21 



treatments to those that give us the greatest return. Our first priority is to assure 

 that harvested or burned areas are prepared for planting, are planted, and that 

 maintenance work necessary for seealing survival is conducted. We never antici- 



Sated that we can complete all of this work in any one fiscal year. We normally 

 efer acres needing treatment into future fiscal years. Much of the carry-over is an- 

 ticipated and not considered backlog. 



Intensive practices such as precommercial thinning and fertilization increase the 

 growth and timber value of young stands. These practices are very cost eflFective. 

 The excess funding we received made it possible for us to accomplish these prac- 

 tices. However, under funding for FY 1992 and FY 1993 we were able to do only 

 a small amount of fertilization and thinning. This resulted in a larger carry-over 

 into FY 1994 them we would like. However, we emphasize that these intensive prac- 

 tices were prescribed for treatment based on assumptions made in the 19808 timber 

 management plans where a rotation age of 80 to 100 years was assumed. The uncer- 

 tainty of restrictions on land use bas^ on northern spotted owl protection and the 

 outcome of new Resource Management Plans made it unwise to invest in treatments 

 for forestlands that may not be harvested or will be managed on longer term rota- 

 tions where timber is not the overriding objective. We are beginning to get a clearer 

 picture of what areas may be available for future timber management and will start 

 to treat these areas, consistent with applicable laws. 



Based on a recent assessment of treatments planned for accomplishment in FY 

 1993, the expected carry-over of acres, and pipeline needs, we anticipate that the 

 FY 1994 program need will be 45,559 acres of maintenance, 63,832 acres of 

 precommercial thinning, and 162,370 acres of fertilization. 



The President's Economic Stimulus Package includes over $15 million for western 

 Oregon management. Approximately $9.4 million of this is slated for much needed 

 road maintenance work, with the remaining $6.6 million for reforestation practices. 

 We anticipate that if this package is passed and implemented, 70 to 80 percent of 

 our pre-commercial thinning treatment needs will be met. 



We have experienced lower bids for treatment contracts than we estimated. This 

 is resulting in contract savings that we are using for more contracts to reduce our 

 unmet needs and to provide for local jobs. We expect that this will result in an addi- 

 tional $1 million worth of work being contracted. 



Forest development work is more than investing in the visible pro-am that re- 

 sults in acres treated. It is an extremely complex program that requu%s hundreds 

 of foresters, technicians, and administrative staff. We have had to establish and 

 maintain seed orchards to produce the seed for reforestation. We have gigantic 

 freezers to store seed collected from hundreds of seed zones and elevation bands for 

 several different species of trees. We have large coolers to store seedlings from the 

 time they are lifted in the nursery to the time they are planted in vmits. We also 

 have a lau-ge cooperative tree improvement program to provide fast growing, disease 

 resistant planting stock in the future. 



All of tnese items are expensive, but necessary to maintain a program as large 

 as ours. 



Another important use of the funds appropriated for forest development is re- 

 search. The BLM has invested several million dollars over the past 15 or more years 

 in research programs that have provided a model for adaptive research and tech- 

 nology transfer to practitioners. Two highly effective programs have been the Inten- 

 sified Forest Research (IFR) program and the Coastal Oregon Productivity Enhance- 

 ment (COPE) program. The now completed IFR program resulted in state of the art 

 reforestation practices in southwest Oregon. This returned to the timber base over 

 100,000 acres of BLM lands that had previously been withdrawn because they pre- 

 sented reforestation problems. The COPE program is continuing to study forest 

 management programs in coastal £u-eas. Both of these programs were cooperative ef- 

 forts among the BLM, Forest Service, State of Oregon, Oregon State University, in- 

 dustry, and local governments. We have also recently established a cooperative re- 

 search center at Oregon State University that will be addressing forest management 

 problems. 



Finally, I would Uke to address methods that we believe would improve the fund- 

 ing processes for our treatments. Forest management is a long-term investment. 

 Stand treatments are not prescribed day to day, but over an entire rotation. There 

 needs to be a better mechanism to help maintain funding levels equal to treatment 

 needs. Several mechanisms have been suggested over the past few Congresses. 



The FY 1993 Interior Appropriations Act included a provision establishing a For- 

 est Ecosystem Health and Recovery Fund. This fund returns the Federal share of 

 timber receipts from salvaged timber to the BLM for forest health treatments. This 

 will assist the BLM in more rapidly responding to forest health problems before 

 they escalate into epidemics. 



