38 



figure that 0MB comes to. And yet you have repeated emphatically 

 that there is no below-cost timber sales here. 



Mr. J. Thomas. What year are you talking about, Congressman? 



Mr. Brown. Well, it is not clear what year. It is just from the 

 1988 environmental impact statement prepared by the Forest Serv- 

 ice. It probably therefore refers to years before 1988, and your fig- 

 ures conceivably could be more recent. 



Mr. J. Thomas. Yes, sir. I think that is the difference. 



Mr. Brown. All right. We will clarify those things as we proceed, 

 and I am not trying to heckle you about that. 



Mr. J. Thomas. No, that is fine. The numbers I gave you began 

 in — well, there is something wrong with the numbers. I believe you 

 have cited $169 million. The entire forest budget for that entire for- 

 est is $20 million. So we have some confusion about figures we 

 need to work on, but the numbers I gave you started in 1989 

 through 1993, over the 5-year period, it was a plus of $5.1 million. 



Mr. Brown. One last question, Mr. Thomas. Your report in 1992 

 on planting accomplishment indicated that you had, between 1982 

 and 1991, planted over 15,000 acres of the sequoia forest with seed- 

 lings, and yet less than 25 percent of the area was certified by the 

 Forest Service as successfully reforested. I have visited some of 

 those sites and observed the situation myself. 



What do you attribute this high rate of reforestation failure to, 

 or do you consider that to be a high rate of failure? 



Mr. J. Thomas. I don't know enough about the circumstsinces of 

 that particular regeneration problem to answer your question. I 

 can get you answers, but I do not know them. 



Mr. Brown. We may submit questions in writing. 



Mr. Dooley. 



Mr. Dooley. I just have a follow-up on the clarification on the 

 prescriptions that are in part of this bill that would in fact abro- 

 gate portions of the mediated settlement agreement. The mediated 

 settlement agreement also included a timber harvest quantity of — 

 I cannot remember the exact numbers — was it 75 million board 

 feet? 



Mr. J. Thomas. Eighty million board feet. 



Mr. Dooley. And then the provision of the bill on page 18, line 

 22, where it says, "Timber cutting shall not be permitted on Fed- 

 eral lands within the preserve," would clearly seem to be a direct 

 abrogation of that mediated settlement agreement. Correct? 



Mr. J. Thomas. Certainly zero and 80 are very different, yes. 



Mr. Dooley. And that is the concern of a lot of us that are in 

 opposition to this. We feel that we had a process with the mediated 

 settlement agreement that did try to reach some mutually agreed- 

 upon management principles, and this bill goes far beyond that. 



Mr. Brown. All right, if there are no further questions. Dr. 

 Thomas, we will excuse you at this time with appreciation for your 

 being here. 



Mr. J. Thomas. Thank you, sir. 



Mr. Brown. You said this was your first appearance. 



Mr. J. Thomas. As Chief. I have made a lot of appearances in 

 front of Congress. 



Mr. Brown. As Chief. We certainly hope it does not discourage 

 you from further appearances. [Laughter.] 



