement that they do not want to take ever5rthing out, that some of it has to be left, but there should be a substantial amount of tim- ber removed. We do not have to use chain saws. We can just get it out of there. I will wait and see. It is real confusing. Mr. DeFazio. Is the conflict over the fact that these are not roaded areas? Is that a problem, or Ms. KUPILLAS. That is not a problem. They are roaded. They im- mediately took the stuff out of the campgrounds and off the roads, but they think they cannot go in and just get it out of LSR. It is beyond me, because they have the scientific evidence that it would improve the LSRs to do it. Mr. DeFazio. In fact, I know that a lot of the LSRs are antici- pated to be managed. You cannot take what is essentially, in many cases, a tree plantation and unnatural densities and put a line around it and have it grown into a natural functioning old growth forest ecosystem without any sort of management activities when man has interfered. I thought you raised two points I would like to explore a little bit more. You said that apparently there are already — I had heard there was a threat of infestation because of the unusual amount of downed woody debris because of these extraordinarily unusual events. You are saying they already have detected insect infesta- tion and Ms. KUPILLAS. There is insect infestation already. The Douglas fir bark beetle is already at work. Mr. DeFazio. I know you are not a forest etimologist, but does that just prey on the downed woody debris or will it go after the standing live timber? Ms. KUPILLAS. Three live trees for every downed tree is the mini- mum that will happen. I have seen another report from 1955, an etimologist's report on a bug infestation. I cannot quote you all the statistics — I forgot to bring it — but it showed a far more significant problem with the bugs than that. I mean, that is just a minimum. 22 It could substantially take the whole stand. I am not an etimologist. I am not a forester. Mr. DeFazio. Right. Ms. KUPILLAS. But I read this thing and I was shocked at the potential here because of an historic event that happened pre- viously where it did this. Mr. DeFazio. I would hope that representatives of the adminis- tration are here and that Mr. Lyons, and again, I hope to be back to direct questions in this area. I think you have raised some inter- esting questions. There seems to be confusion at least between the agencies, maybe even among the agencies on this, and I think it warrants some clarification and expedited action. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. KUPILLAS. I have word from Jack Ward Thomas's office that it is up to the local supervisor to make the decision, but we do have to refer to the REO, so it does not really work that way. Mr. Hansen. The gentlelady from Idaho, Mrs. Chenoweth. Mrs. Chenoweth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Lee, I wanted to ask you, do you know if there are any for- mal studies tracking what happens to dislocated wood products workers or studies that evaluated how these workers benefited from rural development programs associated with the implementa- tion of the President's forest plan? Mr. Lee. I have looked around the region and I know of no sys- tematic scientific studies that would be respected by social sci- entists as evaluation research. I do not know of any efforts that have been made to either track dislocated workers to see what hap- pened to them or of any systematic studies that evaluated imple- mentation of Option 9. Given that a considerable amount of Federal money has been spent on mitigation programs, it is really not clear whether that money reached the target of helping people dislocated recover and find new work or solve their family problems or any of the other issues that have come up. I think one of the real tragedies of this is that we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars studying owls but we know nothing systematically about what has happened to people. We have only anecdotal reports. Mrs. Chenoweth. Dr. Lee, I appreciate your response, and I hope that we can remedy that, because I also understand that loggers are probably one of the most difficult to retrain. Their psy- che, for instance, is in their work, and it is unique work. I came from a logging community and I had experienced that among peo- ple that I knew. It is very difficult to retrain them, so I really ap- preciate your response. I want to thank Joan Smith for being here. Congratulations on your election. I hope you can influence the advisory committee that you are on and influence for the good. How do you feel about that, Joan? Ms. Smith. Are you talking about the Klamath Province Advisory Committee? Mrs. Chenoweth. Yes. Ms. Smith. It is very challenging. As I mentioned in my testi- mony, there are 28, and I believe they are increasing it to 29, mem- 23 bers. They are adding another tribal representative. Of that, two- thirds are government agencies. At the first meeting, we decided that we were going to make decisions by consensus. However, if we had an inability to reach consensus, it would then go to supermajority, which is a two-thirds majority, and the agencies have a two-thirds majority. That has never been done, but that is a possibility. The meetings are two days in length, usually. We travel all around the region. I have yet to have left one of those meetings without a splitting headache. It is difficult. It is hard. The good thing about the PAC is that it puts people together in a room to sit down to talk that normally would not, even agency people. The interesting thing in the beginning of these meetings in May of 1995 was that many of these agency people that were sit- ting down and talking did not normally cross the boundaries of their agencies, so that part was interesting. But as far as any re- sults corning out of it, there has been very little. Out of four rec- ommendations, I believe one has been followed through. Mrs. Chenoweth. We are all looking forward to your influence on that committee and see what you can pioneer out of it. Ms. Smith. Thank you. Mrs. Chenoweth. Thank you, Joan. Mr. Olson, I want to thank you very much for being here. Mr. Olson. Thank you. Mrs. Chenoweth. I really deeply care for these loggers, very deeply care for them. I have lived in logging communities. I love those families. These are the guys that get up in the morning, get dressed, have breakfast, get their lunch pail, kiss their wife and children goodbye, and get to work on time and do their job and par- ticipate in their communities and pay their taxes and they are a special part of our heritage and culture. They are the forgotten families. They are the forgotten men. While we set aside vast acre- ages for other species, we are forgetting about this species, the American logger, and Americans are still looking forward to living in wood houses and enjoying the benefits and the byproducts of wood products. Mr. Olson. You could join the force. Mrs. Chenoweth. Yes. I agree with you and the loggers that you represent because our forests are being destroyed because we are not able to groom them and take care of them as we should. Vice President Gore said in 1993, a healthy forest economy de- mands healthy forests. He understood that then, and the Presi- dent's plan ensures both, is what he said. I really look forward to the administration living up to their word to the people in the Northwest and not just the loggers but all of our small commu- nities. I want to ask you, Mr. Olson, what is your experience with re- training workers as far as their ability to really ever be satisfied with their jobs again? Mr. Olson. My plant that I work at, the plant that I am Presi- dent of the local, over this last year, we have been hit by the downsizing, is what the corporations call it, and most of the people that have lost their job at my facility are going through the train- ing now. They have either found other jobs or right now they are 24 going through schooHng. So they have not gotten to that point yet, to what is going to happen when they get out of school. Are they going to be able to find a job, a job that pays as well as the one that they just lost? They have not gotten to that point yet, so it is still kind of going through the process. I have heard horror stories from other facilities, especially down in Southern Oregon with a lot of the sawmills and that, where these people, they basically — they go to school and when they get out of school, there is no work to find. The next thing you know, they have to go do something else. That is the horror stories. The people that I am associated with have not gotten to that point yet. Hopefully, they will not. Hopefully, they will be all suc- cessful. What helps, I live in Portland, and so they have more of a metropolitan area to choose, whereas down like in Southern Or- egon and Eastern Washington and places where there are not any big cities, and that is where there is more opportunity. So my peo- ple do have an advantage at my facility, and also Vancouver, Washington, right across the river. Mr. Hansen. The time of the lady has expired. Mrs. Chenoweth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hansen. Mr. Kildee? Mr. Kildee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the witnesses. I can relate to the problems you have out there and really have empathy for them. I come from a district that has similar problems with a different industry. Therefore, I really want to work with you to see what we could do to find a remedy. I come from Flint, Michi- gan, and Genesee County is the county in which Flint is located. You may have heard of Flint with the movie "Roger and Me". It is where I come from. We have gone through a terrible dislocation, too, and that is why I want to work with you. As a matter of fact, your brothers and sisters in the Carpenters Union have stayed in regular contact with me on this issue and they certainly are very supportive of your efforts. I can recall my city of Flint, when I was growing up, had almost 200,000 people in it and now it is down to about 140,000. General Motors about 20 years ago employed 80,000 people and now we are down to about 40,000 people. These were the good jobs. It has caused great dislocation, great misery, and worse than that, great fear of the future. Up to this point, in Flint and in your area out there, too, each generation had hoped and expected that their children would have it even better than they did, and now, for the first time, people are beginning to wonder whether their children will have it as good as they did, and that is a problem that government has to be sensitive to. I do not know all the answers, but I think that we certainly have to extend to you our willingness to work with you to find some so- lutions for this human misery. My mother died two years ago at age 94 and she could see what was happening there in Flint, that again, things were changing. I, from government, opposed certain things. I opposed even my own President on the North American Free Trade Agreement because I could see jobs going down to Mex- ico on that. Sometimes your government does make mistakes and 25 sometimes the government has to be listening to the people out there. I do not know what the answer really is. There are changes in the auto industry that I cannot control and the government cannot control. There are changes in the timber industry which the gov- ernment cannot always control. But there are some things we can do. After my mother died, she had left a house in which she had raised five of us children and the house at one time was worth at least $30,000, not a mansion, but I finally sold it for $10,000 and was happy to get that. I tried to give it to the Catholic Church and they would not even take it. It was too much of a burden for them to take. So that community has really been affected, and I know your community has been affected. I really want to work with you and try to find out more what government's role can and should be in this as I try to find out what government's role can and should be in the auto industry. I did think that NAFTA, which has moved some of the 40,000 jobs in Flint that have been lost down to Mexico, some of them, it actu- ally had people almost like Judas goats packing up the very ma- chinery in Flint, sending it down to Mexico so that they could produce the same parts down there. So we have to look at what government does and ask some ques- tions, and I want to work with you. I do not know the answers, but you can help us find the answers and I appreciate your testimony here today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hansen. Thank you. Mrs. Linda Smith? Mrs. Smith of Washington. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have a brief question for Bob Olson. First of all, thank you for coming. This is not exactly a dropoff to get here from anywhere. I think the message about what is happening in the Pacific North- west needs to be said over and over and over. We are not just nameless numbers that get added to the economy. You said you are in the Portland market. I am in the same area. I am a neighbor. I just come out of Morton and Yakalt and Amboy, and those people do not come down and go into the metropolitan market. There is a big problem with retraining or lifestyle. They chose that. They do not want to go work on a computer. I think the point that you made between the two mills is impor- tant. That 2,000 jobs you mentioned that could go down are in my backyard. Back when Crown Z went out and James River took it, I managed a lot of the, I call it the rent for families that were on strike for two years, worked with a lot of the community families to pay their bills, working on benevolence groups, and remember the pain and how much that one mill affected the whole job market in the whole region. I look at that happening again. I think that what you have now, though, is people understanding it, after going through that. A lot of those same folks are there. We lost some. But you made a statement that I think was real important, that we that have grown up in the woods or are mill families, and that is a lot of my background, too, we are not anti-environmentalists. 26 In fact, we were and are, because that is where we make our living and we live there. That point that you made, I think, was really important. But I wondered, when the Sierra Club came out about, what, two months ago, I do not know if you saw that, the "cut no tree" policy, "We do not want another tree cut in the Northwest," that was the Sierra's vote, did you come out publicly against that? Did you all make a statement, because your 2,000 voices there are what will make policy change. Do you remember if you made a statement on that? Mr. Olson. I think the Pulp and Paper Resource Council made a statement here on the Hill, I think, after that. Mrs. Smith of Washington. You think that they did publicly? Mr. Olson. Yes. Mrs. Smith of Washington. I will take a look for that, because I am kind of getting beaten up by them as being anti-environ- mentalists because I went against that statement. The other thing that I would like you to just speak about briefly, and you are the only one I am going to ask a question of, so you do have some time, is the interrelationship between these mills. I do not think a lot of people realize that when they take down one mill, let us say the James River plant goes down at Camus, you are going to have one heck of a time getting supply at your mill. Mr. Olson. Yes. Mrs. Smith of Washington. Can you talk about the inter- relationship, that if we cannot get supply, what happens and how you use the product, because I think when it translates clear back here, they look and they go, oh, Morton loses a mill, or Aberdeen loses a mill, or Vancouver or somewhere, and they go, oh, just 200 jobs or 1,000 jobs. They do not have a clue that it has a spin-out effect to other plants because you supply to each other. Can you talk about that briefly? Mr. Olson. Basically, it is a ripple effect, like if one facility loses a product, loses an amount of jobs, loses customers, loses paper supply, whatever, then whoever they do business for, the next plant, then it rips into them. So if Camus all of a sudden one day could not produce half of the paper that they produce now to go to our facility, then at my plant in North Portland, we would basically have to find paper from some other facility and it would cost more money. The paper would have to come from farther away. There would be more shipping charges. Mrs. Smith of Washington. You do refine paper off of rough product out of Camus? Mr. Olson. Yes. Mrs. Smith of Washington. They make the paper and then you make it into something useful? Mr. Olson. Yes. We process it, put the polyethylene on it and stuff. So basically, it is a ripple. Then we would lose jobs because what would eventually happen is that our suppliers getting our product, the raw product, would be so expensive that our competi- tors would have an edge then. They would get things at a cheaper cost and then we would lose that market, and that is what hap- pened basically in my facility. We lost out on the film market and some of the paper market, so James River decided on a business 27 decision to just cut that business entirely and it just ripped into my facility and so on. Mrs. Smith of Washington. Thank you. I think that is the point that I think people need to understand, is that the supply is affect- ing many, many different parts of the economy and that the cluster of different plants in an area or mills is necessary to keep the cost down, and you did that very well. Thank you. Mr. Olson. Right. Mr. Hansen. Thank you. Mr. Herger? Mr. Olson. One thing. I just got a note here. The Carpenters Union issued a press release on the Sierra Club vote. Mrs Smith of Washington. The Carpenters Union did, also. Thank you. Mr. Herger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members. I appre- ciate the chance to sit on the panel today, and I appreciate the tes- timonies that we have heard from our panel, the testimonies of each of you who are representing communities that have been dev- astated and where we see tragedies taking place. I am also touched and can relate to Mr. Kildee here, who was talking about his community in Flint, Michigan, and the loss of jobs over the years in the automobile industry. But I think what is particularly tragic about what I see happening in my district of Northern California and throughout the Pacific Northwest is that this need not be taking place. We know that may need to be changed whether in the auto- mobile industry or in whatever the reason was for the tragedies and the loss of jobs in Mr. Kildee's district, but we see in our dis- tricts that there is still a need for paper products, including the paper products with your testimonies, the tables, the wood prod- ucts of the tables that you are sitting at, and the seats. The wood products that are needed to build the homes for our children and grandchildren are still needed. The demand is still there. We couple this with the tragedy that, according to Forest Service records, our forests in California are 82 percent denser and are thicker than they were in 1928. Our forests are not only not being depleted, they are almost twice as dense as they were at the begin- ning of the century. Yet, we see a policy here in Washington that does not allow us to produce wood products that would be afford- able for our nation. Instead, we see the people and the lives of real families, real people, real children that are thrown out of work needlessly because of a policy that is tragically flawed. Joan is a constituent of mine, and I congratulate you, too, on your election, as a supervisor. Ms. Smith. Thank you. Mr. Herger. Joan, during a press conference in 1993 announcing the President's forest plan. President Clinton said that his plan would, "meet the need for year around, high wage, high skilled jobs and a sustained, predictable level of economic activities in the for- ests". In your opinion, how well has the President's plan lived up to these promises so far as the communities you represent? Ms. Smith. Thank you. Congressman Herger. I did bring some figures with me from the Employment Development Department, 28 the labor market information, just to let you know how the unem- ployment percentages have been since the President's forest plan. In 1991, our unemployment in Siskiyou County ranged from 8.7 percent to a high that year of 18.5 percent, and then the Presi- dent's plan went into effect the next year. In 1992, it was 12.6 per- cent to 18.4. Then, since the President's forest plan has gone into effect, our unemployment levels have actually increased. In 1993, it went from 12.4 to 20.9 percent. In 1994, it was 11 percent to 18.6. In 1995, 11 to 18.7. And most recently, so far in 1996, it has been 19.6 percent, 20 percent, with a low this year of 12. So it has actually increased, it has not decreased. So no, it has not helped our communities at all. Mr. Herger. And Joan, the President also promised during this same press conference that his plan would help "build a better fu- ture for the families of the Northwest for their children and grand- children". You are familiar with Siskiyou County's school system. In your opinion, how has the President's forest plan impacted the children in Siskiyou County, the county you represent? Ms. Smith. I have a report with me from the Siskiyou County Superintendent of Schools, and probably representative of that would be the number of children that are below the poverty level, in other words, children receiving free and reduced meals. In 1988- 89, those children in Siskiyou County were at 36 percent, 36.1 per- cent. It has increased since the President's forest plan to 45.76 per- cent. In fact, in 1992-93, when it went into effect, it was actually at 40.58 percent county-wide, but in the little community of Happy Camp, where they lost the only mill, the only large business, it is actually at 80 percent. Mr. Herger. Thank you. Again, when the President came up with his plan, we were in pretty bad shape, and the President's plan supposedly, as I recall it, was to help our communities, to help improve the employment rates, and help improve the economies of our communities as well as the environment of the forest. I believe the case can be made very strongly — we have just heard it here with your statistics — that not only has it not improved, it has become fairly dramatically worse. I believe we could go over the same kind of statistics for our forest specifying that the forest health has also become quite dramatically worse during that period of time. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. COOLEY. [Presiding.] Thank you, Mr. Herger. Mrs. Chenoweth, do you have any additional questions you would like to ask? We will give you another chance. Mrs. Chenoweth. No, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. CoOLEY. I want to thank the panel very much for coming today. I appreciate you. I know all of you came from a long, long way. We all travel that route. It is nine hours going this way and 12 hours going back. I know some of you will stick around and we will see you later this week, but thank you very much for coming. I appreciate that very much. At this time, we would like to call up panel two, Mr. Tom Mayr from Mayr Brothers Company, Mr. Bendix from Hi-Ridge Lumber Company, and Ms. Bonnie Phillips, Executive Director of the 29 Pilchuck Audubon Society. Also, accompanying Mr. Mayr is James Geisinger from the Northwest Forestry Association. Did we lose Ms. Phillips at this time? We will begin without Ms. Phillips. Mr. Mayr? STATEMENT OF THOMAS M. MAYR, PRESIDENT, MAYR BROTH- ERS COMPANY; ACCOMPANIED BY JAMES GEISINGER, NORTHWEST FORESTRY ASSOCIATION Mr. Mayr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am honored and feel privileged to speak before a committee of the Congress of the Unit- ed States of Ainerica, but at the same time, I am embarrassed to be here and to publicly have to tell you my business problems. That is not the way my family has conducted business. But the direct and proximate cause of the layoff of our 170 employees within the last few months is caused by direct action or inaction of the Fed- eral Government. Our employees had 1,870 man years of seniority. That is over 11 years average per man of employment with our company. I should emphasize now — ^there have been a lot of people talk about timber supply and so on today — I would like to emphasize that our mills are not closed because of lack of logs. There are logs available to process in our mills, and that is what I am here to tell you about today. With me today is Mr. Jim Geisinger with the Northwest Forestry Association. He has written testimony, which he has submitted, and I would like my written testimony and his to be entered as part of the record and he is available to answer questions. I would like to start with who Mayr Brothers is. In 1933, two teenagers, Werner Mayr, my uncle, and Marzell Mayr, my father, borrowed a horse from a neighbor, borrowed some oats from their dad and started logging. From there, the company grew, had good times and bad, but has existed for 63 years. In the 1980's, due to high interest rates, we went through a bankruptcy reorganization. We exited from that in the late 1980's and concentrated efforts on our Hoquiam sawmill, which was 95 percent dependent upon timber from the Olympic National Forest. We manufactured high-grade lumber for the Japanese market, what you would call a niche market, specialty items. With the onset of logging restrictions due to the spotted owl, we knew that we had to adapt, as the company had done over its his- tory. We did a feasibility study. From that, we determined that we should build a small log facility to compliment our facilities in Hoquiam, to have some synergy with our other facilities, and proc- ess second and third growth wood that would increasingly become available in our area. As you could probably realize, financing a new sawmill in the Pa- cific Northwest in the early 1990's was not an easy venture. When we obtained financing, the center pin of that was a $5 million loan from a local bank, guaranteed by the Farmers Home Administra- tion Business and Industry Guaranteed Loan program. That is now administered by the Rural Business and Cooperative Development Service under the Department of Agriculture. Within the business plan for that loan, we had purchased several Section 318 timber sales in 1990. Our business plan called for har- 26-951 - 96 - 2 30 vesting those sales in 1991, 1992, and 1993, while we built and got the bugs out of the new mill. That is not the way it worked out. When the mill was half built, the administration, the Forest Service, stopped all operations on those timber sales. The cash-flow from those sales was to fund con- tinued operations. We would sell the wood into our existing mar- kets. It would provide a bridge from our old reliance upon our old growth customers to the new second growth economy. When that was taken away, the company has always been resil- ient and we found other sources of supply. We completed the mill. Since the mill was completed, we have paid the mill loan down from $5 million to $4 million. But in order to do that, in order to complete the mill, we used up all of our operating line of credit be- cause the cash-flow from the 318 sales was not available. In desperation, earlier this year, I talked to Tom Tuchmann, who I understand is going to be here later today. I made a proposal to him that Mayr Brothers would return our 14 million feet of Section 318 timber sales, our Forest Service sales, to the government, fore- go any additional claims if the Federal Government would pay off the $4 million remaining on the loan. There was a great deal of in- terest in that proposal but he said, contrary to what our attorney said, he said the administration did not have the authority to do that. Well, where are we now? Our bank that has our operating line of credit lost faith that we would ever be allowed to harvest those timber sales, so they pulled our loan early this year. We were forced to liquidate all logs and lumber inventory to pay off that loan, lay off our 170 people. The other bank, the local bank that has our mill loan, is con- cerned about the loan, about maintaining their eligibility for the guarantee, so I have a broad side here. They have called in auction companies and this is a proposed auction, September 17 and 18, auction proposal, of our entire facility, not only the new mill, the mill we already owned free and clear at the time we took the loan out, even the pickup that I drove to the airport to come here and testify. My father is 81 years old and he still comes to work every day. If this auction occurs, it will kill him, if not actual physical death, emotionally. To think that your 63 years' work is auctioned off at a scrap iron auction because your government will not honor its commitments, that is not the country I grew up in. It is certainly not the country that my grandfather, Marzellinius Mayr, came to at the turn of the century by shoveling coal in the boiler room of a freighter. To conclude, it is not a raw material problem, the reason our mills are closed. It is a financial problem caused by the Forest Service not honoring their contracts. If the Forest Service would pay the damages, the monetary damages we are due for their ac- tions, we could start our mills back up using State, private, and In- dian logs. Thank you for the opportunity to address you today. I would ask that my oral and written comments be made a part of the record. Thank you. [The statement of Mr. Mayr may be found at end of hearing.] 31 Mr. COOLEY. Thank you very much. Mr. Bendix? STATEMENT OF GERALD BENDIX, HI-RIDGE LUMBER COMPANY Mr. Bendix. My name is Gerry Bendix and I am President of Hi- Ridge Lumber Company. I am here to testify about the Clinton ad- ministration's forest plan for the Pacific Northwest and how the promises made in it are not matching reality. Hi-Ridge Lumber Company is something like Mayr Brothers. It is a 40-year-old sawmilling enterprise. We employ 130 people at the mill and an equal number of loggers and truckers work in the woods to supply our mill with the logs we need to operate. In 1996, we will process 45 million board feet of timber and generate ap- proximately $35 million in sales. About 90 percent of the raw materials we need to operate our mill have been historically supplied from national forests in North- ern California. Our main source of logs has been the Klamath Na- tional Forest, a forest which annually sold between 200 and 250 million board feet of saw timber but now only sells between 20 to 30 million board feet. This is part of the legacy of the Clinton forest plan. Even before the President's forest plan was finalized, this admin- istration had dropped 12 percent off its promised volume. The final plan calls for a timber sale program of 1.053 billion board feet, but what is being actually sold is very different. In 1994, 187 million board feet were sold. In 1995, the program jumped to 336 million board feet. Through June 30 of this year, they have sold only 393 million board feet. At this rate, it will take a decade to attain the level promised in the forest plan. When the President announced his forest plan, he directed "his cabinet to identify and implement, in a priority manner, the best ways to strengthen small business and secondary manufacturing in the wood products industry, including a review of increasing sup- plies of Federal timber set aside for small business and possible preferences for bidders who contract for domestic secondary proc- essing." Well, not one single change has been made to help either small businesses like ours or secondary manufacturers. In fact, the Small Business Administration seems to be going out of its way to ensure the small business timber sale set-aside program withers on the vine. Over the last three years, the SBA has cut its staffing for this program and resisted Congressional efforts to force the SBA to fill the vacant positions. While we have seen no help for small business, we cannot help but notice how far this administration has gone to aid the largest integrated forest products companies, particularly those companies with large land holdings. Some companies have cut deals with the administration to exempt many acres from Northern spotted owl set-asides by signing 100-year-long habitat conservation plans. The irony of this becomes apparent when you think about the Presi- dent's promise to help small business and then think about how large business has benefited by a tremendous run-up in the value 32 of their timberland holdings as a result of the imposition of Option 9. Recent decisions by the Clinton administration have been no bet- ter. On the Klamath National Forest, we have a long history of for- est fires. The new layers of bureaucracy seem to have been de- signed to slow down the salvage of dead and dying timber. We have a large fire area called the Dillon Creek area on the Klamath, which has been mentioned before, and it is in dire need of salvage. The various agencies worked for nearly two years to get the Dillon sale ready. Up until last week, we thought we would finally see some 20 mil- lion board feet offered for sale, but then the administration struck yet once again when Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman an- nounced his new salvage policy. Now we do not know if we will ever see the timber sold. I have spoken about the problems as I see them, and in closing, I would like to urge you to take some steps to help out the situa- tion. They include, firstly, to extend the current salvage law or re- place it with a new piece of legislation from Senator Craig of Idaho. Number two, curb the urge to micromanage your resource profes- sionals who are out in the field. Let them take care of the forest, and that definitely includes harvesting trees while they still have value. And lastly, this whole forest plan has been awfully tough on small businesses like mine. It is more than time to follow through on the promises that were made to address those problems and the two best ways of accomplishing that are to sell more timber and sell it before it rots and loses its value and to increase the small business timber sale share to help compensate for the dispropor- tionate amount of pain that has been visited on firms like mine as a result of President Clinton's forest plan. Thank you for this opportunity to testify. I will be happy to an- swer any questions when the opportunity comes. [The statement of Mr. Bendix may be found at end of hearing.] Mr. COOLEY. Thank you, Mr. Bendix. I was hopeful that the for- est salvage program would accomplish what you have mentioned, but we have had some problems. Ms. Phillips? STATEMENT OF BONNIE PHILLIPS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PILCHUCK AUDUBON SOCIETY Ms. Phillips. Thank you. My name is Bonnie Phillips and I am Executive Director of the Pilchuck Audubon Society in Snohomish County and that is in Washington State. I started working for my Audubon Chapter six months ago after about 15 years of volunteer work. For the past decade, protecting ancient forests has been a very high conservation priority for our 1,500 members. We are a strong community organization and we believe in cooperative relations as the cornerstone of our programs. We are proud of the many pro- grams on forest issues that we do jointly with the U.S. Forest Serv- ice. However, sometimes, litigation has been necessary when we find Federal agencies in violation of environmental laws, violations 33 which have repeatedly happened over the last decade. My Audubon Chapter has been a plaintiff in all of the major litigation since 1987 surrounding the Westside forests of the Pacific Northwest, and in most instances, the courts have agreed with us. Litigation, however, is not entered into easily by community or- ganizations such as ours. We not only understand the kinds of po- larization that have been occurring during the past decade over natural resource issues, but we have lived through the effects of this polarization in our personal lives. I have been the target of angry outbursts publicly and privately. I have received many, many telephone death threats, and newspaper articles have called me in my own community an eco-Nazi. But I live in a rural community where many people have been affected and I have become close personal friends with people on all sides of the issue. In short, my personal and professional lives have been totally absorbed by the timber wars in the Northwest. In 1994, when the Clinton plan was proposed, we reluctantly joined in litigation to challenge its adequacy. We lost, the timber industry lost, and Judge Dwyer upheld the plan. However, he also stated that it was barely adequate and that there were a number of factors that could cause him to revisit his decision. The group of plaintiffs, including my Audubon Chapter, rep- resented by the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, chose not to chal- lenge the Dwyer ruling in the Ninth Circuit. Instead, we and a great majority of conservation organizations decided it was in the best interest of all to make the plan work. I was selected to serve on the Western Washington Provincial Advisory Committee set up under the plan and I entered wholeheartedly into the success of its implementation. Although no one was totally happy with the plan, most of us felt that the decade of our timber wars had finally come to an end. Unfortunately, in the year since the logging rider began, we have seen the momentum of the plan grind to a halt. I worked with the Forest Service for a long time, and if I were to find a way to get the maximum volume out of that plan over the next five years, the worst thing that could have happened and the way I would have stopped it in its tracks was to do the logging rider. So last year's rider, with its three components, has had a devastating effect on the plan ecologically, psychologically, and socially. The Section 318 old growth sales have had the most dramatic ef- fect on the land and have led to renewed protests in and polariza- tions of communities worst beyond the worst tensions in the late 1980's. Many court challenges over aspects of Section 318 have en- sued. While we waited for the court ruling on marbled murrelet old growth sales at risk on my local forest, the Mount Baker- Snoqualmie, middle class mainstream citizens, such as myself, search our consciences to see whether we would be willing to be ar- rested for our beliefs should the court rule that the murrelet could go extinct. We heard from so many people, bankers, businessmen, workmen, lawyers, architects, teachers, folks in the labor commu- nity, doctors, seniors and youth, that we began holding civil disobe- dience training and discussing our plans with Federal, State, coun- ty, and city law enforcement officers. This was a very difficult deci- 34 sion for us to make, but the loss of our democratic rights and the egregious violations to the land caused us to plan this unprece- dented action. Fortunately, we were relieved that the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of the murrelet. This ruling, however, does not solve all the problems because the rider still requires like and kind substitute volume. The timber industry is currently in court claiming that this volume does not need to follow the Clinton plan nor environ- mental laws. Many other old growth sales have already fallen throughout Washington State and Oregon, including sales for which murrelet surveys have never been done. The current Option 9 sales, as they are called, are also shielded from citizen input and citizen administrative appeals. This has made it far easier for the Forest Service to do shoddy work and vio- late the standards and guidelines of the plan. In Washington State, the worst violations are coming from the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. This forest plans to expand their sale program by 33 per- cent over what is stated in the Clinton plan. Although the logging rider supposedly provides judicial review for Option 9 sales, in the one case taken to court on the Umpqua National Forest, Judge Hogan ruled that Option 9 sales offered since the logging rider's enactment cannot be reviewed by the courts. The salvage component has also seriously affected the viability of the plan. For example, an old growth salvage sale on the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, my forest, is planned in a 1,300 area in a large late successional reserve. In order to log the defoli- ated hemlock trees, which are mostly adjacent to Canyon Creek, which contains some very important salmon runs, many, many large, healthy, old growth cedar trees would have to be cut. A fa- vorite hiking trail would be obliterated. Because of the rider, no ad- ministrative appeal or court challenge would be available to us for this sale and we have no negotiating clout at this time. Although there has been a lot of discussion for loss of timber jobs, I live in a community that has seen many, many tribal — there are many tribes in the Puget Sound area and I have seen the loss of their jobs through the loss of fisheries resources. I have also seen the loss of commercial fishing jobs and the sports fishing industry has taken a hard hit, and all this because of our decimated salmon runs. In summary, the logging rider may have irrevocably undermined the Clinton forest plan. I would still like to see it work. It surely has devastated the land. It has decimated salmon spawning streams and important old growth habitat. It has provided less cer- tainty for communities and I feel that only repeal of the entire rider now would show the Congress is committed to making a hard- fought region-wide ecosystem management plan work for the long- term stability of Northwest ecosystems and communities. Thank you. [The statement of Ms. Phillips may be found at end of hearing.] Mr. COOLEY. Thank you, Ms. Phillips. Mr. Mayr, I happened to marry a lady from Hoquiam, Rosemary Deweiss, so I am very familiar with your area. I spent a lot of time in that area, by the way. Very few people know about it. When you say Hoquiam, they kind of look at you funny. 