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 



