The national forests are valuable assets, but we have turned them into liabilities.
The annual cost of fighting wildfires on federal lands, much of those national forests, is measured in billions. Counties near the national forests used to receive a portion of timber sale receipts; now, since little timber is harvested, Congress funds a program to support rural schools and infrastructure in those counties, which is measured in hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has called for national forest improvements that would address some of these problems.
Originally, national forests were reserved from the public lands, resulting in vast reserves in the West; later, cut-over forest land in the East was purchased for national forests, but 80 percent was still in the West. The USDA Forest Service manages 193 million acres, with 145 million acres of that actually being forest.
The portion of the forest land capable of growing timber is called timberland. The proportion of overall timberland ownership in the East and West differs, resulting in a disparate impact on local communities and economies. In the East, national forests account for only six percent of all timberland ownership, while in the West it’s 52 percent.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Forest Service aggressively began to clear-cut portions of the national forests, resulting in a public outcry over the harvest levels. This coincided with the environmental movement, and resulting legislation that greatly affected forest management in national forests.
Timber removals from the national forests (mainly timber harvests) have greatly declined in the time since. The national forests, 19 percent of the nation’s timberland, now produce three percent of timber removals. From after World War II to the beginning of the 1990s, timber harvest levels ranged from between 10 billion-12 billion board feet annually. Since then, timber harvests have been about two billion board feet annually. Those higher timber harvest levels accounted for roughly 20-25 percent of the nation’s wood supply, so impacts were felt in the forestry sector economy.
Plus, timber revenue on the national forests was reduced correspondingly. Federal lands, like national forests, are not subject to state and local taxation, resulting in a loss in property tax revenue by local governments. Local governments used to receive 25 percent of revenue generated from the national forests for use in roads and schools. Timber harvests provided the main portion of that revenue, and as those were reduced, so were the payments.
In 2000, Congress passed the Secure Rural Schools & Community Self-Determination Act to replace these payments to local governments. This was supposed to be a temporary way to alleviate the local funding problems, but Congress has continued to reauthorize the program. Without reauthorization, counties would be forced to share timber sale revenue from the national forests as their only payment method. “Draconian” is the adjective often used by local newspapers to describe the impact on local budgets.
Congress has passed acts to increase harvest levels on the forests in terms of overgrown, wildfire-prone stands by easing regulatory and legal constraints on the national forests. Understandably, this has not gone over well with environmental groups. The major mission of the Forest Service lately seems to be fighting wildfires and it consumes a major portion of its budget, affecting its ability to fund other necessary management activities.
There are suggestions to address the problem. One common suggestion is for management control of the national forests to be turned over to the states, or even outright transfer of the forests to the state. Many state forests, after all, are actually managed at a profit. With the forests now serving many of the original functions of national parks, user fees may be an option to enhance budgets.
One long-term observer of the national forests noted that the major uses of the national forests have shifted to tourism, ecosystem management, and wildfire control. Perhaps it is best to recognize that and work with what has become the new mission.
Thomas J. Straka is a professor of forestry and environmental conservation at Clemson University in South Carolina.