35 What do you think we can do to help you? What do you think the administration needs to do to try to help the Mayr Brothers and others that are in the same situation, when we made a com- mitment? What do you feel that we could do to help you? Mr. Mayr. Attached to my testimony is a bill that would give the administration the authority to do what they say they would like to do and offset the mill loan balance against the Forest Service's liability on our timber sales. One point that I skipped in my testimony is the fact that this is not a plan that Mayr Brothers had when we built the mill, to use the Section 318 sales. The Farmers Home Administration was very interested in our current timber supply at that time. How would we operate while we were building the mill? They asked for copies — in fact, over here in the Department of Agriculture, well, the Forest Service is over there, but in the FmHA is a copy of one of our contracts. They asked for the status of all the sales, a report of all the volume under contract. It is my conviction that that loan was approved at the Washington, D.C., level due to the fact we had that timber under contract. That is why I say, to help us, we could go back to work imme- diately if the Forest Service would honor their commitments on those sales by just taking care of the damages. Mr. COOLEY. I imagine your attorneys have pursued the legal remedies, but is there no recourse by the private sector against the government when they do not fulfill the contracts that they have awarded? Mr. Mayr. Yes. There is a remedy and it is called the Court of Contract Claims. That is a long process and our mill will be auc- tioned off and our people will be permanently retrained for other work by the time we ever get a contract settlement. My attorney's optimistic guess is 18 months, minimum. Mr. CoOLEY. It is too bad we cannot expedite that process. Mr. Geisinger, we did not give you an opportunity to make any kind of a statement. I kind of jumped over you, but you were not on the panel. Do you have anything you would like to say at this time, in my little bit of time that is left? STATEMENT OF JAMES C. GEISINGER, PRESIDENT, NORTHWEST FORESTRY ASSOCIATION Mr. Geisinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am here for tech- nical assistance for my colleagues that run mills for a business. I have been at this work for 20 years and I have put myself through this torture because of people like Gerry Bendix and Tom Mayr. They represent the heart and soul of the forest products industry in the Pacific Northwest. They represent the very kinds of compa- nies this administration says it wants to save, but they are the very companies that are getting the least benefit out of Option 9 or any of the other administration's forest policies. I would like to briefly review history to set the stage for some discussion. On July 1, 1993, when the President announced Option 9, Secretary Bruce Babbitt stood in front of this country and said that this plan would produce two billion board feet in its first year and one billion feet thereafter. By my math, therefore, that says four billion feet should have been sold as we speak. The fact is, less 36 than one billion feet of saw timber has been sold in the three years since this plan has been announced. The devil is always in the details, but the volume figures that Gerry Bendix quoted are sawtimber volumes. That is a very impor- tant detail. The President's forest plan says that 90 percent of the one billion feet a year it is supposed to produce is supposed to be sawtimber. The fact is, they have been selling 40 to 45 percent non- sawtimber material and taking credit for it as part of Option 9. These are firewood sales, fence posts, pulp wood, basically anything with cellulose in it, they will take credit for as part of their Option 9 accomplishments. So I want to segue from that into talking about Section K of the salvage rider and particularly the 318 sales. It has been alleged by many that this has completely undermined the validity of Option 9. Let us look at reality. Section K should have released about 650 million board feet of timber, a little over one half of one year's tim- ber sale program under Option 9. We are running a three billion foot deficit. We should have sold four billion. They sold one billion. So how 650 million feet in the face of a three billion foot deficit is going to undermine this plan in any way escapes me. Secondly, I think it is very important, the 318 sales, which in- clude the sales that Tom Mayr is saddled with, were assumed to have been harvested in the record of decision, in the biological opinion for the President's forest plan. We have called this to their attention and they say, yes, that is what the plan says, but that is really not what we meant. These sales were assumed to have been gone when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Na- tional Marine Fisheries Service gave Option 9 a clean bill of health for all threatened species. . So to say that letting these sales go forward is going to under- mine in any way Option 9 can only lead you to the conclusion that those agencies were wrong. I do not think they were when you con- sider that 88 percent of our forest lands are off limits to any kind of sustainable timber harvesting practices under Option 9. The 318 issue is a scapegoat for nonperformance. The reason for the nonperformance is the incredible bureaucracy that is being cre- ated under Option 9, where there are at least half a dozen commit- tees that have to be involved in approving timber sales, and even after that, it is a matter of record that the White House has actu- ally interfered on individual timber sales, questioning forest super- visors' decisions to let timber sales go forward. It is no wonder they have only accomplished a quarter of what they said they were going to accomplish, when you have that kind of bureaucratic gridlock. Finally, I would just like to call the committee's attention to Ex- hibit No. 5 in my prepared statement. It is a chart that shows vol- ume sold as opposed to the U.S. Forest Service's budget. I have not shared this with the Appropriations Committee and I would really hope that this committee would not share it with the Appropria- tions Committee, either, because we have to fund the agency. But the fact is, this administration is spending as much money today to produce ten percent as much timber as it did just six or seven years ago. The money is going to bureaucratic process, not produc- 37 ing outputs. This has to change if there is any hope of making Op- tion 9 a success. Thank you. [The statement of Mr. Geisinger may be found at end of hearing.] Mr. COOLEY. Thank you, Mr. Geisinger. I want to ask you one question, and my time is up, but in your experience as associated and involved in this industry for as many years as you have been involved, has the executive branch ever been involved in any tim- ber contracts before? Mr. Geisinger. Certainly not to the extent that this one has. Frankly, we wish they had been a little more involved than they were. But the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Manage- ment are both professional organizations that have very qualified people that understand their mandate and their instructions and I think they have done their best to carry those out without undue interference from the administration. I think it is always prudent for the Secretary to conduct over- sight of these agencies, but when you have the Chairman of the Council of Environmental Quality calling forest supervisors and challenging their decisions, there is something wrong with that process. Mr. CooLEY. What function of the executive branch or the White House is involved? What branch is involved in these decisions? Mr. Geisinger. Basically, it is the Agriculture Department and the Interior Department for the Forest Service and BLM, respec- tively, but there is oversight basically coming out of CEQ. Mr. CooLEY. Thank you, Mr. Geisinger. That was very inform- ative. Mr. Vento? Mr. Vento. I will withhold at this time. Mr. CoOLEY. Mr. Vento will hold. Mr. Herger? Mr. Herger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to begin perhaps with a question to Ms. Phillips. Ms. Phillips. Surely. Mr. Herger. I understand you are from the State of Washington. Have you ever had an opportunity to come down into California and look at the forests or observe wildlife there? Ms. Phillips. I am most familiar with Washington State and Or- egon. I have been to California. I am not on the ground, as you can see, with my wheelchair, not that familiar with a lot of the Califor- nia forests. Mr. Herger. I have on occasion, regrettably, all too often, been able to look. I represent all or parts of eight national forests in the Northeastern part of California. We have had seven out of ten years of drought in California. Our State is very different from yours. We do not get nearly the amount of rainfall you do. We are much more subject to catastrophic wildfires that will, as they have all too often, completely consume our forests, as we have seen in the Cottonwood fire, just north of Lake Tahoe, where there is abso- lutely nothing left. So much of this is following these drought years that we have had where fires go through and destroy everything. My question to you is, how much wildlife can exist in these areas where the forests have been completely destroyed because of these dead trees that the Forest Service tells us are 82 percent denser. 38 thicker than they were in 1928? How much wildlife can exist in these trees where your groups have been so very successful in pre- venting any cutting, even of dead trees, thinning? How well does the wildlife exist in these areas where there is nothing left? Ms. Phillips. Perhaps I can try to answer that in a slightly dif- ferent way, because I had been able to observe the results of the large fires on the Wenatchee National Forest in Eastern Washing- ton. Mr. Herger. Did it consume everything there? Ms. Phillips. I was going to try to explain what I knew about that. Excuse me, please. But first of all, I do want to clarify. Mr. Geisinger is wrong in that the record of decision said that the Endangered Species Act would be in effect and, therefore, the Section 318 sales that are in violation would not have been logged. But getting on to your question, sir, my sense, and I cannot pos- sibly Mr. Herger. Very briefly, if there are no trees left, how much wildlife can exist in forests that are in my area where there are no trees or any wildlife, no vegetation at all left? How much wild- life can exist there? Spotted owls, can they exist where there is nothing left, but thousands of bare acres. Ms. Phillips. So you are asking me — excuse me Mr. Herger. I am. It is your policy that has been so successful in completely stopping any kind of harvest at all, even the removal of dead and d3dng trees to help prevent these massive forest fires which burned 540,000 acres of timber in California alone in 1994. We may even break that record this year. I guess my question has an obvious answer. There is not any wildlife, and I find it unbelievable that organizations like yours and individuals like you can come before this committee supporting the Sierra Club's stand this year that they do not want to see an- other tree, dead or living, ever removed again from our forests. I think this is tragic and as irresponsible as anything I have ever seen. Mr. Bendix, if I could Ms. Phillips. I am sorry, are you telling me that I cannot an- swer your question? Are you just Mr. Herger. I am just stating that I believe the answer is obvi- ous. There is — well, let me ask it again. Ms. Phillips. You are asking me a question and you are not let- ting me answer? I just want to clarify that. Mr. Herger. OK. Are there owls that can live where there is nothing left? Ms. Phillips. If that is what you are doing, that is fine, sir. Mr. Herger. Where there is nothing left, can owls or any kind of birds or peafowl Ms. Phillips. I am not a member of the Sierra Club. The Na- tional Audubon Society has not taken that position. There is noth- ing my organization has Mr. Herger. But you have joined into lawsuits with them, you stated. Ms. Phillips. To be able to — the Sierra Club has not been in- volved in the spotted owl lawsuits. To ever be able to do anything 39 that would increase fire risk on national forests, I think the Forest Service and I think some of the laws Congress has passed, includ- ing the salvage rider, have allowed our forest at greater risk, and I think you will hear the Forest Service tell you and professional forests [sic] tell you that because of fire suppression and because of poor management, our forests are at greater risk and our com- munities are at greater risk and our lives are at greater risk and I do not agree that that is the way we should manage forests. I think we should have managed them to protect people and lives, and I agree that we should be doing salvage logging and thinning in areas and concentrate where people and lives are and we should put our effort there, not necessarily salvage logging in wilderness areas or fighting fires in wilderness areas or salvaging in areas very far away from people and lives, and I think the peo- ple and lives are the major issue and I, as an individual, am very supportive of management practices that do protect people and lives. Thank you, sir. Mr. Herger. I find your comment interesting. I hear you, it would appear, speaking on both sides of this issue. On one side, you stated that you are in favor of some salvage logging. I do not know if you are aware, but the whole purpose of the emergency, salvage logging which only lasts for a certain period of time, was to expedite what is normally a three-year process in which all our trees are so far rotten by that time and eaten by insects that they are unsalvageable because of lawsuits, which you mentioned you joining, preventing us from doing anything. That is what I would like to do, Ms, Phillips. We have an annual woods tour out in our area and I would like to invite you to come out to it. Ms. Phillips. Thank you. I would enjoy that. Mr. Herger. We can show you some of the problems that we have. The stands that organizations like yours, and particularly the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society and others have taken eliminating any kind of habitat whatsoever. These stands have de- stroyed our communities and allowed for as high as 22 percent un- emplojnnent in some of my counties, driving up the cost of home and wood products and also destroying the very habitat that you claim to be wanting to protect. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Phillips. Sir, I feel like the Forest Service already has laws to be able to use to expedite salvage sales. I know that in Washing- ton State, where I have seen many salvage sales go forth without, by the way, any appeal or litigation on the part of my Audubon Chapter, it does not take three years. They can do an emergency. There is a lot in the National Environmental Protection Act, the NEPA, in implementing regulations that allow them to do many things in a hurry. So I do not think that the salvage rider was nec- essary and I do not really think it is helping the American people. Thank you. Mr. Herger. That is not happening and you know it is not hap- pening and it is a farce for you even to say it as though it were taking place, Ms. Phillips. Mr. COOLEY. Thank you, Mr. Herger. Mr. Riggs? 40 Mr. RiGGS. Mr. Chairman, I would like to defer. Mr. COOLEY. Mrs. Chenoweth? Mrs. Chenoweth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Geisinger, I thought your testimony was very, very interest- ing and I wanted to delve into this a little bit more. We heard it testified to that the failure of the Clinton plan was on the salvage rider and that is what prompted your response, I am sure. But as you said, almost all of the old growth sales authorized under the salvage rider were assumed to be harvested under Option 9, and as Ms. Phillips testified, that one of the problems was with the En- dangered Species Act. I have here, for the record, the record of decision for Option 9. It is the standards and guidelines issued by the administration for management of habitat for late successional and old growth forest related species within the range of the Northern spotted owl. I would like to read that in this administration's decision, it states, "The late successional and old growth habitat in late successional reserves that might be harvested, assuming that these areas meet ESA requirements, represents about one-third of one percent of the total of this habitat in reserves in the preferred alternative." Furthermore, it states in the administration's record of decision, and I am just continuing on from where you made your very good point, Mr. Geisinger. Timber sales awarded prior to the effective date of this record of decision are not altered by this record of deci- sion, ESA or anything. At the time they were awarded, these tim- ber sales were consistent with the planning documents then in ef- fect, complied with the Endangered Species Act, and all other laws, and the environmental effects of these sales were considered as part of the baseline for the biological opinion for the final SEIS. Furthermore, it states that under the timber sales sold but unawarded, the administration's own record of decision stated, with one exception, as described below, and that happened to be the Seattle Audubon Society v. Lanz, all planned and sold but unawarded timber sales were reviewed and adjusted, as needed, following publication of the draft SEIS pursuant to the process de- scribed above. The review ensured that these sales would not pre- vent the attainment of the environmental objectives of a selected alternative. The environmental effects of these timber sales were disclosed in site-specific NEPA documents and subsequent review. Some of these sales have subsequently been awarded and some have not yet been awarded. So I think that that ought to clarify very carefully for the record, and I would like to enter this document into the record, the point that you were trying to make, Mr. Geisinger. You are absolutely right, and I thank you for bringing that point up. Mr. Geisinger. If I may. Representative Chenoweth, during most of 1994, my time was consumed trying to convince the administra- tion that that is what they had written, to try to resolve the 318 sales through normal administrative channels. Congressman Norm Dicks was very involved and very instrumental in bringing those discussions forward. But in the final analysis, they looked at us in the face and said, yes, that is what we wrote, but that is not what 41 we meant, but it is a matter of public record now and I think the amount of volume involved is minuscule in the big picture. It is very small compared to the commitments the administration made in Option 9, and to say that it is preventing implementation of Op- tion 9 is just not right. Mrs. Chenoweth. I suppose that when President Clinton said in 1993 with regards to these sales, by preserving the forests and set- ting predictable and sustainable levels of timber sales, it protects jobs not just in the short term but for years to come, I suppose he could look at you and say, that is what we said but that is not what we meant, because that is not what they are doing, is it, Mr. Geisinger? Mr. Geisinger. No, it is not. Mrs. Chenoweth. I wanted to ask Mr. Mayr, your story is so compelling, your grandfather, and your father and uncle who bor- rowed a horse and borrowed some oats and as teenage boys started a logging business. I have heard that story from several different people who started logging companies. I am very, very sorry that this has happened to you. You know, out of Aberdeen, Washington, was an opinion about what has happened to you and the fact that the administration has broken its word. They said in this editorial or in this opinion, "Mayr Brothers, whose resilience and ingenuity have been beacons of hope for Grays Harbor, announced Friday that it will lay off its 170 employees over the next two months." You know, the most important thing that I feel that as Congressmen we must continue to do is point these industry people in a direction where there is hope, but it is very difficult when we have an administration who does not even bat an eye or blink when they say one thing and do another. Mr. Mayr, I just hope, I very much hope that we will be able to see that hope and resilience for Grays Harbor restored again. Has Senator Gorton's and Senator Hatfield's compromise plan been of any benefit to you, either in the past or do you see it as a benefit in the future? Mr. Mayr. Thank you for your kind words, Congresswoman. I hope, too, that we will come through this. As I say, we have had our ups and downs over the years. Both Senator Gorton and Senator Hatfield had some language to give the administration more leeway in settling these timber sales. That language was stricken from the earlier bill. I am hoping something can be done before the end of September that will allow us the damages from these sales, and they have been very helpful. Nothing, of course, has been passed yet. Mrs. Chenoweth. Thank you, Mr. Mayr. Thank you, Mr. Chair- man. Mr. COOLEY. Thank you, Mrs. Chenoweth. Mrs. Smith? Mrs. Smith of Washington. I guess I will just carry on from there, Tom. I want to make sure I understand. You think the clos- est we can get on a bill is an appropriation coming up in Septem- ber. It is still going to be real difficult. It is possible, and we will walk you over to Slade's office and work on it, but your attorneys say the Forest Service has the authority for this trade and they are 42 saying they do not, and that is really what you are going to try to get clarified? Mr. Mayr. It is more than the Forest Service, but it is all in the Department of Agriculture. The loan guarantee, I think they are on the fourth floor and the Department of Agriculture is on the sec- ond. I mean, they are in the same building. For one agency to say, we did not know you depended on our timber sales for this loan, that is kind of mind-boggling. Mrs. Smith of Washington. It is kind of bad to change all their minds right now, after, of course. Mr. Mayr. I am convinced that our having those timber sales under contract and the markets for those logs were the reason the loan was approved. Mrs. Smith of Washington. You would not have gotten the loan if you had not had a supply. Mr. Mayr. Exactly. Mrs. Smith of Washington. Nobody else is getting loans out there unless they have supply, you are right. Mr. Mayr. Right. And that provided the bridge for the transition that everybody was telling us, both the environmental community, the administration was telling, you have to change to second growth. That is what we did. We were written up at the time as a progressive company for doing the right thing. It is just that when you have a plan that complicated, you cannot pull a part of it out. Mrs. Smith of Washington. It was not done in the dark, by any means, for the members of this committee. Mr. Mayr. No. Mrs. Smith of Washington. It was done very clearly. In fact, I feel that you were encouraged into it and then left high and dry. It brings up cynicism for our government. No wonder not too many folks want to work with the government, if they dump you after they have encouraged. We need the 170 jobs. It is not all in my district. It is right above it and part of it is mine, but I cannot imagine what 170 jobs' loss is going to do in that area. We will do what we can do to try to get the administration to understand, maybe just tell them it is a Democrat county. That might help in an election year. Mr. Mayr. Yes. Mrs. Smith of Washington. But encourage them through that process. But I do not think they realize the impact. They say, oh, 170. We have more than that on one floor in the White House. They do not think about that many employees, but it basically will devastate that community. Mr. Mayr. Yes, it will. Mrs. Smith of Washington. Mr. Geisinger, one thing that I have been interested in since I have been here is the misconcep- tion— so I am premising this with my bias, somewhat — ^but with the Option 9 numbers, a lot of people got the impression, if you would listen to the press back here, we were going to shave the hills. That would leave no old growth and we would literally have nothing left but bald hills in the Northwest. 43 Can you give me an idea of even the four billion, not the billion, but the four billion we thought we would get, what percentage that would be of the total available harvestable timber to give these folks an idea, just to show them what percentage it is? Can you give me a ballpark figure? Mr. Geisinger. There are hundreds of billions of board feet of standing timber on Federal lands in the Northwest. I can provide that information for the committee. I san safely say it is probably at least 450 or 500 billion board feet. Mrs. Smith of Washington. But it is not 100 billion, so the four billion is not even four percent? Mr. Geisinger. No. It is a minuscule percentage of what is avail- able on the entire land base. But again, the problem with Option 9 is we are left with about 12 percent of the Federal lands to man- age in any kind of predictable fashion, and finding areas to put up timber sales is not the least of the agency's problems, and then once they do, they go through this incredible process to get final approval. That is why the performance has been as poor as it has been. Mrs. Smith of Washington. I want to have you address one more thing. I listened to Ms. Phillips as she nobly tried to answer, and I realized something again that kind of amazes me. What I heard was the Forest Service referred to twice, once as if they had no options in letting these sales and they would have to go into the most sensitive wilderness areas, and the other was the Forest Serv- ice has a lot of latitude. Clarify for me why it is bad to let this administration's Forest Service under their direction select the sales environmentally. Why would they choose bad sales? Why should she be afraid when there is that much land mass? Why would she think this administration would go after the most sensitive, and have they shown to do that? Mr. Geisinger. I think Ms. Phillips can speak for herself on that. I think the people closest to the ground are the ones most capable of making those decisions, and they have to be given some empowerment to comply with the standards and guidelines that have been imposed upon them. I think oversight in the Department is perfectly legitimate, and I think that is why the authors of the salvage amendment gave sole discretion to the Secretaries of Agri- culture and Interior to approve or disapprove of any timber sale. The interference, frankly, is coming from above those levels, and if we are ever going to be successful in implementing this plan or some other plan, the agencies are going to have to be reempowered to make a lot of those decisions on their own and to be allowed to move forward with them. The Forest Service and BLM are the only two agencies that I am aware of that gives the public access to challenging their decisions the way they do. I mean, I think of the Defense Department. If you could challenge some specifications on the construction of an F-18 fighter plane with a 32-cent stamp and a letter, I would hate to think of what would happen to our nation's defense. But there are layers upon layers of opportunities for people to challenge what is happening in our natural resource managing agencies and I think the public certainly ought to have access to asking questions and challenging decisions, but not to the extent that they can bring ev- 44 erything to an absolute standstill, which is what has happened in our region. Mrs. Smith of Washington. Thank you, Mr. Geisinger. Ms. Phillips. Thank you, Mr. Geisinger. I appreciate your saying I can speak for myself, and I will be extremely brief. Having not testified before, I forgot to say that I have submitted things for the record, including three different packets which con- tain what we consider really very bad sales in Washington State, in Oregon, and in California under this plan and under the salvage rider. I think if you have a chance to look through that at some point in time, you will see why we are concerned about the Forest Service and violations. I am sorry I forgot to say that before, but thank you for this opportunity. Mrs. Smith of Washington. Thank you, Ms. Phillips. You just think the administration is doing one crummy job of managing this, and I guess I do, too. We certainly agree there. Thank you. Mrs. Chenoweth. [Presiding.] Thank you, Mrs. Smith. Mr. Riggs? Mr. Riggs. Thank you, Madam Chair. I do not know if I want to say anything after that last comment, but it was very apropos and, I believe, on the mark. Ms. Phillips, is it my understanding that you and the National Audubon Society advocate a total repeal of the timber salvage rider? Ms. Phillips. That is correct, sir. Mr. Riggs. Let me understand this, because Mr. Herger, I think, was linking your organization with the Sierra Club, which I think you Ms. Phillips. That is correct, and I am not a member of the Si- erra Club. Mr. Riggs. Yet, if I understand correctly, you do not favor even the harvesting of a dead, dying, or diseased tree, and if that is the case, what form of commercial logging do you support on Federal forest lands and how do you differ, then Ms. Phillips. Excuse me. I did not say- Mr. Riggs. Excuse me. Let me just finish the question. How do you differ from the Sierra Club? Ms. Phillips. Since I am not a member of the Sierra Club and since I really cannot explain their policies to you because I am not a member, let me just explain National Audubon Society's view on this as best I can. We are not — National Audubon Society is not against salvage sales, and I think what we feel is that there are already laws in place, environmental laws that had been instituted and passed by Congress and signed by past Presidents that both protected our natural resources and allowed citizen input into the public process. Within those laws and the implementing regulations on the part of the National Forest Service, they have been doing a salvage pro- gram all along. A salvage program is not new for the Forest Serv- ice. My Audubon Chapter, in particular, has never done an adminis- trative appeal or litigation on a salvage sale. So I think if you take a look at our record and check with the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, you will see that is our record. Our concern is that 45 taking away the ability for citizens to interact with land managers when it is public land, this is what we object to. We do not object to any particular — I mean, I will tell you per- sonally, I do not agree with any more logging of old growth na- tional forests, but if we are talking here about salvage, I think my record speaks for what I have not challenged, what I have the abil- ity to challenge, but I truly believe in democracy and I believe in the people's forest and I believe in a citizen — a citizen, no matter who that citizen is, their right to participate in the democratic process, which is why I would like to see the entire salvage rider and all of its components repealed. Yes. I base that on information that was put in the court record by the administration and by wildlife biologists, particularly Kim Nelson, who is considered one of the premiere researchers on murrelets, and her testimony, which, by the way, was not just a few sales. It could have been up to 10,000 acres, and that is 10,000 critical acres. But this species, of course, is listed under the Endan- gered Species Act, so we are talking about an endangered species. It is listed as threatened. The 20 percent of the known murrelet activity or nesting areas was involved in those 10,000 areas. So when you take an endan- gered species already on the Endangered Species Act and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided that their decision, which is why I do not agree and I appreciate Mrs. Chenoweth putting infor- mation in for the record because I think it speaks to exactly what I was trying to say, that the ESA was still in effect in the record of decision, is that they gave those jeopardy opinions, which meant that they felt that would jeopardize the existence of a species that was listed under the Endangered Species Act. So when you take that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's deter- mination that the species may go extinct, because that is what jeopardy means, and you take away 20 percent of the known nest- ing and murrelet activity areas, I think it, indeed, does have a dev- astating effect. Mr. RiGGS. Let me turn to the gentlemen real quick before my time expires. But first let me note that, regarding your earlier com- ment, citizens can interact with the agencies under the salvage law. We expressly permitted that under the law and there is ample opportunity for citizen input when the agencies are preparing the sales. There is also public comment under the administration's im- plementation of the law and there is also an appeal for arbitrary and capricious decisions. Gentlemen, do you all agree that the primary reason that we are here today is the failure of this Congress and past Congresses to reform the Endangered Species Law? Mr. Geisinger. I would like to try that first, and you may not like my answer, Congressman. The answer is no. The injunction that led to the creation of Option 9 had nothing to do with the En- dangered Species Act. They were a violation of the National Forest Management Act viability regulation and NEPA violations for not supposedly preparing an adequate environmental impact state- ment. It was the viability regulation that Judge Dwyer hung his hat on for enjoining most of the Pacific Northwest timber sale pro- gram. 46 That is a regulation that could be changed, theoretically, with a Federal Register notice and a 60-day public input period, but it has become such a volatile issue and so important to the environ- mental community as a tool to stop land management activities that it would prove very controversial to do it in such a manner. Quite briefly, the National Forest Management Act requires the Forest Service to maintain a diversity of plant and animal commu- nities consistent with the multiple use purposes of the forest plan and to the extent practicable, and I do not think anyone in this room could disagree that that is a laudable goal. But when the reg- ulations to implement that provision were written, it required the Forest Service to provide habitat to sustain viable populations of native species throughout the planning area. We were told in 1981 when that provision was written that the planning area was the re- gion, whether it be Region 5, as California, or Region 6, in Wash- ington and Oregon. You had to have a viable population someplace in that region. