Making Sense Out of "Zero (Commercial) Cut" on Public Forestlands

— By Thomas Michael Power

(Thomas Michael Power is Professor of Economics and Chairman of the Economics Department at the University of Montana. He is the author of Lost Landscapes and Failed Economies: The Search for a Value of Place.)

In the debate over how to manage our public forests, many timber industry officials, political leaders, and newspaper and other media commentators have asserted that irrational environmental obstructionists have been mindlessly shutting down the Forest Service's commercial timber program.

These environmental critics often point to the "zero cut" objective espoused by many of environmental organizations to document that obstructionist objective. These folks, we are told, want to keep any trees from being cut down on public lands. Even on lands that already have extensive lumber road networks in place, where timber has been harvested for decades, and where new commercially designed plantations of young trees are already maturing, these environmentalists want to stop timber harvests. What sense does that make?

I will leave those environmental organizations to speak for themselves. But there is a logic to a narrower version of the zero cut position, namely that commercially-motivated timber harvests should not be taking place on federal lands.

The social logic behind that position is implicit in the widespread recognition, acknowledged in our law and regulations, that our public forestlands produce a wide variety of valuable goods and services, only some of which are commercial in nature. In the past this was described in terms of "multiple-use," but today most recognize that that emphasis on "use" is too narrow. We now talk about forest health and the environmental services that natural forestlands provide to on-site visitors as well as surrounding communities.

The list of the environmental services provided by natural forestlands is lengthy, including wildlife habitat, watershed services, biodiversity, soil stability, climate stabilization, fisheries, recreation opportunities, scenic beauty, and open space. Most of these are non-commercial in character. Of course those forestlands can also provide commercial opportunities to timber, livestock, mineral, and recreation businesses. The source of the conflict over forest management policy has been the appropriate balance between the pursuit of commercial objectives and the pursuit of the non-commercial environmental services objectives.

Between 1950 and 1990, our forest managers acted on the presumption that they could pursue the commercial and non-commercial objectives simultaneously. They told us that huge sprawling clearcuts not only were the most profitable way to harvest trees but that those clearcuts were also good for the forest since they mimicked natural fires. We were told that the clearcuts would also boost water production, allow superior tree stocks to be grown, create more habitat for wildlife, and, through the road system, open more and more of the National Forests to recreation. The commercially motivated clearcut, they asserted, was really a multiple-use tool.

Since almost all of the commercial and non-commercial objectives were said to coincide, no choices had to be made between them; no tradeoffs were necessary; there were free lunches to be had by all. Unfortunately, this simply was not the case. A naïve or cynical "conspiracy of optimism" simply obscured the fact that the commercial objectives were being allowed to trump the non-commercial, to the serious detriment of the forests.

This same naïve position is being asserted today as we discuss forest health and hazardous forest fuels reduction programs. Timber interests tell us that commercial timber sales are also forest fire reduction and forest health programs. This is emphatically not the case. The prescription for a profitable timber sale involves taking the older, larger, and less flammable trees and leaving the branches, tops, and needles as well as the smaller, more flammable trees and brush. The prescription for a more stable, less fire-prone forest is to leave the older, commercially valuable trees, and remove the smaller trees and brush, much of which has no commercial value.

Pursuing one of these objectives necessarily requires that the pursuit of the other objective be at least partially abandoned. Tradeoffs have to be made. There are unavoidable costs associated with those choices. Pretending otherwise is dishonest and dangerous.

A century of growing population, the commercial or residential development of almost all private land, and the harsh treatment of industrial timberlands have also caused a shift in the role people think public lands should play. Those lands are increasingly seen as preserves where commercial and development pressures can be held at bay so that some part of our natural landscapes can be permanently managed for non-commercial purposes. This is not to say that timber would not or should not be harvested, only that the motivation behind the harvest should not be commercial in character. Only harvests justified by other noncommercial objectives such as community safety, true forest restoration, or wildlife, would take place.

There is nothing obstructionist about such a position. It is a forward-looking vision that seeks to preserve for future generations some of that natural forest values that we have all enjoyed in our lifetimes.