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Question 29. It has been said that the Forest Service uses the timber program to 

 achieve a wide variety of benefits. What are the criteria for coding timber sales in 

 TSPIRS? Is it possible to say that some timber sales are undertaken primarily for 

 nontimber purposes? How many timber sales do not produce any commercial timber 

 at all? 



Answer. Appendix 2 explains the newly revised process for coding timber sale 

 purposes and the definitions for each category. Many timber sales are undertaken 

 by the Forest Service for nontimber reasons such as forest health improvement or 

 wildlife habitat maintenance. Because the new purpose codes were just recently im- 

 plemented we do not yet have good data on the amount of timber volume in each 

 category. However, estimates range from 30-50 percent of the total volume harvest- 

 ed on below-cost forests is for forest stewardship (nontimber) purposes. 



