New West Feature
Forest Service Weighs In On Revised Forestry Bill
Will Tester's proposal create jobs and preserve forest land as advertised?By Kate Schwab, 6-13-11
 |
|
 | |
| Hazard tree removal in Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest. Flickr photo by Forest Service - Northern Region. | |
|
The U.S. Forest Service has weighed in on Sen. Jon Tester’s revised wilderness bill, telling the Senate subcommittee that stalled it two years ago that significant changes have been made since Montana’s junior senator first introduced it in 2009.
The Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests on May 25 heard testimony on the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, which Tester touts as a plan for job creation and forest preservation. According to a statement from Tester’s office, Undersecretary Harris Sherman, who opposed the 2009 version, told committee members that the new bill “will allow significant mechanical and restoration work to be done (and) bring new land into our national wilderness systems. The legislation also promotes landscape scale restoration, stewardship contracts, and is supportive of integrated resource restoration.”
After being buried in committee during the last session, the bill was resubmitted on Feb. 3. Co-sponsored by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, it is supported by a coalition of timber industry and wildlife conservation groups. Key opponents include the Wild West Institute and other environmental groups, outdoor recreational organizations, and Rep. Denny Rehberg, the state’s sole representative and a Republican who is running for Tester’s Senate seat in 2012.
Despite the fact that it’s being touted as a jobs bill, “forest jobs and recreation” is something of a misnomer. Snowmobilers and other outdoor recreationists have been among the most outspoken critics from day one, even though according to Tester’s testimony, the bill would close less than 1 percent of existing trails, at least in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.
Concessions made for outdoor enthusiasts now include a temporary snowmobiling zone in the Lolo National Forest, a mandated study of potential all-terrain vehicle trails and creation of the Three Rivers Special Management Area in the Kootenai National Forest, and new recreational spaces in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.
Born out of the Montana logging community’s ongoing frustrations with Forest Service timber and firefighting policy, the bill is actually much more friendly to wilderness advocates than industry. The bill creates 542,000 acres of new wilderness on Forest Service and BLM lands, including an additional 83,000 in the Bob Marshall and Mission Mountain wilderness areas. The mandated average timber harvest levels add up to 100,000 acres over a 10-year period in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge and Kootenai national forests. That’s only 10,000 acres a year, or 0.09 percent of the commercial timber within national forests in Montana.
The state is home to 22.5 million acres of forested ground, a quarter of its total land area. Sixty percent of available commercial timber—roughly 11.4 million acres—is tied up in national forests, according to the Montana Logging Association, the main local industry group. In the western half of the state, industry depends on the national forests for about a third of all timber operations.
Over the past several years, Montana’s forests have been struggling with a relentless epidemic of the Rocky Mountain pine beetle, a voracious, tiny insect that consumes trees alive by cutting off their sap flow. The beetle also has a symbiotic relationship with a fungus that can cause a distinctive blue color in the wood. Standing dead and blued trees have a limited shelf life for lumber purposes, and trees spaced too closely together aid the insect‘s spread. The Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest in the southwestern part of the state has been hit especially hard.
In combination with plummeting housing prices and foreign competition, the beetle has had a devastating effect on local infrastructure. According to the Montana Department of Labor and Industry (PDF), by the time Tester’s bill debuted in 2009, the state had lost one-third of its wood products jobs in less than 20 years. In December 2009, in one of the most critical closures to date, Frenchtown’s Smurfit-Stone plant shuttered just before Christmas, cutting more than 400 jobs in the Missoula area.
Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.
Comments
Have you bothered to actually read Undersecretary Harris Sherman's official testimony before the Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee? If not, you can access Sherman's entire testimony right here:
http://www.wildrockies.org/files/Sherman-Testimony-S_268_05-25-11.pdf
As you can clearly see from the snip of Undersecretary Sherman's official testimony provided below, the Forest Service doesn't support Tester's mandated logging bill and still has very serious, substantive concerns about key aspects of the FJRA.
