Murkowski, Obama admin spar over timber contract overhaul
Great article by Patrick Reis of E&E, and another example of a Senator gone wrong. Tax payer money being used to keep an industry in business that provides for less than 1% of the employement (less than 100 actual local residents employed) to the region as well as less than 1% of the gross income in the region. Hey Senator, if you want to help the region why not start out with helping the fisheries and nature based tourism. Both rank in the top 5 for employment and income in the region.
Patrick Reis, E&E reporter
The Obama administration's plan to revamp federal timber policy came under fire yesterday from a leading Senate Republican who said it would drive forestry firms into oblivion.
In its proposed 2011 budget for the Forest Service, the Obama administration said it would shift its emphasis from traditional timber sales to "stewardship contracts" that pay private firms to do a mix of timber thinning, biomass extraction, habitat restoration, road work and other forest enhancements.
The service will conduct traditional timber sale contracts only when the revenue the sales return to the treasury exceeds the costs of administering the contract, Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee yesterday.
"Ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she saw value in the stewardship approach, but worries the industry would not survive the transition unless it has access to conventional timber contracts."
Murkowski called for new timber sales in southeastern Alaska's Tongass National Forest, which at 17 million acres is the country's largest.
"We cannot afford to spend three to 10 years studying how to make the transition in Southeast Alaska," Murkowski said. "While we go through your budget proposal, another small forests-product company faces having to auction off its equipment."
Tidwell said the administration wanted to wait for the resolution of legal battles over the Tongass and for the results of negotiations among local Alaska stakeholders. "If we put out the perfect proposal today, I don't believe we'll be successful unless we confer" with local timber groups and other stakeholders, he said.
Murkowski was having none of it: "I don't think you'll be successful because I don't believe they'll be in business," she said.
Stewardship vs. timber contracts
Tidwell repeatedly emphasized his belief that stewardship contracts are a "better tool" for the Forest Service to engage timber companies because they still provide material for wood products and business for timber companies while also achieving broader conservation goals.
Even under conservative estimates, the Forest Service's proposed budget would produce only a slight decrease -- from 2.5 billion acre feet this year to 2.4 billion in 2011 -- in timber production, Tidwell said.
Stewardship contracts also sidestep cost-to-revenue comparisons entirely because they are not intended to return money to the Treasury, Tidwell said.
With traditional timber contracts, the Forest Service takes bids on a specified quantity of wood or area of forest and returns the money to the Treasury. But in stewardship contracts, the agency requests bids from private companies to perform restoration efforts and then sells any timber those efforts yield. The revenue from those sales is reinvested in forest restoration.
Environmental groups pledged support for the administration's proposal.
"I don't think the American taxpayer is very keen on paying for subsidies for the timber companies," said Michael Francis, director of the Wilderness Society's national forests program. "The way we can manage forests and provide materials for mills is through stewardship contracting. The conventional timber program, while it's not going to go out of existence tomorrow or the day after, should be phased out."
But Murkowski accused the agency of proposing a double standard that would require timber sales to cover their costs while favoring stewardship contracts that by definition will not. She also objected to the Forest Service imposing cost-benefit requirements on private firms when very few of the agency's programs generate more revenue than they cost in appropriations.
If Congress were to hold the Forest Service to a similar standard, Murkowski said, it would "virtually abolish the agency."
The American Forests Resource Council, an industry group, "is very concerned about the assumption that the traditional timber sale contract no longer has a place in forest management on federal forests," said spokeswoman Ann Forest Burns.
Burns said the group was also unclear how the costs and benefits would be calculated when determining whether a traditional sale met the criteria for going forward. A Government Accountability Office report in 2007 found that the Forest Service's data collection methods made such calculations extremely difficult.
Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) is still reviewing the administration's proposal to change the Forest Service's contracting policy and has not yet taken a position, a spokesman said.
