Budget Asks Loggers To Pay For Roads Public Funds Would Shift To Habitat Restoration

The region’s timber industry scoffed Thursday at the notion that it ought to pay for its own forest roads when logging public lands.

The Clinton Administration believes it will save as much as $55 million in fiscal year 1998 by making timber companies pay to build their own logging roads in national forests.

Timber producers receive credits for punching roads into forest land to get to trees they have bought from the U.S. Forest Service. The companies use the credits to bid on other public timber sales, which effectively makes the trees cheaper for industry.

“There’s hardly any timber being sold off public lands now,” said Dick Bennett, of Bennett Lumber Co. “They wouldn’t be able to sell any timber at all without the road credits.”

When reached at his home in Palm Springs, Calif., Bennett wasn’t concerned about the proposal getting through the Republican Congress. “(Clinton) can make all the recommendations he wants.”

Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig believes such a rule would add insult to an already injured timber industry, said spokesman Mike Tracy in Boise.

The roads are used for recreation and hunting, not just harvesting trees, Tracy said. Craig would prefer to see his proposed forest management legislation gain approval, a plan that environmentalists have panned as too friendly to timber producers.

“The president is walking lock step with environmentalists on this,” Tracy said. “They’re trying to stop or slow down all harvest off public lands.”

Clinton wants Congress to transfer $55 million out of that salvage fund into a newly proposed Forest Ecosystem Restoration and Maintenance Fund, to be used for a broad range of programs intended to enhance fish and wildlife habitat.

Clinton’s budget blueprint, unveiled Thursday, would eliminate what the Forest Service calls “purchaser road credits” beginning Oct. 1.

“These credits are an unnecessary complicating factor to the Forest Service fiscal and budgetary systems,” Clinton’s budget proposal said.

The road credits cost the federal government $41 million in 1996 and an estimated $55 million in the 1997 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 1996.

“Road costs will be treated like other purchaser costs and will be reflected in the competitive bids made for sales,” the Forest Service’s budget said.

Environmental groups heralded the announcement as long overdue.

“If they are really stopping road construction, it is a giant step toward protection of the last few remaining roadless areas of the national forest system,” said Mike Francis, national forests director for The Wilderness Society.

Other pro-timber groups, such as the American Forest & Paper Association, lauded the road building program as an effective way of allowing access to public lands at the lowest possible cost.

Clinton’s budget notes that the increased costs to timber companies may result in less money available for them to bid on timber sales.

Without the credits, virtually no timber would be sold from public lands, meaning that the Forest Service could lose far more in timber revenues than what it would save by not giving the road credits, Tracy said.

Nevertheless, the budget anticipates overall collections from timber sale receipts on national forests would rise from this year’s estimated $361 million to $365 million next year. The total was $378 million in 1996.

The Forest Service intends to maintain the same number of miles of logging roads on national forests as last year, 380,200 miles - larger than the entire U.S. interstate system.

Overall, Clinton proposes a 5 percent increase in the Forest Service’s operating budget, from $1.27 billion this year to $1.34 billion next year.

Clinton also proposes increases in several other land management and environmental agencies:

National Park Service, up 6 percent, from $1.15 billion this year to $1.22 billion next year.

Bureau of Land Management, up 2 percent, from $673 million to $688 million.

Fish and Wildlife Service, up 7 percent, from $524 million to $562 million.

National Marine Fisheries Service, fisheries and protected species account, up 5 percent, from $297 million to $313 million.

His budget for the U.S. Forest Service for the 1998 fiscal year also would cap spending on salvage timber sales at $100 million - about half the level of each of the past two years.

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The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Eric Torbenson Staff writer The Associated Press contributed to this report.