My Plan Would Make Our Forests Sound, Productive

I ‘ve spent my entire adult life turning trees into jobs.

As president and CEO of TJ International, a $630 million-per-year Idaho-based forest products company, I created thousands of good jobs with excellent benefits.

From my experience at TJ, I believe that we can have good jobs in the timber industry and also protect our unique Idaho way of life. That is why I am so disappointed by the current “Holy War” mentality over timber policy in Idaho.

This belief and my experience in the forest products industry led me to introduce recently a timber plan that I believe would go a long way to resolving these conflicts.

More than anything, the industry and timber-dependent communities need certainty. No business can plan for the future one year at a time, and you can’t expect industry to make plant modernization decisions on that basis. Mill towns can’t plan, either. However, with individual timber sales being appealed each year, that is exactly what they are forced to do.

The centerpiece of my plan is a shift to 10-year forest planning, where all timber sales and other land use decisions would be incorporated into each National Forest’s plan after full public input and review in accordance with applicable environmental and forest planning laws. By making this change, timber sales would be open to legal challenge only once every 10 years.

This change would force scientists, industry, and the conservation community to come together every 10 years and make tough decisions about what sales would be offered on a forestwide basis. Following that, unless the forest underwent significant change, sales would be offered on a comprehensive, 10-year schedule without appeals.

As a second element of my timber plan, I would phase out below-cost timber sales on National Forests. I see no reason why the Forest Service shouldn’t run its timber sale program more efficiently. There also is no reason big, highly profitable international forest products companies should be subsidized by the American taxpayer. Publicly owned timber should be priced to earn a profit for the taxpayer.

My plan also calls for realistic, long-term salvage sale legislation that will allow timber killed by fire, insects or disease to be harvested the following summer. A date-certain, expedited public comment period should allow salvage sales to be quickly put up for bid and still provide an opportunity for public input while following existing laws.

It’s only common sense that if a tree is killed one summer, it should be subject to harvesting the next. However, salvage sales shouldn’t be used as an excuse to simply circumvent the law and cut green trees not otherwise available.

My plan also includes a way to upgrade mills to handle faster-growing, small-dimensional timber and incorporate new job-creating technologies to convert chips, wood byproducts and low value tree species into high value lumber and panel products.

Lastly, I support reasonable reform of the Endangered Species Act. Specifically, we should allow private landowners the option of trading like-value land with the government, to protect habitat and to wait until final recovery plans are established before defining critical habitat for species.

I believe that if we take these steps to reform the way timber sales are planned and managed, we could go a long way toward increasing certainty for timberdependent communities and toward reducing the holy war mentality that currently frustrates industry and destroys sound multiple use management of our public forests.

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