From Harris Sherman, USDA Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment, official written testimony on FJRA:
In general, and as the Department has testified to this Subcommittee in the last Congress, we have reservations about legislating forest management direction or specific treatment levels on a sites specific basis because it could establish a precedent leading to multiple site-specific laws in the future. We also recognize the importance of collaborative efforts such as the one which helped produce this legislation. These efforts are critically important to increasing public support for needed forest management activities, particularly in light of the bark beetle crisis facing Montana and other western states. We believe these efforts can significantly advance forest restoration, reduce litigation risk for these activities, and make it easier to provide jobs and opportunities in the forest industry for rural communities.
I will now point out several specific concerns that the Department would like to work with the Committee and Senator Tester to address.
One concern is the definition of mechanical treatment in Section 102(6). The Department acknowledges the inclusion of language that allows fiber to be left on the forest floor after treatment only if an option for removal of the fiber was provided. However, while we acknowledge the importance of encouraging the development of woody biomass and other small diameter timber markets, requiring that an option be provided for removing the fiber creates a barrier to using certain contracting methods that may be more effective in achieving the objectives of the bill.
Another concern arises in Section 103(b). While the Department believes the acreage targets for mechanical treatments are achievable and sustainable, we are concerned about the precedent set by legislating these targets given constrained Federal resources. Further, the Department would not want to draw resources from priority work on other units of the National Forest System in order to accomplish the goals in this legislation. Finally, we do not want to create unrealistic expectations by communities and stakeholders about the quantity of treatments that the agency would accomplish.
The reporting requirements in Section 103(f) raise two concerns. First, the requirements overlook an important opportunity to evaluate whether the Act’s prescriptions continue to provide optimal performance in light of potential changes in budget trends, wood markets and forest health conditions. Second, the analyses prescribed by this subsection may be duplicative of reports required by other laws and regulations.
Regarding Section 103(g), we very much appreciate the Senator’s recognition of the need to maintain the agency’s financial capacity to carry out critical forest management activities elsewhere in the National Forest System. We look forward to working with the Senator to further refine this subsection in order to achieve that outcome. Specifically, we are concerned that the provision as written could give rise to potential litigation about the appropriate allocation of funds among the Regions.
Finally, the Department is concerned about several prescriptions in the legislation that codify scientific assumptions and value determinations that, while consistent with our shared vision today, may come to be recognized as undesirable or ineffective as new data and circumstances arise in the future. These include the road-density standards in Sections 104(a)(4) and 104(b)(3), and the INFISH compliance requirement in Section 104(b)(1).
The undeniable fact is that over the past two year many Montanans – as well as Americans – have expressed serious, substantive concerns with Senator Tester’s FJRA. Concerns and opposition has come from not only the 50 plus conservation organizations (including 16 Montana non-profit organizations) that make up the Last Best Place Wildlands Campaign, but also some of our nation's leading conservation groups such as the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council, Center for Biological Diversity and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility Concerns have also been expressed publicly from some of the former Chiefs of the Forest Service and a host of former Forest Service supervisors and district rangers.
Whether it was his intention or not, the way the FJRA is written, Senator Tester would compromise our national forest and Wilderness legacy by swinging open the doors to simply allow members of Congress (politicians) to mandate how and where logging, oil and gas development, mining, grazing, ATV use, etc takes place in our national forests. Image how different America's national forest legacy would be if we simply allow politicians to mandate resource extraction levels through legislation attached as a rider to unrelated, must-pass legislation.
The FJRA also would turn some of Montana’s federal wildlands (including Wilderness Study Areas protected by former Montana Senator Lee Metcalf) into permanent motorized recreation areas. It would allow motors and other non-compatible uses in Wilderness and it would also cause seriously negative impacts to the Forest Service budgets in our region because other forests not included in Tester's bill (Flathead, Helena, Bitteroot, Custer, Lewis and Clark, Clearwater, Nez Perce, etc) would likely have to send money to the Beaverhead-Deerlodge NF to complete all that mandated logging.
