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reached those agreements and made those investments because 

 they have not been cash-profitable enough. That is in part what is 

 happening here. 



You don't see commercial timber sales on the national forests in 

 the part of the world I am familiar with. Today you see land stew- 

 ardship projects, you see vegetative management projects, you see 

 a whole host of things that do not resemble at all what a timber 

 management, profit-maximizing type of sale would be. And I think 

 in many cases that is appropriate. 



The premise that was offered here by Mr. Francis was that some- 

 how, because the TSPIRS data shows on some national forests that 

 the cash returns may not exceed in all cases the cost, that those 

 are economically unjustifiable lands to manage for timber. I always 

 find it over the years to be interesting that when you get 6 econo- 

 mists in a room and ask them how to evaluate that question, you 

 get 12 different methods of analysis and 12 different answers. 



Our test, quite frankly, would be quite simple. That would be 

 that if those lands were maintained in private ownership for a 

 timber company like those which I represent, would they be man- 

 aged actively for timber, or would they be disposed of as an unpro- 

 ductive asset and sold to a different use? 



I can assure you that all the national forest lands in the West 

 which I am familiar, which the Forest Service has actively planned 

 for some form of timber management, would by no means be dis- 

 posed of if they were in private ownership; they would be actively 

 managed for the timber resource they provide. And there is no evi- 

 dence more compelling than when you look at a map of the State 

 of Idaho, and you see checkerboard ownership where, adjacent to 

 what are the allegedly below-cost lands owned by the Federal Gov- 

 ernment is a section of private timber land which is managed by 

 companies like DAW Forest Product or by the State of Idaho, 

 which have been and continue to be managed in a very productive 

 and financially prudent fashion for timber management. 



And then you look at these times of really desperate log short- 

 ages in the West, where millyards across the country are seeking 

 and doing abnormal things for logs. I have heard of a case now of 

 logs being moved from the State of Colorado to Idaho for process- 

 ing, and those kinds of astronomical things are happening today. 

 Lumber prices are spiraling through the roof. Stumpage prices are 

 at record highs and continue to climb almost daily. It is just incon- 

 ceivable to me that the Forest Service, if their sole objective was to 

 maximize cash return to the Federal Government, could not 

 manage their timber base in a way to make a great deal of money, 

 hand over fist, on every timber sale they chose to put together, if 

 that's what this Congress wants them to do. I am confident it could 

 happen; I am not sure it would be wise. 



I will try to speak to some of the specifics of the administration's 

 policy. It has been a little frustrating to us that we don't know 

 what this policy is, so we read about it in the New York Times, and 

 then that is sort of it and not it. 



What we do know, I guess, is one thing — there is a proposed $46 

 million reduction in financing for the Forest Service timber pro- 

 grams this year. That is not a trivial matter. The President's entire 

 budget that was recommended to Congress for timber sale prepara- 



