Oregon daily emerald., February 13, 1979, Page 6 and 7, Image 6

Timber views
counter those
of ecologists
Sixty-two million acres of roadless wilderness
gives environmentalists and the timber industry quite a
bit to argue about.
If some environmentalists get their way, says Jim
Stratton of the University Survival Center, all acres in
the Forest Service land under consideration would be
designated wilderness
But if loggers such as Dave Sitwell of Roseburg's
Rosbcro Lumber Co had to decide, the land would be
opened to log trucks and chain saws.
The decision will be left up to Congress later this
year, but it’s a safe bet both groups will work hard to
swing the votes in Congress their way.
“Some citizen groups are meeting to determine
where the priority areas are and some kind of bill will
come out of that;' says Stratton. "Then we aregoing to
WcMT Tor TrH* CO«*C|t%*SS*Oric3i **%?<**»«lyS.
Birweti says pressure from environmentalists will
refill in ntow wsawness uian
“Whenever a senator from the tome state puts up
land for wilderness it comes through fairly well, be
. .. . «* *. *. npther States. ftS no skin off their
5 already a proportionally
i in Oregon.
are over 16 million acres of
i equivalent to an 8-mile-wide strip
J States, but more than 10 million of
in the Western coniferous forests.
i is barely over 10 percent of the land base," he
“Something s haywire as hell.-’
Conversely. Stratton says not enough land is wil
derness. and toe senators may even take some away.
Hatfield (Sen. Mark Hatfield. R-Ore) has a bill
that would take some wilderness areas and make
them non-wilderness. The reason, says Stratton, is
that Hatfield “gets a lot of money from timber com
panies when he runs for re-election, so naturally he's
> or. his mind — that's just one of toe
onfall ateft disagree about multiple
me torests are used for
purposes possible; wood, water, wildlife and forage.
With wilderness there is only one use," says Birwell.
“You get your best quality uses out of a wilder
counters Stratton “You gef your best
quality, your best fisheries and in reality, timber
production screws-up the other uses "
Birwell says old-growth forests eventually destroy
themselves and environmentalists are wrong when
they mink they are preserving me forest for the future.
“Like every living thing, me forest must die, and
the death of a forest is not a pretty thing, he says.
Wilderness is also a state of mind, not an official
designation, Birwell says. ‘ Wilderness is for those who
think the spirit erf the pioneer lives on and that you can
an area without seeing anyone,’’ he adds,
be those places anyway. ”
tat they do,” says Stratton,
that leaving land as wilderness
□e the remaining timber lands
Oregon day
OSPIRG and the Oregon Wilderness Coalition plan to celebrate
Oregon s 120th birthday Wednesday with joint demonstrations against
the Forest Service's RARE II proposals.
“Oregon Day'' will feature a noon press conference in the EMU
Forum Room, and slide shows throughout the day in addition to sales
of buttons, bumper-stickers, T-shirts and cookies.
Randal O Toole of OSPIRG says at least 30 roadless areas would
lose money if used for timber harvest and would contribute to inflation
The public needs to be aware of this, he adds.
"Throughout the day we will be educating people about specific
roadless areas," says O'Toole.
Slide shows will run throughout the day in front of Suite 1, in the
lower lobby of the EMU annex. The sales booth will be in front of the
University Bookstore and in front of Suite 1.
Congress ponders which RARE II figures add up
Stories by
MARV FJORDBECK
and KEN SANDS
Of the Emerald
What environmentalists and timber interests
disputed and what economists’ calculations
couldn't settle, Congress must now decide.
The second Roadless Area Review Evaluation
(RARE II) will soon begin winding through Con
gress, and federal legislators will face an army of
witnesses and a barrage of economic data sup
plied to help them decide which lands will be left
wild and which will be opened for roads.
With a long trip ahead, the program has an even
longer history. The evolution of RARE II began in
1972, with an attempt to identify those areas best
suited for inclusion in the National Wilderness
Preservation System.
But that RARE I proposal inventoried too few
lands and so RARE II emerged in 1977. New data
and opinions were gathered from then until last
fall, and in January the foresters released their
updated version of the study to Congress.
But the new program has hardly brought peace.
Instead, controversy has broken out over the
method used in judging land status.
In one camp is Oregon Student Public Interest
Research Group s Randal O’Toole. The Oregon
State University forestry graduate advocates ad
ding a strict economic analysis of the RARE II
proposal.
In another camp are the U.S. Forest Service’s
own economists, who defend their proposal by
noting their development of indexes rating
economic potential for lands under consideration.
Complicating their work are economists such
as Oregon State’s Kenneth Gibbs, who criticizes
methods used by O’Toole’s study and the federal
government's work.
All three will begin to bend the ear of Congress
as soon as subcommittee hearings get under way
to decide which, if any, of the forests in the
62-million acre Forest Service proposal should
gain wilderness status.
Meanwhile, the Carter administration is putting
together its own proposals on the Forest Service's
ideas, while the Senate has already begun its
hearings. The House is set to begin work on the
proposal in the next couple of months.
Economically, the battle lines drawn for the
Congress will be based on making money from
timber sales while still reaping the non-monetary
benefits of any given area. But the method used to
judge those values is being disputed by economic
researchers such as O'Toole and the Forest
Service’s own team of money managers.
"The Forest Service ended up with a lot of data
but no way to put it together," O'Toole says. “Un
less you put a dollar amount on it, you’ve got
nothing to hold it together."
O'Toole contends the Forest Service had no
economic analysis on its RARE II proposal, which
makes its findings misleading.