Let's look at some very specific examples of how the FJRA treats some of our Roadless Areas and Wilderness Study Areas protected by former Montana Senator Metcalf.
Take, for example, the 229,710 acre West Pioneers Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRA), which includes the 151,00 acre Metcalf Wilderness Study Area (WSA). What Sen Tester would do is turn 129,252 acres of this IRA into a permanent, motorized Recreation Management Areas (RMA). Not even the “Beaverhead Partnership” supported this. Seriously, do we really want politicians ignoring the USFS’s travel plans to just legislate where they want motorized recreation permanently permitted? Of course, our recommendation would be to designate the entire 151,000 acre Metcalf WSA as Wilderness and eliminate the permanently motorized RMA, returning the management of that area to USFS travel planning, where it belongs.
Or take, for example, what Tester wants to do to the West Big Hole IRA, a 213,987 acre area along the crest of the continental divide that provides linkages and connectivity between the Greater Yellowstone area and forests to the west and north. Sen Tester would turn just 44,084 acres of this IRA into two small, far-apart Wilderness Areas while turning much of the IRA into a single, large, permanent, motorized National Recreation Area (NRA) totaling 94,237 acres. The large NRA would be twice as large as the two proposed Wilderness areas together and access to these two proposed Wilderness areas would be forced to use the motorized NRA trails. Again, this extreme move by Senator Tester wasn’t even supported by the “Beaverhead Partnership” in their original proposal.
These are just examples of some of the real issues at play here, and the reason why so many conservation groups who work every day on public lands, forest and Wilderness issues opposed the FJRA (see partial listing below). The following link leads to a pdf document which contains a sampling of the types of comments submitted to the US Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests regarding the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act http://testerloggingbilltruths.wordpress.com/comments-from-coalition-members/
But hey, notice how bill supporters don’t seem to talk very much about these specific, substantive issues. Hell, they won't even bother addressing these issues. Nope, it's just easier to ignore real concerns and get some college student to follow talking points and submit a letter to the editor.
The future of America’s national forest legacy is much more important than blindly supporting some politician who apparently thinks the best way to manage America’s public lands is through mandates and interference from Congress.
------------
Alliance for the Wild Rockies (MT)
Big Wild Advocates (MT)
Buffalo Field Campaign (MT)
Conservation Congress (MT)
Central Montana Wildlands Association (MT)
Deerlodge Forest Defense Fund (MT)
Friends of the Bitterroot (MT)
Friends of the Rattlesnake (MT)
Friends of the Wild Swan (MT)
Montana Rivers (MT)
Swan View Coalition (MT)
Western Montana Mycological Association (MT)
Western Watersheds Project (MT)
Wilderness Watch (MT)
WildWest Institute (MT)
Yellowstone Buffalo Foundation (MT)
Allegheny Defense Project (PA)
Bark (OR)
Big Wildlife (OR)
Biodiversity Conservation Alliance (WY)
Buckeye Forest Council (OH)
Caney Fork Headwaters Association (TN)
Cascadia Wildlands (OR)
Center for Biological Diversity (AZ)
Center for Sustainable Living (IN)
Citizens for Better Forestry (CA)
Clearwater Biodiversity Project (ID)
Cumberland Countians for Peace & Justice (TN)
Dogwood Alliance (NC)
EcoLaw Massachusetts (MA)
Ecosystem Advocates (OR)
Environmental Action Committee of West Marin (CA)
Environmental Protection Information Center (CA)
Green Press Initiative (MI)
Friends of Bell Smith Springs (IL)
Friends of the Breitenbush Cascades (OR)
Friends of the Clearwater (ID)
Heartwood (IN)
Hells Canyon Preservation Council (OR)
John Muir Project (CA)
Kentucky Heartwood (CA)
Klamath Forest Alliance (CA)
League of Wilderness Defenders (OR)
Native Forest Council (OR)
Network for Environmental & Economic Responsibility, United Church of Christ (TN)
Protect Arkansas Wilderness! (AR)
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) (DC)
RESTORE the North Woods (ME)
Save America’s Forests (DC)
Selkirk Conservation Alliance (ID)
Umpqua Watersheds (OR)
Utah Environmental Congress (UT)
Western Lands Project (WA)
WildEarth Guardians (NM)
WildSouth (NC)
--------------
The follow piece is by forester, logger and private timber broker Roy Keene from Eugene, Oregon. While his article deals mainly with Oregon, it also includes eye-opening figures from the greater Pacific Northwest region about the tremendous amount of uncut public lands timber already sold and under contract in the Pacific Northwest.
