Should Congress Let the Forest Service Off for Good Behavior?


From Andy Stahl

Some have suggested that Congress amend NFMA, establish a public land law review commission, or otherwise lessen the binds of environmental law. They say that the Forest Service has been reformed, that logging is no longer a problem, or that other problems (e.g., climate, insects, private land use) not addressed by NFMA are now paramount.

Wall Street bankers made the same plea in 1999 when they persuaded Congress to repeal the Depression-era regulations that separated commercial and investment banking. Lo and behold, it didn’t take long for the banks to remind us that where there’s money to be made, it will be, and damn the consequences.

Money still grows on Forest Service trees, ripe for the agency’s plucking. The well-intentioned laws (Knutson-Vandenberg, Brush Disposal, Salvage Sale Fund) that allow the Forest Service to supplement its appropriated budget with timber sale dollars remain on the books. In 2000, President Clinton’s USDA proposed to eliminate the off-budget timber funds by re-directing all timber sale receipts to the U.S. Treasury. Guess who opposed the move? Mark Rey, who in 2005, thanks to a midnight appropriations bill rider, expanded K-V spending authority to include paying for green timber sale planning and administration.

Randal O’Toole’s diagnosis, if not his therapy, remains as sound today as when he published Reforming the Forest Service in 1988. And the odds of eliminating these perverse legislative incentives remain as unlikely as the reimposition of any limits on bankers’ greed.

5 thoughts on “Should Congress Let the Forest Service Off for Good Behavior?”

  1. Andy- I really appreciate how you are thinking outside the box..and considering how to change the incentives to get the behavior of people in the Forest Service aligned with current thinking on priorities.

    Back to the market base. One thing is perhaps to make all uses consistent, either the FS keeps all the funds, or the Treasury gets them all. The problem with the market-based approach seems to be that folks are concerned that FS employees will get carried away (like rec user fees). So that seems to be the tension, to incentivize the right things but not in such a way that gets people carried away.

    If it were up to me, we would take an entire look at all timber related policies and procedures given the 21st century..
    We have biomass that has negative value (we need to move it to treat fuels), some value, all the way lots of value (cherry). Climate change has fundamentally changed the ideas of value of substituting biomass energy for fossil fuels, for burning biomass, and mitigation- it changes a lot of “equations” of environmental trade-offs. We should think about all that, in my view and retool the way we think about vegetation management and utilization for the 21st century, including incentives.

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  2. Andy,

    I think the current budgetary context of the USFS is one reason why a National Forest Commission (or whatever its called) is so necessary. Problematic incentives, related slush funds, the fire budget, etc. are a central part of the “governance” problem.

    Interesting to note that the Ninth Circuit has weighed in on some of these problematic financial incentives. In a stewardship contracting case, for example, the USFS only analyzed this financing option in its NEPA analysis of possible fire reduction projects, essentially treating the arrangement as the only way the agency could do restoration work.

    But the state of California questioned this assumption, and the Ninth Circuit found the agency’s view too limited and in violation of NEPA. Alternative ways to fund fire reduction objectives were not analyzed by the agency, such as requesting a special appropriation from Congress, altering the Service’s fuel treatment program, or re-prioritizing other funding.

    It is hard not to sympathize with the agency in this regard. Perhaps it is simply adjusting to its new political reality, and trying to use whatever tools it can to get work done. But the public should not acquiesce so easily and let Congress off the hook. As the Ninth Circuit asks, if fuel reduction work is of the first importance, and “[i]f the USFS does not have enough [funding], why should not Congress be asked to give it more?”

    [Sierra Forest Legacy v. Rey, 526 F.3d 1228 (9th Cir. 2008). In a concurring opinion, Judge John T. Noonan continues to explore possible conflicts of interest apparent in the USFS’s approach to funding fuel reduction objectives. 526 F.3d at 1234 (Noonan, J., concurring)]

    This is a tangent, but it shows the continued relevance of O’Toole’s analysis, and why, in my opinion, a big picture look at forest management is so necessary.

    Given President Obama’s proposed spending freeze, the budgetary situation will only get worse. And I fear that the agency will start looking for additional budgetary streams (as discussed above, but also carbon, biomass, ecosystem services, etc.) that will present some opportunities AND potential problems.

    Getting back to planning, I’m curious how folks feel about dealing with different budgetary scenarios in a forest plan? A lot of people tell us that NFMA’s mistake was to assume that plans would be funded—plan it and the money will follow. That didn’t happen, of course.

    Maybe that history adds further weight to the keep it simple approach?

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  3. Martin,

    Thanks for pointing to the Sierra Forest Legacy case. As an aside, I think Judge Noonan’s long-standing gripe that FS-retained timber receipts violate due process is wrong because no one owns property rights in the national forests.

