34 



table, people act in a dilatory manner to interrupt the revenue 

 flow from the national forests and to drive up the Forest Service 

 costs simply to trip the Forest Service up on a financial criterion if 

 they can't win the policy. 



In thinking about that, I was reminded of an article earlier this 

 month where we learned that members of "Earth First" have set 

 up a camp in Dixie, Idaho. In moving into Dixie, they held a press 

 conference as they normally do and were quite gleeful about the 

 fact that last year, they were able to ascertain that they cost the 

 Forest Service in the neighborhood of one-quarter of a million dol- 

 lars in extra law enforcement and extra activities the Forest Serv- 

 ice had to go through to manage their actions on the Nez Perce Na- 

 tional Forest. This year, they articulated their objective as costing 

 the Forest Service $1 million to do that. Now, I am not sure where 

 those costs ought to be racked up in this accounting system and 

 what they ought to be posted to, but when you encourage that kind 

 of behavior, it is inappropriate. 



I would also note in passing that our West Coast national forests, 

 some of the most productive timber lands in the entire country — 

 the Olympic National Forest on the Olympic Peninsula showed up 

 in this year's TSPIRS report to be below cost. And the reason is 

 they haven't sold any timber because of the sweeping injunctions 

 from the spotted owl and that well-known problem. So that forest 

 may very well be presumably trapped in a spiralled reduction be- 

 cause of the administration's policy. 



In speaking to this issue, you can't help but make a few notes 

 about the TSPIRS accounting system, which you asked our com- 

 ments on. The record is replete with various economists offering 

 various opinions about that. The fundamental issue that has 

 always been at stake in that is this problem with what I am told is 

 joint cost allocation. The Forest Service organization is in place to 

 do many things — sell timber, manage nontimber programs — and 

 the costs are posted oftentimes only to timber. The clear example 

 that we have talked about is the road costs. The roads on the na- 

 tional forests, after they are used many times for timber purposes, 

 are used thereafter for a whole host of forest management or recre- 

 ation purposes, but repeatedly, the entire road cost, regardless of 

 how it is amortized, is posted in these accounting systems solely 

 against the timber revenues. 



There are costs for many nontimber programs treated the same 

 way. This proposal that we see seems to be insensitive to the fact 

 that forestry is a long-term proposition. We make investments 

 today, as wisely we should, which will pay off several years from 

 now. And to look only at the cash flow from a single year has 

 never made sense to private forest managers, and it certainly 

 doesn't make sense as a wise financial policy for public forests, 

 either. 



Then, I have mentioned payments to the counties. 



When we reviewed the TSPIRS data, we found that the principal 

 reason for any apparent below-cost problem always shows up 

 where there has been a serious disruption in the timber sale pro- 

 gram — a sweeping injunction because of the spotted owl problem; a 

 disruption due to some sort of organized appeal effort; something 

 which has stopped the timber sale program for a year or two or 



