The Changing Role of Timber Harvest in Our National Forests
Chief Mike Dombeck, USDA Forest Service
American Forest and Paper Association (AF&PA), Washington, DC

May 22, 2000

I would like to thank John Heissenbuttel for inviting me here to speak to you today. I appreciate this opportunity to appear before such a knowledgeable and influential group of forest and corporate managers. We’ve sometimes had differences in the past. And you might not agree with everything I say here today, but it’s important that we have a dialogue.

Before starting, I’d like to address a concern about a passage in our draft roadless area rulemaking environmental impact statement. The passage describes social effects related to timber harvest. Some have said the passage is patronizing and offensive toward forestry workers and their communities.

I grew up near northern Wisconsin’s Chequamegon National Forest. Many of my friends and relatives made a living from logging, guiding, recreation, and tourism. I did, too, in my younger years. I have a great deal of respect for those who make their living from logging and other forest-related industries. Be assured: If there is anything that implies otherwise in our draft environmental impact statement, I apologize—and I will personally make sure it is corrected.

History of Service

The American forest products industry has a long history of serving the American people. For most of America’s history, wood was practically our only fuel. Wood warmed our citizens, produced our iron, powered our machines. Wood products were used in our houses, barns, fences, bridges, even our dams and locks. Everything depended on wood from America’s forests—rural economies, industry, transportation, the building of our cities. In a very real sense, forests were the economic foundation of our Nation.

Today, however, we face serious long-term social and economic challenges. At the Forest Service, we understand that such challenges can mean fewer mills, fewer jobs. We are deeply committed to working with you to create opportunities for communities that depend on the forest products industry.

Forest Service Mission

The Forest Service’s mission demands that we care for the land so we can serve the American people in multiple ways. Only by maintaining the health, diversity, and productivity of our national forests and grasslands can we fulfill our mission. We must strike the right balance between removing forest products and maintaining healthy ecosystems.

In the past, we sometimes neglected to take the long view in managing our forests. In response to what we perceived as society’s demands, we built a 380,000-mile road system, cut wide swaths of forest, and didn’t listen carefully enough to the growing chorus of public discontent. I do not know anyone who would suggest we return to the era of harvesting 12 billion board feet of timber per year from our national forests. But the unfortunate reality is that those not-so-long-ago days are still fresh in the minds of many, feeding residual distrust and conflict. But things have changed much, and the only certainty I know is that the rate of change will accelerate.

Our multiple-use mission has greatly evolved in a short period of time. Today, we no longer manage public forests primarily for outputs of wood fiber, minerals, or animal unit-months. In ever greater numbers, the American people are asking—demanding—that we focus less on what we take from the land and more on what we leave behind.

You know better than most that a forest is much more than just trees for harvest. Here are just a few of the many ways we depend on our national forests:

·    Clean water. The most and the cleanest water in the country comes from our forests. More than 60 million Americans get their drinking water from watersheds that originate in our national forests and grasslands.

·    Recreation. In 1946, our national forests and grasslands hosted just 18 million visitor-days; last year, it was nearly 1 billion—that’s 50 times more! People are coming from all over the world. They come to enjoy our 7,700 miles of national scenic byways. They come to fish and canoe our 4,348 miles of national wild and scenic rivers. They come to hike our 133,087 miles of trails, to camp in our 4,300 campsites—the list goes on and on.

·    Wildlife and fish habitat. Our national forests provide 80 percent of the habitat in the lower 48 States for elk, mountain goat, and bighorn sheep. We maintain 28 million acres of wild turkey habitat and half of the country’s blue-ribbon trout streams. 

Changing Public Demand

Controversy. From our very beginnings, the Forest Service has been steeped in controversy. At the turn of the 20th century, a debate was raging about how to manage the Nation’s forests. Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and other early Forest Service leaders made decisions that weren’t always easy or popular.

We respect them today because their decisions—though often politically unpopular at the time—served the interests of the land and of future generations of Americans. Through a system of public lands, the Forest Service protected watersheds in the West. After the Great Depression, we were again called upon to help restore millions of acres of abandoned farmland in the Midwest and East.

Following World War II, we worked with the timber industry to help fulfill the national dream of providing families with single-family homes. Our timber harvests escalated for nearly a quarter of a century.

Along the way, social values changed. Eventually, the changing times caught up with and overran us in a flood of controversy, lawsuits, and injunctions. We’ve learned that we must be responsive to new demands—demands for clean water, healthy habitat for fish and wildlife, recreation opportunities, and ecologically sustainable timber harvests.

