Fact:
Contrary to the timber industry's frequent claims that the cause of
money-losing timber sales on
public lands is environmental regulation, all environmental analysis/
documentation and
appeals/litigation costs totaled less than six percent of the total
expense of the logging program
in FY 1995.
Between 1979 and 1988, while logging levels increased, more than 26,000
timber jobs
disappeared. Due to automation, it takes only 3 workers to produce
the same amount of timber
today as it took 5 workers to produce in 1979. In the Southeast,
new chip mills can consume
200 sq-miles of forest in 3-5 years, while employing as few as 4-12
workers per shift. In the
Northwest, nearly half of all the lumber cut is exported raw or minimally
processed. Every
million board feet shipped overseas takes 7 direct jobs and 14 more
indirect jobs with it. (Forest
Ecosystem Management Assessment Team, "Forest Ecosystem Management:
An Ecological,
Economic, and Social Assessment," USDA Forest Service, et al., p. VI-26,
1993.)
In 1996, the Forest Service issued a report that predicts that by 2000,
recreation, hunting and
fishing, on National Forests will contribute more than 30 times more
to the national economy
than the timber sale program. The billions of dollars currently
subsidizing the logging of public
lands could instead employ tens of thousands of people to restore native
biodiversity rather than
destroy it.