
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, February 18, 1991                   TAG: 9102180349
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A/8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TIMBER SALES

THE FOREST Service has issued its annual financial report on logging in the national forests. The bottom line: Profits nationwide from timber sales netted more than $300 million, more than offseting losses from forests in Southern Appalachia.

Not much new there. The Forest Service consistently reports nationwide profits on timber sales, and just as consistently reports losses in our region.

Fiscal 1990 was the fourth straight year that the government lost more than $8 million on timber sales from forests in Southern Appalachia. Uncle Sam subsidizes logging in those publicly owned lands: building access roads and bridges for logging companies, replanting after the companies have taken timber out, and so on. The service acknowledges that only 47 of its 122 national forests took in more money from logging than was paid out.

Or maybe the Forest Service didn't really profit as much as it claims. The Wilderness Society has found plenty to question in previous profit-and-loss statements.

One way the service makes the figures look better, says the Wilderness Society, is through amortization - writing off an expense by pro-rating it over a long period. In fiscal 1989, says the society, the average time for amortizing the Forest Service's costs of roads and reforestation was 112 years.

In the George Washington National Forest, where 1989 operations cost the taxpayer $2.5 million, the amortization period was 232 years; in the Jefferson, with a loss of $2.6 million, it was 194 years. That's a wink of an eye compared with the 1,361-year amortization period for the Nebraska National Forest, or the 1,743 years for the Coronado National Forest in Arizona.

According to Wilderness Society computations, the Treasury lost money from logging on 84 percent of the forests and on 60 percent of the volume cut in fiscal 1989. Despite the fact that the roads also can be used for fire control and recreation, all this activity leads to environmental damage too.

Logging interests and the Forest Service defend the subsidized sales by saying they help the industry provide jobs. That's no negligible factor in Southwest Virginia, where the job picture is spotty.

But in a time when federal dollars are harder to come by, it becomes more difficult to justify subsidies to private business. Should Uncle Sam give extra help to loggers just because the public land they want to harvest is mountainous? Why shouldn't the loggers pay more for the privilege? What about the economic damage subsidies do to private owners of timberland?

President Bush says he wants to end at-loss timber sales. Rep. Rick Boucher of Virginia's 9th District sees political pressure mounting toward that goal. He favors shifting taxpayer funds more to recreational uses of the forests: another of the service's mandates, along with providing wildlife habitat. We hope the days of subsidized logging in national forests are numbered.

by CNB