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, however, subsequently inter- preted that to mean that viable populations had to exist on every single national forest and every single ranger district in the region, and that is what brought the gridlock to the Pacific Northwest through court order. I am not suggesting the ESA does not need reforming; it does. It does need to be streamlined and more workable. But it is not the cause of the gridlock that occurred in the Pacific Northwest. Mr. RiGGS. We will pursue that in a minute. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mrs. Chenoweth. Thank you, Mr. Riggs. Mr. Vento. Madam Chair? Mrs. Chenoweth. Yes. I would like to call on Mr. Vento now. Mr. Vento. Thank you. I found it interesting, the discussion on the salvage rider. Obvi- ously, the salvage existed before the rider and probably will exist after it. It is a question of how you proceed. Clearly, what the in- tent of the rider is, is to dispense with the processes that were in place and to override them and to subsume them into this trun- cated process. So it basically abandons the effort to implement a range of different laws, including laws that affect small businesses and the extension of and dispersal of the jobs and contracts within that context. It does that. It enters into roadless areas. It has spe- cial provisions with regards to Montana, with regards to 318. I would just point out that there was a good faith effort in 1990 and other times to write 318. I actually had worked with Congress- man Dicks at that time, who was on the conference committee, to provide for it, but the news we kept getting back in terms of the science was that, of course, things did not work out so we could achieve the types of harvests. I find this whole discussion, incidentally, in reference to my col- leagues with regards to fire, very interesting, because, of course, we have an environment in which we have heavily been influenced by the activities of the Forest Service and others to extinguish fires, and to suggest now that is simply the result of inadequate harvest, I think, and/or salvage types of problems, is, I think, a real prob- lem, because the areas you might salvage are not necessarily the 47 areas where the fires will occur. Obviously, if we cut all the forests down, they would not have a fire problem. I guess that is the gist of that particular issue. So I think it is sort of scapegoating the salvage problem or the degree of harvest with the fires. In other words, I do not think that there is much, if any, correlation between them, but nevertheless, it is an attempt to try and superimpose an event that is obviously negative and put it at the feet of the amount of salvage that takes place. Mr. Mayr, I read your statement and the progress of your com- pany and so forth, the development. It is very interesting in terms of its history. But you point out in here you are 95 percent depend- ent upon the Olympic National Forest for harvest. Mr. Mayr. We were. Mr. Vento. But you suggest that that was the predicate. Does your corporation or company or your entity specifically have under contract the contracts you were talking about, or were they indi- rectly under contract? Mr. Mayr. No. We were 95 percent dependent upon national for- est timber for the mill. At the time we took out the loan, the con- tracts I am speaking were in the name of Mayr Brothers. We actu- ally had Mr. Vento. They were your contracts? Mr. Mayr. Yes. Some of the contracts are harvested. Some of them have roads built. In fact, one of them actually has timber that has been on the ground since 1991. Mr. Vento. Is your concern here with regards to the fact that the Farmers Home Adminstration did not do diligence with regards to your loan? Mr. Mayr. No. Mr. Vento. Or you did not do diligence with regards to your loan? Mr. Mayr. We did. Mr. Vento. Or the Forest Service is supposed to do diligence with regards to your loan? Mr. Mayr. No. Everyone did the due diligence. It is the fact that the Forest Service has not performed on the contracts. Mr. Vento. I think that all the laws are in effect that affected this. For instance, we talked about NEPA and we talked about the Forest Management Act and the Endangered Species Act. All of those were in law in 1990, were they not? Mr. Mayr. Right. But what I am speaking to is the fact that the Forest Service owes us damages. They have admitted Mr. Vento. Well Mr. Mayr. No. They have admitted such. We have had offers from them. They have admitted they owe us damages, but they have not done the honorable thing and paid them. Mr. Vento. In other words, they have not come to a negotiated agreement with you? Is that what your contention is, is that they should come to a negotiated agreement with regards to your Mr. Mayr. They should either honor the contract by letting us harvest it, they should cancel the contract 48 Mr. Vento. If I just might interrupt you, I understand — I did read the testimony — I understand the fact that they cannot honor the contract. It is bound by other factors Mr. Mayr. Right. Mr. Vento. [continuing] — like court injunctions and other factors beyond their control, is that correct? Mr. Mayr. That is correct. Mr. Vento. So it is sort of beating a dead horse here in terms of the fact that — but they then say that because they are admit- ting, in other words, they can suggest that they are taking on the burden of having have not gone through the process or NEPA cor- rectly, that they then take on the burden of not delivering the tim- ber to you as per se the contract. In other words, they are admit- ting that. You are just saying that it is a matter of what the nego- tiated amounts might be in terms of not harvest or whatever the damages are that occurred. Mr. Mayr. Yes, and it has been that delay of over — on one timber sale, it is a delay of five years, and in normal commercial contracts, if we had a contract with a private company, we would never be allowed to delay performance for five years, and that is where we have suffered from, is that delay. Mr. Vento. I understand that there are adjustments that have to be made in terms of the economy, in terms of its reconciliation. I just think it ought to be understood that, from my perspective, yes, the Forest Service is up front in terms of not doing this, but they also have the obligation under court order and under a whole series of other laws that needed to be followed in terms of bringing this issue — I mean, all of it has to be considered in the context. It is not a question of competence, but it is a question of nonperform- ance from your aspect. Before we begin to render judgments on them, I think we ought to look at what responsibilities that they have that have been placed upon them. I also. Madam Chair, I would note that the suggestion about, ob- viously, the amount of harvest that has gone on or has not gone on, I think I would just note for the record, it is my understanding that, in fact, there have been salvage contracts put out in which there have not been bids in some parts of the country. So the whole issue of whether or not you do salvage or not, I would just ask my colleagues to consider the fact that sometimes these salvage sales are not very attractive in terms of their profitability and the con- sequence of that is that those types of sales are not bid upon, so they go by the wayside. You can make them more attractive by putting in more profitable types of harvest of trees, but that is not necessarily where you want to go in terms of trying to deal with the management of a forest. So it is the reason that salvage, even though there is a consider- able amount of salvage that could be out there that is on roaded lands and other areas, it is not always a very attractive purchase. It is not a very attractive business for those that might be doing it. We know what is more desirable, the large volume old growth type of trees in the Northwest or in other areas where you have different types of timber which would be more attractive, but it does not always match the needs of how a land manager might 49 want to manage a forest. I remember well the discussions about Alaska and the types of timber that were desired in those in- stances. So it is a lot more complex than simply suggesting you have all of this timber and that simply just putting it on the market is going to do it, because it is not going to unless you make it profit- able, very profitable, in some cases. Salvage is a loser for the gov- ernment in terms of costing us money in most instances. It is a loser for the government in terms of costing money for the prepara- tion of the roads, and, of course, as we know, we have an ongoing debate about what the costs are in terms of the general sales pro- grams. Mr. Herger. Would the gentleman yield? Mr. Vento. I would be happy to yield. Mr. Herger. I realize the light is red, but would the Chair- woman mind? Mrs. Cheng WETH. Yes. Mr. Herger. I want to commend the gentleman for pointing out that there are not any bidders for many salvage sales. As the gen- tleman mentioned, the reason is that they are basically below cost. They are not marketable. I would like to point out that I noticed throughout my eight na- tional forests that one of the major reasons of this is that once a tree dies, whether it be by fire or by insect infestation depending on the species, we have anywhere from 18 months to three years to salvage that timber before it is non-marketable. So when we have those environmental groups that have been so successful at suing and holding up these sales, if they can hold them up for between 18 months and three years, then there will not be any bidders on them. That is the reason that the emergency salvage legislation was intended to expedite — not eliminate, but ex- pedite this process so that we could get these trees out prior to the time that they are unmarketable. Mr. Vento. Of course, the salvage rider included roadless areas of Montana. It included 318. It included a variety of things. There are other factors that affect the profitability besides the age of the timber. Certainly, if it takes longer, it is in a position where it is not of value. I mean, I understand that with most species. There are some species that that does not affect as much. So that rep- resents a dilemma in terms of salvage, because, in a sense, by the time you plan, it is an unplanned sale, you have to come in with some sort of a shortened period of time. I disagree, as the gen- tleman knows, strongly with the salvage rider as being the solution to that. I also wanted to point out, Madam Chair, while you are tolerat- ing my continued rambling on here, that some of the discussion about what the Appropriations Committee is spending and the vol- ume that they are getting, I think, directly relates to forest health. I think most of us recognize that forest health is something that is going to require an investment in the forest, not spending less. The easiest thing is to go in with these high-volume cuts and chop it up and get some dollars back, but I think that those days are over. Mrs. Chenoweth. Will the gentleman yield? 50 Mr. Vento. As long as I still have time, if the Chairwoman rec- ognized my time. Mrs. Chenoweth. Yes, I will grant you time. I appreciate Mr. Herger for pointing out the fact that these sales sometimes are not profitable because they do take so long to issue, and that was the very reason why we put through this salvage sale rider. Salvage sales need not be a loser for the government, but I can tell you one thing, Mr. Vento. Fires are a loser for the govern-^ ment, a big loser, so Mr. Vento. I appreciate the observation with regards to fire. I just would suggest that that comes out of accumulation of manage- ment that has gone on for 100 years. It is not simply the most re- cent phenomenon. It has to do with how we fight fires and our fire regime. That, I hope, will be led by the science, not by emotions, and I think that it is a very emotional issue. I think that, in the end, we are going to have some fires. I do not think it is the sal- vage rider that is going to prevent it. I do not think it is wilderness management that is going to prevent it. I think that we really need to reconcile that and not just use it as a debating point here or blame the management of the North- west. After all, if cutting trees down was going to save the North- west, it would have been saved many times over, based on the fact that we were cutting what, in my judgment, not to be argumen- tative with my colleagues, but what is over the sustainable type of forest. The question is, how do you get the salvages done? The real question is, it is easy to sell the profitable stuff, but to manage a forest properly, you need to deal with forest health and you need to deal with much of what you would say is salvage, and most sal- vage— almost all salvage in most regions is not profitable to the government. Obviously, if you get wood prices high enough, it would be, but none of us are looking for higher wood prices, I do not think. Mrs. Chenoweth. I thank the gentleman, Mr. Vento. Mr. Vento. You are welcome. Madam Chair. Thank you. Mrs. Chenoweth. I thank this panel for coming so far and for your very informative and instructive testimony. I would like to ex- cuse the panel now and call the next panel. Mrs. Chenoweth. The next panel consists of the Honorable James R. Lyons, Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Envi- ronment in the tJ.S. Department of Agriculture, and Mr. Lyons will be accompanied by the Honorable Jack Ward Thomas, Chief of the Forest Service and Mr. Tom Tuchmann, Special Assistant to the Secretary. We will also have joining us Ms. Nancy Hayes, Chief of Staff and Counselor, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Depart- ment of Interior. STATEMENT OF JAMES R. LYONS, UNDER SECRETARY FOR NATURAL RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, ACCOMPANIED BY JACK WARD THOMAS, CHIEF, FOREST SERVICE, AND THOMAS TUCHMANN, SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE SECRETARY Mr. Lyons. Thank you very much. Madam Chairwoman. I appre- ciate the opportunity to appear before you today. As you indicated, 51 I am accompanied by Dr. Jack Ward Thomas, who is Chief of the USDA Forest Service, and Mr. Tom Tuchmann, who is Special As- sistsint to the Secretary of Agriculture. Your request letter for this hearing included a number of ques- tions regarding the purposes, promises, and accomplishments under the President's forest plan. While my full statement re- sponds to those questions in greater detail, I would like to offer a few brief summary comments in response to those questions up front. To understand the goals and accomplishments of the President's Northwest Forest Plan, one must consider the circumstances that led to the need to develop the plan and the crisis that the Clinton administration was presented with when we took office and that we have sought to resolve. When the Clinton administration took office, the Pacific North- west found itself deep in turmoil and controversy over the future of timber sales, the viability of spotted owls, of saJmon, and the fu- ture of old growth forests in the region. Litigation was driving for- est policy, and injunctions against the sale and harvest of timber from the national forests and BLM lands in Western Washington, Oregon, and Northern California had brought the agency's timber sale program and the timber industry to their knees. Neither the Reagan nor Bush administrations were able to re- solve the controversy over timber production and forest protection in the region. Congress spent much time and energy reviewing this situation and receiving testimony regarding efforts by prior admin- istration officials to resolve the issue. However, a legislative solu- tion to the dilemma could not be fashioned. While controversy and confrontations continued, the communities of the region suffered. Forest products firms continued to obtain fiber from limited Federal timber sales and from private wood- lands, but for all intents and purposes. Federal timber sales were shut down. With no new national forest timber sales to fill mill yards, companies were left to operate the backlog of sales that they had purchased in years prior. But log supplies were clearly limited. At the same time, concern for the future viability of the Northern spotted owl and the integrity of old growth forest resources was growing. Murrelets and salmon stocks were also under study to de- termine if their numbers were declining and their future was at risk. A solution to the gridlock that gripped the region was des- perately needed. On April 2, 1993, President Clinton convened the Forest Conference in Portland, Oregon, to address the human and ecological issues affecting the region. This was the first major con- ference convened by the President and reflected a substantial com- mitment of time and resources by the administration. The Presi- dent, the Vice President, and a number of cabinet members were in attendance. Participants heard and discussed a wide range of issues associ- ated with the controversies affecting the region. It was clear that an aggressive and concerted effort by the Clinton administration was necessary in order to resolve these issues, to get past the in- junctions and the gridlock and to get on with the management of the national forests in a balanced and sustainable way. At the end 52 of the conference, the President announced that he would commit the resources of his administration to developing a solution to the crisis in 90 days. Soon after, the Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team, or FEMAT, was established, with Jack Thomas as chair. Dr. Thomas was then chief scientist of the Forest Service, operating out of La Grande, Oregon, and had made his mark in this issue through his leadership of the Bush administration's interagency spotted owl committee and through his participation in the House Agriculture Committee's Gang of Four study. Jack assembled a di- verse team of natural resource agency experts and academicians with expertise in biology, sociology, ecology, hydrology, fisheries and wildlife management, silviculture, and economics. The team was assembled in Portland and began its work. Under the gun and under fire, the team worked tirelessly to de- velop a comprehensive, innovative, and provocative report identify- ing a range of options for resolving forest management crises af- fecting the region. That report led to the development of a plan that eventually became the Clinton administration's strategy for resolving the gridlock in the Pacific Northwest. The plan itself was to provide for the protection of old growth for- ests and associated flora and fauna in the region and to provide for the sustainable harvest of timber from the forest. However, the for- est plan was not simply about forest management. It recognized that the region's economy was in transition from a strong depend- ence upon wood products to a more diversified economy which would benefit from a wider array of all the goods and services pro- vided by the national forests of the region. For this reason, the Northwest Forest Plan included measures to aid unemployed loggers and mill workers, to assist communities in identifying means to diversify their economic basis, and funds to retrofit mills and develop the needed infrastructure to improve and expand upon existing industries and facilities. The President's forest plan is truly a revolutionary plan and it marks a new paradigm for forest management, not only in the Pa- cific Northwest but throughout the United States. The Northwest Economic Adjustment Initiative, a multi-Federal agency effort, pro- vides immediate and long-term assistance to people, businesses, and communities where changes in forest industry and Federal for- est management practices have affected the economic and social fabric of areas dependent upon timber. County payments which have traditionally been taken from Federal timber receipts are now governed by special revenue sharing provisions in the Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 1993. Each State, Oregon, Washington, and California, has a group called the State Economic Revitalization Team, or CERT, to coordi- nate the implementation of the economic assistance programs. Members of Federal, State, local, and tribal governments and the private sector work cooperatively on these teams to make effective use of funds available to help businesses and communities. For instance. Forest Service efforts include providing technical and financial assistance to displaced timber workers and busi- nesses and communities through the Jobs in the Woods program, the old growth diversification and community assistance programs. 53 The Forest Service NEAI has invested $12 miUion in watershed restoration through the Jobs in the Woods program and has award- ed 300 contracts. Over 99 percent of the contractors and workers live in or operate their businesses within the affected region. Data on the number of workers employed and their wages based on 60 percent of the Jobs in the Woods contracts awarded show that in 1995, 2,225 workers have been employed, 1,010 of whom were displaced timber workers, at an average wage and benefit of $17.10 an hour. Old growth diversification funds are used for projects that add value to existing timber resources and create and retain employ- ment. In Oregon, this program stimulated the investment of $15.77 for every dollar of agency funding. As a result, an estimated total of 943 jobs were created. Overall, more than 4,900 job training opportunities have been created in the region, and as of last September, more than 81 per- cent of those completing training had found emplo3anent. The Northwest Forest Plan applies current science to on-the- ground management. This is done in a number of ways. Watershed analysis provides the basic information for managing watersheds. Thus far, the Forest Service has completed 120 watershed analy- ses, comprising over seven million acres. We have done so in co- ordinating with the other Federal agencies who are our partners in managing the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and I would say that we are on schedule in completing the analysis proposed in the forest plan. With respect to wildlife conservation, we are already seeing the benefits of our efforts. Where watershed analyses have been com- pleted and the streamlined consultation approach has been imple- mented, consultation under the Endangered Species Act is com- pleted quickly. For example, between August 30, 1995, and May 31 of this year, 102 informal consultations were completed, averaging 18 days per consultation. There were 18 formal consultations, aver- aging 46 days per consultation. In order to sustain forest ecosystems and local economies, the Northwest Forest Plan recognizes the need to invest money into these ecosystems. This is accomplished through watershed restora- tion, by improving fish passages, stabilizing land erosion, resur- facing roads, revegetating road banks, and reclaiming unnecessary or problem roads. These projects have also provided immediate em- plo3Tnent for displaced workers through the award of 300 water- shed restoration contracts. The Northwest Forest Plan has included management areas that build on our monitoring efforts but goes one step further in creat- ing areas for developing and testing new ideas. The plan estab- lishes what we call ten adaptive management areas, which operate on the principle of adaptive management, which means we learn from our actions and change our management when necessary. For clarification, the Northwest Forest Plan covers 24 million acres of Federal land. Thirty percent of these acres have been set aside for special protection by acts of Congress. The remaining 70 percent is allocated in the following manner: Late successional re- serves constitute 30 percent; adaptive management areas, six per- cent; managed late successional areas, one percent; administra- 54 tively withdrawn areas, six percent; riparian reserves, 11 percent; and matrix land, 16 percent. Approximately 19.5 million acres of the Northwest Forest Plan are National Forest System lands, of which 22 percent is in the matrix in adaptive management areas. The sustainable production of forest products is a key part of the Northwest Forest Plan. The Northwest Forest Plan estimated a po- tential timber sale quantity of just over a billion board feet per year for the Forest Service and BLM management areas combined. The Forest Service's portion of this volume is approximately 850 million board feet. As forest plans are revised and on-the-ground analysis is completed, we will revise the PSQ. In 1995, the Forest Service planned to offer 454 million board feet and exceeded that volume by offering nearly 500 million board feet. A portion of the excess volume came from late successional re- serves and riparian reserves as a result of meeting ecosystem objec- tives. In 1996, the Forest Service plans to offer 610 million board feet, and in 1997, we will offer sufficient volume to meet the full estimated PSQ. In short, Madam Chairwoman, we are on track for preparing timber sales under the provisions of the Northwest Forest Plan consistent with our commitment to ramp up to a sustainable level of forest offerings. The accomplishments we have realized in managing National Forest System lands are the result of taking to heart President Clinton's principle to make the Federal Government work together and work for the American people. To facilitate this coordination, the Federal agencies have developed the Northwest Forest Plan Interagency Cooperative Structure. Part of this structure facilitates the Northwest Economic Assistance Initiative, that I just discussed. The Regional Interagency Executive Committee serves as the sen- ior regional body coordinating and implementing the forest plan. A Regional Ecosystem Office provides independent recommendations and scientific technical and other staff support to the REIC. The Northwest Forest Plan area is divided into 12 provinces with distinct land ecosystem and climatic qualities and an advisory com- mittee is included in each province. As a result of these advisory committees, there have been over 300 people involved in advisory meetings concerning the forest plan. Working in partnership with other agencies and the public, many accomplishments have been made. Some of these accomplishments are the completion of a revised Interagency Watershed Analysis Guide, streamlined consultation, the distribution of over $29 mil- lion of economic assistance through the Community Economic Revi- talization Teams, an interagency monitoring plan, the development of a strong linkage among the existing State Rural Development Councils and Community Economic Revitalization Teams. In conclusion, we feel we have made significant progress in meet- ing the goals set forth in President Clinton's historic conference and encompassed in the Northwest Forest Plan, goals of supporting people and communities during a period of economic transition, of providing for sustainable forest products, protecting and restoring the environment, ensuring that Federal agencies work together as one government, and adhering to our nation's laws and utilizing 55 scientifically credible research as a foundation for our decisionmak- ing. We are proud of what we have accomplished, Madam Chair- woman. We believe we are on target. I would be glad to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. [The statement of Mr. Lyons may be found at end of hearing.] Mrs. Chenoweth. I thank you, Secretary Lyons. I want to let the committee and the panel know that we have two votes that have been called, one on the NATO suspension and one on food quality suspension, so I think I am going to recess the committee right now. We will probably be gone for about 20 min- utes. We will return about 1:30. Thank you. [Recess.] Mr. Hansen. [Presiding.] Let me apologize to our witnesses. We are all really busy today and supposed to be in three places at the same time. Excuse the musical chairs that has been going on. I ap- preciate Mrs. Chenoweth chairing, as she has. I understand, Mr. Lyons, that you have testified. Mr. Lyons. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hansen. Nancy Hayes, Chief of Staff and Counselor, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Department of the Interior, are you up? Ms. Hayes. Yes. Thank you. Mr. Hansen. How much time do you need? Ms. KLayes. Less than five minutes. Mr. Hansen. Christina, give her seven minutes, will you? [Laughter.] Mr. Hansen. Everybody goes over their time. That is expected, especially around here. STATEMENT OF NANCY HAYES, CHIEF OF STAFF AND COUN- SELOR, BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Ms. Hayes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate this opportunity to bring the Subcommittee up to date on the Bureau of Land Management's implementation of President Clinton's Northwest Forest Plan. I will summarize my statement, but I would ask that my entire statement be made a part of the hearing record. The President's Forest Plan established a blueprint, a science- based, legal, and balanced forest management plan that provides for both economic opportunity and protection of the environment through five fundamental goals. In June of 1994, just two months after the plan's Record of Decision was adopted, the Federal court injunctions banning timber harvests from Federal lands were lift- ed. Timber sales in the region of the northern spotted owl were once again offered and timber was harvested. Earlier this year, the President's forest plan was upheld by a Federal appeals court. The President created the Northwest Forest Plan to resolve in- tense disputes about use of the public forests. Individuals on both sides of the issues were driven by passionately held beliefs, and the compromise reached in the Forest Plan did not please every inter- ested party. However, the Forest Plan has had many successes: re- training dislocated timber workers, providing a stable, sustainable 56 supply of timber, protecting wildlife habitat and collaborative Adaptive Management Area planning. Let me now turn to the specifics of the BLM's implementation of the Forest Plan. We measure our accomplishments, past, present, and future, against the Plan's five fundamental goals. The first goal is to support the region's people and communities during a period of economic transition. From the start, the Presi- dent made clear his goal was to relieve the paralysis that had gripped timber-dependent communities in the Pacific Northwest during the gridlock. To help these communities diversify their economies, the President developed a five-year, $1.2 billion eco- nomic assistance package. It has awarded millions of dollars in grants and loans to stimulate business growth and economic devel- opment in rural communities in Washington, Oregon, and Califor- nia, and to develop and improve community infrastructure, includ- ing waste systems and water treatment facilities. The second goal is to provide a sustainable timber economy. Let me assure the Subcommittee that the BLM is meeting its commit- ment to offer timber sales under the Northwest Forest Plan. In 1994, the BLM in western Oregon made a commitment to ramp up to offering the full allowable sale quantity under the Western Or- egon Resource Management Plans. In fiscal year 1995, we commit- ted to offering 120.5 million board feet that met the standards and guidelines of the Northwest Forest Plan and we offered 129.5 mil- lion. In fiscal year 1996, we committed to offer 182.5 million board feet. To date, we have offered 128 million board feet and we will meet our target. We are committed to offering the full sustainable amount of 213.5 million board feet in fiscal year 1997. The third goal is to protect and enhance the environment. At its core, the goal of the Forest Plan was to restore some level of timber harvesting by methods that also protect and enhance the environ- ment. Our first priorities were watershed analysis and expedited consultations in timber sale preparation. To protect and restore watersheds, the BLM began to do water- shed ansdysis for the entire area, systematically characterizing the aquatic, riparian, and land features within a watershed. Watershed analysis is critical because it paves the way for timber sales, and other projects, in the future. The BLM developed expedited procedures for consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service on Forest Plan projects in the six western Oregon BLM districts to ensure protection for threatened or endangered species or critical habitat. Under these expedited procedures, the districts rapidly completed consultation on all fiscal year 1995 projects. We have already finished 80 to 90 percent of our fiscal year 1996 projects and we are already working on many of our fiscal year 1997 projects. These expedited procedures cut our consultation time by more than half Informal consultations are completed in 17 days or less and formal consultations result in bio- logical opinions in just 43 days. The fourth goal is to ensure that Federal agencies work together as one government. The President directed the Federal regiilatory and land management agencies to work together in carrying out the Forest Plan. This order to the agencies — to work better to- gether— was unprecedented in a region as large as that covered by 57 the Forest Plan. But we did it, and things are working better than we hoped. The fifth goal is to adhere to our nation's laws. In 1990, the BLM was not meeting all applicable environmental laws. In December 1994, Judge Dwyer found that the Forest Plan met the require- ments of not only the environmental laws but also laws addressing the need for timber. Last month, Federal District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson of the District of Columbia ruled that he was de- ferring to Judge Dwyer's ruling on the Forest Plan, and as you know, Judge Dwyer has been upheld by the Ninth Circuit. Legally, we are sound. In summary, then, three points. Before the Forest Plan, we had gridlock. After the Forest Plan, we have a future for timber sales in the Northwest. We are proud of that future, and of our success in making it happen. Second, the BLM is meeting its targets for timber volume, and then some. And third, we are very proud of how well our people in the field have implemented the Forest Plan. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I will be happy to an- swer any questions. [The statement of Ms. Hayes may be found at end of hearing.] Mr. Hansen. Thank you. Mrs. Chenoweth? Mrs. Chenoweth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Lyons, I wanted you to know that I have gotten some reports from Idaho that our lumbermen were very pleased with the in- structive and informative meeting that Dr. Jack Ward Thomas had with them out in Idaho. I wanted to refer to the graphs that are up there. Dr. Thomas, could you show me what percent of the 800 million board feet that you have lined out there for 1997, 1996, 1995, what percent is saw logs and what percent is pulp wood? Mr. Thomas. I could. I have it with me. It will take me a minute to find it. Mr. TUCHMANN. If I may, the Forest Service does not report ac- tual saw log/pulp wood/firewood volume in terms of target commit- ments, but what we did do, given concerns by this committee and others, is estimated that for 1995, and our estimate is that 77 per- cent was saw logs, 14 percent was for poles, and the remainder was noncommercial volume. Mrs. Chenoweth. Actually, what we have seen, although Presi- dent Clinton promised a total of 1.053 billion board feet, saw logs being at 0.948 billion board feet and pulp wood at 0.105 billion board feet, we have not seen that, according to what our figures are. What we saw in 1994 were 0.187 billion board feet of saw logs, and then in 1995, 0.336 billion board feet of saw logs. So we are falling way under what is the normal industry standard and what the President had promised. Do you have any comment on that? Mr. Lyons. Yes, Mrs. Chenoweth. I know that there was a report that was prepared, at least, we have obtained a copy of it, that al- leges that we have fallen short of our goals. Mr. Tuchmann, who is in Portland working for the Secretary monitoring these things, I think, is in a position to respond to the specific points raised in that report and, I think, could explain the differences that exist. So 58 I will let Tom address that, and then, if you like, I think Jack can talk about what the forest plan called for overall. Mr. TUCHMANN. We are getting into this arcane business of num- bers and differences between volume offered, sold, and harvested. What the forest plan committed to in our probable sale quantity calculation was 953 million board feet offered. That offer is cal- culated on what they call chargeable volume, which historically was primarily saw logs but did not have to include saw logs specifi- cally. What I just reported to you, the 77 percent and 14 percent, that is 91 percent, was commercial volume that was offered last year under the 600 million board foot target between the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, so we feel that we have met that probable sale quantity commitment in 1995, and we also feel that we are on track for 1996. Mrs. Chenoweth. What is the difference between the sales that were offered and the sales that were actually harvested, according to that chart? Mr. TuCHMANN. Those are offered volumes, not harvested. Mrs. Chenoweth. Right. Mr. TuCHMANN. A purchaser has up to three years to harvest that volume after it has been sold and awarded. Mrs. Chenoweth. My problem is that with Secretary Glickman's latest rules and regulations, it has brought it to a screeching halt. I know it has across Idaho, and that is a serious disappointment. I hope that there is some way we can work out of that, not only for jobs and communities but for forest health, too, and because we really would like to believe in the President's promise. President Clinton said July 1, 1993, by preserving the forests and setting predictable and sustainable levels of timber sales, it protects jobs, not just in the short term but for years to come, and I think the President was talking about timber sales and protecting jobs. Although I appreciated the Secretary's testimony, actually, what I am hearing is that we are putting a lot of processes in place but yet we are frustrated about getting the logs out of the forest. Secretary Lyons, you also mentioned about the fact that the President's plan requires a watershed analysis, and you are en- gaged in that, to be completed for every watershed before timber sales can proceed. What percent of the analyses have been com- pleted as of today? Mr. Lyons. Let me just check my numbers on that for a second, Congresswoman. I would point out, if I could respond to the earlier point that you made, that neither the — I assume you were referring to the Secretary's directive with regard to salvage timber sales in your earlier comment? Mrs. Chenoweth. Yes. Mr. Lyons, [continuing] — nor the activities that we have been in- volved in have brought anything to a screeching halt. Quite to the contrary, I think they have facilitated moving forward both with an aggressive salvage sale program and, of course, we have continued to operate aggressively to implement the Mrs. Chenoweth. If the Secretary will yield for just a moment, most of the sales in my district have stopped because of the Sec- 59 retary's directive. I imagine it is that way throughout the North- west. Mr. Lyons. I would suggest to you, Congresswoman, that if they have stopped, it has been a temporary stop while some additional analysis and evaluation proceeds. What the Secretary's directive does is not stop timber sales. What it does is it clarifies which sal- vage timber sales should proceed under the emergency rules pro- mulgated by the Congress and which sales should proceed through the normsd salvage sale program. That is the only distinction that exists. So I would be stunned if all salvage sales in your district came to a halt. In fact, I can assure you that, since Jack has been out there and talked with folks, that we are pleased with the perform- ance of forest supervisors in that portion of Idaho in dealing with the salvage directive that they have received. Mrs. Chenoweth. Secretary Lyons, I just wonder if you could be in touch with James Caswell, the supervisor of the Clearwater Na- tional Forest, where sales that his people had been working on for a year, three major sales were brought to a screeching halt with the release of the Secretary's new rules and regulations. Mr. Lyons. The only sales that would have been impacted in that regard, Congresswoman, would have been sales in roadless areas, and I would clarify that one of the objectives of the Sec- retaries directive is to try and place priority on those sales that ought to be a priority from the standpoint of threat to life or prop- erty, sales that might be imminently susceptible to fire. In those instances where roadless area sales were proceeding, we provided direction that those sales should proceed through the nor- mal process rather than the expedited process unless there is a threat that they are imminently susceptible to fire. So that would be the only distinction that is drawn. Mrs. Chenoweth. Mr. Secretary, what is the normal process? I do not think we have a normal process anymore. Dr. Thomas? Mr. Thomas. I think that some of the sales that Caswell may have under consideration are those that had been put forward and had been appealed and the appeal had been upheld and then we had proceeded with certain portions of that operation under the salvage regulation. That may be one that we have been instructed to — that was one set of sales, not that one specifically, but that one criteria was one thing we were told to pay close attention to, and I suspect that is one of the sales that he is dealing with. The other one, the question is what is a normal procedure for a salvage sale? Mrs. Chenoweth. I wanted to know what is normal these days. Mr. Thomas. Oh, boy. Mrs. Chenoweth. Mr. Caswell said in a newspaper report that it is not clear yet whether these sales will be held up three or four months or until after the salvage law expires. If these sales do not fall under the criteria of having been appealed and upheld, would you be willing to release them immediately? Mr. Thomas. What we are going to do is follow the instructions in the Secretary's letter, which we have clarified out there, some of them, if it has a green component above a certain level, our in- structions are that I would review those sales. So I am not — there 60 are a lot of sales. I am not familiar with specifically those. But there may be sales where that green component exceeds, I believe, 20 percent, 25 percent of volume, which we have been instructed to review at my level. When those do come in for review, we will expedite them as rapidly as we possibly can to make sure that they are OK, and if they are, we will proceed. If there is a problem, of course, we will hold them. Mrs. Chenoweth. I know my time is up and the Chairman wants to proceed. I am not going to talk about silvicultural man- agement here, but I would love to just work with you. Dr. Thomas, on what your criteria is, even in associated trees. When they are in a disease or insect-infested area, they are likely to be attacked and killed, also, so we are very concerned. Mr. Thomas. I can respond to that very quickly. That is part of the review process. We would like to achieve other silvicultursd as- pects. We want to be as effective and efficient as we can, and if that is put forward and it is clear, then we will proceed. If there is a problem, we will not. But let me tell you, if we do not proceed, that does not mean the sale will not go forward. It means it may go forward after the expiration of the salvage rider because there is an obvious concern with public input and ability to appeal. So we will follow that process. If it looks good and it seems to be within the guidelines, we will proceed. If not, we will delay it until the salvage rider is expired and then we will proceed under regular process. Mrs. Chenoweth. Thank you, Dr. Thomas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hansen. Thank you, Mrs. Chenoweth. This has been an interesting hearing. This is the seventh hear- ing, I think, we have done on this type of thing. Also, we went out to Roseburg, Oregon, and did a hearing. But we keep hearing the same thing. We get a lot of folks in, elected officials, county super- visors, city councilmen, loggers, environmentalists. There is a difference of opinion, obviously. The loggers point out, especially the union folks, how many hundreds of jobs they are los- ing. Some of the fish and wildlife people talk about how they have to have more habitat. The lumber people talk about how the price of lumber has escalated. Other people talk about how unreasonable the government is, whether it is the Forest Service, BLM, Con- gress, or whatever it may be. Out of this timber sales, this salvage thing, that law was passed on July 27, 1995, and during the emergency period, the Secretary concerned is to achieve to the maximum extent feasible a salvage timber sale volume level above the program level to reduce the backlog volume of salvage timber. If I am reading Secretary Glickman's direction of July 2, it pretty well countermands that. Is that the whole theory behind this, Mr. Lyons? Mr. Lyons. No, it is not, Mr. Chairman. Quite to the contrary, it simply is intended to provide additional guidance with regard to how the emergency salvage program is to be implemented. It is not countermanding in any way, shape, or form. I would offer that it is a clarification of guidelines that the field is to use and direction 61 to Jack to help the field better understand how to proceed under the emergency provisions. Mr. Hansen. In your opinion, this actually compliments the law and does not in any way change the law? Mr. Lyons. It is not inconsistent at all with the law, Mr. Chair- man. Mr. Hansen. It was not intended to do that? Mr. Lyons. No, sir. Mr. Hansen. Your chart, Mr. Lyons, and I was not here, and I apologize to you, identified the timber sale volume offered. How much of that volume was actually sold? Mr. Lyons. I would have to get that information for you, Mr. Chairman. Of course, you understand that Mr. Hansen. Can you give us a rough estimate of the offer and what was sold? Mr. Lyons. If you give me a couple of seconds, we will generate that, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hansen. While we are looking for that statistic, let me give you another one. How much of the volume is saw log volume and how much is other wood, pulp, fuel wood, et cetera? Mr. Lyons. Actually, we just presented some of that information to Mrs. Chenoweth with regard to the percentages. Tom can go over it again, if you like. Mr. Hansen. I do not mean to try and pin you down. I am not trying to do that. Mr. Lyons. No. Mr. Hansen. I just really, honestly want to know the answer to this. The President's plan establishes a probable sale quantity of 1.053 billion board feet with 90 percent saw timber and ten percent other wood. That is what he came up with. Was that not his idea? Mr. Lyons. Why do I not let Mr. Tuchmann address that, since he just went over the numbers? Mr. Hansen. Mr. Tuchmann, we will turn to you, sir. Mr. Tuchmann. Again, Mr. Chairman, what we committed to was that volume in "chargeable volume", which includes saw tim- ber and other commercial species. Our estimates are that 77 per- cent of the volume you see on that graph was saw timber, 14 per- cent was poles and other commercial products of that type, and that the remainder was noncommercial volume. Mr. Hansen. So it has not come too close, then, when he said 90 percent would be saw timber. Mr. Tuchmann. No, we never said that 90 percent would be saw timber. Mr. Hansen. No, the President did. Mr. Tuchmann. I am not aware of that. Mr. Hansen. Is that right? Maybe I have wrong information here. Mr. Lyons. Mr. Chairman, if I could make a point here? Mr. Hansen. Sure. Mr. Lyons. I am going to have to follow up with the information on actually how much was sold, but I want to make a point. There is always this distinction between sold and harvested and I think what essential is all we can do in the Forest Service, BLM, is offer timber for sale, hopefully, sales that are economically viable. So we 26-951 - 96 - 3 62 measure the performance of the agency, of course, by how much has been offered. So we have used as an objective approximately a bilUon board feet as our goal for timber offered, consistent with the President's forest plan, and I want to make clear that we are on track toward that offer goal. Mr. Hansen. Let me respectfully disagree with you just a tad, Mr. Lyons. As I read the law that was passed in 1995 and I read Mr. Glickman's instructions that he put out on July 2, it says no salvage in inventoried roadless areas except where imminently sus- ceptible to fire. If you are going to achieve this thing, how do you not do that? It seems to me that you have a contradiction here. If you are going to achieve what it says in the law of 1995 and then you put a restriction on it where you could and could not go, it seems to me you cannot achieve it. In these seven or eight hearings we have had, and when I talk to people from the land grant colleges and forest people, they say, let us get out and clean up some of this stuff. Your possibility of fire escalates dramatically, and we see all kinds of fires cropping up all around, whether they are caused by man or they are caused by lightning. But when you have a lot of timber around, most of us realize you are going to get the fire. It is just like when we do not take care of the pine beetle and we do not cut or spray. Imme- diately, we have these dead trees out there and you can almost count on it. The head of the Utah State University Forestry Department told me at one time, he said, if you do not clean out the pine beetle, and he was talking about an area in the Dixie National Forest, which, incidentally, is having all kinds of problems because of the challenges of the environmental groups, he said, I will give you the statistics. You have 100 percent chance you are going to have a fire. He said, this is going to happen. Then he went on to say, then you have a 100 percent chance you are going to have a flood, and that top soil that has taken 100 years to build up goes to zilch and you will not bring it back in five lifetimes. So I do not understand how my good friend, Dan Glickman, who I worked with very closely on a lot of issues when he was here, can think that this really compliments the law of July 27, 1995. It seems to me it is in contradiction to it. Mr. Lyons. Let me elaborate on my answer, Mr. Chairman, if I could. I believe it compliments the law in that it does not restrict what timber can be sold. It just clarifies what process those salvage sales should go through. There is an emergency process that is spelled out in the statute. Mr. Hansen. I thought it was Colorado and Montana that made the restrictions. Am I wrong on that? The law says, not to enter roadless areas under these provisions in Colorado and Montana only. Mr. Lyons. That may have been the case. I cannot address that specifically. I would say this with regard to roadless areas, if that is the question, that we have simply stated that salvage sales to be offered in roadless areas where the sale is not imminently sus- ceptible to fire should go through what we would call the normal salvage procedure. That is, these are sales that should be prepared 63 with an EIS and that should be subject to appeal, so the public has an opportunity to- Mr. Hansen. How do you Mr. Lyons. That is the only distinction we have drawn. Mr. Hansen. Excuse me, Mr. Secretary. How do you determine when it is highly susceptible to fire? Mr. Lyons. That is a judgment that has to be made on the ground, but it also has something to do with Mr. Hansen. The district supervisor would make that decision? Mr. Lyons. Yes, and Mr. Hansen. Is that how that works, Chief? Mr. Thomas. Yes, sir. That would be correct, unless the volume was over 20 percent of the volume was green and the Secretary has instructed me to review those sales. Mr. Hansen. Thank you. Chief, while I have you at the microphone there, I understand you recently visited some of the Forest Service salvage sales in the West. Based on your observation when you were out there, do you agree with Bonnie Phillips in her testimony, "the salvage rider has had a devastating effect on the ecological environment"? Mr. Thomas. No, sir. Mr. Hansen. You do not agree with that? How about Mr. Thomas. Wait. Wait. I Mr. Hansen. Excuse me, sir. Go ahead. Mr. Thomas. Let me — this is critical. Repeat that for me. I am a little deaf. Mr. Hansen. So am I, so speak up. Too much shooting in your younger years. Mr. Thomas. I still do it. Mr. Hansen. I do, too. Mr. Thomas. Could you repeat the question, please? Mr. Hansen. I just wondered, on your recent visit where you had an opportunity to see the salvage sales when you were out in the West, do you agree with Ms. Phillips, who testified earlier, and in her testimony, she says, "the salvage rider has had a devastating effect on the ecological environment"? Do you agree with that state- ment? Mr. Thomas. I would like to separate the question of the 318 sales away from the salvage part. There were 318 sales, the old growth sales that were associated. If we separate that out and talk about the salvage aspects of the rider, I do not agree with that. Mr. Hansen. You do not? How about you, Nancy Hayes from BLM? Do you agree with that statement from Bonnie Phillips? Ms. Hayes. The BLM has, as the President directed, followed all environmental laws in implementing the salvage portion of the sal- vage rider. Therefore, I would not agree that it has had a devastat- ing effect. Mr. Hansen. So both the Forest Service and BLM would disagree with the Audubon Society on this statement, then? Mr. Thomas. I disagree with that statement, yes, sir. Mr. Hansen. OK. Chief, the spotted owl situation on the Olympic Peninsula has recently been reanalyzed. What do the scientists think about the spotted owl population on the Olympic Peninsula? Is this an area of particular concern for the spotted owl? 64 Mr. Thomas. I have not seen that. Mr. Hansen. You have not seen that? Mr. Thomas. I have not seen that. Mr. Hansen. Will there be a reanalysis of this stuff at all? Mr. Thomas. Yes, sir. There is a continuing rolling reanalysis. We are continuing to spend money both on monitoring and on re- search on spotted owls and we constantly consider new informa- tion. However, I would also point out to you that by the time we got through with Option 9, the question was a far larger question than spotted owls. It was a question of the old growth system and a number of — hundreds of other species associated with the system. Mr. Hansen. My time is more than up. Mr. Secretary, the President's plan that I referred to, if you could get me that information, I would be grateful. Mr. Lyons. I actually have that, Mr. Chairman, if I could just read it for you. Mr. Hansen. Sure. Mr. Lyons. In fiscal year 1995, we planned to offer 458 million board feet. That includes the PSQ offer as well as the, what we call other wood. The actual offer was 493 million board feet. We sold 387, and 437 million board feet were harvested. In 1996, the total offer is 610. I do not have the 1997 figure here. So the figures for 1995 would indicate we offered 493, sold 387 million board feet, and 437 million board feet were harvested. Those are the most recent figures. Mr. Hansen. I see. Thank you very much for your testimony. Mr. Vento? Mr. Vento. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. When you talk about the numbers, Mr. Secretary, we are not just talking about Region 9. We are talking nationwide on the salvage numbers? Those are only salvage numbers? Is this just Region 9? Mr. Lyons. Those are the forest plan numbers. I am sorry. We keep jumping back and forth between forest plan and salvage sale program. Mr. Vento. Yes, I noticed that. In addition to this, then, there may have been more salvage that is harvested, or did the 50 mil- lion board feet that you are talking about — what was the salvage for Region 9, then? Or Region 6, pardon me? Mr. Lyons. For Region 6? I do not have the actual salvage offer for Region 6 with me, Mr. Vento. Mr. Vento. That has been the concern, because I think Region 6, that is really what has driven the salvage. It is pretty obvious and evident from those that are in the forefront of this particular issue that it is a Region 6 issue. So I just think that the issue here is the forest plan. Obviously, we are talking about that today. You are also talking about, in conjunction with that, forest salvage. This does not include 318, then, either, does it? Mr. Lyons. This reflects the actual offers on the west side, or the Cascades, of course, in Oregon, Washington, and Northern Califor- nia. Mr. Vento. But these are new offers, new sales. Mr. Lyons. Yes, sir. Mr. Vento. So they do not reflect 318. Mr. Lyons. No, they do not. 65 Mr. Vento. So we do not have 318 in there. We do not have sal- vage rider material in there. So I just think it is important that we understand what is going on. We keep jumping back and forth between these two, and I do not know, maybe somebody else has it very straight in their minds, but it is not in mind. So I just think, for the record, it might be that you want to do a full report- ing on that if it is possible today, right now. It is not, I guess. On the salvage sales, you also have offered and prepared more salvage sales than have been purchased, too, is that correct? Can you give me any type of idea for Region 6, since we seem to be talk- ing about Region 6, what is offered and what is purchased? I might add that it is my understanding that you do not offer salvage that is not economic. You try to actually put these together to make them somewhat attractive and obtain all the goals that you have. Mr. Lyons. Let me address the first question first. In terms of salvage offer for Region 6 in the Pacific Northwest, in 1995, our of- fered volume for salvage was 539 million board feet, which was ac- tually 118 percent of what we had planned. In 1996, our offer for Region 6 thus far is 195 million, although we have 491 million pro- jected. These are accomplishments through June 30, so the last quarter is when the bulk of the salvage is to be offered. Mr. Vento. So there is 419 projected, you said, for this year? Mr. Lyons. Four-hundred-and-ninety-one. Mr. Vento. Ninety-one. In 1995, how much was purchased in Re- gion 6 of salvage? Mr. Lyons. Excuse me? I am sorry, Mr. Vento. Mr. Vento. How much was sold in 1995? Mr. Lyons. I do not have that. Mr. Vento. Was it all sold? Mr. Lyons. No, I do not believe it was. We have had problems in having some sales sold. Mr. Vento. Can you give us any type of characterization? Was there a significant portion that was not sold? I mean, we obviously need numbers because we are trying to operate on facts here. Mr. Lyons. I am told that about 50 to 60 million board feet was not sold this past year. Mr. Vento. So you think that that is going to continue? In other words, have there been larger problems? Region 6, of course, is really the high-grade. In terms of the forests nationwide, it is really the high-grade type of timber. Mr. Lyons. The interest in purchase, obviously, is a function of— stumpage price is a function of the quality of the timber and a number of factors. Stumpage prices declined precipitously between the time that the Recision Act was passed and the salvage rider was put into effect and where we are now. Mr. Vento. I know there are other economic factors, Mr. Sec- retary, that affect it, but I do not think that it affects the fact that Region 6 tends to be a very high grade timber, whether it is sal- vage or non-salvage. I mean, those are still the Douglas firs and cedars and other types of timber. I mean, we just do not have that in Minnesota. There is not quite as much interest in aspen. Mr. Lyons. Of course, most of the salvage in Region 6 comes from the east side, Mr. Vento, so while we have high quality softwoods west of the Cascades and certainly have some highly val- 66 ued timber on the east side, the salvage we are talking about is from the east side, and that is a function of, as I said, the factors that impact its quality and Mr. Vento. What often happens, Mr. Secretary, that, in fact, when putting a salvage proposal together, besides trying to be eco- nomic, you are trying to do something called forest health, is that right? Mr. Lyons. Correct. Mr. Vento. I note that my colleague, of course, went on to point out, and it looks like to me that there is a pretty good definition in this that the Secretary is, in fact, pointing out that the salvage definition in the law that was passed was very broad and vague, in his words, in the words of the Secretary, the memorandum of the Secretary of July 2. That is what the Secretary says. Then he goes on to talk about trees eminently susceptible to insect attack, and then he goes on to talk about eminently susceptible to fire, but in that definition, he also deals not just with fire but he deals with personal property and life. Mr. Lyons. What we have tried to do, Mr. Vento, is place a high priority on those sales that are in what we call the urban interface zone, so we are Mr. Vento. I certainly understand that, Mr. Secretary. I just want it on the record. I mean, the point here is that when the For- est Service is dealing with these issues, they are not just dealing with these in the abstract in terms of volume but they are dealing with a number of other goals that are trying to be achieved, like preventing personal property from being damaged, is that correct? Mr. Lyons. That is correct. Mr. Vento. The law does not specify that. This rider, at least, does not specify that. It seems to me that the Secretary in point four is also trying to avoid unnecessary duplication when he says, any part of a sale and preparation that was identified to the public through a scoping notice, environmental assessment, decision, or other manner prior to subsequent enactment of this law should, in fact, go forward. In other words, was there duplication going on? Mr. Lyons. Actually, I think that was intended to address an- other concern, Mr. Vento, and Mr. Vento. Maybe I misunderstood it. Mr. Lyons. We wanted to be sure that in offering salvage sales, that sales did not proceed and were not offered under the emer- gency salvage program that had either been offered previously and withdrawn or had been offered previously as a green sale and then after the passage of the salvage rider were subsequently offered as a salvage sale under the emergency provisions. I think that is a rare event, but we wanted to be abundantly clear. Mr. Vento. No. I thought points four and five — in fact, point five, I think, addressed that, so I think that there is, though, it seemed to me, in reading that, that this was actually intended to, in fact, not require duplication, and that point five actually addressed the answer that you have just given me. One of the suggestions here is that there is a direct relation — we have heard this allegation over and over and I want the Forest Chief or yourself, Mr. Secretary, to respond to it — and that is that 67 the incidence of fire and its relationship to salvage and the manner in which the forests are managed. And secondly, I wanted to raise the question about reducing the total volume of salvage that might be occurring, even though you have right now what many would describe as an aggressive pro- gram, one which, in fact, limits the application of various proce- dures and process which, I think, really in the end is not going to be helpful. But in any case, it does truncate many of the laws and other process that have normally been followed, but will, in fact, because of drought, because of other factors, really overshadow what happens in terms of salvage sales, not the least of which one is, of course, that you cannot sell the salvage. If you, in fact, pre- pare the sale, you cannot force people to buy it because there are market forces and/or other issues that deal with profitability. So my two questions, one deals with giving a shot on fire, and second on reducing the total amount of salvage that is in our na- tional forests by virtue of this law or any other. Mr. Lyons. I would say, Mr. Vento, that we believe with these additional directive and clarification offered by the Secretary, we are going to be within the goal that we agreed to with the Congress as a part of the salvage rider that was on the Recision Act. With regard Mr. Vento. Let me just interject, though, that the law that was read here said that you would reduce the total amount of salvage available in the forests. Mr. Lyons. The law directed us to address the backlog that ex- ists, and I would say that there is certainly a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done to improve forest health. Salvage is one portion of that. I will let Jack address silviculturally what it is we are trjdng to tackle. Mr. Thomas. Without giving a long speech, this issue is so politi- cized that everybody is losing focus here. We have a forest health problem, in my opinion, when we define what is healthy, and healthy enough for what. It took us a long time to get there. We would not get out of this with the salvage rider, with or without it. This is a small portion of the problem. Salvage can be part of the solution. Sometimes salvage is to make some silvicultural treatment, to fireproof. Sometimes salvage is just salvage because it makes sense. We can do it, achieve some objectives of getting ready for regeneration, that we can provide jobs, we can provide wood to the mills. Sometimes salvage is just salvage. This issue needs to be a broader discussion. This salvage rider is a blip. When it is over, no matter what our achievement is, we still have a very large problem that we have to collectively address in some intelligent fashion. I will make my little speech now. I hate to see us so diverted by this particular question that we lose focus on the larger questions that we have to address. This is just part of it. We do have salvage we can do. We were already aggressively moving ahead with sal- vage. But I am afraid that all of this argument is beginning to di- vert us from the real question of how v/e address those questions that have evolved over a very long period of time. This will not get 68 us out of it. This did not get us into it. This is one year in a very, very long program and we need to start talking about how we are going to get from A to some desirable condition further downline. That is my answer, and excuse my speech. Mr. Vento. I appreciate it, but I just think it is an important question because the presumption is that this is sort of a downpay- ment and that you can reduce the amount of salvage, but I think it is obvious from the economics and from weather and other fac- tors that are going on that it is not likely to happen even if you hit the so-called targets here, even if the market sustains it. I think the other issue, of course, is the whole fire regime issue and the suggestion that simply the lack of an aggressive salvage program is responsible for the fires. It would be good just for fires to burn where there are salvage laws, but unfortunately, they do not do that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Hansen. Thank you. If I may ask Nancy Hayes another question, we had some inter- esting testimony to start out with. Sue Kupillas testified today about the blowdown/snowdown salvage sale possibility and testified there are tens of millions of board feet of timber, probably 100 mil- lion board feet of timber in these lands. They say a lot of this is sawmill quality timber. This is kind of under your jurisdiction. Do you intend to harvest that? Ms. Hayes. Yes. We try and harvest any — well, if it is too dis- persed, it is difficult to harvest it. It may not be cost effective. We may not get bidders. But assuming that the blowdown is condensed enough that it makes sense, we try to harvest that. My under- standing, also, is that the forest plan does not preclude such har- vest in LSRs, which Mr. Hansen. You have two of them. One is yours and one is the Forest Service's. What does the Forest Service intend to do? Mr. Thomas. We ordinarily pick up any salvage opportunity that we have that we can do under environmental restriction and that makes some semblance of economic and social sense. But as Nancy was trying to point out, even in the Northwest, where their lands are located, and in Region 6 that we are discussing, such salvage is not even precluded within late successional reserves. Mr. Hansen. I do not disagree with what you said earlier. Chief, regarding the bigger picture. I agree with that, and I know that some of these targets are sometimes arbitrary, just like we have ar- bitrary things. We just kind of like to follow it out and see what we can do to get the best of both worlds, if there is a way to do that. You could salvage some of this timber, keep the prices of tim- ber down, which seems to be totally prohibitive today. In fact, a guy was telling me the other day you can build a steel house cheap- er than you can a wood house, which I thought was an amazing statement. Mr. Thomas. Mr. Chairman, I might want to point out to you that we have had a precipitous decline in stumpage value, which is part of our problem in being able to get some of this stuff mar- keted. Things that we could have obviously marketed when we started preparing the sale, by the time we got through, the price had declined to the point where it was difficult for