You here in this room know very well what I’m talking about. The Sustainable Forestry Initiative, pioneered by the AF&PA, addresses some of the very same public concerns. We share those concerns and commend the AF&PA for its Sustainable Forestry Initiative, for its Environmental, Health, and Safety Principles, for its efforts to protect longleaf pine forest, the red-cockaded woodpecker, and other rare and endangered species and ecosystems.

Role of Timber Harvest

Today, we know it is possible to generate forest products while maintaining healthy, sustainable forest ecosystems. Some people propose a zero-cut policy for our national forests and grasslands. I’ll say it again: I reject the notion that we should stop all timber harvest in our national forests.

For one thing, cutting off the timber supply from our national forests would do nothing to curtail our Nation’s growing appetite for wood products. It would only shift environmental problems to other lands where environmental protections are fewer. In the absence of a national consumption ethic, we must continue to meet at least part of the Nation’s demand for timber. Although the mix of uses continues to shift, multiple use remains alive and well. And timber harvest will remain a part of it.

But most harvest in our national forests is no longer an end in itself. More and more, we are using harvest as a means to achieve ecosystem health.

Many of the problems we face in our national forests defy simple administrative solutions. One serious problem is the health of our forest ecosystems. Some 54 million acres of national forestland are exposed to a moderate to severe risk of unnaturally occurring catastrophic fire. And 24 million acres are at risk of excessive mortality over the next 15 years due to insect and disease outbreaks.

Our forest ecosystems most in trouble once had low-intensity fires every few years. Decades of fire suppression allowed dense stands of small-diameter trees to fill the spaces between larger, older trees. When fire now occurs, it often ladders into the canopy, destroying the entire forest for generations to come.

Many of our ailing forests are suffering from exotic pests—a threat to private as well as public forestlands. A good example is the gypsy moth, a problem throughout the Northeast. In the next 30 years, the gypsy moth could spread throughout much of the South and Midwest. Working with partners, we expect to slow the spread by up to 60 percent through survey and management practices.

Partnership or Confrontation?

We know how to begin to solve our forest health problems. Thinning, prescribed fire, and planting all play a role.

·    In Oregon’s Sumpter Valley, we experimented by thinning a stand of beetle-infected ponderosa pine. Tree mortality declined by more than 90 percent.

·    On Lake Pend Oreille in northern Idaho, we removed thickets from open forests of ponderosa pine. Then we burned the underbrush. The forest is now on its way to recovery.

Thinning can help bring our ailing forests back to health. To do it, we need your know-how, your resources. Norm Johnson, who chaired the Forest Service’s Committee of Scientists, put it well: “In the past,” he said, “the forest industry needed the national forests; now the national forests need the industry to achieve ecological objectives.”

Unfortunately, the relationship between the Forest Service and the forest products industry has been rocky at times. Remember the spotted owl old-growth controversy in the Pacific Northwest? At the time, the timber industry likely could have settled for legislation that would have reduced harvest in the Pacific Northwest from 5 billion board feet to 2 or 3. Proposals along these lines were summarily rejected. Today, we struggle to harvest 1 billion board feet in the Pacific Northwest.

Now we are facing another issue—roadless areas. Some are crying foul because our proposal for roadless areas would permit timber harvest and other uses they don’t like. Others are crying foul because our proposal would, quote, “put up a wall around our forests.”

Allow me to respond to some of the concerns raised by AF&PA and others about the roadless issue.

·    No “wall” surrounds our national forests. The reality is that more Americans are using their national forests in more ways than at any other time in history.

·    Your Website implies that 65 million acres in our national forests are at risk without roads in roadless areas. The reality is that many of our national forestlands are indeed at risk, and it is sometimes easier to treat them using roads. But the highest priority areas for treatment already have roads, for the most part; and those high-priority areas won’t be affected by our roadless proposal. So how much land will be affected? Here’s one way to look at it: On all national forestlands, we are planning to treat about 2.5 million acres at risk through timber harvest in the next 5 years. Our roadless proposal would reduce that number by about 54,000 acres—or about 2 percent.

·    Many also claim that without roads, we can’t fight fires. The reality is that roads do make firefighting easier. But they also contribute to human-caused fires. We’ve been fighting fires in roadless areas for almost a century. We’ve been so good at firefighting that we’ve actually contributed to the fire problem—the fuels problem. Last year, we put out 98 percent of the fires we fought in the first few hours. Think about it: 98 percent! And let’s not forget—our roadless proposal contains an exception for firefighting.

