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stant payment in lieu of taxes (PILT), whether or not any timber is 

 cut on the national forests. 



I would like to take a moment to discuss PILT payments to these 

 communities in more detail. Few communities that adjoin below- 

 cost national forests will see any change in Federal payments if 

 subsidized timber sales on the forests are eliminated because PILT 

 payments will continue. Research has shown that on a per acre 

 basis the 25-percent payments from below-cost forest timber pro- 

 grams do not approach the $0.75 per acre level of PILT. 



By way of explanation, PILT payments are based on the number 

 of acres of "entitlement lands" within a local jurisdiction. In the 

 case of the Forest Service, entitlement lands are the number of 

 acres of national forest land in each local jurisdiction. The amount 

 paid to the local government is the higher of: (a) $0.75 per acre re- 

 duced by Forest Service 25-percent payments in the preceding year, 

 or (6) $0.10 per acre. 



In addition, all PILT payments are subject to a ceiling based on 

 population. This ceiling ranges from a high of $50 per person if the 

 local population is 5,000 or less to $20 per person where the popula- 

 tion is 50,000 or more. The absolute ceiling is $1 million. 



Thus, as long as the population ceiling is not a constraint, elimi- 

 nating below-cost timber sales will not lower a county's total 

 income from the Federal Government. 



The Forest Service defends losses on the national forests on the 

 grounds that logging is needed to control insect epidemics. Protect- 

 ing forests from insects, fire, and disease has long been used to jus- 

 tify investments in the national forests where the costs of logging 

 exceeds the value of the timber. In fact, each year, vast sums are 

 spent to protect commercially worthless timber from fire and pests. 

 Logging is said to provide a healthy forest of young, vigorous trees, 

 to limit the damage from fire and pests, and to add to the protec- 

 tion of recreation and other forest resources. These arguments are 

 coming into question. 



While the removal of dead and dying trees may appear to pro- 

 mote the health of the forests, it is seldom of benefit to nature. In 

 fact, the "damage" caused by insects, fires, and disease is in many 

 ways essential to the health of forest ecosystems. 



As an example, lodgepole pine on the Targhee National Forest 

 has evolved in association with insect outbreaks for thousands of 

 years. The mountain pine beetle plays a major role in the stand dy- 

 namics and successional trends of lodgepole pine communities 

 throughout the Rocky Mountains. At normal, or endemic, popula- 

 tion levels, this bark beetle inhabits trees that are weakened, in- 

 jured, or of poor vigor as a result of environmental conditions — 

 such as localized drought or lightning strikes — or biological 

 agents — such as fungal or dwarf mistletoe infections. Outbreaks of 

 mountain pine beetle typically run for 5 to 10 years, after which 

 the population crashes and remains at endemic levels for 20 to 40 

 years. With each cycle, large lodgepole pine trees are killed, and 

 younger lodgepole pine as well as shade-tolerant species such as 

 subalpine fir and Engelmann spruce are released to occupy the 

 canopy. Increased growth in the understory adds to habitat diversi- 

 ty in dense, even-aged stands of pine. Moreover, by selectively re- 

 moving only the larger, less-productive canopy trees, the pine 



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