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Tax Dollars at Work -Logging

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Heritage Forests Campaign

I Just Gotta Tell Ya

  • The United States originally had a billion acres of forest.
  • Now only 40 million acres remain uncut.
  • American people own 635 million acres of public land  U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Park Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and are compris
  • Public lands provide 80% of municipal water supplies and half of the remaining habitat left to endangered species
  • The U.S. Forest Service routinely loses $1.2 billion per year for the taxpayers, since they spend more money building logging roads and administering timber sales for timber companies than they receive from the sale of public trees.
  •  An honest, full cost accounting of the Forest Service would reveal that revenues from living public forests are worth over $117 billion per year, yet revenues from Forest Service lands are only $354 million per year. ” 

Tongass Logging 

According to Forst Service Reco commerial logging in the Tongass National Foret lost taxpayers $48 M in 2004. Since 1982 Taxpayers have spent nearly $1b subsidizing the timber industry clear cutting of Tongass Nation Forest

In one deal alonen the Forest Service spent nearly $4.3 M preparing 450 acres of pristing forest for sales by building logging roads then sold it for $53,000.

Tongass Logging Subsidies http://65.110.78.8/Library/Documents/upload/Factsheet-TongassSubsidies-TCS.pdf

Siskiyou National Forest

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) today confirmed that logging after the Biscuit fire in southern Oregon’s Siskiyou National Forest lost money. The report released by Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), ranking Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee revealed that the Biscuit logging project cost taxpayers nearly $2 million dollars. (Portland Independent Media Center) http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/10/346999.shtml

Taxpayers  have to foot the bill for building roads and other operations that will make the extensive logging project possible, according to the agency documents compiled by PEER:

 

  • Black Hills National Forest has proposed an amendment of their Land and Resource Management Plan that would run up net losses of US $969 million over the next ten years
  • Wyoming’s Bighorn National Forest is proposing to eliminate more than three-quarters of it inventoried roadless area at a net loss of US $218 million
  • The East Fork Fire Salvage in Utah’s Wasatch-Cache National Forest, proposes to exacerbate already serious water quality and soil erosion problems by cutting dead trees at a final cost of US $325 million to the taxpayerEven some of the smaller Healthy Forest salvage sales are expensive, such as the Duck Creek Fuels Treatment Project in Utah’s Dixie National Forest, which proposes to lose US $10.9 million, or US $5,000 for each new structure (such as a retirement cabin) in the planning area.As well as providing the primary source of sediment in forest streams, from erosion caused by logging, these roads are costly both to build and to maintain, Mr Ruch pointed out, with the estimated backlog of deferred maintenance currently standing at around US $8.4 million.”The environmentally preferred alternatives are greener in both an ecological and an economic sense,” he concluded. “At a total distance of 386,000 miles, we already have more roads through our national forests than the total number of roads in existence in the entire nation of Russia.”Country Boys_ Department of Agriculture-Another cornucopia of targets for reform:  A crop insurance program that costs more than $3 for every dollar in benefits delivered, atimber program that has spent a billion dollars building roads for private logging companies, or a subsidy program that paid $49 million to ineligible farmers are just a few wasteful abuses that come to mind. 

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    1. I get sick to my stomach whenever I read about the pillaging that has happened under the Forest Service and BLM. I’ve spent many weeks backpacking in the Siskiyou range and it’s heartbreaking to see what the logging companies have done to that land and watersheds. The real raping happened under Reagan and really hasn’t let up since. Very sad indeed.