Again, on both sides of the issue, we’re setting ourselves up for a fall. We’re setting ourselves up with overblown rhetoric, distortions of the truth, confrontational bluster. Let’s learn from the past. Let’s avoid repeating the same old dynamic that has failed us all in the past.

Another contentious issue is looming ahead: chip mills. Chip mills use low-quality, small-diameter trees. They could be just what we need to utilize the small-diameter trees thinned for the health of our forests.

But instead, many chip mills are accelerating the harvest of hardwood timber on private forestlands in the Southeast. In some cases, forests that have barely begun to regenerate from selective cutting in the past are today being clearcut to feed the chip mills, using methods that can damage watersheds and destroy fish and wildlife habitat. I understand that more trees are harvested today in the Southeast than are growing. Sooner or later, that is certain to draw public criticism and public demands for a more sustainable forest management.

Already, many residents in the Southeast think that the harvest methods used to feed the chip mills are compromising their hunting, fishing, scenic beauty—their very basis for existence. The State of Missouri has declared a 2-year moratorium on permits for new chip mills. Some of the practices promoted by chip mills might be challenged on the basis of sound environmental principles, such as the AF&PA’s own Environmental, Health, and Safety Principles.

Now, I want to make something very clear. These are not public lands I’m talking about, and we will not try to regulate private forestlands. I challenge you, the world’s foremost leaders in private forest management, to show leadership on this issue. Don’t allow the old model of controversy, litigation, and injunction to decide the future of chip mills in the Southeast. For our part, we will offer research support and technical assistance to private landowners through our State and Private Forestry program. But leadership on this issue must come from you!

We share a mutual love for the land and a mutual desire to ensure that the land remains productive for future generations. Based on our mutual interests, let’s work together!

Partnership Opportunities

For too long, we have focused on what divides us. It’s time to step aside from past debates, ruinous to all concerned. It’s time to refocus our energy on what we have in common.

I think we can agree that Americans need three things from their forests: a sustainable wood supply; jobs in rural communities; and values associated with healthy forests and healthy ecosystems, such as clean water and recreation. We need to deliver all three.

Our past approach, based on timber quotas, no longer does the job. It leads to costly litigation and injunctions without necessarily improving the health of our forests. An alternative approach is to plan based on the desired future condition of our national forests. The desired future condition we all wants translates to productive watersheds and ecosystems. If we stop planning based on quantities of board feet and start planning based on desired future conditions, then I think we can deliver all three things Americans need from their national forests—wood, jobs, and healthy forest ecosystems.

To that end, the Forest Service is seeking imaginative ways of using timber harvest as a tool for achieving healthy watersheds and ecosystems. That creates opportunities for you in the forest products industry and for the communities that depend on you for jobs.

·    First, we are developing stewardship contracts that combine components of timber sales and service contracts. They will allow us to treat forest vegetation in a single entry—more efficient and environmentally benign than the multiple entries common in the past.

·    Second, we are exploring other alternatives to traditional timber sales. For example, we might contract for logging and then sell the timber at the roadside or in log sort yards. Contract logging might help reduce environmental damage while making forest products available to more customers.

·    Third, we are seeking new markets and commercial uses for small-diameter trees that can substitute for traditional lumber and help reduce our reliance on wood imports. Our Forest Products Laboratory has a long record of developing technologies for using our wood more efficiently. Examples include the wood truss frame system, panelized construction, and stress skin panel construction.

None of these efforts can succeed without the comprehensive involvement of the forest products industry.

Looking Ahead

I would like to leave you with a question and a challenge. Here’s the question: What is the role of industrial forests in helping the Nation to reach its environmental and material goals?

I ask this question because for too long, we assumed that all we need do is supply the Nation with forest products. Today, people want more. They want their forests to look like forests. They reject large clearcuts and below-cost timber sales. They are turning to forests for things like clean water, abundant fish and wildlife, a place for solitude and personal renewal, and—above all—opportunities for future generations.

My challenge is for you to continue to help us find a way on Federal lands to meet timber supply needs in an ecologically sensitive manner. The important thing for us all is to get beyond past disputes. The important thing is to show respect—respect for the land, respect for each other. The important thing is to build on what we have in common for our mutual benefit.

If we do—if we strive for greater harmony with each other—then maybe, just maybe, we will achieve greater harmony with the land and the waters that sustain us all.