us to sell it. 69 Mr. Hansen. The market is always the driver in this thing, there is no question about it, just like our cattlemen right now. I wonder if there will be any of them left at the end of the year. The cattle prices are down to zilch, but you do not see an3rthing reduced in the supermarket. That is what bothers me, and it kind of gives you a little clue. I have had a chat with Secretary Glickman, and I ap- preciate him moving out on that. I have greatest the respect for Secretary Glickman and his group. He seems to be on top of it. Mr. Herger, do you have some questions for this last panel? Mr. Herger. Thank you. I do, Mr. Chairman. Again, I appreciate a chance to be able to sit on your panel and I appreciate our panel- ists. Just catching part of your last statement here. Chief Thomas, I would have to say I agree with you. We have a major problem, which I believe the Forest Service and many of us are aware of. At least, some of us are aware of this. We eliminated fire beginning in the 1850's, heavily eliminated it in the early 1900's and up to this point, and we have forests that by the Forest Service's own statistics are 82 percent denser and thicker than they were in 1928, maybe one and a half times denser than they were in the 1850's. Now, we are in this situation, particularly in California, where we are subject to droughts, where we do not get as much rainfall as in Washington and Oregon and where we now have forests that will burn entirely, unlike historically, prior to the Europeans com- ing to California, when there were periodic fires that did not burn the entire forest. That is what I see as a problem. I believe that is what you were alluding to, this big problem that we have of get- ting to and somehow managing these forests, at least in part. But just to ask you briefly, I know that you have stated before this Congress in the past that you have faith, great faith in the qualifications and judgment and work ethic of your local Forest Service experts. I would presume that this has not changed. Mr. Thomas. That is correct. Mr. Herger. If you would look at some pictures that we have taken from different areas in the district that I represent, one is a picture of the Lick Creek, which is part of the Klamath National Forest and part of the Dillon fire area, and the other is a Lone Pine Ridge which is between the Six Rivers and the Shasta Trinity, on the border of both Congressman Riggs' and my district. Your local experts have identified these two sites as areas that are eminently susceptible to fire. I guess my initial question is whether you would agree with them? Mr. Thomas. I would not argue with my local experts, but I will not answer it over looking at those pictures. Mr. Herger. Understandably. But these are some pictures of the areas that they looked at extensively on the ground and have de- termined— at least, their judgment was that these sites are a major risk and that there should be something done with them, like treat- ment, in order to reduce the risk of wildfire. Yet both of these areas, both Lick Creek and Lone Pine Ridge, are located in roadless areas. Based on the recent directives from the Secretary of Agriculture and clarifying memoranda from you, will these sales 70 that have been recommended by your local experts go forward under the salvage law? Mr. Thomas. Under the salvage law, no, sir, but I would assume if they are good, sound operations and those roadless areas are in the timber base, we will proceed under regular process after the ex- piration of the salvage law. I think the Secretar3r's concern is that we prepare full environmental impact statements for entry into roadless areas that are in the forest plans for timber base, that that is the standard process and he feels that we should not enter a roadless area without ability for public appeal. Mr. Herger. You are also aware, being Chief of the Forest Serv- ice, of the problem we have. The reason for the salvage law was the fact that we have a timeframe for working before these trees become unmarketable. Mr. Thomas. Yes, sir. Mr. Herger. Depending on the species, it is 18 months to three years at maximum, two to three years. If the extreme environ- mentalists through their lawsuits can stall us long enough, it does not matter if you put them up, and that is what is happening. We sat down and spent a lot of time, both with yourself and your rep- resentatives when we drew up the salvage law this last year. This was the problem that we were addressing, and yet you — maybe I should begin addressing my questions to Mr. Lyons. Mr. Lyons, why is it that the very tool that the administration worked with us to draw up, including the Forest Service and Mr. Thomas, is being defeated by a directive that now will stall this longer and do exactly the opposite of what the intent was? Mr. Lyons. I think, Mr. Herger, the Secretary stated it best in the memorandum that he sent to Jack. He stated in the opening paragraph, "Unique and unprecedented provisions of the emer- gency salvage program authorized in P.L. 104-19 impose an equal- ly unprecedented responsibility upon us to administer the program while sustaining the public's confidence in our stewardship of the national forests. While I believe the program has been successful due to the dedication of Forest Service employees, I do have some concerns and members of the public have expressed concerns about its implementation and those concerns have given rise to the fol- lowing clarifications in policy." That is, I think, the key. Also, I just want to clarify for the record that our participation in the development of the salvage rider was, I think, more at the tail end than in the beginning, as we sought to mitigate some of the impacts of what we thought the initial version of that bill might be. Mr. Herger. Are you saying that the agreement that the admin- istration, through the Forest Service, came up with and signed off on a letter, as well as the letter that President Clinton signed in which he said he intended to implement this, were not what they really meant? Mr. Lyons. I am saying two things, Mr. Herger. One is that we will fulfill the commitments that we made, consistent with the let- ter that was written by Secretary Glickman to the Speaker, and we will operate consistent with the goals that were set, plus or minus 25 percent. 71 I think the other thing I am sa3dng is, and I have said this ear- Her, we are operating through this directive in a manner consistent with the statute, and let me be clear about that. The statute says in Section 2001(c), "A document embodying decisions relating to salvage timber sales proposed under the authority of this section shall, at the sole discretion of the Secretary concerned and to the extent the Secretary concerned considers appropriate and feasible, consider the environmental effects of the sadvage timber sale and the effect, if any, on any threatened or endangered species, and to the extent the Secretary concerned, at his sole discretion, considers appropriate and feasible, be consistent with any standards and guidelines from the management plans applicable to the national forest or Bureau of Land Management district on which the sal- vage sale occurs," the key phrase being "to the extent the Secretary concerned, at his sole discretion, considers". The Secretary has put out additional clarification consistent with his discretion provided in the statute that you all authored so as to ensure that the salvage sale program is implemented in a man- ner consistent with the goals and objectives set up by the Presi- dent, and that is simply what we are seeking to achieve here. We are not stopping salvage sales. We are clarifying under which au- thority salvage sales should proceed, consistent with the statute. Mr. Herger. So, you are saying that you are not stopping sal- vage sales. Wc just went over the fact that we do have experts in the field who have recommended sales in both of the cases that we have pictures of. Are you saying, then, that the Secretary is mak- ing the decision to override the experts in the field, to say, no, we are going to hold these sales up? Mr. Lyons. No, Mr. Herger. The Secretary has simply indicated that these sales in roadless areas should proceed under a different process, the process that would normally apply to salvage sales if the salvage rider were not in effect. It is likely that these salvage sales will proceed. However, they will proceed under the normal process of an EIS with an opportunity for public input and possibly appeal. Mr. Herger. And we are already two years into both of these sales. We have a window of maybe three years at the max, two to three years. So in other words, by the time we finish studying this, which was the whole purpose of the salvage bill to begin with, and even if they decide to go ahead, there will not be any economic value of going ahead and salvaging this. That is, in essence, what you are saying. Mr. Lyons. No, Mr. Herger. That is not what I am saying. What I am saying is Mr. Herger. Because with the present legislation, the Forest Service supervisors, of which Jack Ward Thomas, the Chief, has in- dicated in prior testimony and just here a few minutes ago, he has confidence in, both have recommended, with their studies, going ahead with these. Yet you are saying that we are going to have the Secretary of Agriculture, Bill Clinton's Secretary of Agriculture, hold these up an additional amount of time to the point that these sales would be infeasible. 72 Mr. Lyons. All we are sa5dng, Mr. Herger, is that the experts should determine whether or not these are appropriate salvage sales. The policy decision that has been made and the direction Mr, Herger. And they have indicated they are. Mr. Lyons. And the policy decision and direction that is being of- fered is that if these are, in fact, salvage sales that should proceed in roadless areas, then those should go through a different process than the emergency process which should apply to true emer- gencies. It should apply to those sales that face an imminent threat to fire or insect or disease, that pose a threat to life and property. Mr. Herger. Is the feeling, then, that owls and habitat will be able to dwell in these areas better once a fire has completely burned them down? Mr. Lyons. I cannot speak to the impacts of these particular sales, Mr. Herger. Mr. Herger. Because, in essence, that is what we are doing. We are dooming these forests to fires, whether it be by lightning or ac- cidental causes, which will bum them completely. If that happens in these areas, the sole blame will be at the feet of the Bill Clinton administration. Mr. Lyons. Let me clarify, Mr. Herger. I believe what we are try- ing to do is make sure that we proceed in a manner that protects forest health, that reduces fire risk, and restores public confidence in the agency. What this salvage rider has done, in fact, in an at- tempt to expedite and bypass the public, has done more to upset and affect the credibility of the agency than anj^hing any adminis- tration has done. I would point to the fact that the Secretary and I both agree the Forest Service has done an exemplary job in implementing the sal- vage rider. The problem is that it has created tremendous public concern and misperceptions about the capability of the agency, and we are forced to try and address that through clarification reflected in this policy document. That is what the salvage rider has done. Mr. Herger. I appreciate the patience of the Chairman. I have gone overtime, and I appreciate your listening. We have heard from previous panels that those who live in the areas are not happy at all with the job that the administration has done with this, and I think what it boils down to is whether we stall this long enough to where we can make it feasible to take out these trees or whether it costs us taxpayer dollars either in fighting fires or taking them out in a way that is not feasible. Mr. Chairman, I thank you and I thank the panelists for their patience. Mr. Hansen. Thank you. This has been a longer hearing than we expected, and I apologize to our witnesses for many of us being in and out, but there are a lot of obligations on the Hill at this par- ticular point. I am keeping quite a few people waiting right now. Mr. Vento. Mr. Chairman? Mr. Hansen. Yes? Mr. Vento. I just wanted to make one comment on the last thing, and I appreciate it, and I will not be long. I think that, given the capability of the Forest Service, or for that matter, the BLM, to deal with salvage, dealing with and recognizing the backlog of salvage that exists, much of it uneconomic, probably, to remove — 73 I mean, there are those problems — I think it is almost certain that if somebody sets up some sort of a goal with billions of board feet, whatever it is, unless it absolutely would take care of ever5rthing, and if three years is the life of timber on the ground, as an exam- ple, in terms of its economic use, you are almost doomed to fail, given the fact that you have tens of billions of board feet of salvage that exists in non-wilderness, non-park type of areas. So the question is picking and choosing and making the sales. There are not the dollars there to prepare the sales, much less to do the forest health. So it is a scenario in which, unless they cut exactly what I want — for instance, in Minnesota, we had had some straight-line winds that knocked out some timber in the Chippewa National Forest. I think they used the salvage law. They probably would not have had to use it. There had been salvage that had gone on before and there will be salvage that goes on after. The real question that we have to address, and I think this is what the Chief was pointing to, was whether or not we have the dollars and the policy in place that will, in fact, deal with the total forest health problem afterwards, because the salvage rider, in that sense, besides making everyone angry, with 318 and the roadless area types of harvest that occurred in Montana and apparently in Colorado — I did not remember that — but those actually were just taken out of the wilderness study, or not taken out of the wilder- ness study but they were precluded from being protected under wil- derness bills introduced, as they had been before. They were not legislated wilderness study areas. I mean, that is the sort of scenario you set up. So you can sit up here with anyone. You can bang on them and you can tell them that, but the fact is, they have to pick and choose what they are going to do and what is workable, and those that are the most via- ble and economical — if you have roadless areas, right off the bat, one of the costs is the roads. So that almost on its face indicates a higher cost tyipe of option than where it is already roaded. Mr. Hansen. I do not think we are going to resolve this if you two get into a debate, so I will not let you. [Laughter.] Mr. Vento. I am not trying to. Mr. Hansen. Let me just say, there are a lot of problems in- volved in this thing. My heart goes out to Jack Ward Thomas many times because I think before he makes a move, he has to figure out all the legal challenges he is going to have on that plus all the hoops that we put for him to jump through, so do your best. Thanks to each and every one of you for coming today. We appre- ciate your patience and your testimony. We are now adjourned. [Whereupon, at 2:51 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned; and the following was submitted for the record:] 74 U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Resources Subcommittee on Parks, Forests and Lands The Honorable James V. Hansen, Chairman July 23, 1996 Statement by the Honorable Wally Herger It is not often that I agree with President Clinton when it comes to forest management. However, I fully concur with a statement he made in 1993 at a press conference announcing Option 9. President Clinton said on that occasion that "the Pacific Northwest requires both a healthy economy and a healthy environment and that one cannot exist without the other." It is only appropriate, therefore, that we hold this hearing to determine whether the Clinton Forest Plan is successfully presendng both our environment and our northwest economies. Perhaps the best place to start is the health of the environment. I draw the subcommittee's attention to two photographs taken within two late successional reserves in northern California. These are two small portions of the 21 million acres permanently set aside under the Clinton plan for little or no human management. The stated purpose of late successional reserves is to protect old growth forest ecosystems and habitat for species like the spotted owl. The first photograph is of a burned late successional reserve on Lick Creek in the Klamath National Forest in my district. The second is of a blowdown in a late successional reserve along Lone Pine Ridge in the Six Rivers National Forest bordering my district and Mr. Riggs' district. As you can see, pictures truly can paint a thousand words. The Lick Creek site burned in 1994 in a fire that covered over 27,000 acres. The Lone Pine Ridge site was part of a blowdown 17 miles long and 7 miles wide. Both sites are now imminently susceptible to insect infestations, disease and wildfire. The local Forest Service believes both are in immediate need of onergency salvage harvesting under the salvage law to protect owl habitat, begin reforestation, and provide several million board feet of timber for local mills. Tragically, however, the Clinton Administration has forbidden it under a recent directive fi'om the Clinton Administration restricting implementation of the timber salvage law. These scenes can be repeated over and over again in the Option 9 forests of northern California. Washington policies which mandate doing nothing are literally destroying the health of our forests. Tragedies like Lick Creek £•! Lone Pine Ridge are the direct consequence of Washington dictating local policy under the salvage law. But even without the salvage 75 law, the Clinton Forest Plan would still prevent local managers from treating these sites. To better explain what I mean, I would like to show the subcommittee a chart that illustrates the process the Clinton plan requires local forest managers to follow in order to treat areas like Lick Creek and Lone Pine Ridge. By way of explanation, the yellow and red portions represent the additional process required under Option 9 that is not otherwise required under current law. If you find this process unusually complicated or long, you are not alone. So do our local forest managers. I am told by the people on the ground that it is not unusual to take the full three years shown on the chart to treat sites like Lick Creek and Lone Pine Ridge. This is without litigation. Unfortunately, the Douglas fir and ponderosa pine trees at Lick Creek will be badly deteriorated within three years. The white fir trees at Lone Pine Ridge will be worthless within 1 8 months. When and if these sales go to bid, nobody will bid on them, because they will be practically worthless. As a consequence, nothing will be accomplished on either site. Lick Creek and Lone Pine Ridge will be a total loss to the forest, to local communities, and to the American taxpayer. With impossible situations like these, it is little wonder that the Clinton Plan has yielded in 1994 and 1995 combined only one quarter of the 2 billion board feet that Secretary Babbitt, in a July 1993 press conference, promised the Administration would harvest in 1994 alone. President Clinton's statement was true. As we lose places like Lick Creek and Lone Pine Ridge, our local economies in northern California are sure to follow. In 1994, the same year as the fire that burned Lick Creek, the local mill in Happy Camp, only a stone's throw fi-om Lick Creek, closed permanently for lack of timber. Last May the local mill in Hayfork, just to the northeast of Lone Pine Ridge, also closed permanently for lack of timber. Hayfork is the 30th mill in my district to close in recent years. The tragic irony of Hayfork is that the surrounding forests contain enough dead and dying timber to have kept this mill operating for another IS years. It should come as no surprise that Trinity County, where Hayfork is located, has an unemployment rate consistently ranging fi-om 15% to 24%. It should come as no surprise that 80% of the children in Happy Camp Elementary School receive fi-ee or reduced meals. President Clinton predicted it would happen. His forest plan and forest management directives issued fi-om Washington are making it happen. To close, I would like to submit for the record a letter to President Clinton I received recently fi-om Nadine Bailey, a former constituent of mine. Nadine tells the tragic story of a promise President Clinton made to her daughter, Elizabeth, in 1993 and the events that have transpired since. Time will not allow me to read the letter, so I encourage every member of the subcommittee to do so. Nadine and Eliiabeth used to live in Hayfork while the mill was still operating. Their story puts a profoundly human face on what I have been talking about. 76 The people of northern California deserve some answers. The towns of Happy Camp and Hayfork deserve some answers. Nadine and Elizabeth Bailey deserves some answers. Hopefully we will be able to provide a few today. Thank you. 77 Lost Dreams and Bidcen Promises A Letter to Bill Clinton March 11. 1996 President Bill Clinton The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, D.C. 20S00 Dear President Clinton, You made a promise to my daughter on a national television program. When Elizabeth showed you her yearbook with names of the children whose parents would lose their jobs because of the spotted owl, you made a promise to her and to all the children who live in timber dqxndent communities. Do you remember what you said? Your promise was that you would solve the problems in the Northwest and California. That you would bring everyone together and they would come up with a solution that would allow logging and protect the spotted owl. Do you remember? Do you care where Elizabeth is today? Do you care where her £atber is? Do you know how hard her family worked to bring about solutions that would save the community and ensure the health of the forest? 1 hope this brirfsununary of the last three years will make you understand and regret your broken promise. (1993) After the summit, 1 worked with the environmental community to develop a plan that would add jobs while protecting habitat and wildlife. I received a call firom Vice President Gore asking for my support for the Option 9 Forest Plan. (1993-1994) The Option 9 plan is approved and the Hayfork region gets an Adaptive Management Area. (These areas were specially designed to have adaptive management techniques used to produce products that would enable local communities to survive the transition brought about by changes in forest management) Hopes are high in Hayfork that some relief from the timber supply crisis will be felt (Spring 1994) Jobs become hard to find. Grants for Option 9 do not make their way to unemployed loggers. In &ct, in public forums your representative admits that much of the money will go to infirastructure. In other words, the pet^Ie most affected by change in national forest policy will be the least likely to receive help. We no longer have our own business. Years of work to build a business are gone and my husband, Wally, works for five different employers, some as Cu away as eight hours. Families are starting to leave the Hayfork area. Some Trinity county school districts now have 96% of children on fiee and reduced lunches which means they live below the poverty level. (Fall 1994) The last large logger in Hayfork prepares to move operation because of lade of work. The Adaptive Management Area Culs to produce any more timber than other areas under Option 9. In fact, there seems to be more study in the AMA than in other areas affected by Option 9. (Spring 1995) We move our &mily from our home in Hayfork to Redding. At this point, I contacted the many agencies that had been giving money to help displaced workers for help with the move. We were told that we didn't qualify because my husband had already found work. We were forced to borrow money bom a fiunily member to move. We had been home owners, itow we are fitced with renting, and finding the $2000 00 needed for deposits. We cannot sell our home partly because of the market, and parity because the house was built by my mother and father and I can't &ce losing my home. Wally becomes even more bitter about being betrayed by your administration. Despite nty job with the California Forestry Association we Ml deeper into debt My kids are not happy. City life is much difiierent To leave a high school with 125 kids and start again in a high school with 1000 is almost too much for country kids. I am very concerned about Elizabeth. She misses her fiiends so much. WaUy finds work six hours fitom home. He moves out to live on the job site and I become a single nootha again. 78 (April 24, 1995) A bomb goes off at my office killing my boss and friend, Gil Munay. I seem to haive lost the heart to fight for our commimity. Nothing I have done for the last four years seems to have made a difference. My trust in government and society as a whole is weakened. You used the Oklahoma Bombing to attadc right wing political groups. You never mention the Unabomber. Vice President Gore doesn't call this time. (Summer 1995) Where did I go wrong, was it believing in the promises of a president? Could I have done more? Eveiything is beginning to unravel. With the exception of some local groups that came together to seek solutions through consensus, like the Quincy Library Group and the Trinity River CRIKfP. everyone seems to be going bade to war. I wonder if you realize what an opportunity you had to heal old wounds. Instead, all hope is £ading for the fiiture of towns like I^^ork. I stm get calls late at night from peq>le not knowing how they will make it through the winter, wanting to know if they should stick it out, if there is any hope that things will change. For the first time in my life, I have no hope. (Fall 1995) I am offered a job at the Timber Producers Association of Michigan and Wisconsin in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. We are not making it in California. The work just isn't there. How can I leave my home and family to start over in a strange land miles fix>m home? How can I ask nQT femily to give more than they've already given? (Winter 1995-1996) Wisconsin experienced the coldest winter in 50 years but we survive it I love my job, but suffer as I see my family longing for the friends they love so much. I dream of the South Fork mountains, the river so clean and cold, the hot sunmier sun and the soimd of the wind through the trees. We survive but our hearts ache. (February 1996) I receive a call from a close friend. She tells me that the mill in Hayfork is closing. I sit in the living room with the lights out, looking at the frozen whiteness that surrounds me. The landscape looks tike how my heart feels, barren and cold, a great white void. I can't allow myself to think of the pain my community is experiencing. How will they cope with the reality that their way of life is gone forever? I wonder, do you know and do you care? (March 1996) I read a press release where you say that the salvage rider is undermining the healing process that Option 9 had produced. Do you actually believe this? Do you remember the workers whose wounds weren't healed, whose pain and loss was simply swept aside? Do you remember Elizabeth Bailey and the promises you made? Or do you think she has healed? Do you have the courage to meet her &ce to &ce now? One of the first things I did when I became involved with forestry issues was an interview with Chris Bowman for the Sacramento Bee. He said, "Nadine, your stoiy would make a great movie- of-the-wedc, but you would have to die at the end" I doubt very much if my husband and son will stay in the Lake States. They dream of the mountains and the tall trees and the sound of the wind in the 'canyon too much. So in the end, with my £umly scattered like leaves, a part of me has died All I wanted was to keq> our community together. When that hope died, I guess a part of me did too. Maybe it's time to make that movie now. Sincerely, Nadine Bailey Former Resident of Hayfork, California 19 HELEN CHENOWETH Oversight hearing on President Clinton's Option 9 Forest Plan f Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests & Lands House Committee on Resources July 23, 1996 Mr. Chairman, thank you for holding this hearing. Although my district does not contain any of the so called "Option 9" forests, what is happening with President Clinton's Forest Plan in the Pacific Northwest will most likely serve as a model for the Columbia River Basin's forest plan, which is in my district. My concern here, however, is that the Option 9 plan affecting the Pacific Northwest will be by default used as the model for the rest of the country. Option 9, Mr Chairman, is not a model to protect fish and animals, or to put people back to work. Option 9 is nothing more than a model to line lawyers' pockets; a model of what not to do. It is not a model forest program that we should follow when crafting other forest plans. The President's so called Option 9 solution was announced in 1993, and adopted in 1994! The plan was to be the great "solution" - - the solution to saving owls, squirrels, and fish, and a solution to saving jobs. Yet, here we are in 1996. Nothing has changed for the better. Between 1993 and 1995, 66 mills closed their doors in 80 Oregon, Washington and California. Unemployment has continued to skyrocket in many of the rural communities despite President Clinton's promise of economic assistance and retraining for displaced workers. Its worth noting, Mr. Chairman, that when jobs are found, they are not well-paying, food-on-the-table jobs, they are too often temporary and do not provide sufficient wage to support a family. In my district, the agencies are putting the final touches on the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project (ICBEMP). Public comment closes next month. If the President's Option 9 Forest Plan serves as a guide post, I have grave doubts that the ICBEMP will do what is promised. Let's look at the facts. Pi-esident Clinton's Option 9 plan was to provide One Billion Board Feet (1 bbf) of sawtimber annually. Let me restate that for clarity. President Clinton promised to facilitate annual timber sales of one billion board feet. He's not even come close. The first year that Option 9 was in effect, BLM and USES sales were 0.187 bbf. FY95 saw 0.336 bbf; and sadly, Mr. Chairman, FY96 is projected at less than 0.5 bbf. Each of these levels fall miserably below President Clinton's promised level of timber sale availability. Mr. Chairman, these paultry numbers must be considered not only against the one billion board feet of sawtimber promised by the President, but against the back drop of the 4.5 billion board feet 81 produced in the 1980s. The agreed upon one billion board feet goal was already a compormised number; compromised to only 25% of previous production. How would you like to live upon only 25% of your previous year's salary? Today, even with President Clinton's one billion board feet promise, the actual production numbers are so low (less than 20% of FY94's promise) that they are killing Pacific Northwest rural timber communities. Between 1993 and 1995, 66 mills shut their doors. The one billion board feet, Mr. Chairman, is a promise by President Clinton made to the families of the Pacific Northwest who make their living from timber ~ a promise that was broken. As if this weren't enough evidence of the Clinton Administration's true intentions, Mr. Chairman, Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman earlier this month issued a new directive that clearly violates the intent of Timber Salvage Act (P.L. 104-19). We passed the Salvage Act to streamline some of the bureaucracy that does nothing but keep salvageable timber from being harvested ~ often times resulting in the timber just rotting away or being consumed by massive forest fires. This is literally burning money; money that should be food on the table of timber families. Yet, Secretary Glickman's own staff has stated that some of the salvage sales that would have qualified under the Congressional directive are now pulled and not allowed under the new Glickman 82 directive. Let me restate that, even though President Clinton has promised one bbf, he has effectively pulled numerous qualified timber sales, three alone in my district totalling 36.2 million board feet. I've got to ask, Mr. Chairman, is this a good faith effort to reach President Clinton's one bbf promise to the American people? Sadly, I have to answer no. Another Promise Made, Another Promise Broken. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today, Mr. Chairman, and to asking the Administration witnesses some of these questions. Thank you. 83 TESTIMONY OF SUE KUPILLAS, JACKSON COUNTY COMMISSIONER Before the House Committee on National Parks, Forests and Lands July 23, 1996 Good morning I am Sue Kupillas, second term commissioner serving Jackson County.The federal government exerts anover>vhelming influence on our citizens, our communities and business'. The BLM manages 449,000 acres in Jackson county alone. With the addition of the three national forests which are found in Jackson County, federal land managers control almost 50% of the counties land base. About half of the county budget, historically has been revenues from timber harvest on federal lands. Jackson Counties shared timber receipts resulted in as much as S17 million for the general fund. In the national recession of the early I980's shared timber receipts dipped as low as S6.1 million. These receipts have funded an array of ser\'ices, i.e. USPS contributed to roads and schools; O & C general fund revenues supported the criminal justice system, the administrative services and small contributions that sustained human ser>'ice non-profits as well as OSU extension services including 4-H, home-ec and beef production education, also maintained the Water Masters office in the count)', and the Soil Conservation Service. The county has do^vnsized, combined departments, eliminated functions, and privatized services, anticipating the shortfall with changing forest management practices. Jackson County wrote the book on reinventing government. With a fast growing population and increasing demand for more law enforcement, human services, there is no comprehensive simple answer, but we feel the residents should bear part of the burden thus the proposed tax levy, and because the land is not available to tax, the timber receipts should also make up for part of the shortfall. In this testimony I will include the statistics and effects of revenues declining because of the annual reduction in the safety' net. The Federal Government has set programs to address the job loss and declining revenues in the counties. Therefore I would also like to address the effectiveness of programs created to ease the job loss from the wood products industry. Finally, the future of timber receipts and the future of Jackson County depend on the success or failure of the Record of Decision on the Presidents Forest Plan for the Northwest. Because of the Counties direct impact, I will discuss the implementation problems with the President's Forest Plan ROD. 84 The reduction in timber receipts has a negative effect on Jackson County. In the addendum you will see the actual 3% reduction in O & C revenues projected out. While Jackson County is putting two tax levies on the September 17 ballot, the amount asked for will not make up for the decline in O & C. If the O & C revenue would disappear tomorrow, Jackson County would no longer be able to support a county criminal justice system. We would be unable to apprehend, prosecute or incarcerate criminals. As it is the picture is dismal. Of the SI 1.4 million dollars of current safety net from O & C, -S10.3 million is dedicated to criminal justice, the District Attorney, the probation system, jail, the juvenile system and rural county sheriffs patrols. The people of Jackson County voted in support of a criminal justice levy to meet the increased demands. The levy adequately increases staff for the Juvenile facility, the jail, the work release center, the DA's office and the probation oflice. The Commissioners guaranteed we would not reduce the O & C contribution we were already making, if people would vote to support increases to handle our growing crime in the count>'. Still as these safety net dollars from O & C are racheted down, we must rachet down the criminal justice system. This is in a county that has one of the highest crime statistics in Oregon and one of the fastest growing crime problems in the region. Also in the addendum you will see the list of cuts in ser^'ices that will happen if the proposed librar>- and general services levy do not pass September 17, 1996. When you look at the senices listed, you might think, we can get along without these services. They wont affect the average citizen. Let me describe one service where prevention is having a big impact and without the prevention wc will ensure a growth in crime and violence. (Need I remind you that prevention is much less costly and the dollars for criminal justice are declining also.) The service I will ask you to focus on for a minute is the Rogue Family Center , a model program for the State of Oregon and the nation. The RFC brings together federal, state and county services, as well as the local school district. The mission is development of an integrated system to better serve the families to bring self-empowering services to people willing to share the responsibility for themselves and each other. This is the most successful project in the state to work with dysfunctional families and help them back into employment and self-sufflciency. I helped start this program to deal with the 85 dysfunctional families that were caught up in a qcIc of domestic violence, child abuse, alcohol and drugs, thus raising at risk children, destined to be our next generation of criminals. Many of these families were dislocated timber workers (see attached 1995 Jackson County Housing Authority Report.) As a result of budget cuts and decline in O & C revenues, Jackson Count>- will no longer be participating in the Rogue Family Center program. The county programs include, prenatal care and referral services to obstetricians, immunizations, well/sick child check-ups, blood pressure checks, stress management, nutrition assistance, answers to general medical questions and home visits to pregnant women and mothers with young children. Mental Health will also be terminated, including counseling for children and adults for low income families and persons receiving Medicaid. We will also tenninate HEALTHY START, a home visitation program for first birth families, providing new parents with information on baby care, infant feeding, gro^^th and development, acti\-ities to stimulate learning and parenting skills. Children in this area come to school witli no readiness skills and many abuse symptoms. The long term impact on society* is expensive, for these children at risk and it is preventable through a little investment and training during the first few months. If the levy fails in September, Jackson County Health Department will be out of the project entirely. Thus, the very people that would have timber industry jobs, out of work, needing county services, will not be served. The long terra effects on this community and on Jackson county are immeasurable. I have been involved with this communit}' in an elected official capacity since 1980 when I was elected to the District 9 School Board , a district which includes this community. I have worked with this community toward empowerment for the residents for all these years. Here is an example, where the blue collar workers, retired fixed income residents, and generally motivated community, need a hand up with the few disenfranchised, problem families. We help with teaching self- sufficiency. Each family we help through crisis and back into a functioning unit, is thousands of dollars and heartache saved. 