Forest Service Role Changes Logging’s Share To Shrink Further By 2000, Agency Says

Most of the money generated by the Forest Service in the future will come from recreation and only a tiny fraction from logging, a new report says, prompting a key pro-timber senator to consider an effort to abolish the agency.

Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, chairman of the Senate Government Affairs Committee, said his panel will hold hearings to determine whether the Forest Service’s functions should be handled by other federal agencies.

“This administration is taking the Forest Service out of timber production,” Stevens said.

The Forest Service projects that by the year 2000 its programs will contribute $130.7 billion to the nation’s economy - three-fourths, or $97.8 billion, in the form of money generated by recreation on national forests.

Only $3.5 billion, or about 2.6 percent, will be generated by timber harvesting.

Fish- and wildlife-related activities, including hunting and fishing, will contribute about $12.9 billion, and minerals another $10.1 billion. A variety of other programs would account for the rest of the contribution to the gross national product.

The picture looks almost exactly the opposite on the Idaho Panhandle National Forests, officials here said, although they have not made the same year-2000 projections.

“Timber production has declined and we are trying to bring it up again to 100 million board feet a year,” said Carl Gidlund, Panhandle Forests spokesman.

“We will have more visitors, but recreation will never contribute to the extent timber has unless we raise our (campground) prices or charge entrance fees,” Gidlund said. “I don’t see how we can ever charge entrance fees like national parks.

James Lyons, deputy agriculture secretary in charge of the Forest Service, presented the national figures Wednesday during a hearing before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the Interior.

“Timber production is one of many things we do. We provide more recreation than any other federal agency,” he said.

Stevens, also a member of the appropriations subcommittee, said he is working on a variety of plans to reorganize and shrink the size of government by the year 2000, although no dates were immediately set for the hearings on the Forest Service.

“If the Forest Service targets less than 3 percent of its activities toward timber production, why should there be a Forest Service?” Stevens asked.

“It looks as though the Sierra Club’s position will be achieved by the year 2000: no timber production from national forests,” he said.

Lyons said Wednesday that logging on national forests is expected to produce about 4.2 billion board feet of timber in the next fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

That’s down from peak annual harvests in excess of 12 billion board feet during the 1980s before a series of federal court rulings found logging in the Northwest violated U.S. environmental laws.

At the same time, demand for campgrounds, hiking trails, wilderness areas and other recreation facilities on national forests is sharply on the rise.

For example, visitor days for use of national forest wilderness rose from 614,000 in 1960 to 13.8 million in 1995.

“Recreation is sadly underfunded,” Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas told the subcommittee on Wednesday. “We are about $500 million behind in maintenance of recreation facilities.”

The revenue projections for the year 2000 are based on visitor days recorded at national forests - each visit by each person that lasts 12 hours or longer. They include indirect revenue generated as a result of the visit to the national forest, including such things gasoline, travel, food, lodging.

, DataTimes