From a social and economic perspective, our National Forests are far more valuable standing, growing, dying, and regenerating where they are than cut down and converted into two by fours and paper products.

Economic Case Against Logging National Forests

Forest Facts

The Cost of the Federal Timber Sales Program

Economic Reports

Economic Case Against Logging National Forests

Overview

From a social and economic perspective, our National Forests are far more valuable standing, growing, dying, and regenerating where they are than cut down and converted into two by fours and paper products. National Forests provide many social and economic contributions to the nation, simply by existing as natural ecosystems.

Ecosystem services include important functions such as flood control, purification of water, recycling of nutrients and wastes, production of soils, carbon sequestering, pollination, and natural control of pests. They also include valuable products such as plants used in manufacturing life-saving medicines, edible mushrooms, and floral greens. Finally, they include a diversity of uses such as recreation, hunting and fishing.

When functioning naturally, National Forests provide services to society at an estimated worth of $4.7 trillion per year. Those benefits include flood control, carbon sequestering, purification of air and water, recreation, hunting and fishing, as well as scenic, aesthetic and cultural values.

Many of these benefits have been inhibited or entirely halted as a result of commercial abuses of our Federal forests. Commodity extraction on our National Forests has proven itself an ecological and economic failure. The Federal government is not only spending over 1 billion taxpayer dollars per year to log public forests, but also precious funds to restore the ensuing degradation. The trend must be reversed.

The Cost of the Federal Timber Sales Program Logging National Forests Creates More Economic Harm than Good

The National Forest logging program represents a net loss to U.S. taxpayers of over $1.2 billion per year. Yet these financial costs are just the tip of the iceberg. When National Forests are logged, valuable recreation, fishing, and hunting sites are destroyed.
When National Forests are logged, municipalities, businesses, and domestic water users downstream must pay for filtering logging sediments out of water supplies. When National Forests are logged, increased flooding destroys prime farmland, washes out bridges and roads, and causes loss of life and property. After the Pacific Northwest floods of 1996, the Forest Service spent over $100 million repairing bridges and roads that were damaged from landslides largely attributable to clearcuts on unstable soils.

Heavily logged National Forests are scenic eyesores, diminishing property values and thwarting the ability of communities to attract businesses and residents to enjoy high quality environments.

National Forest Logging is Anti-Competitive

Forest Service timber sales are heavily subsidized, and, as such, they are anti-competitive. Subsidized timber sales on National Forest lands place small scale producers who operate on their own lands at a competitive disadvantage, creating costs in terms of lost revenues and jobs. Subsidized National Forest timber sales also create market barriers for alternative fiber producers and recyclers. Economists call these "displacement costs."

While the Forest Service takes credit for creating wood products jobs, in many cases, the agency is simply displacing jobs that would otherwise be available from private lands or supplying recycled and alternative fiber products. When National Forest timber sales have been reduced, in many regions, jobs and income in the wood products sector have actually increased.
When added to the $1.2 billion financial losses incurred by the logging program each year, externalities and displacement costs render the National Forest timber sale program an abysmal failure from an economic perspective.

Cities Demand Watershed Protection

During the winter of 1996, siltation from excessive logging so badly damaged the watershed of Salem, Oregon, that its water supply was rendered unusable for a month. Water treatment facilities were unable to process the tons of mud and debris washing down from clearcut slopes. Similarly, the city of Portland, Oregon, population one million, has asked the Forest Service to stop logging its water source - the Bull Run watershed - out of concern for the region's rapid growth, and the quality and quantity of the water available to support it. Among other considerations, the city does not wish to build an expensive water filtration plant specifically to cleanse logging sediment.

Damaged Fisheries Threaten the Loss of Thousands of Jobs

Logging threatens commercial and sports fishing by destroying fish habitat. Sedimentation smothers spawning beds; erosion and landslides destroy trout streams; and clearcuts raise the temperature of previously shaded streams killing fish. The Columbia River system once boasted yearly migrations of 20 million salmon. The numbers are now down to less than 2 million and 60,000 jobs in the commercial fishing industry have been affected.

Recreation Far More Valuable than Logging

Recreation, hunting and fishing in National Forests contribute vastly more income to the nation's economy - and generate far more jobs - than logging on National Forests. In fact, an April 1996 Forest Service report predicts that, by the year 2000, recreation, hunting and fishing on National Forests will contribute 31.4 times more to the nation's economy and create 38.1 times the number of jobs than the existing timber sale program. (USFS, "The Forest Service Program for Forest and Rangeland Resources: A Long-Term Strategic Plan," Draft 1995, RPA Program, Oct. 1995, pp. IV-2 & IV-3.)

Economic Reports

National Forests and Mill Closures - A report by ECONorthwest (2003)
Logging industry experts report that mills in the U.S. are closing due to plummeting log prices caused by a worldwide over-supply of wood products. Despite this fact, the logging industry in the U.S. continues to blame all mill shutdowns on environmentalists. A report by economists from ECONorthwest examines the true factors behind U.S. mill closures.

Forest Service: Little Progress on Performance Accountability Likely Unless Management Addresses Key Challenges. A Report to Congress May, 2003
 
Lost in the Forest: How the Forest Service's Misdirection, Mismanagement, and Mischief Squanders Your Tax Dollars
Taxpayers for Common Sense In a report released July 11, 2002, Taxpayers for Common Sense documents hundreds of millions of dollars in logging and road subsidies for the timber industry while American taxpayers are stuck with a road maintenance backlog that has ballooned to more than $100 million in each of 16 states.

Sierra Club Forests Report: The Economic Benefits of Forest Protection, Recreation, and Restoration (August 2000)
 
Executive Summary, The Economic Case Against National Forest Logging (1999)- A report by John Talberth and Karyn Moskowitz
This report looks at the many social and economic contributions National Forests provide to the nation, simply by existing as natural ecosystems. These ecosystem service values dwarf the value of our National Forests for timber production.
Preface   Chapter 1   Chapter 2   Chapter 3   Chapter 4
   
Ending Timber Sales on National Forests: THE FACTS (FY '97)
Copyright March 1999 By Chad Hanson
This report analyzes the issues surrounding an end to the timber sales program on national forests.
 
Economic Contributions and Expenditures in National Forests
A report prepared by Karyn Moskowitz (1999) (report on zip 2, use cover of report for icon). The value of these non-extractive benefits far out- weigh the value of extractive activities, yet the Forest Service spent over $972 million on extractive activities in 1997. If the Forest Service is to fulfill its mandate to provide maximum benefits to the most people, then it must move away from destructive extractive activities.