10 Good Reasons to End Logging on Public Lands

1. Public Lands Belong to the People: Nearly 200 million acres of public forestland belong to all Americans and to future generations. 4% of America’s original forest cover remains, almost entirely on public land. Our natural heritage should not be liquidated for the profit of private corporations.

2. Public Support: Americans are strongly in favor of environmental protection. A nationwide poll conducted in 1998 concluded that 69% of Americans now oppose allowing timber companies to log our National Forests.

3. Native Forest and Habitat Protection: Native forests play an important role in creating soils and minimizing soil erosion, lessening flood and drought and maintaining clean air. Public forests contain over half of this nation’s remaining wildlife habitat.

4. Direct Subsidies and Indirect Costs: The public lands logging program operates at an increasing loss each year; in 1997, the US Forest Service lost $1.2 billion (source: John Muir Project, verified by Congressional Research Services). Taxpayers, not industry, pay for administrating the timber sale program, constructing logging roads, replanting and restoring degraded habitat. The costs of deforestation to biodiversity, clean water and air, fisheries, tourism and our spiritual well-being are incalculable.

5. Timber Supply: "Production of timber volume from the National Forests accounts for less than 5% of the total volume of timber produced in the United States" (US Forest Service). 72% of the timberland in the US, and most of the highly productive land, is in private ownership. The timber industry says it can meet domestic consumption from its own land.

6. Waste: Half of the trees cut in this country are wasted through inefficient utilization and lack of recycling.
Eliminating this waste would save more than 3 times the amount cut on public forests. Despite the existence of alternative pulp fibers, such as hemp and kenaf, about half of the trees cut each year are turned into paper products. 50% of the landfill waste in America is wood and paper fiber.

7. Automation and Exports: Between 1979 and 1988, while logging increased, more than 26,000 timber jobs disappeared due to automation. In the Southeast, new chip mills being built can consume 200 square miles of forests in 3-5 years, while employing as few as 4-12 workers per shift. In the Northwest, nearly half of all timber cut is exported raw or minimally processed. Every million board feet of lumber shipped overseas takes 7 direct jobs and 14 more indirect jobs with it.

8. Jobs: The billions of dollars currently spent subsidizing the logging of public lands could instead employ tens of thousands of people to restore forests rather than destroy them. In 1996, the Forest Service issued a report predicting that by the year 2000, recreation, hunting and fishing on National Forests will contribute over 30 times more to the national economy than the National Forest logging program.

9. Benefits to Private Timberland Owners: Subsidized public timber artificially lowers wood prices, providing an incentive for sustainable management of private timberlands. Government sale of cheap timber devalues all timberlands. It’s time for the Forest Service to abandon it’s role as a producer of commodities.

10. Lawlessness: In 1991, Federal Judge William Dwyer accused the federal land agencies of a "systematic and deliberate refusal" to comply with environmental laws. If the Forest Service cannot obey existing laws, why should we expect them to comply with "better logging" laws? The laws must be changed to stop the logging!

Produced by: Protect Our Public Lands, P.O. Box 25431, Eugene, OR 97402; (541) 349-8733

John A. Keslick, Jr., Tree Biologist, Tree Biological Laboratory,
Allegheny Defense Project, Keslick and Son Modern Arboriculture,
West Chester, PA.