“They don't want to take the time to get the
data,” O'Toole charges. "They want to go in there
and cut. They re not willing to sit down and go over
these economic details.”
In an initial economic model of RARE II com
pleted last spring, O'Toole predicted a combina
tion of 30 areas which the Forest Service wants to
develop for timber will lose nearly $1.5 million in
maintenance and development costs each year if
they are developed for timber. And that, O'Toole
adds, could be inflationary.
Additionally. OToole says 30 other areas
couldn’t be managed on a sustained yield basis
without losing more money.
"But it's a moot point as far as the Forest Ser
vice is concerned They made the decision 'ast
May that they weren’t going to do an economic
analysis, and it was irrevocable,’’ maintains
O'Toole while advocating the Forest Service
apply dollar amounts to its proposal.
But O'Tooles work has drawn fire from both
Forest Service and non-government economists,
who say his study is misleading.
"What is wrong with his analysis is that he
polarized people by making two growth rates,”
says Gibbs, a former Forest Service worker.
Gibbs wrote in a reply to O'Toole’s work that the
study had used two growth rates in judging what
economists call “benefits from preservation as
opposed to development.’’ That error may have
skewed the findings back toward the environmen
talist point of view. Gibbs says.
“That kind of erroneous analysis does more
harm than good.” Gibbs maintains.
But neither does Gibbs agree with the work of
the Forest Service economists, whom, he says,
were also slightly inaccurate in detailing the vari
ous costs and benefits of wilderness allocation.
"On the other hand," Gibbs explains, "it wasn’t
an economic analysis because they didn’t
evaluate all the uses. But, whether they put it in
dollar terms or not, it’s still an economic analysis
because it still looks at the trade-offs, the costs
and benefits.”
Judging those trade-offs isn't a difficult chore
when dealing with items that go through markets,
Gibbs says, because prices can be compared.
The project gets a little rougher, however, when
economists have tried to gauge non-market
items.
“In wilderness," Gibbs says, “people get be
nefits whether they use it or not, so it’s more than
just environmentalists versus timber interests.
"If we could figure out how to judge the worth of
those things, immediately, a lot of us would be out
of work.”
Among the items that must be rated, Gibbs
says, are the market items, plus the aesthetic
benefits that are received without the market pro
cess.
"What they should analyze in RARE II is
whether the foregone is worth the wilderness plus
the other benefits,” Gibbs says. "But they don’t
have the hard and fast numbers."
To get those numbers. Forest Service
economists have tried to judge the utility of harv
esting in one area by using indexes instead of
dollars.
(Continued on Page 11)
Oregon’s federal legislators wait for mountain to come to them
While lobbyists for loggers and environmen
talists scramble to prepare for congressional
hearings on RARE llt three of Oregon's federal
legislators are waiting for the mountain of informa
tion to come to them.
Aides to Fourth District Rep. Jim Weaver, a
Democrat and U.S. Sens. Mark Hatfield and Bob
Packwood, both Republicans, say their bosses
want to look over most of the data, including ex
pected Carter administration recommendations,
before they decide.
“We prefer to wait until the administration
makes recommendations" before making a
commitment, says Hatfield press aide Jennifer
Oldfield.
When those recommendations on how to allo
cate 62 million acres included in the Forest Ser
vice proposal arrive, Oldfield says Hatfield will
evaluate them and then “will likely come up with a
bill of our own.”
Packwood and Weaver are holding their RARE
II cards just as close to their vests, although
Weaver has long been a supporter of wilderness
and conservation projects.
Packwood aide Bruce Hagan says Oregon's
junior senator has yet to study the proposals in
depth, while Weaver’s Eugene aide, Ron Eachus,
says the representative will consider a number of
factors in assessing land status.
However the three legislators vote on the
Forest Service’s RARE II proposal, which will
divvy up 62 million acres of land for wilderness
and non-wilderness use, strict economic analysis
won’t play a major role.
Oldfield says Hatfield will consider economics
of forest management when he views and later
votes on the RARE II proposal, but profit won't be
a controlling factor.
" We ll evaluate the uniqueness of the individual
areas and its ecological system before deciding,"
Oldfield says, adding the amount of existing wild
life will also be a consideration for Hatfield.
Hagen of Packwood's office says they would
support an economic analysis — if it didn't take
too much time.
“Maybe the Forest Service didn't do a very
good job (in its analysis of wilderness feasibility),
but Packwood doesn’t want RARE II left in the air.
“Uncertainty hurts here," Hagen added.
Packwood's economic concern centers on the
effect creation of wilderness will have on specific
localities. "Wilderness has a certain impact on the
area and the effect will be very localized, like a mill
shutting down."
Weaver, meanwhile, will concern himself with
other factors that might not play strictly into the
economics of wilderness or non-wilderness allo
cation, aide Eachus says.
"We ought to look more at reforestation and log
exports as opposed to how much will be lost in
wilderness areas," Eachus says. “The real timber
supply problems tend to be reforestation prob
lems."
Eachus says there are various ways to meas
ure economics, and that Weaver will be looking
for what is the best designation for any piece of
land, not what is the most profitable.
The Fourth District representative will look at
the wilderness value of lands as opposed to the
effect the lands hold on the timber supply in mak
ing judgments on allocation, while hearing tes
timony in the House public lands and forest sub
committees.
Those judgments for Weaver will be based on
the relationship between any given piece of land
and other roadless areas, as well as other factors
such as water quality, fish resources and mineral
values.
“The value of timber is easy to assess," says
Eachus. “These are harder and you end up mak
ing value judgments."
Which is exactly what economists hope Con
gress can avoid.
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