This letter kind of disturbs me. It is United States Department 

 of Agriculture, Forest Service, Dixie National Forest. And Hugh 

 points out this. I won't read the whole thing. He says, "Since 1993, 

 these forests have lost more than 40 million board feet of sawmill 

 capacity due to local mill closures." I am sure he is referring to 

 Escalante, the little sawmill there that the Steve boys had. About 

 268 people had jobs there, and that is all gone. Not only did they 

 sell it, it has been destroyed. It was torn down. 



Kaibab Industries have one in Fredonia and one in Panguitch. 

 They closed Fredonia. I don't know how long it is going to be before 

 Panguitch closes down, but I have talked to Sheroldson and others. 



And certainly he is soliciting people to come in on the Dixie be- 

 cause they are having a real outbreak of bark beetles in old growth 

 areas. And he is concerned that if they don't go in and cut some 

 of that out, they are going to lose the whole darn forest according 

 to this thing. That seems to me that would be a great concern. 



It is interesting to note, he even says in this thing — on the back, 

 he said, "Anybody within 500 miles." That is a long way to come. 

 He says, "Anyone that is in 500 miles please bid on this." And, yet, 

 as I hear from some of these folks, they are not inclined to bid on 

 it in the Dixie, not that it is not good timber. What is the problem? 



Mr. Unger. I would have to look into the specifics of that, Mr. 

 Chairman. 



Mr. Hansen. Would you feel that somewhere in there the prob- 

 lem could be that if someone does bid on those deals, that they im- 

 mediately have a challenge, say, like the Southern Utah Wilder- 

 ness Association or the Sierra Club or somebody else? Like Mr. 

 Herger recently pointed out just before you got on the stand that 

 the Sierra Club had stated there should be no timber cutting on 

 the national forests in America. In your wildest imagination, do 

 you think that could be one of the reasons? 



Mr. Unger. Well, certainly there may be those challenges. Usu- 

 ally though, that challenge would come before this point when the 

 decision was made to have the sale and the appeal opportunity was 

 provided and people would come forward if they disagreed with it 

 at that time. Once the appeal period is over and we have made the 

 decision to go forward and solicit bids, why I would think that 

 there may be concerns and complaints indicated. But ordinarily 

 that would happen during earlier in the process. 



Mr. Hansen. Do you think your forest supervisors are getting a 

 little gun-shy, that every time that they start to do one of these 

 things, they have to cover every little base and make sure that 

 they have dotted every i and crossed every t, that they don't have 

 some type of legal challenge? 



Mr. Unger. I think that the climate of public land management 

 over the past several years, which has led to many court decisions 

 that have laid out the requirements for documentation of effects to 

 meet the requirements of the Endangered Species Act and other 

 considerations, cause us to be more concerned about making sure 

 that we do the most adequate job of analysis and documentation 

 as we prepare our documents. Certainly, that would be true. We 

 hope that we are not going any farther than is necessary, and we 

 spent a lot of time trying to simplify and streamline those proc- 

 esses. 