Right now in the Pacific Northwest there is enough timber already under contract to logging companies and timber mills from federal and state forest lands, 2 billion board feet, to fill nearly 500,000 logging trucks.
Just what does that 2 billion board feet of timber already under contract, but unlogged, look like? Well, it enough timber to fill logging trucks lined up end-to-end for nearly 4,200 miles. Imagine log trucks lined up end-to-end from Missoula to New York City...and back again!) This 2 billion board feet of public timber remains uncut because of the economy, lack of construction and glut of homes and developments already built, but unoccupied.
Yet, given these facts, some politicians want us to believe the timber industry is "starved for timber" and that we need to mandate more logging of our national forests to create "timber jobs?"
Want to create timber jobs? Stop the export of raw logs
By Roy Keene
Wednesday, Jun 8, 2011
http://www.registerguard.com/web/opinion/26323347-47/timber-jobs-million-log-board.html.csp
Two related points:
One of the largest timber sales in recent history on the Helena National Forest is currently taking place. It's a timber sale that involves logging along hundreds of miles of roads on the forest. You know what's happening to a large percentage of those trees cut down on the Helena National Forest? Well, they are being cut down and quickly run through a chipper on site (minimum amount of jobs required for this) and then shipped to China. Sounds like a great sustainable plan for America's national forests, eh?
Also, I drove by Sun Mountain Lumber in Deerlodge, MT this weekend and their log yard is so full of trees they have run out of room. I've never seen so many logs in their log yard. Could the log yard be full because the market for lumber is still in the toilet? Yet Sun Mountain Lumber owner Sherm Anderson tells the Senate Committee Congress needs to abandon America's national forest legacy and establish the dangerous precedent of simply having politicians mandating more logging?
New Wilderness Areas HAVE to meet the guidelines of the Wilderness Act, so that means dead forests are ineligible. The idea that we can "create" wilderness goes against the Wilderness Act.
Wood fiber is a natural resource, to provide for the more than 300 million souls in the US. Logging wood to make it into chips is possible because the timber is sold "lump sum", as a stated volume, and all that the contract requires is that it be removed in an acceptable manner. The timber purchaser buys the USFS stated cubic volume of fiber with no guarantees. The timber is sold based on its cubic volume of fiber, not the board feet of lumber it will make. That is a caveat emptor clause in the contract. In fact, isn't that way of measuring wood most favorable to chipping on the landing?? And then the chips can be reconfigured into panels, pulp, paper, or other products?? All of which are jobs that pay a wage. Jobs we sorely need.
The decision for the US to buy its manufactured consumer goods primarily from China means that is where packaging must originate, and thus the robust market for wood chips to make Kraft paper. Someone in Montana is working due to the need to ship widgets from China. That is not what drives a successful economy here, but at least someone is getting a piece, albeit small, of the market. What jobs do the aforementioned NGOs have to offer blue collar America? None.
In fact we are in the fourth year of declines. Matthew would like to know that April was the apex, hopefully, of home foreclosure in Bend, Oregon. Almost 600. Buy a McMansion on a golf course for half price of what it cost to build. The problems of a no use natural resource economy coupled to war support and entitlement promises are manifesting themselves in a very real course to a second and more severe recession. Of course Koehler's unaffected due to financial support from old money. And tax forgiven money. Neither of which are doing much to further the US economy.