86 Every one of the services listed will have cumulative damaging effects on the social structTirc and economics of Jackson Coant>'. When timber revenues decline, social systems decline, family wage jobs decline, crime rises and criminal justice s>'stems are reduced. Another impact of the dollars allocated to address problems created by the Presidents Forest Plan on Jnckson county and other counties is the JOBS IN THE WOODS program. As a Board Member of the Job Council that administers the program funds, I have had a direct interest in implementation and continuation of this program. The program is successful for the sLx participants who are employed currently as a result of training in this program. If this was intended to address the problem with dislocated wood products workers, there arc by now thousands of workers, formerly employed by the industry in family wage jobs, no longer employed, and not affected by this program. The Jobs in the Woods will not make up for lost industry jobs. The problems being solved by the Rogue Institute of £coIog>' and Economy in helping the forest service change antiquated business and contracting policies, will help future success of this limited program. In the second phase. The Rogue Institute will help with apprentiship training programs and creating private-public partnerships that bundle projects to create longer term projects for workers. This will improve the prospects for success. The addendum in the form of a memorandum from the Job Council shows that the program has six people entering employment with the cost of S6,308 per person in 1995 and 14 in the 1996 program at S6857 per participant. I support continuation of this program as one small component of training for the Job Council programs that give preference for dislocated timber workers. I do not support characterizing this program as having a major impact on displaced timber workers. To that end, I emphatically support maintaining a timber sale program from federal lands which has multiple benefits in high-wage manufacturing jobs, support for social systems and county services, creation of a product desirable in world markets and in addition creating a healthier forest under new forcstr>' practices. Because the timber sale program from federal lands has been severely restricted by the Presidents Forest Flan interpretation and has been subject to appeab, court actions, layers of administrative, prescriptive regulation, political positioning by national interest groups and dela} s, therefore I also support transfer of the O <& C lands to the State of Oregon, 87 where we are leaders in combining good forestry, good science and a strong social and ecoDODiic system. I am a Democrat and an environmentalist and I want whatever plan we use, to achieve management of our forests so our children and grandchildren ^ill inherit vigorous, healthy forests that support their generations. The assumptions in The Forest Plan and the ROD include some that require creating a condition that has never historically existed on the forest. (The "Disneyland" ecosystem syndrome). Specifically, under the Standards and Guidelines for the plan there is a requirement for coarse woody debris of 120 linear feet, 16 inches in diameter that has to exist on everv' single acre. This is for the matrix lands. Lets look at one sale observed by the Implementation Monitoring Team in the Botte Falls District, which was marked and sold, but not logged. The natural condition was that the stand bad never been entered and was the 90 year old product of a stand replacement fire. The ground was somewhat clean and did not meet the requirement for coarse woody debris required by the ROD. Remember the stand was in a natural condition. Looking at the intent of the ROD, in a young stand such as this one, did the land managers fail to meet the ROD requirements if the coarse woody requirement was only achieved the day after logging was complete. Should the stage of the stand's development be taken into consideration? I think so. Should the coarse woody debris requirement be artificially met by cutting trees and leaving them to meet this artificial standard, or should the stand be managed, (in this case thinned) to release the stand and promote late successional characteristics which would in time, provide for coarse woody dcbrij on its own, if there wasn't another stand replacement fire? This is but one case where the ROD assumes a condition that docs not historically exist, and requires the managers to create an unnatural condition to meet a standard presumed to be natural. The reality is that the conditions in the forest are not uniformity' the same, thus defy this prescriptive regulatory approach based on erroneous assumptions. ( The "Disneyland'* ecosystem syndrome.) We cannot 88 prescribe that every acre of forest has the same prescribed conditions. That is not natural nor desirable however, the ROD for The Presidents Forest Plan requires it. The solution is to require general management plans over the landscape and on a larger scale and for longer periods of time for each forest alIo\«-ing discretion for existing diverse conditions, thus steering clear of prescriptive, regulatory administrative rules, that do not match the conditions and many times are based on incorrect assumptions. The Adaptive Management Area (ANlA) should be the creative experimental area where new forcstrj- techniques are tried, however, the AMA's arc bound by the same administrative minutia of prescriptions and layers of screens and administrative review as the matrix, the LSRS and other areas . Under the guidelines the manager must still address the concerns of elk thermal cover, big game winter range, visuals, archeologjcal sites, ephemeral streams, wildlife connectivity corridors and sensitive plants that are neither threatened nor endangered and the list goes on and on. As an example, the Squaw- Elllot timber sale in the Applegate, where the stand has been identified as a high fire hazard and risk. Under guidelines in both the Rogue LRMP and the NW Forest Plan, there arc all the concerns mentioucd above. The archeological site is a mining ditch and the visual is a lake and the streams run a little water when it rains but have no annual deposition and scour. ^Vhen you screen for all these values, and require helicopter logging as specified by the local hydrologist, even though immediate and cost effective treatment is desirable because of high fire hazard, the sale is not practical with this burden placed on it. Even in the AMA we cannot accomplish a common sense goal of reducing fire hazard, because of regulation and cost escalation. ( The constraints assume that any disturbance will damage the environment when we have scientific evidence and history that show us the natural system in the forest is created by natural disturbances and catastrophic events which humans have altered in the last 10,000 years.) There is not enough flexibility built into the ROD to experiment making assumptions that are different. Recognizing nuances and differences is the basis for creatr\'c problem solving in science and all other endeavon. The restrictions add up to an equation that guarantees failure. To their credit, the agency managers and personnel try to meet ever more burdensome regulation, but the task cannot be successful as now prescribed. 89 Another example of upplicntion of the ROD for The Presidents Forest Plan is the Snowdown/Blowdown timber in Jackson and Douglas Counties (called wiodthrown bv the Mcdford BLM). First I credit the Rogue River National Forest with rapid and thorough timely attention to this natural disturbance in the forest Members of the Jackson Count}* Natural Resources Committee and Headwaters, an cn%'iroDmentaI group have been meeting with the team created to analyze and recommend action. ( I have requested the forest supervisor also contact the industry group, SOTIA, who would have an interest in being a part of the discussion, but as of this date they have not been contacted.) There were several tvLater storm events that contributed to downing significant amounts of timber in the Butte Falls, Prospect and Umpqua ranger districts. Logging contractors have cleared campgrounds, roads and are working on the matrix lands. They have found double the amount of wood estimated, so the amount of downed wood is probably 2 to 3 times the estimated 20 >JL>IBF. The team is concentrating on what can be done with the downed wood in the Late Succcssional Reserves area, with the goal of making a recommendation to the Regional Ecosystem Office, where the final decision resides. The maps I will show you clearfy show what the problem is. With the overlays of Late Successional Reserves 'nith limits in treatment, the limits in the riparian areas, the limits in the scenic ^i^ er special interest areas etc, there arc too many restrictions before we talk about solving the immediate snowdown/blowdown problem. In addition wc arc to consider the treatment to remedy the problem. The question that is confusing is which value takes precedence when wc make the final decision. The entomologist have confirmed that the bark beetles are already at work on the downed timber, and that we can predict that for every downed tree, three Ii\'e green trees will be attached and killed by bark beetles. Moreover a 1955 cntimolog>- report confirms the damage could be much more severe. The fire specialist confirms that the forest already had a burden of fuel that would cause a stand replacement fire, and with the added fuel, this would significantly increase the risk. The REO participant agreed that a stand replacement fire and beetle kill would not enhance the Late Successional Reserve, but would have catastrophic consequences that could destroy the LSR. There should be no question about treatment A significant nuxaber of the do^vned trees need to be removed to ensure the survival of the LSR area. This needs to be done in a timely manner and we are still debating about the results. We 90 8 must verbalize this in a way to justify the ROD and the goal of preserving the LSR. Meanwhile, the public will not support wa.ste and dcteiioration of thb important part of the Jackson Count}' landscape, economy and recreational area. The wood could go to our mills and keep workers in valuable jobs. We can create a valuable product. And wc can preserve our forest ecosystem. If we wait too long lightning strikes will ignite the forest and wc have all wasted our resource and a valuable part of our community to fire. The regulation is overly prescriptive and the process too long when you have a significant natural destructive event such as this. Regulation stops action and Inaction most certainly will mean destruction. The Medford BLM has written a letter to confirm that swift action has been taken to do what they can to remove 80mbf of windthrown timber. There is no estimate of the total volume, but the letter indicates, the BLM ^ill leave the prescribed down woody debris (because it was not naturally there) before they remove any more from other areas. I believe the managers are working hard to meet the requirements of the ROD and to remove what they can. I also believe they will be blamed if the resource is lost to fire or bug infestation. I think the process required by the ROD, while has merit, slows do\«°n the managers in making the required decisions and as always they take a conservath'e approach with the constant threat of lawsuits. In cheeldng with agency people in higher official capacity, one indicated there was no way any wood could be removed from LSR's. Another clearly stated that the local supcrv isors would be responsible for the decisions under their jurisdiction. The supervisors say the decision rests with the R£0 office. There is some indication that with it being an election year there might be interference with the process from the ecosystem office in the White House. I have a meeting scheduled with them to verify what their interest and involvement will be with the implementation of the ROD and the event of forest disturbance in Jaclvson County. If the Forest Service and BLM Receipts came to the counties, instead of the counties being in a safety net the revenue would help to maintain county services. As it is, it will help save jobs and families and community- stability. The desire of Jackson County is not to remain 91 forever in a safety net that declines and can at any time disappear. The best solution would be to assure a level of management and a % of the total acreage that can be managed, then allow mnnagcmcnt at the local level, xvithout prescriptive ovcrsite. In summary, I would conclude that I want the goal of forest management to help create healthy forests for our children, and our children's children. I want us to manage not only for healthy forest ecosystems, but for products, jobs, families, housing products, social and economic benefits. Wc have the best of all worlds when we have a renewable resource and wc know how to cncctivcly manage in a sustained yield, environmentally sound manner that creates our community stability forever. We have a great system that requires us to accept the tradeoffs and responsibilit)' for our commimities demands and not transfer the problems to other continents less able to handle the environmental safeguards. Option 9 is too prescriptive and still is full of assumptions that are not true. I have outlined a few of them to you. Option 9 does not implement a system that requires wood removal for useable products, job creation and community stabilit>', thereby neglecting a valuable part of the equation. The introduction spcUs out the concerns, but the prescriptions and the interpretation are such that there is a general assumption that timber cannot be removed from LSR's and riparian areas. I would refer you to Governor Kitzhaber's letter to Rcpresentntive Jim Bunn, where he describes an interpretation that LSR's are to be protected and not resource production potential and thus, in the O & C transfer, the LSR's would be an administrative and financial burden, without producing revenue to manage. If the LSR's and all but matrix lands arc to be treated like national parks, then we do not need agencies at all, we could transfer all these protected lands to the national parks and only maintain them as paries. That is the attitude by many who do not support wood production on national forests and Bureau of Land Management lands. From the beginning, the Option 9 of thePrcsidcnts Forest Plan was interpreted to allow production of wood products and management in riparian areas and LSR's. I suggest that Option 9 of the Presidents Forest Plan be clarified, simplified and less prescriptive, letting the local supervisors have the flexibility necessary to manage and make it clear that wood production is a part uf the management. As a local elected ofGcial who has devoted two terms to helping empower and strengthen local communities. There is a great deal of 92 mistrust ia a top down prescriptive system , lieavj- with regulation and laced with punishment. The system of local empowerment I am describing b built on trust and confidence in people making the right decisions in local communities and mth their local forests. Surely this is the system we want for a strong United States. 10 93 United States Department of the Interior BUREAU OF L^\D NIANaGEMENT MEDFORD DISTRICT OFFICE 3CM0 BIDDLX ROAD " ■ MEDFORD. OREGON 97504 ,, ,„^^ ^^,„ ^^. 5420(1 10) Kupillas ^£\VtO S3136(DR:jmw) Ms. Sue Kupillas , ^iO^ Jackson County Commissioner '^^ROOi^^'*^ ^ l2 iqqc 10 S. Oakdale ^^° Mcdford, Oregon 97501 Dear Ms. Kupillas: This responds to your letter dated July 3, 1996, examining the timber salvage process being followed by the Medford District, Bureau of Land Management The following information will clarify what the BLM is doing to salvage the winter blowdown. Since March 1996, Buitc Falls Resource Area has issued nine short-form negotiated permits for windihrown timber, totaling 80 MBF. We have had a number of requests to sell additional small amounts of timber on a negotiated sale basis. These requests have been denied for the most part because it is far more cost effective, both fiom preparation time and revenue return stand points, to sell this volume on a competitive basis. We are currently working on offering two competitive sales to salvage the blowdown. The Windy Evans Environmental Assessment, a 200 MBF timber sale, is out for public review and 's scheduled for sale in August 1996. The Ground Round Environmental Assessment is near completion and a September seile date is anticipated. This project is estimated to harvest approximately two miUion board feet of blowdow-Ti located in the Round Mountain, Flounce Rock and Trail Creek areas. We have been working with the Forest Service's Butte Falls Ranger District to include their lands in the Groimd Round Environmental Assessment and timber sale. We also, are working with the Prospect Ranger District to include BLM lands located on isolated parcels in the School Marm area in a Forest Service salvage timber sale. We understand an 3d\-isory committee has been formed, with members representing the Forest Service, Jackson Count>' Natural Resources Advisory Board, Timber Industry and the Regional Ecosystem Office (REO), with an objective to evaluate the affects of salvage in Late Successional Reserves (LSR). The Medford District is avx-aiting the outcome of this process and vi.ill implement the final REO direction, which will be the same direction the Forest Service will be following. Through the Bune Falls Ranger District and Prospect Ranger District it is anticipated that all salvage of blowdown uiU be done consistendy. OA-om _ Qfi - 4 94 S3 136 2 Until such time as further direction is received, we will be complying with all "Standards and Guidelines," including those which direct us to complete Watershed Analysis on all LSR's prior to any activity within the LSR (ROD SEIS pg. C-8 to C-17). These watershed assessments help to make better management decisions to protect and enhance conditions of late-successional and old- growth forest ecosystems, which serve as habitat for late-successional and old-growth forest related species. The Forest Service and the BLM are working together to complete a watershed analysis for the Elk Creek Watershed/LSR, projected to be completed by the end of July. la areas along the roads in unmapped LSR's where it has been determined that "Standards and Guidelines" for coarse woody debris have not been met, trees would be cleared from the road prism, and left on site. If coarse woody debris standards have been met, the material could be harvested from the road prism. Theft of wood products is an ongoing concern throughout the Medford District, and enforcement is being accomplished by law enforcement personnel. In your letter, you referred to salvaging under FEMAT. This document has been superseded by the Record of Decision (ROD) for the Final Supplemental Enviroimiental Impact Statement on Management of Habitat for Late-Successional and Old Growth Forest Related Species Within the Range of the Northem Spotted Owl (SEIS) and the Medford District Resource Management Plan, Record of Decision (ROD), and therefore, no longer provides management directioiL If you have any further questions or concerns my staff will be willing to meet with you and your committee to discuss and or clarify our current direction. Sincerely, David A. Jones District Manager 95 JACKSON COUNTY SERVICE CUTS THAT MAY BE RESTORED WITH PASSAGE OF 3-YEAR LEVIES ON SEPTEMBER 17, 1996 • Criminal Justice: o Sherififpatrols to unincorporated Jackson County will ceaJse on September 30th. White City, whose citizens passed a special levy in 1995, will continue to have both patrol and code compliance services. o The Juvenile Department will not hire-an additional counselor. Funds for a new juvenile center must still be provided in the near fiiture. o The understaffed District Attorney's Office will not be able to hire additional professional staff as planned. All 15 Libraries will close after September 17. Agate Lake Park and the day use area of Cantrall-Buckley Park, are closed. The coiinty Softball fields will close in September. Veterans' Service Office is cut from 1.8 employees to a .6 employee. Office hours are cut to two afternoons per week, resulting in fewer veterans receiving needed advocacy to obtain earned veteran's benefits. Funding for 4-H and Future Farmers prize programs and judging is no longer available. The Oregon State Extension Service will most likely close after county support ends on September 30ih. The local voters pamphlet will not be printed after the November general election. Building maintenance will decline, and after July 1st, we will repair buildings only if there is damage. Assessment will not be current in malcing tax maps for newly created tax lots. There will be less actual field reappraisals and more reliance on market trends. The county will no longer maint^n the buildings at the Expo Park. If they become damaged, they will remain damaged unless the Fair Board can fund the repair. The county no longer pays dues to the Rogue Valley Councfl of Governments, meaning the county will have less participation in regional problem solving. This includes issues such as traffic and clean water. 96 The county no longer contributes to the Southern Oregon Visitors Association, an organization that promotes tourism. Southern Oregon Regional Economic Development no longer receives funds from the county. County finance, CIS (mapmaking), administration/budget, counsel, personnel, and Board ofComniissioners all cut support personnel. - • This means: o Phones will often be answeired by answering machines; o It will take longer to respond to questions and complaints; o Payments to vendors will be slower, and o The level of customer service will suffer. The county contracts with a number of nonprofit agencies. This funding will cease September 30th. The funding was cut fi^om $270,000 in 1 995-95 to S33.500 for 1996-97. Two examples of cut services are: o On-Track will dose the Men's Alternative to Violence Program. o The Medford Community Health Center will be closed on Wednesdays and will provide an estimated 2,200 fewer visits for the treatment of illness and communicable diseases. Health & Human Services will close all communicable disease clinics. This means there win be no public health programs for se>cually transmitted diseases, rashes, lice, hepatitis, measles, etc. Programs for poor, young, single pregnant women will be curtailed. Dog license fees will have to be increased or the animal shelter will have to curt^l hours of service and number of animals housed afler September 30th. Zoning code compliance ends on July 1st, and the available hours for accepting permit applications have been reduced. 97 3-YEAR COUNTY LEVY PROPOSALS Jackson County's current tax base per capita is SIO'.' Including the old Library Levy and the Criminal Justice Levy, the consolidated tax rate per capita for all county taxes was S59. Component Current Levy Proposed Diflerence LIBRARY 4.100.000 S.300.000 COUNTY SERVICES Expo 0 Parks 0 Health & Human Services 0 Grants/Nonprofit Human Service Agencies 0 Law Enrorcement 0 Justice Services 0 General Government 0 Reserves _ 0 TOTAL - 0 GRAND TOTAL - 4,100,000 100,000 100,000 250,000 250,000 941.000 941,000 500,000 500,000 650,000 650,000 531,000 531,000 1,128,000 1.128,000 300.000 300.000 4,400,000 4,400,000 9,700,000 5.600,000 Library - Will allow the libniy to keep all brandies open. r"""'«"' open houn to meet patron demand, and add to the book and DOD-piiBt collections. E»po - '\^ill aUo>k- capital repair and Tnaimmiinoi Parks - Ke^ parks open and allow for capital improvements, repair, and maintenance. Healdi & Human Sem'ces - Will restore disease control, matenial diild care programs, and the Upper Jtoguc Family Center in White Cit>-. Grants - Will provide support to tltf public^vate partnership, inchiding ACCESS, Connnnnit)- Healdi Center, Crisis Intervention Ceotet/Duna.House, Shelter aodivahiation Center and Youdiworfcs, Nonprofit Legal Senrices, Commission on Children and Families, Alcohol Recovery Centcr;.Ashland Adolescent Center, CERVS, Children's Advocac>- Center, Foster Grandparents Program. CASA, On Trad:, Retired 4 Senior Volunteer Program, Southern Oregon Drug Au-areness. and Upper Rogue Community Center. Law Enforcement - Will pro\-Jde fiinding to keep patrol through Fiscal Year 1 996-97. An Enhanced Law Enforcement District may be on the ballot in March 1997. Jurtiee Services - Will restore funding for Jail, District Attorney, Communis Corrections, and Juvenile. General Government - Will restore Amding for building maintenance, clerical and technical support, and protidc funding for OSU Extension Service, 4-H, Southern Oregon Visilors AssociaJion, Southern Oregon Regional Economic Development, and Soil £ Water Conservation. Reserves - WUl provide fimding for increased costs of senices over the life of the levy. 98 1 AXtS ON 5100,000 HOME COMPONENT CURRENT LEVY ^Annually ■ PROPOSED . Annually DIFFERENCE Annually GRAND TOTAL- S 48.98 S 115.88 S 66.90 DIFFERENCi Monthlv Library S 48.98 $ 63.32 S 14.34 S 1.19 County Services Expo .00 1.15 1.19 .10 Parks .00 2.99 2.99 .25 Health & Human Services .00 IIM 11.24 .94 Grants/Nonprofit Human Service Agencies .00 S.97 5.97 .50 Law Enforcement .00 7.77 7.77 .65 Justice Services .00 6.34 6.34 .53 General Government .00 13.48 13.48' 1.12 Reserves .00 3.58 3.58 .30 TOTAL = .00 52.57 52.57 4.38 SS.58 JACKSON COUNTS REVENUE SOURCES FY 96-97 INCLUOCS TJOC BASE. CRIHINAL JUSTICE LCVX AND HISTOfllCAL LEVT lVtBSjt« CHMWES MWPSflTY Taxis ess. uc.. sCHMSCS FEOEM. SOI«IMCNT OtmwO tNTE^SST STATf MO {.OCm. GOI.T 99 5 ,- 2 O o * < 5 y < 5| 5 - I S 5-11 ^M •S o 5 * '> -S 2t) i a"! C • •65^ < i o S -^ 'O ^ « 4) r-WI? '■5-5 S- : Z 25 S-K^ 5"- '^m 3 S; llMl >.f^f/Q^ 100 ^»3 21 I- §1 ■s • "I ll 1^ IS & 101 MFMQRA]^DlJKf TO: FROM: DATE: SUBJECT: COMMENTS: COMMISSIONER SUE KUPILLAS RAY OLSEN, JTPA PROGRAM MANAGER JULY 1 9, 1996 YOUR REQUEST REGARDING JOBS-IN-THE-WOODS PROJECT 1 ) Training ts leading die changfap indusny, which IS barely changed 2) Employers unsure wfiy ihey should hire trainees, rather tfian continue as is 3) US Forest Service and BLM contractiis pracdces VERY slow to change 4) Few will be entrepreneurs scon (tough to break in, plus start up costs) 5) The Job Coondl not likely to have program in 1 997 1?95 1996 Number Served 13 14 Entered Employment 6 (41%) N/A Cost: $6;508 per person $6,857 per person RO/Ikr wdb:]itW-rIo 102 Jackson County Assessment of Drug Related Issues In Public Housing Drug Elimination Technical Assistance February 1995 HOUSING AUTHORITY JACKSON COUNTY, OREGON "Developing Strategies for Livable Viable Communities and Enhanced Ufestyle Quality for All People" Prepared by: CC Consulting 704 NE Larch Court East Wenatchee, WA 98802 103 1 Submitted by Joan Smith) STSKTIVni T rOTJNTV FACTS lTLQN Population feoplc 46.426 Cows 88.000 Area of County (square miles) 6.313 Area of Maryland (square miles) 12,198 Acres in County 2,420.990 1.609.393 4.942 4.038.843 Federal lands Private lands State/County lands Federal Wilderness Areas 948.269 Acres Land in Farms 1.153,246 Acres Annual M of cows. grazing on Klamoih N.F. 4.894 Annual Timber Growth 400,000,000 bd ft Federal 5Sn000 000hdft Private 650,000,000 Doard feet Annual Federal timber cut under President's Plan 60.000.000 bd ft 1989 19^ # of timber jobs Workforce employed in timber 1.300 10% 670 5% Federal USFS Reciepts to County FY 95/96 $6,823,959.60 TIMBER HARVEST IN SISKIYOU COUNTY 11(4 • l*«4 • •0 *t« •• (0* L «•• k 4«e o >•» • »•• 0 to« F "• T '•• «0 . A. / • / \ /• \ • . \ / ....\ M »VVt'«iM'it liV"?* TJi t4 M TT »■» »• •» t'l •»' i»' M iV •• V» *'•'»•'•'• M it *'* •* -• TOTAL VOLUME ■ »U(LIC VOLUME • PMIVATE VOLUME 104 STSKTVOTJ rOTJNTV LOGGERS » PEOPLE « PEOPLE EMPLOYED EMPLOYED EUQUEJL NAME . IN 1989 IN 1995 467-3959 G & K Logging 0 2 467-5695 H & G Logging 13 13 496-3443 Mark Thomas 1 1 469-3460 Ross Cornwell 25 2 493-6150 N.W. Skyline 25 5 493-2764 Norman Herman 1 0 493-2662 Kenny McCully 14 7 467-3267 Franklin Logging 125 25 842-0831 John Sample 12 1 493-2622 Harold Smith 37 4 493-2866 High Horse Logging 2 2 465-2335 Chuck L. Logging 30 15 642-5160 Snap Top Logging 0 2 468-2669 Jim Johnson 0 7 926-2456 Accord Logging 55 30 926-2477 Oarrah Logging See Accord 5 842-3176 Chuck Scnepp 5 3 467-5341 Bill Krueger 0 3 468-2336 Bob Evans 1 2 468-2999 Ken Oysert 0 6 468-2049 Bob Smiley 3 3 493-2601 Foster Logging 23 3 938-2227 Edgewood Logging 0 5 468-5410 Ouane Kennedy ■ 0 2 842-2252 Ederick Logging 6 17 938-3014 McCarrol Logging 14 2 938-2499 T & Y Logging 33 9 459-5560 Roy Pace 25 9 926-4263 Marvin Siover 6 4 406-3272 Mark Crawford 13 15 642-5560 Walt Moody 0 3 498-3457 Rudy Murieen 3 3 493-2371 Attebury & White 4 0 403-5266 ABC Logging 8 6 926-2790 Cheek Cat Logging 38 30 926-4778 F.W. Porteous Logging 70 3 926-2094 Schwartz Logging 27 0 549-4924 Garry Franklin 65 0 493-5281 Tom White See Attebury 2 468-5138 Ron Bennett Logging 8 2 926-6087 Richard Porteous 0" 2 926-4778 Dave Richardson 12 12 642-6606 LC Logging 30 3 938-3302 John McGary 15 0 926^010 Mike Brown 40 6 105 938-4120 Ross Sanders 12 10 9S4-2773 Frank Wood 15 1 467^912 Wayne Meek 0 2 493-2028 Vernon Layton 18 8 842-5548 Rodan Logging 10 5 493-2875 Walt Whitman 30 2 842-1434 Bill Meadows 0 3 926-2164 Gene Spencer 0 3 468-5560 Vem Boudro 5 2 467-3788 Charles Snapp Jr. 4 0 467-3111 Jay Denny 8 0 466-2463 W.S. Cramer Logging 15 0 496-3129 Ken Oliver 4 2 468-5266 Golden Hoof Logging 10 10 235-4335 Jim McColpin 0 2 842.5813 Joe Roberson 6 0 467-5198 John Owens 2. a. TOTALS JOBS LOST 1989-95 951 331 620 Siskiyou County has lost 65% of it's logging jobs since 1989. This research conducted by Mike Duguay April 12-20 1995. All loggers listed were personally contacted by Mr. Duguay. All known public records, as well as word of mouth, were used to account for above list. This information is the most accurate and complete listing possible. 106 adding clgniflcantly to Um n«t growth ol the local economy. Tables 3-43 and 3-40 show recent employment by key Industry sectors. Trade, government arxj services together provide over two-thirds ol the current Jobs in the 7-county area. ■^^^^^^^M^M ^^g^oojjic ^^sms^m*^ i^m :" --- - r .. - 1683 1M4 188S 1SS4 1887 1988 Agricuiturs. Por •sliy and Fish tries 4 4 4 4 4 3 Mining and Conunjclion 3 3 4 4 4 4 Manufacluring Lumber and Wood Product* Other 17 11 6 17 11 6 18 11 S 16 11 S IE 11 5 IS 11 6 Transpo nation, Communlcalions and Utiliilat 6 6 6 6 6 8 Wholastla and Ralail Trada 24 24 25 2S 25 26 Finance, Insurance and Real Estate 4 4 4 4 4 4 Sarvjcas 20 20 20 20 20 21 GovarnmanI 22 22 21 21 21 20 Total too 00 too too 00 00 Travel arKl tourism, which Include developed and dis- persed recreation as well as wUdlile-related activities Qike hunting, fishing ar>d bird-watching), make up a large and growing part of the area's economy. Tourlsnv related employment Is spread through a variety of economic sectors, IrKluding service (meals and lodg- ing), trade (gas and tackle) and transportatton. This Is not readily tracked In a single economic sector. Trade, both wholesale and retail. Is the number-one ]ob producer in the area. This sector Is the heart of the residoniiary sector. Generally, when the economy Is healthy, trade and services are expanding. The trade sector also brings In money from outside when travelers buy supplies for recreation on the Forest. Trade and services win grow to nteet the needs of population expansion and increased disposable in- come. Government Is a large and growing sector ol the economy. It accounts for about one-filth ol area Jobs. Nearly two-thirds (or about 1 Job in 7) of these are local government arid education employment. Increased Job opportunKles are tied to population growth and a desire for Improved educaiien. ServkM is a major sedor It responds to Increased tourism and wHdWe-relaied activities (lor example, hunting and fishing), population growth and Increased demand for health care and leisure activities. ^^S BS c."" -" 1983 1884 188S 1886 1987 1888 m IW Agricullurt, For atlry and Fish arias 9 8 8 7 6 6 r e Mining and Construction 3 3 3 4 4 4 3 3 Mant^acturing Lumbar and WbodProducto Other 10 8 2 13 11 2 13 11 2 13 11 2 15 12 3 14 12 2 '2. 10 •2. 