The Likely Economic Impact of the Roadless Area Initiative on Western Montana

The US Forest Service has been wrestling with the question of how to manage its remaining roadless areas. The road system that it has in place is already far larger than the Forest Service can afford to manage and the environmental impacts of those roads on water quality, wildlife, and recreation are considerable. This combination of economics and environmental concern is working against roaded entry into the remaining roadless areas for commercial purposes. The roads cost a bundle to both build and maintain, and they are the primary source of environmental damage on these public lands. We could save both money and the environment by curtailing this mountain scarring procedure. Many don’t care about the cost of the roads since someone else has to pay for them and their building and use creates jobs and income in Montana. To them, the environmental impacts are just an unfortunate by-product of job creating government activity. The more the merrier! That, apparently, is the position the Governor is going to take when later this week he testifies against protecting Montana’s remaining roadless areas.

The basic assumption of this economic argument against limiting commercial roaded development of these public lands is that such limits will cost Montanans jobs, jobs that we badly need. It is easy to jump to that conclusion since these roadless areas represent almost a third of Montana’s National Forest land, 5.8 million acres in all. For a timber-oriented state to sacrifice a third of its National Forest land sounds outrageous on its face, especially in the context of the current hysteria about a “collapsing” Montana economy.

That approach to evaluating the economic impacts of protecting these roadless areas assumes that the state’s commercial timber is evenly distributed across all National Forest acres. That, however, is not true. There is a reason why these roadless areas have not been commercially logged in the past. Those same reasons support not logging them now.

Back in the mid-1980s each National Forest evaluated the biological and economic productivity of each part of the forest and developed appropriate management plans. Those plans were released as the National Forest timber harvests in Montana reached peak levels. Those forest plans found that 82 percent of the roadless acres were not suitable for timber management. That is the Forest Service did not plan commercial timber harvests on four out of every five acres of these roadless areas. Timber harvests since then confirm the nearly trivial role that these roadless areas have played in contributing to National Forest timber harvests. Between 1993 and 1999 when National Forest timber harvests averaged about 220 million board feet a year, about 4 million board feet of that harvest came from the inventoried roadless areas, about 1.8 percent. Current Forest Service plans for harvesting trees in these roadless areas over the next five years involve an even lower reliance, about 3 million board-feet, about 1.4 percent. That is the economic cost of protecting 5.8 million acres of our forested mountains, namely a one percent reduction in National Forest timber harvests.

Can we economically afford this? Between the peak harvest years of the late 1980s and today, National Forest timber harvests have declined by about 470 million board feet. If we were able to successfully digest that decline in federal harvest, we certainly won’t even notice a decline of 3 million board feet.

Did we successfully digest that dramatic fall down in National Forest timber harvests? In the ten years during which National Forest timber harvests plummeted, Montana added 45,000 new jobs, welcomed 43,000 new residents, and enjoyed a ten percent increase in average real incomes. Average real pay per job, however, did not improve. But increased National Forest harvests have not boosted pay in the past. For instance, in the 1970s as National Forest timber harvests declined almost 40 percent from their 1969 peak, average real pay rose 4 percent. Between 1978 and 1987 harvest rose about 40 percent but average real pay fell 20 percent. During the 90s as National Forest timber harvest plummeted 73 percent, average pay fell only 2.5 percent. Clearly, roading and clear cutting more public lands is not closely correlated with average pay.

The lesson here is that we cannot bring more prosperity to Western Montana by clawing even more frantically at our forested mountains. Fortunately our economy is no longer tied to having to do permanent damage to the wildlands and wildlife that surround us and make this a spectacular home for our children and ourselves. There may be other legitimate concerns about the Roadless Area Initiative, but the impact on the Montana economy is not one of them.