What I would proffer is that continued opposition to natural resource use on public lands is not producing jobs, and not producing jobs is evolving into a construct that will provide a wide, thick, strong platform on which to support a much more conservative electorate. If that were to happen, and a continued slide into the economic sludge of a state run economy, in which the state owns the resources, the means of production, and the means to employ workers, a voter revolt might produce a country more interested in economic gains and not environmental trophy hunts. The realization that Asia is going to work no matter what, and our apparent ability to hand over vast sectors of the world manufacturing capability to Asia is without apparent limits at this time, means the real danger is in the reactions that can take place when the economic revolt happens here. Not giving an inch is a slender and thin board in platform building, and when it lets go, the whole shebang can fail. Political support is frail and slippery, and when the American public decides that it would rather work than litigate, the attacks on Tester and his ability to effectively legislate for Montana will be moot.
A friend, interested in keeping some land he owned in a natural condition, it never having been logged and containing some very, very important grizzly denning areas, approached the USFS to sell it to them last year. Only the USFS can't buy land, apparently, unless it is from TPL, evidently. And TPL will only move when the USFS has money budgeted by Congress to repay them. An NGO as a money laundering deal. An NGO as the designated middle man for Congress, at a guaranteed profit. NGO financing through the back door. My friend died. There are estate taxes. The IRS is a demanding creditor. That land was sold, and is still private, still blocks creation of a proposed wilderness due to its cleaving that wilderness from east to west. And you know what??? None of that long, long list of really concerned NGOs could come up with the money to buy it. Not even with your money. All hot air, really, and they only will try to gain title to land if they can steal it, have it given to them. No interest in earning their living. A long, long list of NGOs with their hands out, telling you they are important and working for you. Wrong. All they are is litigants sucking on the teats of a wildly disparate dispensing of EAJA monies by a system with no controls, with lawyers charging Wall Street rates in some dingy US Courtroom in backwoods Montana or urban California. AG Holder when asked if he knew how much EAJA was paying said that he did not and did not care. Obama Admin arrogance at its best. Your NGO is a Ponzi deal. A pyramid scheme. There is no there, there, unless they can get the Eagle to squirt. What a sad state of affairs. In a year, they can't make a land purchase that was there, offered at the same per acre price that Baucus arranged for the Plum Creek Swindle in Western Montana.
Tester is your best chance, and without significant economic recovery and end to the financial malaise, the real need for economic need will erase ill gotten gains the NGOs of Green have litigated for so successfully. All you have to do to erase those gains is get votes in Congress to put public lands back to work for the common good. Wilderness and recreation are a part of the common good, and so is using wood fiber in manufacturing.
As far as stating current economic woes as the reason not to have use of public land resources, you have to look no further than the Pacific Northwest Power Grid. All those tax forgiven, tax credit financed wind turbines that now are shut out of the market due to the huge spring runoff. BPA is giving away power at night, just to keep water going through turbines, and is not buying any gas power. Wind turbines can only be of use if there is a 24/7 power base to run when the wind does not blow. Now they are cut off due to excess water in the run of the river power generation sites. Wind turbines did not construct power lines or expand the grid. They are there using the existing power dispensing infrastructure. Theirs is subsidized power on the highly subsidized cheap, only it is intermittent due to vagaries of wind, and dams have to not increase dissolved nitrogen in the water by spilling it and instead using all the dam turbines, in order to not give fish the "bends." The wind farmers are suing, of course. No salmon saving mandate for them while they are killing birds and bats. Like, what are the wildlife savings by not having turbines running at night?? Meanwhile, almost a million acre feet of water a day is passing Portland on its way to raise the ocean levels. Oregon's legislature, on a straight party vote, defeated a bill to increase Oregon's share of irrigation water from the Columbia (the river is a boundary and shared with Washington along its entire length in Oregon) from 4% to 8%. Washington gets 58% and Idaho 38%. Nope, said the Democrats in the Senate. A dead bill. Environmental zeal killed another 15,000 jobs the water would have created. Meanwhile, the very same Democrats and their Koehlers are worried about sea level heights. Import your food, your goods, and save the wild!!! NIMBY at its best. And why we are not working in this country. We mistakenly thought that home appreciation would pay all the bills. Say!!! Didn't the Japanese economy fail from the same belief twenty years ago?? (light bulb goes on)
Also, I don't believe Roy Keene stated anywhere in his oped piece that export of raw logs from National Forests is allowed. You are misreading his piece, so go back over it and see what it says before you make a claim that I, or Roy, don't know what we're talking about. I believe the intent of his piece was to bring up the issue of raw log exports, which are still currently allowed from non-National Forest lands around the country. Also, Keene's piece appeared in the Eugene Register Guard, the mainstream daily paper in Eugene. If you want to discount Keene's piece because of that, go right ahead.
