2/16/98

KUFM/KGPR

T. M. Power

The Road Building Moratorium on Forest Service Roadless Lands

Last month the US Forest Service proposed a moratorium on road building in most of the remaining National Forest roadless areas. A quarter of the total forest acreage affected by this national decision is found in Western Montana and North Idaho, almost 8.4 million acres of it. That roadless acreage is 65 percent larger than the 5.1 million acres in the region already protected as wilderness. So it represents a significant chunk of land. It is that aspect of the roading moratorium that has the timber industry concerned. It sees its access to timber supply being dramatically reduced even further.

The simple arithmetic built around the acreage of the land affected, however, does not tell the whole story. All forested lands are not equally productive for timber nor do they have equal commercial logging potential. If, for instance, the Forest Service only put off limits to harvest those lands that had no timber on them (rocks, ice and water) or those lands so isolated and steep that they could not be commercially harvested, that decision, no matter how many acres of land it affected, would have not impact on the timber supply at all.

Forested lands that remain unroaded at the end of the twentieth century, after over a century of commercial timber harvests, are likely to have characteristics that discouraged harvest in the past. In general, since white settlement in Western Montana began, the most valuable timber that was the easiest to harvest was taken first. Often the land was then converted to agricultural purposes. Next, as timber prices and public subsidies supported it, harvest was extended to areas of progressively lower timber productivity and higher costs. In the end we were harvesting the higher and steeper slopes and lodgepole pine stands of small densely packed trees.

The net result of this economic pattern of timber resource development is that the remaining roadless areas have lower timber productivity and higher costs associated with them. As a result, almost two-thirds of those roadless lands were removed from the Forest Service’s commercial timber base. The Forest Service’s harvest program does not rely upon those particular roadless acres at all. In fact, if one looks more closely and goes roadless area by roadless area, only about 20 percent of the remaining roadless acres have any commercial timber potential. If, in addition, one were to enforce a ban on all Forest Service timber sales where the costs exceed the benefits, almost none of these remaining roadless areas would be seen to have commercial timber potential.

What this means is that for the vast majority of the roadless acres that are being protected under this roading moratorium, there is no actual reduction in timber supply since these lands had no commercial potential to begin with. There is no timber supply point in arguing about those lands. Recognizing that should help reduce the level of fear as to what the moratorium will do to our communities. The impact will be much, much less than what the aggregate 8.4 million acres might suggest.

It is this economic logic that has been guiding Forest Service timber sales away from roadless areas in recent years. In straight-forward business terms, it costs a lot more to enter a roadless area: One has to punch in a new road, wrestle with a variety of environmental problems, incur the higher costs of operating in isolated, steep terrain, all to harvest trees from a lower productivity site. Plain business sense would steer a decision-maker away from most roadless areas. Demanding that the Forest Service reverse this policy and return an extensive effort to bring all forest lands into production regardless of their economics almost assures more environmental gridlock and greater Forest Service financial losses. Because of that, a return to the older Forest Service roadless area strategy is unlikely to boost the long term timber supply in the region.

All this can be said before saying anything about the damage that Forest Service roads have done to our fisheries, water quality, and wildlife habitat. Study after study has revealed the extensive negative impact that lumber roads have had on our streams. The Bitterroot National Forest provides a good example. Fisheries are still in good shape only in those watersheds that have remained unroaded. Roading our forested mountains brings significant sedimentation and fishery loss. Those same roads also threaten most key wildlife species.

From a hardnosed business point of view, one has to ask why public policy would focus timber harvest where it is least likely to pay for itself and most likely to have serious environmental impacts. Wouldn’t it make sense to move to a more sustainable pattern of harvest where one invested in maintaining the current system of roads before building new ones and focused upon those areas where the value of the wood fiber justified the ongoing costs associated with the timber management. Such a strategy would also better protect our fish, wildlife, and recreation quality: things that are both directly important to Montanans and also a crucial part of our economic base.

In that sense, we can have our cake and eat it too. We can pursue an economically rational and sustainable timber harvest policy while maintaining that which is unique about Montana. Why would we want to do otherwise?