Wilderness study draws criticism
By JACK DESMOND
Of the Emerald
Boulder Creek, 35 miles to the
east of Roseburg, lies in a large,
low-elevation valley in the Ump
qua National Forest containing
stands of old-growth Douglas fir.
The valley, along with 172 other
roadless areas in Oregon, is cur
rently a center of controversy pit
ting three major groups against
each other. The timber industry
wants to log Boulder Creek be
cause the valley is one of the last
low-elevation, uncut forests. For
the same reasons, conser
vationists hope to protect the val
ley from cutting. The Forest Ser
vice must gingerly plod between
both camps, though it has already
tentatively announced that it
wants to log the area.
The roadless areas of Oregon
and 1,700 areas nationwide are
currently being evaluated for wil
derness designation by the Forest
Service in a study termed RARE II
(Roadless Area Review and
Evaluation). It is the second at
tempt by the Forest Service to re
solve the future of roadless areas.
When RARE II was publicly is
sued June 15, it listed 13 alterna
tives for allocation of the 3.1 mill
ion acres of roadless area in
Oregon. The alternatives ranged
from allocating all roadless areas
to timber production, to designat
ing all roadless areas as wilder
ness.
Conservationists soon bitterly
attacked the document as being
biased in favor of the timber indus
try, as only three of the alterna
tives allocated more than 20 per
cent of the areas to wilderness.
Randall O’Toole of OSPIRG re
sponded to the document by de
veloping an economical model of
roadless areas. At a recent press
conference at the University,
O'Toole issued an OSPIRG report
entitled An Economic View of
RARF II
O'Toole, citing economics,
stated that “between 2.4 million
and all 3.1 million acres of Forest
Service roadless areas in Oregon
should be protected."
He was able to arrive at those
figures by comparing the annual
value of timber that could be ex
tracted against the annual costs of
building roads and extra logging
costs for each roadless area. He
further assigned a value of $5 for
each visitor day use of the road
less areas.
“Wilderness has always been
free because there was lots of it.
Now it's in short supply,” noted
O'Toole. “We have to be willing to
pay for wilderness, though I'm not
saying the Forest Service should
start charging for wilderness."
He explained that there was
very little research relating to the
value of primitive recreation. The
Willamette National Forest had
tentatively set a figure of $13 per
visitor for day use in wilderness
areas and $6 a day in roadless
areas. O’Toole chose $5 as a
value.
Through a convoluted
mathematical process, which
makes the study rather difficult to
understand, he projected a
benefit-cost ratio. Some notable
projections were:
• Boulder Creek — 1.6; that is,
the Forest Service would annually
receive $1.60 for each dollar in
vested in development
• Waldo Lake — .3; the Forest
Service receiving only 30 cents for
each dollar annually invested.
Overall, the study indicated only
47 of the 173 roadless areas had a
benefit-cost ratio greater than
one-to-one. If O'Toole had not as
signed a $5 visitor-day use value,
only 800,000 acres would be
economically unfeasible. How
ever, he maintained that primitive
recreation use was growing by 10
percent a year in contrast to
timber demand which was only
growing by 2 percent.
The day after the report was is
sued, the Eugene Register-Guard
editorialized that most areas
worthy of wilderness in Oregon
had already been so designated
Emerald graphic
and that the Forest Service should
open up most of the roadless
areas. The Register-Guard also
mentioned that the timber industry
would not idly sit by and let
O'Toole’s study become gospel
for saving all of the roadless
areas.
Of the three timber industry
people approached by the
Emerald, only one felt confident in
commenting upon the study.
“Randy (O'Toole) has built the
best possible case he could to
save all roadless areas from his
point of view,'’ replied Dave Cox of
industrial Forests Association.
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“But, I think using different figures,
the outcome might change
greatly.’’
Cox said he thought O’Toole’s
statistic that one million board feet
of timber supports only two jobs
was wrong and said the figure
would be 8-10 jobs.
Contacted later, O'Toole admit
ted that Cox was correct. How
ever, O’Toole maintained that the
new figures did not substantially
change the benefit-cost ratios of
most roadless areas.
Cox further claimed that
O'Toole was attributing all of the
road-building costs to timber and
discounting the value of the road
for recreational use.
“The Forest Service always re
quires the timber industry to build
roads of a much higher quality
than necessary for hauling
timber," Cox added. “That has al
ways been a bone of contention to
the timber industry.”
But O'Toole said he had used
only road-building costs neces
sary for timber transportation.
Roger Fight of the Forest Ser
vice said he had not studied the
document enough to comment.
Asked what he thought the im
pact of O'Toole’s study might be,
Cox replied, “I really don’t know
what impact it will have. It will de
pend on the Forest Service study
(an economic study of selected
roadless areas)."
‘‘I don’t want to make any pre
dictions because we’ve done
these analyses since January
1977,” O’Toole said. ‘The timber
industry has never uttered a re
sponse. By hoping not to give it
credence, people will forget about
it. I could be wrong, but they
haven’t said anything yet,”
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