Minnick Advocates Phasing Out Timber Sales Industry Should Also Quit Trying To Gut Endangered Species Act, Candidate Says

Money-losing timber sales from national forest lands should be phased out, Walt Minnick said Wednesday, throwing down the gauntlet in one of the more contentious issues in his campaign against Larry Craig.

Get rid of the congressional budget measure that exempts timber sales from environmental laws, added Minnick, who is running as a Democrat against Craig, a Republican. Industry should quit trying to gut the Endangered Species Act and instead work for a sensible compromise, he said.

These proposals came in a speech Minnick delivered at the University of Oregon and from interviews about his views on the future of the timber industry, one of the most important industries in North Idaho. The address in Eugene was part of a distinguished lecturer series funded by timber giant Weyerhaeuser Corp.

“The public should be treated very much the same way as a private landowner,” Minnick said of subsidized timber sales. “If you or I sold 1,000 acres of timber, we would expect Boise Cascade or Potlatch to pay the costs of roads and reforestation.”

Eliminating unprofitable timber sales would double the federal timber program’s return to taxpayers, Minnick said.

Minnick’s views on timber supply may be as controversial. While particular mills may face log shortages, there is not a timber shortage on a nationwide or global basis, Minnick said. “If that weren’t true, prices would be going up instead of going down.”

In light of that, industry should retool mills to handle smaller-diameter trees that are far more plentiful than larger old growth. The retooling could be done with the help of government grants, he said.

Rather than paying unemployment to people in Council, Idaho, where Boise Cascade recently closed a mill, the federal dollars should be used to revamp the mill and keep it operating, Minnick said.

Former CEO of a Boise timber-products company, Minnick characterizes Craig as fiscally unwise on the timber front.

“He is in favor of continuing subsidies,” Minnick said. “He’s in favor of maximum harvest, regardless of the cost to the taxpayer, regardless of the environmental impact.”

The Craig campaign says it agrees with many of Minnick’s points on the timber industry. But not when it comes to timber supply.

Land locked up to deal with endangered species and wilderness cause those timber shortages, said Mike Reynoldson, Craig’s campaign manager.

Craig doesn’t believe in maximizing logging, no matter what the cost, Reynoldson said. Instead, the senator wants the Forest Service’s harvest plans followed, without allowing extreme environmentalists to alter those plans.

One of the biggest departures between Craig and Minnick, however, may be subsidized timber sales. Some timber sales lose money, but overall the Forest Service returns $200,000 to $300,000 a year to the federal treasury, Reynoldson said. “We’re banking money.”

When sales aren’t profitable, “they are necessary for the health of the forests,” Reynoldson said.

Bob Wolf, a forester who worked for the Office of Management and Budget, the Forest Service and the Office of Management and Budget, says Forest Service timber sales generate only red ink. “Any way you measure it, they lose money,” he said, pointing to a September 1995 General Accounting Office report.

During the last 13 years, the Forest Service lost $4.6 billion on timber sales, Wolf said. There was red ink on 103 of the 118 national forests.

Every national forest in Idaho lost money, according to the GAO report.

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