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Cutting a Sweet Deal
BLM's Public Domain Forestry Program
$30 million

"BLM's logging program on public domain lands consistently operates at a significant loss to American taxpayers. Its lasting legacy of mismanagement has led to overcutting, resulting in the devastation of millions of acres of vital woodlands." Representative Luis Gutierrez (D-IL)

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages more than 12 million acres of commercial forests on public domain lands. Due to contract defaults and the diversion of funds to other purposes, the agency fails to return 20 percent of its timber revenues to the federal treasury, as required by law, to cover the costs of administering the sales. The agency's fiscally mismanaged logging program jeopardizes natural resources and wildlife habitat.

Green Scissors Proposal
Terminate funding for the Bureau of Land Management's Public Domain Forestry Program, saving taxpayers more than $30 million over five years.

Current Status

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) reviewed forestry activities related to the BLM's timbercutting program in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and California - the states where more than 85 percent of the sales occur. Aside from fiscal waste, PEER has documented other evidence of agency malpractice involving widespread violations of environmental laws and internal procedures.

Program Hurts Taxpayers

Payments by timber purchasers fail to cover the agency's timber sale costs. BLM districts routinely lose money on sales because public domain forests are relatively unproductive, and therefore are less attractive commercially to timber buyers. Most of the proceeds from public domain timber sales are earmarked by the BLM for other purposes such as irrigation. The few timber receipts returned to the federal government are offset by overhead costs. Some districts spend millions of dollars to prepare and administer sales, but collect less than 10 percent of these costs from the timber sales. Through a combination of negligence by BLM and fraud perpetrated against the agency, as much as half of the timber harvested from public domain lands is stolen by logging companies. In some cases, purchasers have taken up to five times the contract volume of timber without payment.

Annual losses from BLM public domain timber sales roughly equal the forestry program's entire budget. Despite the fact that program expenditures out-pace operating costs, the agency has received a 31 percent increase in funding over the last two years.

Program Hurts the Environment

BLM's actions jeopardize the public domain. Public domain lands consist largely of "scrub brush" forests that serve as important ecological buffers between grazing lands and upland forests. The agency routinely exceeds sustainable levels to "get the cut out" and fails to comply with its own reforestation requirements. Many districts vastly exaggerate stocking rates, reporting healthy forested tracts when, in fact, the new trees have died from disease, insect infestation or drought. By ignoring replanting failures, BLM miscalculates productive timber acreage and presents overly optimistic sale projections, a vicious circle that leads to overcutting.

In addition to causing severe environmental harm to watersheds and wildlife habitat, BLM's post-sale indifference means that much of the damage caused by unsustainable logging is never mitigated. Because existing forests are not timber dense, an average of nine acres must be harvested on the public domain to equal the yield from one acre of prime forested land.

Contacts

• Jeff Ruch, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, (202) 265-7337.
• Sean Cosgrove, Sierra Club, (202) 675-2382.