P.S. And yes, Larry Harrell, I believe the Forest Service does technically have plans in the works to for clearcut logging of lodgepole forests in some official inventoried roadless areas. Thanks.
I also doubt that the Forest Service intends to clearcut Roadless Areas. Are you saying that jammer logging, cable logging, roadbuilding and other damaging activities are being planned, in addition to leaving steep, erodible public Roadless lands treeless? Also, there IS a provision for logging Roadless Areas, "for forest health". However, a cleacut would never be allowed under that provision.
Look to Arizona for the future of your dead forests, Matt. Oops, I forgot that the Wallow Fire is burning in GREEN forests. The eco-public stills clings to the rhetoric of "Let It Burn". Since the demand for wood is down, that surely is a signal to abandon forest health and stewardship, eh???? Let the erosion begin!!!! Let Endangered Species Habitat burn to a crisp!!! Destroy historical sites!! Turn the rivers brown and black!! After all, "it's natural"!!!!!!! *smirks*
BTW, Matt is obsessed with displaying my name, hoping that eco-hackers will attack me and my computer. NICE!! Hopefully, people will discover my landscape photography and decide that maybe I'm not the evil destroyer of "natural" worlds.
Also, Larry, I had to chuckle a little bit that by your claim that I choose to use your real name here because of my "hope that eco-hackers will attack you and your computer."
Funny, but I use your real name because it's your real name and I prefer not to play in the land of make-believe. Also, while my understanding of technology is pretty low, I'm pretty sure someone can't attack you and your computer simply by knowing your name. Thanks.
Matt is obsessed with displaying my name, hoping that eco-hackers will attack me and my computer. NICE!! Hopefully, people will discover my landscape photography and decide that maybe I'm not the evil destroyer of "natural" worlds.
Or are you worried the bill might pass, and be so crummy, that no wilderness will ever happen again?
As for exports, that's Forest Service export data, not necessarily USFS wood. For example, I was over on the Peninsula, hit a scaling station at Port Angeles. Private wood, to the docks at 525-650 a thousand while the domestic market is paying 300. Duh....
But at that price, it would help the taxpayers just a little to export just a little.
However, that is exactly the opposite of what eco-groups want.
If you would have read Roy's piece more carefully you would have caught that.
And as to your notion that "Matt just posted Ray's (Sic) piece to muddy the waters, and promote public distrust of the Forest Service."
Actually, I posted Roy Keene's piece because it contained some good, relevant information. It's you, Larry, who is trying to "muddy the waters" by claiming Roy Keene said something he simply didn't say. Also, not sure how Roy's piece "promotes public distrust of the Forest Service." Anyway....
So the formula for forestry for profit is to cut at the cumulation of mean annual increment of growth. When this years growth is no more than last years, or less than last years, you clear cut, realize the capital gains, deduct the capital expenditures and logging costs, and pay your taxes. With money that is left, the profits, you prepare the site for planting, buy some trees, and plant them. You get to deduct those costs the next time you clear cut, against you capital gains.
In the meantime, it behooves the land owner, international giant or local small woodlands owner, to replant, with success, as soon as possible. You are in a race with your money to begin again to capture the free sunlight, the rain and snow, the accumulated nutrients, and the productivity of the site. It is about net earnings per year over time. It is why most timberland is now owned or controlled by institutions interested in long term gains. The California Public Employee Retirement System is a timberland buyer. Banks are not paying meaningful interest, unless by meaningful you say that micro low interest rates are meaningful because they are punitive to investors.
