Audit Says Forest Service Loses On Logging, But Agency Says No

The government spent $1 billion more to log national forests over the past three years than the timber sales netted for the federal treasury, congressional auditors said Monday.

The Forest Service has reported logging profits for each of the three years, including a $214 million gain for 1994. And agency officials stuck to that on Monday, saying it was wrong to conclude from the audit that logging operations are costing taxpayers money.

A substantial portion of the income - nearly $900 million for the period - went to several states as their federally mandated share of the timber receipts, most of it dedicated to county roads and schools in the West. And the Forest Service estimates that jobs created by the logging brought millions of dollars into the treasury.

The agency, in its accounting, does not consider the state payments to be a cost of the timber sale program.

Overall, the Forest Service spent $1.3 billion preparing and administering the logging and returned $303 million to the Treasury, the General Accounting Office said.

The service actually collected about $3 billion for timber sold from the 118 national forests, the audit said. But 90 percent, about $2.7 billion, went to specific accounts, including reforestation, road-building and erosion control tied to the logging - as well as the money off the top for states.

“It means more went out of the U.S. treasury than went in to fund the program,” said James K. Meissner, who directed the audit as associate director of timber for the GAO’s natural resources management division in Seattle.

“The Forest Service’s contention that they make money long term on these things is full of hot air,” said Julie Gorte, vice president of The Wilderness Society. “Most years, the timber sale program is not self-supporting.”

But Rick Prausa, a forester and agency spokesman, said of the auditors, “I think they were pretty careful to avoid discussing this as profits or losses. There are other effects there that don’t get figured in the report.”

Congress probably would provide additional appropriations to the states with national forests if it weren’t for the set-aside tied to the logging.

In addition, he said, the logging created or maintained 76,000 jobs in 1994. The jobs produced $2.7 billion in associated income “of which we estimate about $403 million was returned to the federal treasury in federal income taxes,” he said.

Meissner acknowledged the GAO did not characterize the figures as profits or losses, “but it’s clear how much money is coming in and how much is going out” of each forest.

“When we subtract out administrative costs, you can see most of them end up being negative,” he said.

Most of the state money went to the South and West - $480 million to the Northwest region made up of forests in Washington and Oregon.

The $1.3 billion spent to log 18 billion board feet of timber for the three years includes the cost of environmental impact statements and court battles as well as mapping, planning and transportation.

A board foot is one foot square by one inch thick. It takes about 10,000 board feet to build a typical single family home.