9 TrantpoJiatlen, Communlcaiiont andUtSlias 7 7 7 7 6 6 i y Wtiolasal* and Ratal Trade 21 22 22 22 22 22 Z.O i-H Financa, bisuranea and Real Etlata 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 i Sanrlce* 17 16 16 16 16 16 xz. Govsrnmant 30 28 28 28 28 29 2H 27 ToUl CO 00 00 too too 00 m lOQ TTie area-wide trends are (aiily constant and consis- tent with the 50 year trends. State employment depart- ment economists expect employment growth to show continuing expansion of senrlces-prodiicing Industries and contracting ol goods-producing Inuustrtes. Timber Industry Jobs are expected to decrease for a variety of reasons. Some reasons Include increased mechanization in harvest and production processes and reduced outputs on pubOc and private lands. While other manufacturing emptoymertf Is projected to in- Klamalti National Forast ■ Draft EIS 107 Current Labor Force and Industry Employment 4/19/SS Match 1994 Bonclimark; D»l» Nol Ad|usl«d tor Sea»on»lily Civilian labt>r Floret (s«e note 1) Civilian EmploymanI CIvlMan UnamploymanI CMIian UnamploymanI Rata (Calltomla Uneinploytn»r)t Rata) (U.S. Uneinploymtm Rata) g f. Total Farm Farm Producllon Farm Sarvlca* Total Nonfann Goods Producing ^ Ye Contlrucllon & Mining 9 % Manufacturing Logging - ■ • - •■ - Sawmllla 1% toOittti Lumbar & Wood Proda Olhar Durable Goods Nondurabl* Goods Food & Kindred Product* Olhar Nondurabia Goods Service Produclrtg 5* y^ Tranaponalion i Public Ulifiiles Transponallon CommurUcallona & Public UIU. 2*/% Trade ' Wholesale Trade Retail Trad* Food Slores Ealing & Drinking Placea Olhar RelatI Trad* 2 % Ftrtanca, Insurance & Real Eilala "O- % Sarviees Holds & Olhar Lodging Plocee Health Services ^ Olhar Service* 2/ » Government Federal OovernmenI SiAio i Local QovemmenI Slate Government Local GovernmenI MAn94 ,Trr.T'.v67p :Rai3iT;'5730 ^h% 0 Nela I : Labor force data is by place e( rasldonea; Includoa talf-amployed Indlvlduala, unpaid family workers, household domastic wotltars. and workers on atrik*. The federal govemmeni bsgan uaing a new method for eaiculaling employment tiallsllcs in January 1(84. Because of the changa, fabor force data lor 1884 are not comparable with prior historical data. NoiaeinployaiI Indlvldualar unpaid family wotkart^KolitJhblc/domaitlcworliirs.'arvd'workara-wi^irika. Thi* Inlormatlon la produced by the Labor Marfcal IntomMllon OhHelon of th* Calltomla Slal* Employmeru OavalopmeAl Oepamnent (EDO). Ou«slia(» on ha content should ba dlieeted to Kathy Porter at (816) 22S-26S2. or Unda Rodaers ai (916) 883-4458. TiM data conlalned herein are available aleclronleally through the Labor Market Inromiadon Division's LM! On-Bne bullelln board. For InstnicUons on accessing 108 'L^l>6 2^E 5"% SiKklyou County Labof Torca and Industry Employment HWSSItkl.XLS March 1S94 Benchmark Title b^e •Z-OV, 2 re 3'/f, Civilian Labor Force Civilian Employment jClvilian Unemployrnent Civilian Unemployment Rale Total, All Industries Total Farm Farm Production Farm Services Total Nonlarm Goods Producing Construction & Mining Mar>ulaclurino Durable Goods '/iT, Lumber & Wood Products _ Logging Sowmllls Other Lumber & Wood Prods. Other Durable Goods Nondurable Qoods Food & Kindred Products Other Nondurable Goods Zither Manufacturing Service Producing 'Transportation & Public Utilities Transportation | Communications & Public Util. _Trodo Wholesale Trade fletall Trade _ ' Food Stores Eating & Drinking Places Olhor Rotatt Trade Finance, Insurance & Real Estate Services Hotels & Other Lodging Plaeaa Health Services Other Services Government ■ Federal Government State & Local Government Slate Government Local Government MARflO le.eso 16,426 2,426 12.0% 13.525 700 12,625 2,050 400 1,060 1,300 350 10,775 825 2,675 400 2,276 360 2,376 4,550 1.225 425 2,900 7J% «P MotujOchn/o /6 Utn/per f Ulad M MQfQffi Sitwfff zQZ'Zi 109 ■Jobs in ihe Woods'- The inlernjjency Wnierslicd Restorahon Stratei;y ofFiscal Year 1994 was adopted lo guide an interat{ency process for selecting and developing warershed restoration projects within the range of the nonhcrn spoiled owl. One objective of the strategy was to "provide needed employnteni for local communiiies.* Referred to as 'Jobs in the Woods," the program was instituted to olVsci the loss of limber jobs resulting from timber harvest reductions due to measures taken to proieci ihe northern spotted owl. Special Forest Service restoration funds (CNWR) were provided to Forests to pay for watershed rcsioraiion projects and also generate "jobs in llie woods." During FY 1994. ihe Klamath National Forest expended approxin)a(ely $800,000 of CNWR funds on watershed ^:.....i.. ., 7C .. — - . -r.-. r- 110 ■ c: t . « ■ - V .• .> « 1 &I ' SI If 5 •' > ■ ■•■ l» . ..«*■' ■•• e fe«. 4» •I I" 0 3 •Id > ■ e V ^ £2 US ^ ••• 49 0 e : - e ■•-■• •a:. •8 -- ii 5 1. u December 1993 111 United States General Accountine Office GAO Briefing Report to Congressional Requesters DISLOCATED WORKERS A Look Back at the Redwood Employment TVaining Programs GAO/I1KD04-1CBK 112 Social and Economic Ctiallenges Facing Counties Impacted by Reduced Wood Production on Federal Lands in the Spotted Owl Region TESTIMONY Prepared for a Hearing of the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Forest Lands of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Resources Prepared by Robert G. Lee, Ph.D. Ptofessor of Forest Resources University of Washington Box 352100 Seattle. Washington 98195-2100 (206) 685-0879 Email: boblee@u. washington.edu Submitted July 19. 1996 Presented July 23. 1996 113 Social and Economic Challenges Facing Counties Impacted by Reduced Wood Production on Federal Lands in the Spotted Owl Region Submitted by Professor Robert G. Lee INTRODUCTION My name is Robert G. Lee. I currently serve as Professor of Forest Resources at the University of Washington. I specialize in the application of sociology to problems of natural resources protection and management. I have worked for the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. National Park Service, and Rockport Redwood Company, and for over 13 years cooperated with the U.S. Man and the Biosphere Program to promote and enhance biosphere reserves and demonstration areas for sustainable development. 1 have been on the faculty at the University of Washington for 18 years and served as Chair for the Division of Forest Resources Management and currently serve as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the College of Forest Resources. My comments today reflect my professional opinion and do not represent the College of J-brest Resources, University of Washington, or any other persons or institutions. My testimony will summarize results of a study describing some of the social and economic challenges facing counties affected by reductions in wood production on federal lands in the spotted owl region. Details on this study, including maps and description of data sources and methods, are available in a report published last year (Lee, 1995). This study was completed in the summer of 1995 to describe 1988-92 changes in population, jobs, and income for the 72 spotted owl region coimties. Appropriate data for years after 1992 were not yet available when data analysis was completed. Despite the lack of data for the last three years, the five-year 1988-92 series provides useful information for tracking the immediate social and economic effects of reduced federal wood supply resulting from federal court injunctions and the President's forest plan. Subsequent effects of reduced federal wood supply are also substantial, but are not reflected in the information I will present. The primary purpose of this study was to show the geographic distribution of social £md economic challenges resulting from reduction in federal wood supply. Focus of attention on economic activity at the state level has obscured the differential impacts occurring at the county level. Some have concluded that the economic well-being of the Pacific Northwest has been unaffected, or even positively affected, by reductions m federal wood supply (Power, 1995). Aggregate data summarized at the state level cloud the differential effects of growing rural unemployment, social problems, poverty, and political alienation taking place at the community and county level. The county-level data summarized in this testimony also suffer from the same defect, and obscure the differential impacts on communities, families, and individuals within counties. However, counties are the smallest subdivision available in most archival records of economic activity. 114 Study Questions My testimony will present answers to six questions: 1 . How were wood products employment and earnings affected by the decline in the saic and harvesting of federal wood between 1988 and 1992? 2. Have counties reliant on federal wood supplies faced a greater challenge in revitalizing their local economies? 3. Has reduction in wood supply required by the President's forest plan affected the ability of counties to meet these challenges? 4. Can recreation and tourism help counties meet these challenges? 5. Would secondary manufacturing help counties meet these challenges? 6. Would allocation of future federal wood supplies to small businesses help counties meet these challenges? Limitations of Study There are two major weaknesses to this report ( 1) lack of reliable, comparative information on the economic and social dynamics of local communities, and (2) lack of comparable data on county economies after 1992. Substantial changes in local economies, community structures, families, and individuals are overlooked by focusing on county-level information. Wood products workers have been losing jobs, income, and social status, while other people have been gaining. Major changes involving the redistribution of social standing, jobs, income, and economic opportunity are not visible when the average conditions of a county are examined. These redistribution effects remain the most important, and under-studied, consequences of the decisions to suddenly withhold federal wood supplies. By 1992 counties had already exhibited the sudden economic changes described in this report. But, when this study was conducted, economic data series were not available to describe the additional changes that have taken place over the ensuing three years. Anecdotal reports from counties indicate that many counties and communities are only now experiencing the full impacts of the 1990 decisions to reduce federal wood supplies as the last stocks of volume under contract are exhausted. As a result, some counties that are not identified in this report as highly challenged by the need for economic revitalization may now face such challenges. Reliance on Federal Wood Supplies An alternative to metropolitan/non-metropolitan classification for counties was developed for making more discriminating judgments about population density, the importance of the forest products industry to the local economy, and reliance on federal wood supplies. This means for classifying counties resulted in a clearer picture of the imjxjrtance of the wood products industry to the economic base of counties such as Lane County, Oregon, which would otherwise be classified as metropolitan. The 72 counties in the owl region were assigned to one of the four following types: 115 (1) Densely-populated counties. Defined as the 19 counties in the owl region in which peculation density was equal to or greater than 100 persons per square mile at the 1990 census. (2) Wood products dominant counties. Defined as the 30 counties in which wood products employment exceeds seven percent of total county employment The wood products industries are reported to support many more jobs than are shown by direct employment because of indirect employment multiplier effects. Seven percent was selected as the cut-off point based on a recent analysis of the wood products industry in Washington State in which a forest industry multiplier of 3.67 was reported. Based on this multiplier, seven percent of direct employment in wood products in a county would indirectly support over 25 percent of the county's total employment. None of the 30 counties that fell into this category were densely populated, as defined above. Half of these counties were found to rely heavily on federal timber (see below) and placed in a different category for analysis purposes. (3) Federal wood-reliant counties. A subset of the wood products dominant counties was created based upon the 1992 Mason, Bruce, and Girard survey of wood sources for mills. The 15 wood products dominant counties whose mills souroed more than 25 percent of their wood from federal lands were classified as federal wood-reliant counties. (4) Low population density counties. There were 23 counties in the owl region whose population density was less than 99 persons per square mile in the 1990 census and were neither forest products dominant oc reliant on federal timber. QUESTION 1 How were wood products employment and earnings affected by the decline in the sale and harvesting of federal wood between 1988 and 1992? Table 1 (attached) summarizes results from an analysis by Wilbur Maki and Associates showing changes in total employment (both full time and p>art-time for wage earners and the self-employed) and earnings (including benefits) for the 72 counties in the owl region from 1988 to 1992. There was a loss of almost 30 thousand wood products jobs and $278.5 million in wood products earnings from wages, associated benefits, and self-employment This represents a loss of 20 percent of total wood products employment The 5.2 percent loss of wood products earnings during a period in which the cost of living increased 18 percent translates into an effective total earnings loss of over 23 percent. These declines in wood products employment and earnings contrast with a 12 percent gain in total employment and a 32 percent gain in total employment earnings for the same five- year period in the 72 county region. There is no convenient way of linking the decline in federal timber sales and harvesting to employment and earnings. However, Table 1 shows that losses in wood products employment and earnings were proportionally greatest in the 15 rural federal wood-reliant counties, with a loss of 25.3 percent of wood products jobs and an effective 41 percent loss of wood products employment earnings. Moreover, along with wood products dominant counties, rural federal wood-reliant counties exhibited the lowest rates of growth in total employment and employment earnings during this period. 116 QUESTION 2 Have counties reliant on federal wood supplies faced a greater challenge in revitalizing their local economies? Annual population estimates from 1988 and 1992 provided by Wilbur Maki and Associates show that none of the 72 owl region counties lost population during this period. All but four (Skamemia, Wa, Douglas and Lake, Ore., and Glenn, Cal.) of the 72 counties in the owl region experienced employment growth from 1988 to 1992. However, this apparent robustness of county economies clouds a significant decline in average county employment earnings (as well as yet unmeasured employment and eeunings losses for individuals, families, and communities that had relied on wood products employment). Counties with employment growth, but a decline in average wage and salary earnings, illustrated that family wage jobs in the wood products industry are being replaced by sub- family wage jobs in the service sector. As a result, many counties are faced with the challenge of revitalizing local economies to reduce economic depravation and its associated social costs. To complicate this challenge, the industries providing new jobs generally have much lower employment multipliers and average earnings per job than tihe wood products manufacturing industries that are lost The Washington State Input-Output 1987 Study prepared for the Office of Financial Management in 1993 estimated employment multipliers for logging and sawmilling (excluding management overtiead and associated services internal to a company) of 5.8 and 4.2, respectively. Corresponding multipliers for service industries were all substantially lower retail trade- 1.9, finance, insurance and real estate- 2.5, business services- 1.7, and health services-2.0. In 1988, earnings (including benefits) from wood products jobs averaged about $30,000 (See Table 1). Table 2 shows growth in jobs, average earnings per job, and percent average earnings growth by selected economic sector and county type from 1988 to 1992. Table 2 shows that health and social services was the economic sector in which most jobs were created during this period, with an overall growth rate of 25 percent and average earnings growth of 1 1 percent. Producer services (services that provide inputs to service or manufacturing industries) and retail services ranked second and third, respectively, with 23 percent and 18 percent. Slate and local government ranked fourth with 15 percent However, producer services exhibited a decline in overall average earnings growth of five percent. Wood-producing counties exhibited negative average earnings growth for four of the five industries in which job growth was greatest. The counties most reliant on federal wood supplies have experienced the lowest rate of growth in both number of jobs and in average earnings per job (See Table 2). Job growth has occurred in consumer service industries with the lowest employment multipliers and lowest average earnings per job. Forest products dominant counties, when compared to those reliant on federal wood supplies, are similar to other rural counties in showing greater rates of growth in producer services and lower rates in health and social services and retail services. These estimates suggest that counties most reliant on federal wood supplies face the toughest challenges in revitalizing their economies. An index was developed to rate the challenge of economic revitalization facing counties impacted by loss of wood products employment and earnings. Four categories were developed by adapting and modifying the Oregon State Economic Development Department's "Distressed Area Analysis" rating system developed for communities: 117 (1) High challenge. Counties with (a) loss of wood products employment between 1988 and 1992 that was equal to or greater than four percent of the total county employment, (b) which had not added back at least two non-wood products jobs for every job lost in the wood products industry, and (c) which had experienced a loss of average employment earnings in the same period (average earnings growth was less than the 18 percent cost of living increase during this five-year interval). (2) Moderate challenge. Counties with (a) loss of wood products employment between 1988 and 1992 that was equal to or greater than four percent of the total county employment, and (b) which had not added back at least two non-wood products jobs for every job lost in the wood products industry. (3) Low challenge. Counties with (a) loss of wood products employment between 1988 and 1992 that was two percent or greater but less than four percent of the total county employment, (b) which had not added back at least two non-wood products jobs for every job lost in the wood products industry, and (c) which had experienced a loss of average employment earnings in the same period (average earnings growth was less than the 18 percent cost of living increase during this five-year interval). (4) No challenge. Counties with loss of wood products employment between 1988 and IS'92 that was less than two percent of the total county employment. Table 3 summarizes the relationship between the challenge of economic revitalization and reliance on the wood products industry. Six of the eight highly or moderately challenged counties were classified as relying most heavily on federal wood supplies. Nine of the 15 counties facing a low to high economic challenge were also typed as federally reliant. None of the densely populated or low density, non-wood products rural counties face economic challenges related to decline in the wood products industry (although there may be other causes for loss of income or jobs). Counties facing the greatest challenges in revitalizing their economies are concentrated in southwest Oregon where reliance on federal wood supplies has been greatest Similarly, counties most challenged in Washington State are those that have been most reliant on federal wood supplies, especially Skamania and Klickitat Identifiable economic challenges associated with decline of the wood products industry in California are limited to Plumas County. Challenges faced by local communities within counties were overlooked by this rating system, since it focused on the aggregate economic conditions of counties. Of particular concern are highly challenged communities in counties where aggregate data show a very low challenge of economic revitalization. The Oregon State Economic Development Department has developed a trial method for rating communities as "Distressed Areas" (see above), but gathering employment data by Zip Codes does not provide reliable sources of community-level data for communities in the three-state region. There are several examples of counties where county-level information masks substantial challenges of economic revitalization at the local level. Some of the most noteworthy cases of communities facing high challenges are Forks in Clallam County, Washington, and Aberdeen/Hoquium in Grays Harbor, Washington. Both have shown signs of severe social and economic dislocation following the withdrawal of federal wood supplies. A notable case in Oregon are the small wood-producing towns along the North Fork of the Santiam River in Marion County. Social and economic conditions in these communities eire even more challenging than most in neighboring and highly challenged Linn County. In northern California, Hayfork and other small counties in Trinity County illustrate how local conditions can be far more severe than indicated by county averages. 118 QUESTION 3 Has reduction in wood supply required by the President's forest plan affected the ability of counties to meet these challenges? This study analyzed the Hkely employment effects of implementing the President's forest plan for the owl region. Sale of wood scheduled under the plan was compared with the annual harvest from federal lands in 1992-93. Results suggest that implementation of the President's plan will reduce federal sales in the owl region by 616.9 million board feet, translating into an additional loss of 5,660 jobs. However, 1994 sales of federal wood were well below levels scheduled by the President's plan and totaled only 140 million board feet. Projected sales for 1995 were even lower. These losses will further detract from efforts to revitalize counties facing economic challenges caused by the loss of wood products jobs and earnings. Six counties (Linn, Douglas, Curry, and Lane Counties, Oregon and Skamania and Lewis Counties, Washington) would lose two percent or more of their total employment base under the President's plan. All but one of these counties (Lewis) already face a high to moderate economic challenge in revitalizing their economies. Skamania County would lose over 20 percent of its total employment base, and Linn and EX)uglas would lose 5.1 and 4.4 percent, respectively. The remaining counties would lose a little more than two percent Further reductions in federal timber harvests are not the only causes for erosion of the economic base in wood-producing counties. Additional losses of employment and employment earnings from implementation of the President's plan will most likely be less than losses originating in reductions of harvest on state, private industrial, and small non- industrial private lands. Harvesting of state lands in Washington State has been reduced by almost two-thirds since 1992 by habitat management planning and other environmental concerns. Private industrial owners have reduced harvesting during this same period as required by implementation of habitat conservation plans and other state and federal environmental laws and regulations. Harvesting opportunities for non-industrial private owners have also been reduced by these same environmental laws and regulations, and may decline in the future as readily available supplies are exhausted by rapid harvesting on lands where opportunities currently exist. QUESTION 4 Could recreation and tourism growth help counties meet these challenges? Tourism employment is often recommended as a substitute for declining wood products employment To assess the economic potential for tourism in counties faced with economic challenges, SIC code 80, Hotels and Other Lodging Haces, was selected as the indicator for tourism growth. Previous tourism studies have relied on this industrial group as a reliable criterion for detecting tourism activity (Smith, 1989). Other industrial groups, especially SIC code 58, have been avoided because other factors (e.g., changing lifestyles) are thought to have caused rapid growth in eating establishments and employment. The county-level employment and employment earnings data provided by Wilbur Maki Associates was used to classify counties on the basis of growth and decline m employment in hotels and lodging places from 1988-1992. Four categories were created: (1) employment decline of 10 percent or more, (2) nine percent employment decline to nine 119 percent emfdoyment growth, (3) employment growth of 10 percent or more, and (4) employment growth of 10 percent or more that replaced lost wood producing jobs. The range of nine percent decline to nine percent growth was used because activity in this industry tends to fluctuate with economic cycles, and 10 percent growth or decline was thought to represent changes more enduring than a temporary fluctuation. There was tourism growth in only one (Plumas County, California) of the 15 counties facing the challenge of economic revitalization. Ten of the 15 challenged counties exhibited tourism employment declme of 10 percent or more. Counties with declining tounsm employment were concentrated in southwest Oregon, coastal Washington, and south central Washington. While Skamania County, Washington, showed decline in tourism employment for the years in which data were available (up to 1992), the opening of Skamania Lodge in 1993 will likely result in its reclassification as a tourism growth county. Tourism growth appears to be located in counties with significant natural amenities (e.g., Skamania County, Washington and Hood River County, Oregon), new destination resorts (e.g., Jefferson and Tillamook Counties, Oregon), or urban areas with growing reputations as tourist attractions (e.g., Portland and Seattle). County economies are not necessarily improved by growth of tourism industries. Work in tourism establishments is generally seasonal, unstable, low-paying, lacking in benefits, and low-skilled (Smith, 1989). It does little to train people for advancement in careers and is generally limited to secondary employment for spouses or primjuy employment for individuals (especially single women) living in poverty. As such, it is a very poor substitute for the family-wage industrial jobs lost with decline in the wood- producing industries. QUESTION 5 Would secondary manufacturing help counties meet these challenges? Secondary (value-added) wood-products manufacturing is widely recommended as a means for creating employment in counties facing the challenge of declining employment and employment earnings in logging OJ"*^ Ol' <»S9 ■» m- . CO *" to" *" o r- CM CM «V CM S 00 CO c 3 o •»- «» •---§ O in <6 O ^.^ 5 < Jgtt in* jn a> oo >; CM «^ ss s? O O -5 «>sso as ss si>.e §:=~ to ^. en o^ CO CM »- gg?- §«Ss^ S a (O 4» ©•'T « 2 iO 3 h-T'T-" i>»* 23 0th Count Low Pop in»- s •»M s ederal ducIng 5(3) 00.256 48,081 16.0% « CM (D in CM 12,151 ■25.3% -4.1% ,976,000 441,000) -22.8% 19,871 6% 22.000 22% 15% \±SS n ^ ' ^_ 15 Rural Wood-P Count flO •»»- S IWood- jclng Ie8(2) 4.421 2,366 1.3% s 1,487 !1.9% ■2.5% .143,000 844.000) -13.1% 3.710 9% 5.000 21% 11% « in *" m ^ • ^ o ^ 4» * in 15Rura Prodi Count in oo 5« M fl? 0.839 9,775 1.6% 6.844 11.4% ■0.2% 5,000 5.000 5.7% 8.167 12% 5.000 33% 19% c< in « in CO _ CO CO ^ S o>co S CM »-o> s ^a>

£ 1 1 'ood Products Emp nge In Wood Produ 'ood Prod. Emp. as CtsEamlngs, 1988 food Products Eam nge In Wood Prodi bs. 1 ood 1 rodu o a. 5*5 £0£ rodu InW Cha Total Jo Total W( WoodP c E ange rcent ange WoodP Change Percent CO .C « £ o o x: o o 1 Hi OQ-O KQ.UOLQ. 1 ^-E 2 1^% S: a. CO CD c ._ S-if S i ® §75 CM Cog Q."5£ gsSS ^•^ i C CO C CO "O A £Si 75 « a> ■£ w E = " >.» 111 0.0..^ £ » E •€■€ 'S S $ o en 01 & !§■§ o o o u u $ en CO M TJ *0 T> Q> O Q> 11 124 Table 2 . Job Growth in Owl Region, by Type of County, 1988-1992 Percent Net Percent of Average Average Employment Jobs Net Earnings per Earnings Type of County Growth Top Five Growth Sectors Created Growth (1) Job 1992 Growth (2) Densely Populated 448.167 jobs 1 ) Producer Services 115.525 26% $ 23.917 (5)% 12% growth 2) Health & Social Services 99.060 22 30.927 16 3) Retail Services 65.681 15 16.706 7 4) State & Local Govt 62.215 14 30.228 2 5) Distributive Services 48.976 1 35.897 (6) Wood-Producing 43.710 jobs 1) Health & Social Services 19.923 30% $ 22.596 (5)% 9% growth 2) Retail Services 11.510 26 14.466 (11) 3) Producer Services 8.194 19 17.646 0 4) State and Local Govt. 7.757 18 25,687 (7) 5) Construction 5.282 12 27.737 (4) Federal Wood-Producing 19.871 jobs 1) Health & Social Services 11.378 57% $ 22.650 7% 6% growth 2) Retail Services 6.506 33 14.583 16 3) Manufacturing 4.913 25 27.464 1 4) State and Local Govt. 3.510 18 24.304 (1) 5) Construction 2.333 12 24,809 3 Other Rural Counties 75.066 jobs 1) Health &Social Services 2 1 .4 1 1 29% $ 23.289 3% 1 3% growth 2) Retail Services 20.465 27 15.086 13 3) Sute & Local Govt. 13.536 18 26.821 2 4) Producer Services 11.990 16 18.530 (8) 5) Distributive Services 6.294 8 28.081 (5) All Counties 586.814 jobs 1) Health & Social Services 144.773 25% S 26,026 11% 12% growth 2) Producer Services 137.880 23 22.896 (5) 3) Reuil Services 104.162 18 16,137 8 4) Sute & Local Govt. 87.018 15 29.079 2 5) Distributive Services 59.774 10 34.405 (7) (1) Sum of percentage growth of sectors with net job increases exceeds 100% to account for net job losses in other employment sectors. (2) 1 8% inflation from 1 986 to 1 992 was subtracted from the percentage increase in average earnings to estimate the true value of changes in earnings. 12 125 Table 3. Challenge of Economic Revitalization and County Type, in Number of Counties Economic Challenge Densely Populated Wood- Products Dominant Federal Wood- Reliant Low Density Rural TOTAL None 19 9 6 23 57 Low 0 4 3 0 7 Moderate 0 1 2 0 3 High 0 1 4 0 5 TOTAL 19 15 15 23 72 Ofi-QSl _ Qfi _ S 126 Table 4. Number of Primary and Secondary Wood-Producing Establishments by Industry Group and Type of County, Owl Region, 1991 . Industry Group Densely Populated Number % Wood- Dominant Number % Fed. Wood- Reliant Number % Low Density Number % Total Number % Logging 376 16% 918 39% 600 25% 462 20% 2,356 100% Sawmilling & Planing 170 27% 240 38% 104 17% 111 18% 625 100% Millwork, Plywood & Structural Members 407 55% 148 20% 97 13% 88 12% 740 100% Wood Containers 43 80% 5 9% 0 0 6 11% 54 100% Wood Buildings & Mobile Homes 29 63% 8 17% 8 17% 1 2% 46 99% Msc.Wood Products 109 40% 90 33% 47 18% 25 9% 271 100% Furniture & Fixtures 339 82% 44 11% 23 5% 7 2% 413 100% Subtotal Secondary Mfg. 927 61% 295 19% 175 12% 127 8% 1.524 100% All Wood Products Manufacturing 1,473 33% 1,453 32% 879 19% 700 16% 4,505 100% Source: Establishments Compiled from Bureau of Census, County Business Patterns for 1991, by Paul Polzin, Bureau of Business and Economic Research, University of Montana. 127 Table 5. Projected Consumption of Federal Log Supply by Type of County and Small and Large Mills, Owl Region, 1992 County Type SMALL MILLS MM Bd. Ft. % LARGE MILLS MM Bd. Ft. % TOTAL MM Bd. Ft. % Densely Populated 146.6 13.7% 151.2 16.3% 297.8 14.9% Wood-Producing 150.3 14.0% 176.3 19.0% 326.6 16.3% Fed. Wood-Prod. 565.1 52.6% 380.4 41.1% 945.5 47.3% Low Density 212.0 19.7% 218.7 23.6% 430.7 21.5% TOTAL 1,074.0 100.0% 926.6 100.0% 2.000.6 100.0% Source: Mason, Bruce, and Girard Mill Survey, December, 1991. 128 Figure 1 . Stability of Oregon Logging and Sawniiliing Employment (SIC 24) and All Manufacturing Employment, by Size of Establishment, 1964-1991 50 1 r 45 - ■ 40 • 35 - ■ SIC 24 30 ■ ■ □ All Mfg. ?5 • . 20 - . 1 5 - ■ — 1 1 — 1 ■— , 10 - 5 - 0 - ii m 1 |l i Total 1 to 19 20 to 99 100 to 250 to 249 499 500+ Number of Employees per Establishment Source: R. Lee and P. Eckert. 1995. Figure 2 . Stability of Oregon Logging and Sawmilling Establishments (SIC 24) and All Manufacturing Establishments, by Size of Establishment, 1964-1991 Number of Employees per Establishment Source: R. Lee and P. Eckert. 1995. 16 129 Figure 3. Stability of Washington Logging and Sawmilling Employment (SIC 24) and All Manufacturing Employment, by Size of Establishment, 1964-1991 o a> •o a 250 to 499 500+ Number of Employees per Establishment Source: R. Lee and P. Eckert. 1995. Figure A . Stability of Washington Logging and Sawmilling Establishments (SIC 24) and All Manufacturing Establishments, by Size of Establishment, 1964-1991 Total to 19 20 to 99 100 to 249 250 to 499 500+ Number of Employees per Establishment Source: R. Lee and P. Eckert 1995. 17 130 MAYR BROS. COMPANY 92 U.S. HIGHWAY lOI P. O. BOX 180 HOQUIAM, WA 98550-0180 (360) 532-7490 Fw (360) 532-2381 TESTIMONY of Mr. Thomas M. Mayr President Mayr Bros. Company Hoquiam, Washington Before The House Resource Subcommittee On National Paries, Forests, and Lands July 23, 1996 131 Thank you Congressman Dicks for introducing me to tbe members of this Confunittee. Mr. Chairman, I am honored and fed privileged to speak b^re a committee of tbe Congress of the United States of America, At tbe same time, I am embarrassed to be here today speaking in public about my problems. It seems to me like whiiuog and oomplaining, and that is not how the Ma)T iknuly has conducted ourselves or oQr business. However, the direct and proximate cause of our recent mill closing, the layoff of 170 employees wth over 1,S70 man years of service with -en the Administration's meager expectations. In FY 1993, the forest sold 14.2 MMBF; in FY 1994 the level was again 14.2 MMBF. Then the Clinton plan kicked in. FY 1995 the forest wld only 3.2 MMBF. This year, through June 30th, the forest has sold only 3.5 MMBF. While it may look like tbey are improving, you need to look a little deeper. Thus Ui this year, only 2 5 MMBF of the material sold on the CMympic has been material our company could manuftcture to meet our customers' demand. Mayr Bros has always been « resillem company. We completed the new miO, found an alternate wood supply for the big log mill, and survived for a time. In fact the new mill is one of the most efficient and highest producing mills of its type in the world, During Uus some pehod, Mayr Bros. has paid the original loan down fiom $5,000,000 to S4,000,000. In order to accomplish aS of that without the Sec. 318 timber, the company was forced to use all of its operatiog line of credit to finance completion of the mill constmction. SX the same time we lost our valued customer base in 136 Japan, and with it our lucnitivt niche nurkets. During this time Mayr Bros, always held out hope that the Forest Service would do the honorable thing and make some type of settlement viith us on our timber sales, The Mayr family vainly held out hope as the delays and setbacks continued. FlnaQy, in Febniary of this year I made a proposal to Tom Tiichnunn. President Clinton's forestry representative in Portland, Oregon. The offer was tWs: Mayr Bros, would trade all of our claims against the Forest Service on our Sec. 318 sales, if the Govcnanent would pay off the approximately S4,000,000 remaining on the government guaranteed miO loan. 