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:] 



