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- 



