29 



grams are failures. Do you revisit that area when you have a fail- 

 ure? 



Mr. Robertson. Yes. You know, planting trees is kind of like 

 farming. There are just some bad years sometimes. You have some 

 failures, just like you have crop failures. We have been running 

 somewhere around 90 percent success, and there is about a 10 per- 

 cent failure rate on the average per year, and we do an annual sur- 

 vivor survey and then go into that 10 percent or whatever it is and 

 replant. 



Mr. Smith. Mr. Penfold, what are the practices of the BLM? 



Mr. Penfold. They are the same, ana Mr. Shepard tells me our 

 success rate is about the same as well. 



Mr. Smith. Okay. 



I was just in Oregon, as you know. Chief Robertson. You men- 

 tioned the east side problem. There are forests, you well know, on 

 the east side, trying to harvest salvage, which has been an acceler- 

 ated effort. It is my understanding that every salvage sale has been 

 appealed — every salvage sale. How can we get through this jam-up 

 if we are trying to protect forest health, taJke out the salvage in a 

 proper time, never harvest near a stream bank, never go into a 

 roadless area, and yet we can't seem to move the salvage that ev- 

 erybody agrees must be harvested? Is it stagnation of the law? Is 

 it something that you can do administratively? 



Mr. Robertson. Well, some of both. The basis for the appeals is 

 rooted in law, but there are two ways in which we can deal with 

 those appeals: One, in emergency conditions we can exempt timber 

 sales from appeals, and we have done that, I believe, in many of 

 those cases; £md, two, speed up the appeal process once we get an 

 appeal. 



We do have drtift regulations now to implement the new appeal 

 process that passed last year as part of our appropriation bill being 

 reviewed now within the administration. So I am hopeful that we 

 will get those new appeal regs out shortly for review and comment 

 and then finalized some time soon, ana that will accelerate the 

 time it takes to deal with these appeals. 



Mr. Smith. Mr. Penfold, this is a hypothetical admittedly. I think 

 that Judge Frye in Oregon really did not comprehend her decision 

 with the implication of the elimination of salvage on BLM lands. 

 Is there any effort by your Department to review and appear again 

 before Judge Frye on this very issue of salvage with the thought 

 that her ruling actually covered salvage when she may not have 

 even considered it? 



Mr. Penfold. The larger picture is that all of our programs in 

 western Oregon are being reviewed right now after the draft of our 

 plans are out. As part of the Forest Conference, that is going to 

 generate additional activities. 



What we would anticipate having is a very well coordinated pro- 

 gram with the U.S. Forest Service to present to our various publics 

 and the Congress. 



Mr. Smith. So you are not going to go piecemeal, you are telling 

 us, just on the issue of salvage. I understand this. As I recall, 60 

 to 100 million board feet of dead timber in the southern part of the 

 State of Oregon — that dying and dead timber — is infesting green 

 standing beside it. It ought to be taken out quickly if we care any- 



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