46 



sell timber sales that are below-cost. If we are going to do ecosys- 

 tem management in this country, the Congress and the people 

 ought to step up and decide we are going to do ecosystem manage- 

 ment and fund ecosystem management, and we shouldn't make the 

 funding of ecosystem management somehow dependent on a timber 

 sales program. That is part of the perverse incentives that exist 

 right now in the Forest Service. So many of the managers out on 

 the land, to get the money for wildlife and other things they want 

 to do, are forced to sell timber, and they sell timber at below cost. 

 This is an incentive in the system that makes it difficult to achieve 

 ecosystem management. When you have to sell a sale because you 

 need to do rehabilitation in grizzly bear habitat, and you are going 

 to sell the new sale in grizzly bear habitat, isn't that a self-fulfill- 

 ing prophecy that we continue to do these kinds of things? 



I would be reluctant to endorse ecosystem management or some 

 form of below-cost timber sale if it provides an incentive to keep 

 going with sales that should and might not be able to go forward so 

 you are trying to fund a system. 



So I am reluctant to make a statement. 



Senator Craig. Okay. I think you have done a pretty good job of 

 explaining why you would be concerned there. 



I'll turn it back to you for questions, Mr. Chairman. 



Senator Daschle. Thank you, Senator Craig. 



Mr. Leonard, let me go back to this question of your current posi- 

 tion with regard to timber sales. If you were directed to reduce the 

 number of sales rather than terminate the program, what steps 

 would you have to take in order for that to occur? 



Mr. Leonard. Basically, because we would have less money to al- 

 locate out to the field, we would allocate smaller amounts out to 

 the field, and it would result in less sales. We have a couple 

 choices. One is to take that reduction proportionately across all of 

 the below-cost forests, which every forest would take roughly a 25- 

 percent reduction in the first year, or you could target the worst of 

 the forests and take them out first, with the hope that the better 

 forests get well before you work up the list to them. That is a dis- 

 cussion we have not yet completed with the administration as to 

 how we would make the allocations should the Congress sustain 

 that $46 million reduction. 



Now, as Assistant Secretary Lyons pointed out, there are some 

 opportunities for the Forest Service to accept some of that $46 mil- 

 lion cut in simply more efficient ways to do it. But we can't take 

 all that $46 million cut through efficiencies, so someplace between 

 saving for efficiencies and a reduction in the size of the program, 

 either proportionately across the below-cost forests or on a segment 

 of those below-cost forests, is the way we would have to do it. 



Senator Daschle. I am interested in your reference to efficien- 

 cies. What kinds of things are you thinking about that could be 

 done in the short term to maximize savings within your operation- 

 al budget? 



Mr. Leonard. We are looking at such things as, on the smaller 

 forests, instead of having a sale preparation crew on each district, 

 we would share the sale preparation crews between districts. In 

 some cases, for example, in Utah, we have one sale preparation 

 crew for three small timber forests. Take an engineering crew and 