As for export logs. Long term or not, timber investors have to have money to pay for management, property taxes, infrastructure maintenance, and possibly some annual dividends. The issue with log export is that it is an additional market, which addresses the value of the falling dollar in foreign trade, and is an avenue to capturing some of the past growth of private trees, and it does employ people, and taxes are paid. It is commerce. Wilderness is not commerce, and does not pay the bills. No logging on Federal lands due to a paucity of need in the domestic market because people who have money are not spending it, and having double digits trillions of dollars idle at the moment due to low expectations in the markets is driving our economy to another drop in outputs, and further employment problems.
The flipping export of private logs is commerce. It employs people, uses supplies, drives demand for some new equipment. It allows older folks to capture a decade or decades of capital appreciation in their trees. It allows for diversity because we once again get sunlight hitting ground, and growing low lying plants to nourish ground borne critters. We have a more diverse age group of trees down the road because we don't have an oversupply of trees in one age group. I would also note that 95% of all sawmills now cannot use a log larger than 30" on the large end. Most cannot cut logs over 24" on the butt end. So as they sit there with timber growing every year, and mills to cut larger timber ending production every year, it is very possible to end up with trees that have no market. If the writers like Keene were observant, and inquisitive, they would discover that the Chinese log market is geared at this time to taking those larger logs that are hard to market domestically. The China export market for logs is a chance to realize your gains at a more than fair price for logs that have grown larger than the market and mills to cut them. It is an urgent problem, and probably pretty esoteric to the stupid and arrogant urban public. The China market is providing a solution to a growing (no pun intended) problem with oversize logs that were grown for a domestic market that no longer exists. There was once a synergy with the public land long cutting rotation timber that is long gone. The industrial forests were pared to become a consistent producer of small diameter logs that meet the best possible product realization in a highly mechanized and computerized milling process based on best possible mathematical sawing solutions, all of which are realized much more efficiently with logs with top diameters of 4"-18", and butt diameters no larger than 24". The best log sort for dollars per thousand board feet is the logs 8"-11" top diameter, forty feet plus trim long. Not old growth.
So public demand in building products that reflect highly unified home designs using 6" outside wall studs and 4" inside wall studs, engineered floor joists, laminated veneer lumber for headers, veneer and wafer panels, are geared to the wood produced in a small log with small knots. China is buying hemlock and other white woods, and larger doug fir logs. That market is a blessing for small woodland owners, and for loggers and longshoremen. It also is putting money in state coffers for schools and social services, prisons and courts. The flipping enviros get free money from trusts and foundations, from public employee payroll check offs. And maybe less in a down economy. But less is a hell of a lot better than none, which is what many are getting.
Export logs are a good deal in this economy. And, the new clear cuts and thinnings will mean more wood of useable size and value for the future, as the new forests grow from the bare land of the clear cuts.
Probably too checked to make usable wood given the delays delays delays in getting started, too. So don't say there would have been jobs from those trees or declare them "export wood" in the same category as prime sticks.
Any new wilderness designation must be accompanied by mandated multiple use and improved modern recreation access on non-wilderness lands.
Seasonal restrictions on access, scientifically based and timed, are not objectionable at all. Permanent restrictions, in the face of market and climatic changes, are prima facie stupid.
I just have to wonder, that megacomplex in Arizona while the supervisor down there is saying prescription burns are the preferred action? Mills would better utilize the centuries-old carbon.
And where's the bleeding hearts for all the spotted owl habitat that is now charred? Destroyed an economy, now the habitat attributes are gone. Tell me, where the freak is the sense in that?
And FJRA will lock in the same regime in Montana. There's MILLIONS of acres of beetle kill, that would not be kill had it been logged at ANY TIME in the past 20 years, especially when markets were robust.
FJRA still doesn't cut the mustard. Until the wilderness is packaged with enforceable targets and success markers for the non-wilderness vast majority of American forest users, not one more inch.