Green Scissors 2003 Timber Roads Construction

"For years, an unusual coalition of environmentalists and budget-conscious conservatives has been trying to end the practice of federally subsidized logging in America's national forests, a practice that does as much damage to the government's bottom line as it does to the environment."

Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 1998.

U.S. Forest Service's timber program pays to construct logging roads that assist timber companies in cutting and removing timber from our national forests. Over the history of the program, the agency has paid for the construction of hundreds of thousands of miles of timber roads. Construction of these forest roads exploits tax dollars to pay the timber industry's business costs and leads to the degradation of wildlife habitat, soil, and streams.

In 1998, members of the House and Senate Appropriation Committees agreed to eliminate the "Purchaser Road Credit" (PRC) program, which enabled timber corporations to receive trees from our national forests in exchange for building logging roads, from the Interior Department's fiscal year 1999 budget. Despite elimination of PRCs, Congress continues to appropriatefunding to subsidize the engineering and design costs associated with timber road construction.

Green Scissors Proposal

Cut all funding for construction, planning and design of new logging roads, saving approximately $34.6 million annually or $173 million over five years.

Current Status

In fiscal year 2002 the Forest Service spent almost $62.3 million on road construction, including direct appropriations, purchaser roads, and purchaser elect roads. The administration's fiscal year 2004 budget request has projected these costs to be around $34.6 million for the construction and reconstruction of roads to access timber sales.

However, for the time being, most road building in roadless areas is prohibited by the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, but the administration has announced its intentions to revise the rule and is moving forward with most plans for road building in roadless areas, particularly in Alaska's Tongass National Forest.

Program Hurts Taxpayers

Taxpayers should not pay for the timber industry's cost of doing business. According to the General Accounting Office (GAO), taxpayers paid over $387 million to construct timber roads from fiscal year 1992 to fiscal year 1997. Additionally, there is already an estimated backlog for maintenance of existing roads of around $10 billion.

More than 380,000 miles of roads have been built on national forest lands, with an additional 60,000 miles of unclassified, non-system roads. In recent years, an average of 95 percent of new roads built in national forests were logging roads - only five percent were for recreation or general purpose.

Program Hurts the Environment

Forest roads continue to cause significant impacts to grizzly bear security and other wildlife such as elk. Roads fragment habitat, disrupt wildlife-migration routes, and destroy scenic beauty. Forest roads cause serious soil erosion and stream sedimentation, ruining water quality and fish habitat, and have been linked to more frequent and severe mudslides.

Contacts

Shannon Collier, Taxpayers for Common Sense, (202) 546-8500 x127
Bethanie Walder, Wildlands Center for Preventing Roads,
(406) 543-9551
Tiernan Sittenfeld, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, (202) 546-9707




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