17 



have had in this area. We think it has been outstanding. Our suc- 

 cess is demonstrated by the fact that there is at least as much 

 standing forest volume today as there was when forest inventories 

 were completed in the 1940s. 



However, recent stories and testimony by the Inspector General 

 for the Department of the Interior have charged BLM with mis- 

 management of these lands and clciimed a large backlog in tree 

 plcmting and other forest development practices. These stories and 

 testimony are based on a 1989 report by the IG that has not been 

 updated. We do not believe that the lands are mismanaged, and 

 are emphatic that the BLM does not have a tree-planting backlog 

 in Western Oregon. 



I might refer the committee to the book that you have in front 

 of called Western Oregon Forest Development Program. Do you all 

 have a copy of this? 



[Editor's note. — This document may be found in the hearing 

 file.] 



Mr. Vento. Yes, we do have copies. 



Mr. Penfold. All right, sir. 



Mr. Vento. It was distributed with our testimony. 



Mr. Penfold. If I could bring your attention to page 1 where 

 there is a graph that indicates the tree planting success story that 

 we have had. On the lefthand side is a yellow, orange and red 

 graph that indicates the magnitude of the tree planting job we 

 faced from 1989 up until the present time. The green bar chart in- 

 dicates the tree planting work that has been done from 1990 to 

 1992, and then the blue line indicates that there is a carryover of 

 7,500 acres, which is a rather normal carryover. So we are very 

 much current on the tree planting. This huge carryover was in 

 large part due to forest fires that happened in 1987 and 1989 as 

 well as some speeded up timber harvest. 



The forest development program concerns centered around the 

 build-up of this treatment of 108,000 acres of plantation mainte- 

 nance, 43,000 acres of precommercial thinning, and 178,000 acres 

 of fertilization, as well as 3,200 acres of stand conversion. BLM 

 concurred, in general, with the findings fi-om the IG, although we 

 did take some exceptions to the report. BLM recognized that sev- 

 eral factors increased our program needs beyond the budget and 

 work force capability. I explained the wildfires and those issues. 



Another point was that in 1984 BLM was enjoined from using 

 herbicides to manage competing vegetation, and this required us to 

 use more expensive treatments and that did reduce the acreages to 

 some degree. 



Congress recognized the severity of these problems in the Fiscal 

 Year 1990 Appropriations Act, They provided that 50 percent of the 

 Federal share of O&C receipts above the estimate of the receipts 

 in the Presidential budget would be returned to BLM to invest in 

 forest management £ind forest development work. This funding and 

 the dedication of our people have enabled BLM to make significant 

 progress since publication of the IG's report. 



I refer you now to page 3 of that document. This graph, pie chart, 

 indicates the accomplishments over the 3-year period from Fiscal 

 Year 1990 to 1992. If you add those figures up, you will notice that 

 there is a total of 430,000 acres of work that has been done in 



