No Clear-Cut Decision for Timber

The U.S. has not seen such a tumult over timbering since the great conservationist Gifford Pinchot took on bureaucrats and lumber barons at the turn of the century. On one side are the U.S. Forest Service and the $57 billion-a-year wood-products industry. Opposing them is a coalition of environmental groups. At stake: how the nation's 183 million acres of federally owned forest should be managed--including how much timber should be taken out of them.

That is no small issue. For years the Forest Service has sold private companies the right to cut timber in national forests. Even last year, when demand was dampened by a slump in home building (housing starts were 43% below 1973), the harvest from 155 national forests still topped 9 billion board feet, or 27% of the industry totals. Most of it was softwood for paper products and the building industry. But now this arrangement has been completely upset by environmentalist suits.

The environmentalists charge that the Forest Service is allowing too much logging in the national forests. Their suits therefore seek strict enforcement of the service's original charter. The Organic Act of 1897 specifically permits logging in national forests--but only of "dead, matured or large growth" trees that have been individually marked for cutting. In 1973 the Izaak Walton League sued to halt clear-cutting in West Virginia's Monongahela National Forest. Since clear-cutting means the chopping down of every single tree in a given area, including young ones, the court decided against the Forest Service.

Grave Doubts. Every modern timber company clear-cuts where possible. The practice confines the harvest to one area and makes reseeding easier; thus clear-cutting can cost a lumber company about 50% less than cutting only selected trees. The industry thus was shocked when a higher court last August upheld the Monongahela decision. Then in December a federal judge in Anchorage cited the same decision and voided Ketchikan Pulp Co.'s 50-year contract to take 8.2 billion board feet of timber out of Alaska's Tongass National Forest. The ruling cast grave doubts on the legality of clear-cutting in the 53 million acres of national forests in eight other Western states, including the main producers of softwoods, Oregon and Washington.

Many big private companies in the area, like Weyerhaeuser, Crown Zellerbach and Georgia-Pacific, are not seriously affected, because they mostly log their own lands. But other giants and nearly all the small independent producers are in big trouble. Says Gerald McChesney, president of Fort Vancouver Plywood Co. in Washington: "This could kill us--99% of our timber comes from the Pinchot National Forest." As for prices, predicts Lewis Krauss, partner in the Rough & Ready Timber Co. of Cave Junction, Ore.: "We could have a wood crunch as bad as the oil crunch of two years ago."

Timber men are looking to Congress for relief. If the Monongahela decision is applied nationally, they say, the results would surely include: 1) a 10% drop in production of softwood, 2) the layoff of 130,000 workers, 3) shortages of everything from hardwood railroad ties to toilet paper, and 4) average increases of $2,400 in the cost of wood for a single-family home--enough to hurt the home-building industry, which is finally pulling out of its recession. In addition, the industry and the Forest Service argue that clear-cutting makes good conservation sense. It is little different from harvesting grain, say foresters, and greatly benefits the replanting of Douglas fir and other valuable species that need plenty of sunlight to grow.

Environmentalists have strong arguments for Congressmen to consider too. "We don't oppose clear-cutting per se," says Tom Barlow, coordinator of the Coalition to Save Our National Forests. Rather, the environmentalists are against clear-cutting 1,000 acres at a time, which destroys wildlife habitats, and clear-cutting on steep slopes, which causes rivers to silt up. The environmentalists merely want, says Barlow, "sensible, balanced forest management" --meaning long-term protection of the forests for recreation, wildlife and other uses as well as for continued lumbering.

Fight Ahead. Each side has a bill before the Senate that suits its aims. One, sponsored by Hubert Humphrey and backed by the timber interests, has been reported out of the Senate Interior and Agriculture committees. Despite some safeguards, its main thrust is to direct the Forest Service to issue guidelines for timber management--thus giving it a free hand to do business as usual. The other bill, sponsored by West Virginia Democratic Senator Jennings Randolph, would set controls on timbering and specifically limit clear-cutting to 25-acre plots in national forests. A fight is expected on the Senate floor later this month.

The outcome is too close to call. Environmentalists have vowed to mount the most intensive lobbying campaign since their defeat of the SST. Timber men, for their part, have set up "Monongahela Action Committees" to press for the Humphrey bill in every congressional district. Last week some 100 independent loggers drove their huge rigs to the Western Forest Center in Portland, Ore., and staged a mock funeral for their industry, thus dramatizing what they think will happen if Congress does not see the issue their way.

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