'Wfafle a great deal of interest was ocpressed in this proposal, we were told by Mr. Tuchmann of the office of Forestry and Economic Development that (contrary to the opinion of our anomey) the administration lacked the authority to do such an ofiset. It should be noted th!»T irt ?;^alfinp thig offer. Mavr Bros, was, (out of desperationi expressing a willingness to settle for leg; tHian 50% of what the damages wiD be on these contracts should Mavr Bros, be forced to file clahns m the U.S. Court of CffW*^ Qfvy\i Attached to my testimony is a proposed piece of legislation prepared by my attorney which authorizes the Clinton Admiiustratioo to enter into an agreement with my company that would require my company to relinquish any and all claims for damages related to all of oor Forest Service timber sale contracts purchased prior to fiscal year 1992 in exchange for the United States fully retiring my company's obligation on its govenuncnt guaranteed loan, including all principal, interest, fees and other charges. The Clinton Administration has expressed a great interest in this approach, yet it claims not to have the authority to execute sudi an action. I truly believe that this is in the best interest of the U.S. govenuneot and of my company. The case law is clear that 137 damages are due my company as a result of the govenuneot's long delay in making the timber held under coatract available for barvest. Ratlier than spend years in coun to resolve the fuQ damage amount and seal forever the fate of my company, I call on this committee to pass this legislation and provide my company a ray of hope for the future. Where are we today? The afieimath of one agency of the Department of Agriculture refusing to perform on the contncts that were to be used to r^ay a loan set up by another agency of the same departmcot has been devastating. By usmg our operating line of credit to fioance the activities that should have been financed by the harvest of our Sec. 31S sales, we did not have adequate funds avaOable to properly buy logs and market hunber from our xniQs. Vfben the provid«r of our operating Uoe of credit lost confidence that the Forest Service would ever perform on the Sec. 318 contracts, thev deypanded repayment of the loan. This forced the company to liquidate alJ log and lumber inventory. From 190 employees in 1995, we are now down to 16 and by August 31 that nun^)cr will be zero. The local bank which has stood behind us through the last 10 years is in fear of loang the federal loan guaramee if they do not force us to payoff the mill loan. We have been required to solicit proposals from auction companies for a liquidation of our mQIs. An interesting side issue is the retraining programs for miO and woods workers impletnented by this administration. Most of our laid off employee have become participants in at least one if not several of the federal and state ttmber worker retrainiog programs. While these programs began as well intentioned, they constitute the final nail in the coffin of the small family owned sawmill 138 company. "Why? Because the programs employ overt blackmafl of the particjpants. How? If a laid off* timber worker chooses to sign up for these programs, (such as junior college education), and he is called bade to his old job (or any job in the timber industry) and be takes the job, he loses all benefits of the program now and in the future. Why? Isn't the idea to put the unemployed back to work — or is the idea to remove our employees from the timber industry permanently? We have prior persoiul experience with these retraining programs. In August of 1994 we temporarily laid off the second shift m the planer mill while we upgraded the dry kilns, this was a 3 week period only. When we called the crew back to work, 6 individuals had be«n sigDed up by the social service agency for displaced timber worker retraining and refused our offer to come back to work. Th^' weren't displaced timber workers, they were on temporary layoff during which most of them drew vacation pay? We were forced to hire 6 new people to 6U in and suffer the cost of training them for the jobs. I would also like to mention two other points I believe this Committee and this Congress should focus on. The first is what has happened to the town of Hoquiam. Ho^jiuam was a thriving community. We had the largest coQcentration of wood product compaoies in the State of Washington. Today, three years into the President's Forest Plan, we are down to two stzuH sawmiDs and one pulp mill. Our town as been converted from a thriviog communis to a dumpii^ ground for indigent families. I am told that over 50 percem of the private homes in Hoqisam are now rentals. I am also told that the average length of stay for the new tenants is four months. Thick of that, every four months SO percent of the homes in our town have tenants leave You might ask why is ttus 139 occurring. Well, it is simple - the economy is so poor in Hoqutam that rents are so low daj the State encourages the poor and indigent to scnle in Hoquiam. Several families I know have moved to Alaska, in part, because they were concerned for rhar safety in our new Clintooized town. Z know it is di£Gcuh for governmental agencies to look at the data for individua] towns, or evtn individual fiuqilies. But come to Hoqidaro and look what the plan which *1>roke the gridlock*" has resulted in. WKlc your at it, you oi^ht to visit some of the other town which are being devastated by this Administrations nusguided natural resource policies. You can find them in nearly all the western Rates. The other thing Congress should examine is how this Administration has begun s land rush with the largest companies in this industry. Despite promises to help smaO business companies Eke Mayr Bros., just the opposite is occurring. The Forest Service, supported by many members of Congress, is tuning to Urge land exchanges to grow the number of federal acres it can lode up. Weyerhaeuser Company has one proposed on the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest and Phim Creek has one proposal caOed the 1-90 land exchange. This Admirustration is encour«tgsng the most wealthy companies to give the federal govermnent lands which are located in areas where timber cannot be harvested under the President's forest plan. In exchange they are giving these companies lands wisch are open for harvest under the Pnradent's forest plan. The net readt is less land will be available for the timber sale program smaO companies Gke xnoe need to survive. We have also observed the Administration is in the process of entering into Habitat Conservation Plans with these largest companies. The result is that much of land owned by these companies is 140 released fi»r harvest while our timber supply continues to be locked>up. The Clinton Administration's promise to help small business companies and secondary manu&cturers v/as peiiiaps the most eo^ty promise made in the Presidem's forest plaa Mr. Chairman. I told you coonng to testify about our bmilies problems is very uncomfortable. But, I hope my coming 'will help you take action to reverse the economic destruction of the Pacific Northwest before h is too Ute for other oompaoies. I will conclude my testimony with this. I would like to show you this broadside (exhibit). One company has gone so far as to schedule an auction for the bank. If this auction actually takes place, it will kill my father, if not by actual physical death by emotional. To be forced to liquidate 63 years of bard work at a senp iron auction because your country will not honor its obligations is not acceptable. That is not the country that he has supported for 81 years; it Is not the country I have been a proud citizen of for 44 years; and it is certainly not the sountry my grandfather, Marzellinius Mayr, came to for the first time at the turn of the century by shoveling coal in the boiler room to pay for his pass^e. 141 Remember what I snid earlier, it was not a lack or raw material in oor area that dosed the mill, or even the current cost of logs. If this administration would settle with Mayr Bros, for the hnge monetary^ lo5ses caused bj the Forest Service contract nonperfonnxnce, Mayr Bros, coold rvfinancc ^nr operations and pat oar mifls back in operation otilizing logs from state, Indian, and private landt. Please consider ^iog the Administration (he authority they say they need to settle so we at least have one nty of hope for the fotnre. Thank you for the opportumty to address you today, I request that both my written and oral testimony be made part of this hearing and we would be happy to answer any of your questions. 142 X04th CONGRESS 2d Session rd. • X^ • IN THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES A BILL Tills Is a bill authorizing the Secretary o£ Agriculture ("Secretary") to eliminate all of a timber purchaser's pending or potential timber sale contract claims against the Forest Service in exchange for fully retiring a timber purchaser's obligation as a government guaranteed loan. SECTION 1. SHORT TITLI. This Act shall be cited as the "Timber Sale Contract Damage Elimination Act." SECTION 2. FINDINGS- -Congress finds the following; (a) Federal timber purchasers have been unaible to log timber sales sold by the Secretary because of government delays and changing environmental standards. 143 (b) Timber purchasers have used chese very sales to obtain loans from Che government Cor mill improvements and modernization to remain In business. (c) The government's long delay in making the timber availsU>le exposes the government to substantial claims for timber sale contract damages. (d) The long delay in releasing a purchaser's federal timber sales has hindered timber purchasers' ability to repay government loans. (e) Offsetting a purchaser's potential contract damage claims against its government guaranteed loan obligations is in the purchaser's and government's best interests. SECTION 3. AUTHORITY OF SECRETARY TO ELIMINATE CONTRACT DAMAGES (a) The Secretary is authorized to enter into an agreement with a requesting timber purchaser that would require the purchaser to relinquish any and all claims for damages related to all of a purchaser's timber sale contracts purchased prior to fiscal year 1992 in exchange for the United States fully retiring a purchaser's obligation on a government guaranteed loan, including all principal, interest. £ees and othor chargee. 144 XaUL r. lirHINGER&As ASSOCIATES Conni bants to tbe Forat PrvJuets Industry 1200 HIGH STREET. SUITE 22 EUGENE, OREGON 97401 503/686-9607 FAX 503/686-8124 MILL CLOSURES In listing mills as dosed, wc use the follcrsviiig criteria: 1 . The mill that management Indicates the operalion will be closed permanently. 2. A mill is considered closed if tt has been closed for 60 days or more and, wc believe, is not likely to reopen, or management indicates a closure of indefinite length. 3. Mills that reopen are removed entirely from the list. There is no double counting in our data. The listing Is for mills that are closed or formally announced to be closed en the date of listing. 4. To be on the list, a mill must have been a producer of a primary product: lumber, plywood, veneer, board, pvilp. or other major commodity. 5. The employment data is the number of mill employees that lost their job. In some cases if a plant has normally run 2 shifts, but for the last year prior to closing has run only a single shift, we try to capture the 2 shift level of employmcnl- 6. The producUon informaiion represents the average annual production over the two yeaxs prior lo closure. 7. Our history of recording closures shows that once a mill Is closed in the western states, they rarely reopen. Over ihe past 10 years of tracking mill closures, wc find the permanent return to operation rate to be about 1%. In some cases, our judgment and Information may be proved wrong, but we believe lliis criteria reflects the status of mills within our Industry. 145 ■■Sat; iniui. i^LUSUKEti 1 9S9 TO PRESENT^ WatMngten .•-— •"— ■*^* -)., V Idaho JN \ \ Cadfomle S. I J KEY -PuipMBI ■Wood Products \ Each town shown on this map has lost one or mere prlmarywood processing facilHIas- Sswmllls, Plywood Plants, VeneerPlsnts. and Pulp mills 281 min» have closad and ovar 30.000 primary mill and woods iobs haw bean eliminalsd. Piapcrcdby; PauiF.Ening«r«A>coei««> Eugene, OR 6/21/96 146 TABLE 1 OReGON/WASMiNGTON/IDAHO/CALIFOnNlA/MONTANA MILL CLOSURES PLYWOOD/PAMEUVEWgE»t/OTWEH mooucnoN no. no. iiimso.ft. www- EK*1.0TEES MU« WABt 1MC 13 S42 n» IMS it •TV 1,»3« 1«94 Z2 •M 1,123 1M3 M 730 1,«9 1MZ 2t •m 2^2 1M1 3S •i,2sa 2jsn 1M0 M i^oe 2,321 i«e« 1» MS 1.M3 100 1M 3M 3S1 7*7 oas 427 M3 i^«a 2,300 B7 ^.»« uu 1,»1» «7a MO MM COMBweO SAWMILL « PANEL 1«M 14 «42 1WS » 2,2B8 lOM 20 *«yt IMS 34 2,3»1 1M2 43 4.732 1M1 49 3,«2V 1M0 IS 4.240 1«» J5 2.3(3 TOTAL 3B1 29.131 « Plywood.V*n«tr: Indualry prsducUcn total* ar« not uiad for piynood and vcnosr baeaut* all wood product* 1(1 v«n*tr plants at* ultlmataly ua*d In plywood production. Includaa one Pulp Mil. «*lnclu4*a two Pulp mUm. ■** tnelud«a «n> lamlnatad baam plant In numbar of mllia and amployava. T«t«li fer'Calltornla prIarM 1*47 Incemplala. Dan for Montana Incomplat* at inia Nm* pr'o* to KM. FfZ h Asaodatas 147 TABLE 2 OREGON MIU. CLOSURES SAWMILLS NO. MUS PftOOuCnOH Miter ppaoucnoNi TO. - MM so.rr. NO. - MML9 .VlBMlS EMPlOTCeS IMS 190$ 19M 1*M 1992 1991 1900 1999 r 3SS 2W 14 1 999 I.OSC : cs IS 1 1 310 947 15 t 4N 1,«J2 U 790 i.«49 « 1 337 MS : r 3«7 790 « 0 13S T3a ror coo S m 393 »TS (•• 991 1.200 929 902 19" 2.011 1.824 « 993 710 COMBmED SAWMILL A PANEL HO. NO. MILLS IWiOTE€S 199« 1999 1904 1993 1S02 1991 1990 1989 299 1,199 72« 1,2» 2.932 2.34S 2.379 1,4«0 TOTAL 127 12.2r« *p|yt> ar* ultimataiy usad In plywood productioii. ■Includo* two Pul0 Mill* (production was t9S Ton* Fmr Day). Pf E & Assoc iotvi 149 TABLE 4 CALIFORNIA MILL CLOSURES PL'rWOeD>P*WEUVEWeEW/OTH6R PBOOUCriOK MMOF PROOOCTlONt NO. MM9C/T. tn. MILS :v* BASIS Btnorns 1IM 1»S ISM IMS 1>»2 1990 1989 4 1 190 370 110 1(0 1 »9 •32 r ZS9 517 E 292 442 ' «1 530 i: 1 tu I^OS 1 1SS 3(1 0 170 0 26Z 120 120 COMBWEO SAWMILL * PANEL NO. NO Miaii Wnnarees 19M 270 1J« 3S0 1«9« S32 199J 779 1992 SS2 1»»1 •SO 1990 13 1^8 1989 311 TOTAL 93 S.012 vPiywoDdA/MMar: )ndu(try production total* »rw net u«*d tor plyweod and v«n«»r b«cau*« all wood products In venavr plants «r» ultlmataly uaad In plywood production. Includoa on* Pulp Mill (production wac 700 Tone Par Oajr). *^nclud«s ojw.ffaMi»^^ III lllllll III WM III IIM OPINIONS What's endangered is common sense THE most endangered species on the Olyrnpic PenuisoJa wpean to be the femily tawmiU — and coimaco sense. Ev«D if you believe thai the thou- uuuia of acres already set aside for spotted owl* and marbled murrdcts aren't nearly enough: even if you Relieve that the whole oU-frowtfa «c»- iysten is on tbe eve of oestructioo, SVirelx ycu win agree t)v>t it's on3y right that the Mayr Bros. Legging C0. of Hoqulam be compeoMted for the 14 millian board feet of federal tinibtf it bought, fair and square, but has been unable to log for nearly six years. • Three years after President Clin- toB's Forest Conferea^ and a week after the cod of the Seventfa American . Caught in the middle once again is Mayr Bros. Tb« Koquiam cempainr bought severaj Section 318 old^owth timber sales from the Forest Servioe in the Olympic Natiooal Forcsl about six years ago. •: Sen. Slade Gorton of Wssbingtoa and Oregon's Mark Hatfield have crafted a comproinise plan to give the sdministratioa new fleiability to buy 9Ut the contracts or provide substitute timber in cases where major caviro&> mental impacts atv f eand. ; But the White House is balking becaota the Republicans' plan still fivu the contract bokler final say oa wbetho' a buyout offer or exchange is acceptable — as if that's not ialr. ' While Washington fiddles, mora hu- man beings are getting burned. ; Mayr Bros., whose resilience and ingenuity have been beacons of hope tor Grays Harbor, announced Friday l^at It will lay off most of its UO employees ever the next two months. Lack of revenue from the 31* sale loggertieadsovertimberpoHcy. • meet loan navments for t>i« . ^^iSw r timber policy. Hub being an election year, we are not holding our breatb for a solution any time soon: It isn't all his fault, but President Clinton's track record on Ii7nt>er issues is a mirror image of his wortt (eodeo- cies as governor of Arkansas: ' Bob- bing. Weaving and often reversing course, he wants it both ways. .' As part of a comprehensive spend* ing bill last summer, Cliatwi signed the salvage logging 'Yider." which yould allow logging of blow-down and other trees that otherwise would be left to rot. But the rider also allowed logpng of some green timber, the '.'Section SIS" sales that date back to the Bush administration. < Environmentalists claim this log- ging will wr«ak havoc, and during a campaign stop in Seattle last week, the president declared that he wants torepealmuehofthelaw. , ... .1 ._ meet loan pa^^ents for the small-log sawmil] it built in 19S3 to make the - transition to the new dounsized era. : Mayr3r(s. did everything it eeuU to meet the challenges of the future ^nd preserve hundreds at Xamily-wag« -. 3obs. AJad it's stiC gettiog hosed. l\ ' Company Cresident Tom Uayr is absolutely rignt when be says that if >Iayr Bros, isn't sUowed to log the ^ber it bought, it should be folly Compensated for the stumpage, plus pillions in damages due to the delay. V '"Xcep hope alive," candidate Clin- •(on said in 1992. "We haven't get « «erseB to waste." .•■ Wbafi wasting is lime, Mr. Presi- tdent At iba rale we're going, will ■,ttoera still be a Mayr Bros, when Uncle ■fam gets around to keeping his part ef _:ihe bargain? "' • •; ' Tbis tUteriMl nprtstatr tbt vkm lef JohO Bugbm, Dta Aaaa Bauso, 'JfUekMdenooMoJDougBurker. 155 s'^^c'ES HI-RIDGE LUMBER CO. phone:(9is)M2^4si Ooustas F„ p 0 BOX 458 *"*** <9^*> "*"«» Ponderosa & Sugar Pins H«mFir YREKA, CAUFORNIA 96097 TESTIMONY OF GERRY BENDDC President Hi-Ridge Lumber Company Yreka. California Before United States House of Representatives House Resource Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Lands July 23. 1996 156 L Introduction Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, my name is Gerry Bendix. I am president of Hi-Ridge Lumber Company located in Yreka, California. I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today to share with you how the Clinton Administration and the Forest Service have abandoned the forest products industry in northern California. I also am here to help set the record straight concerning promises the Clinton Administration made and never fulfilled. The President's Forest Plan is devastating individuals, businesses and communities which have traditionally depended on our national forests. Additionally, I want to describe the layers and layers of new bureaucracy this Administration has put in place to slow the development of any timber sales in northern California. Mr. Chairman, I£-Ridge Lumber Company is a 40-year-old saw mill, dry kiln, and planing mill located in the small (population 7,500) northern California town of Yreka, California. We employ approximately 130 people at the mill and an equal number of loggers and truckers work in the woods to supply our mill with the logs we need to operate. Our family, along with a partner, buih and has been operating Hi-Ridge Lumber Company for the last 40 years. We have always actively participated in the management of this closely held family business. In 1 996, we will process 45 million aboard feet of timber and generate approximately S3 5 million m sales. We operate on several national forests in northwestern and north central California, 157 several of which are included as part of the area covered under the President's Forest Plan. About 90% of the raw materials we need to operate our mill is supplied from the national forests in northern California. Our main source of logs has been the Klamath National Forest. n. The Klamath National Forest and Ui-Ridge's Timber Supply Throughout the 1970's and 1980's, the Klamath National Forest annually sold between 200 and 250 million board feet (MMBF) of saw timber to companies like ours. It was with great disappointment thai we found the forest was slated to sell about 40 to 50 MMBF each year under the President's Forest Plan. Despite recent pronouncements by the Administration that the President's Forest Plan had broken the grid-lock and things are now moving, it frankly disappoints me to tell you where the Forest Service is heading. Since 1993, when the President's plan for the economic destruction of the forest products industry was announced, the Klamath National Forest has been moving backwards. In 1993. the Klamath National Forest sold 32 MMBF. In 1994, the Klamath National Forest sold 23.8 MMBF. In 1995, it sold only 25.6 MMBF; and this year, now with more than three quarters of the year over, it has sold only 27. 1 MMBF. While the raw data may look like things are improving, the detailed data is quite disturbing. Most national forests usually sell a mix of saw timber and non-saw timber products. In a typical year, 75 to 80 percent or more of what the Klamath National Forest would offer was sawoimber. Each year, we have seen the ratio of sawtimber to non-sawtimber slip. 158 In 1995. less than half the Forest Service volume sold in the state of Califoniia was sawtimber. Companies like ours cannot survive when the Forest Service sells non-saw timber material to meet its targets. With the implementation of the President's Forest Plan, we have seen a steady decline in the federal timber available to our company, as well as the share of sawtimber which is offered. In March of 1993, a month before the President came to Portland, Oregon for his Forest Conference, our company held 62 MMBF of timber under contraa. That was down from 77 MMBF of volume we held under contract in 1 99 1 . As of March 31,1 996, we held only 2 8 MMBF of volume under contraa. To maintain a timber supply, our company now purchases timber as fer away as the El Dorado National Forest, a distance of more than 300 miles from our mill. Yet as T just said, our very life blood - federal timber under contract- continues to shrink. These contracts are crucial to our ability to secure the lending we need to modernize our mills. nL The Clinton Forest Plan - A Trail of Broken Promises A. The Administration Has Ignored Its Promise (0 Sell Timber When President Clinton announced that Option Nine would be implemented during a July 1, 1993 press conference, he promised the Forest Service and the BLM would sell 1.2 billion board feet of timber per year. By the time the final plan was published, the Administration had reduced the planned goal to 1 .053 billion board feet. Thus, the Administration dropped 12% off its promised volume before we even got started. As the following table shows, the Clinton Administration has completely failed to even keep its reduced promise. 159 Timber Sold By Forest Service and BLM Under the President's Forest Plan Year Volume Sold Percent of Promise 1994 .187 Billion Board Feet 17.78% 1995 .336 Billion Board Feet 31.91% 1996* .393 Billion Board Feet 37.32% * Through June 30, 1996 Mr. Chairman, at this rate it will take a decade to attain the mythical billion board foot level promised in the President's Forest Plan. Given Secretary Glickman's recent announcement to administratively gut an important part of the emergency salvage program, I have difBculily understanding how we will ever get to the promised level. B. The Administration Has Broken Its Promises to Small Business Three years ago when the President announced his Forest Plan for the Northwest, one of the few glimmers of hope I saw was included in the President's press statement. The President directed " his Cabinet to identify and implemenl. in apriority manner, the best Miays to strenphen small business and secondary manufacturing in the wood products industry, including a review of increasing supplies of federal limber set asides for small business and possible preferences for bidders who contract for domestic secondary processing." Mr. Chairman, T am here to tell you that nothing, not one signal change, has been made to 160 help either small business or the secondary manufacturers. In fact, the Small Business Administration seems to be going out of its way to ensure the Small Business Timber Sale Set-Aside program withers on the vine. During the Reagan Administration, and during much of the Bush Administration, the Small Business Administration had six Industrial Specialists, all foresters, to oversee the set-aside program. They where adequately funded and had adequate support staif to both oversee the program, and to be advocates for small business as they interacted with the Forest Service and BLM to insure small business needs are secured. Today, the SB A has cut staflBng down to just two industrial specialists and has resisted Congressional efforts to force the SBA to fill those positions. While the President's promise was artfiiliy stated, 1 am sure his staff would tell you they've completed a study. Many government personnel and private sector people, including me, participated in a year long process to develop and comment on a report which identified opportunities to assist small business primary and secondary manufacturers. To date, nothing has been done. No final report was prepared or released, and to my knowledge, no recommendations were ever forwarded to the President. The President has done nothing to help the small forest industry companies like mine in the last three years. While the SBA program itself may be confusing, it is critically important to small companies like the one my family owns m California. We do not own vast land holdings like many of the large forest industry companies. Hi-Ridge Lumber Company and many other small family-owned businesses like ours are 161 almost totally dependent on timber sold from federal lands. The President recognized the critical link between companies of our size and the federal land when he direaed his cabinet to "identify and implement, in apriority manner, measures to strengthen small business and secondary manufacturing. While we have seen no help for small business, we cannot help but notice hoAv far this Administration has gone to aid the largest integrated forest product companies. Particularly, those companies with large land holdings. The Administration Promised Other Economic Assistance - Little Assistance Has Been OfTered Amidst great fan fare, the Administration promised to insure that workers who are put out of work, due to the drastic reductions in federal timber supplies, would be offered economic assistance and retraining. While none of my employees have been forced to face this problem, yet we have observed that very few mill or wood workers in northern California seem to have benefited by these programs. It seems most of the funds have gone to build infrastructures in the communilies which applied for this program. We've heard of towns in Oregon where softball fields were built so the town could hold softball tournaments in hopes of encoun^g more people to spend money in the town. Let me tell you, in Yreka, that type of economic assistance might bring a handful of ball players to town between May and September. It would be a long tough winter if all we had to rely on was increased spending of softball players during the four summer months. 162 D. The Heralded Adaptive Management Areas Have Produced Nothing But Employment for Federal Employees The President also made much-to-do about special Adaptive Management Areas which could be used to experiment with new forest management techniques and indicated we would see timber flowing from these areas very quickly. Mr. Chairman, the Goosenest Adaptive Management Area on the Klamath National Forest has produced no timber volume up to this point. Although it is producing work for Forest Service employees who are preparing an Adaptive Management Plan, an LSR Plan, a watershed analysis, and will need to do other NEP A documentation. Meanwhile, Ihe health of the forest in the area has steadily declined over the last three years. Another opportunity and another promise broken. IV. Option Nine Has Provided an Incredible Employment Opportunity for Government Workers When the Administration adopted the President's Forest Plan, they also imposed several new layers of bureaucracy. They set up a number of regional and provisional advisory boards to review proposed federal forestry projects. The Forest Service invited various people to serve on these advisory groups. T was invited to apply to serve on our local provincial advisory group but, thankfully, was not chosen. 1 say that because one only has to hear details of one of the meetings of these groups to conclude that these meetings are little more than a guaranteed employment program for numerous federal employees. 8 163 These advisory boards are so heavily staffed with federal employees that the groups could not propose any action which the agencies did not already approve. Further, we have seen no tangible evidence that these groups are making decisions which are producing timber sales. V. The Administration Has Oflered Special Deals to the Largest Timber Companies As part of the overall strategy for dealing with endangered species, the Administration originaUy said it would only address the problem on federal lands. Shortly after that announcement, the Administration changed its tune and said they would develop a rule under the Endangered Species Act which would facilitate private land management and protect the Northern Spotted Owl. In fact, thai proposed rule will impose restrictions on both state and private lands within our state if implemented. To date, the Administration has yet to finalize the 4(d) rule, so I cannot tell you how much more pain the Administration will heap on the region of northern California. At the same lime, the Administration worked with the largest forest land-owning companies to cut special deals to free up their forest lands for management. Weyerhaeuser Company, Plum Creek Ltd, and others have been exempt from having to deal with Northern Spotted Owls on some of their acres in exchange for signing 100 year long Habitat Conservation Plans. The irony of this becomes apparent when you think about the President's promise to help 9 164 small business and then think about how large business has benefited as a result of the imposition of Option Nine. As a result of the imposition of Option Nine, the value of the largest companies' timber holdings has skyrocketed. With less federal timber likely to come to market, these companies watched their timber increase in value at an significant rate. Thus, these companies found themselves with more revenue and gaiiied a competitive advantage over small companies like mine as a result of the decision to reduce federal timber sales by 80 to 90 percent. Then to add insuh to injury, the Administration offered HCP's to the largest companies. These IICP's are not a practical option for smaller land ovsners, due to the expense of completing the extensive biological research which the Department of Interior requires. When signed, these HCP's free-up a significant amount of the forest lands these companies hold. Thus small business companies are forced to compete against companies which were made more powerfijl through the actions of the Clinton Administration. If one was conspiracy minded, one might conclude the Administration and the largest timber companies in this country aren't working together to eliminate small companies like mine. VX Recent Decisions by The Administration Continue the Persecution of the Forest Products Industry Despite having signed a law to expedite the salvage of dead and dying timber, witliin three days of that bill becoming law this Administration released a Memorandum of 10 165 Understanding which gave the US Fish & Wildlife Service, the BLM. the National Marine Fisheries Service, the EPA, and others agencies veto authority over how, when, and where the Forest Service may salvage dying timber. On the Klamath National Forest, we have a long history of forest fires. Like many other areas, we suffered major fires in 1994. This new layer of bureaucracy was designed to slow down the salvage of dead and dying timber. And on the forest I am most familiar with, the slow down is working. We have a large fire area called Dillion Creek, wliich is in dire need of salvage. The President's Forest Plan and the Emergency Salvage MOU have combined to delay the salvage of the Dillion Creek area. This area has been visited by more top natural resource officials than most any other prospective timber sale in the west and they've all pronounced the sale a good one. Up until last week, we thought we would finally see the 20 million board foot sale offered, a sale of fire-killed timber. Then the Administration struck yet one more time. The Secretary of Agriculture released a new policy on ihe Emergency Salvage program which precludes offering of salvage sales in inventoried roadless areas. For the Dillion Creek sale, this new policy will result in yet one more delay. At this point, the latest delay could render this .sale uneconomic You see, the agencies were going to require that aknost all the volume be logged with a helicopter. As the years pass, the trees rot. At some point, there is not enough merchantable wood to pay for this very expensive method of logging. In this case, the Secretary's decision may have sealed the fate of this sale. We 11 166 will be deprived of the opponunity to bid on 20 million board feet of timber which we desperately needed. The Administration has shown once again that it does not really care what happens to small companies like Hi-Ridge Lumber. Vn. Congress Gets Into the Act In 1994, a little more than four million acres of lands in this country were butBed. As a result of those fires, and the generally deplorable health conditions on our federal forests, Congress pushed through land-mark legislation to expedite the salvage of the timber killed in these fires. This year, we have experienced more fires, to date, than we had in 1994. As of July 18th, the Forest Service reports 2.9 million acres have burned so for. compared to 1994 when slightly less than l.S million acres had burned by July ISth. Yet, both the House and the Senate seem to be ignoring this year's fires . Less than a month ago, 208 of your colleagues voted to repeal fimding for implementation of the emergency salvage law. We expect the Senate will face a similar vote within the next month. Mr. Chairman, as of last May, the Forest Service indicated there were 18 billion board feet of dead and dying timber on Forest Service lands that had economic value. Since the passage of the Emergency Salvage Law, the Forest Service has salvaged less then 2 billion board feet of that dead and dying timber. In a year when the fire season is even more active than 1994, 1 do not understand how Congress could be seriously considering 12 167 repealing this law. What is even more frustrating to me, is how the leadership of both the House and Senate refuse to even consider extending this much needed law. To fiirther illustrate the point, our company was recently solicited by U.S. Forest Service ranger districts from Utah where the forest products industry has virtually vanished as a result of the federal government nearly stopping all timber sales. Now the Forest Service wants to manage against insect infestation and increased fire hazards. They now recognize that a healthy forest products industry is needed to implement the management projects. Mr. Chairman, Congress, through its willingness to allow this needed law to sunset, is walking away from hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues. In the face of compelling evidence of the need to manage federal forests, I am unable to understand how Congress can be so shon sighted, I am disappointed that Congress stands by while this Administration works to economically destroy Ihe small timber purchasers in the west. This policy of political correctness is killing many small towns like Yreka. In my opinion, it is unconscionable that the Congressional leadership would stand by and allow groups like the Sierra Club, aided by the Clinton Administration, to nearly stop all timber harvesting on federal lands. Our national forests were established 100 years ago to supply the timber and water needs of a growing nation. Our country is now a net importer of wood. Mr. Chainnan, companies like Hi-Ridge Lumber need this Congress to do more to ensure our federal forests are properly managed and supply domestic forest products for Americans. 13 168 Conclusion Mr. Chairman, I know of no analyst who will tell you the promises made by President Clinton as part of his forest plan for the Pacific Northwest, have been kept or that the President's Forest Plan is a success. As a company which has struggled for the last four years at ground zero, I must tell you it is a disaster. But what is more disappointing, is that the Congress, the Administration, and the public are walking past the most important question. Unless this Congress extends the emergency salvage law or passes forest health legislation, such as Senator Craig's Forest Health bill, you will have done a great dissen/ice to our forests and to those of us who depend on these forests for our social and economic well-being. You will also have failed to serve the American public, which demands a wide range of uses from our forests I appreciate the opportunity you have afforded me. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have and request that you make both my statement part of the oflBcial record of this hearing. 14 169 Testimony Before the House Resources Subcommittee on National Parks. Forests and Lands On the Impact of the Rescissions Logging Rider on the Northwest Forest Plan by Bonnie Phillips. Executive Director Pilchuck Audubon Society July 23, 1996 My name is Bonnie Phillips, and I am Execurive Director of the Pilchuck Audubon Society. We are a chapter of the National Audubon Society, with 1500 members in Snohomish County, just north of Seattle, in Washington State. For the past decade, protecting ancient forests has been a very high conservation priority for ovir Audubon Chapter. In 1987, we were the first Chapter to begin a program called Adopt-a- Forest. That program established a relationship vwth several of the Ranker Districts on the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. We be^an workme cooperatively with the Districts in mapping old growth, in setting up workshops to educate citizens on how the Forest Service works, and how atizens can get involved. For the p