    From the other side of the judicial ideological spectrum, we have Alaska Federal District Court Judge Sedwick’s decision on the Tongass’ Orion North timber sale. Sedwick dinged the Forest Service for overstating the economic benefits of logging while understating its financial costs to the Treasury (Tongass logging always costs more than it returns).

    Whether tree removal is called vegetation management, logging, regeneration harvest, thinning, or fuels reduction, what matters to the national forest manager is how much revenue logging will return to that manager’s budget. This budget revenue derives from two sources: Congress and the tree purchaser. The Forest Service has become adept at milking Congress to subsidize logging coincident with the agency’s declining ability to log timber for which someone will pay good money.

    A good place for Iverson’s scenario planning is to explore policy questions, such as “Do the financial savings (e.g., homes saved from wildfire) from national forest fuel treatment exceed its costs?” This is a regional-scale question, and thus not amenable to KISS-style NFMA planning.

    Modern-day NFMA plans, for all their faults, have improved on the budget front. The Northwest Forest Plan’s “probable allowable sale quantity” concept, which has been widely copied, has added some realism to timber volumes. Many forest plans (but not the Tongass) are now focused on a PSQ number that is budget and needs driven instead of the “rational, comprehensive” linear programming-produced ASQ.

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  4. Here is the proposed USDA budget for fiscal year 2011.

    http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1OB?contentidonly=true&contentid=budget2011.xml

    Note the Integrated Resource Restoration Line Item–something that a lot of groups have been advocating for some time. Also includes full funding ($40 million) for the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration fund, among other positive things.

    Budget Authority
    (Dollars in Millions)
    2009 2010 2011 Program Enacted Estimate Estimate Discretionary Accounts:
    Forest and Rangeland Research………………………………… $296 $312 $304
    State and Private Forestry……………………………………… 266 308 322
    National Forest System:
    Integrated Resource Restoration:
    Priority Watersheds and Job Stabilization.………………… 0 0 50
    Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Fund ……… 0 0 40
    Restoration and Management of Ecosystems……………… 652 668 604
    Total, Integrated Resource Restoration………………… 652 668 694
    Recreation, Heritage and Wilderness………………………… 278 285 293
    Other NFS Activities………………………………………… 580 598 599
    Total, NFS………………………………………………… 1,510 1,551 1,586
    Wildland Fire Activities:
    Preparedness………………………………………………… 675 675 1,008
    Suppression:
    Suppression Activities……………………………………… 994 923 595
    FLAME Fund……………………………………………… 0 413 291
    Wildland Fire Contingency Reserve………………………. 0 0 282
    Total, Suppression……………………………………… 994 1,336 1,168
    Hazardous Fuels Reduction a/………………………………… 328 340 349
    Other Fire Operations………………………………………… 135 166 120
    Total, Wildland Fire Activities…………………………… 2,132 2,517 2,645
    Capital Improvement and Maintenance………………………… 495 556 438
    Land Acquisition……………………………………………… 51 65 75
    Other Accounts………………………………………………… 9 6 6
    Subtotal, Ongoing Discretionary …………………………… 4,759 5,315 5,377
    Emergency Supplemental Funding and Repayments………… 200 0 0
    Recovery Act:
    Capital Improvement and Maintenance……………………… 650 0 0
    Wildland Fire Management………………………………… 500 0 0
    Total, Recovery Act Programs…………………………… 1,150 0 0
    Total, Discretionary ……………………………………… $6,109 $5,315 $5,377

    Mandatory Programs:
    Permanent Appropriations…………………………………… $361 $349 $316
    Secure Rural Schools………………………………………… 395 387 348
    Trust Funds…………………………………………………… 238 100 104
    Total, Mandatory………………………………………… 994 836 768
    Total, Forest Service Budget Authority…………………… $7,103 $6,151 $6,145

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  5. Here’s some more info on the restoration items from WFLC:
    http://www.wflcweb.org/infomaterials/issue_briefs.php
    WFLC FY11 President’s Budget Update
    February 3, 2010

    National Forest System
    The National Forest System (NFS) budget request is roughly equal to the FY 2010 levels ($1,551,339M in FY10 to $1,585,719M). Of note, the NFS request includes a new budget line item for Integrated Resource Restoration. This program is the consolidation of several existing Forest Service programs including Forest Products, Vegetation and Watershed Management, and Wildlife and Fisheries Habitat Management. The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration program will also be funded out of this new Integrated Resource Restoration budget line item.
    This new Integrated Resource Restoration budget line item includes $604 million for restoration and management of ecosystems, $40 million for the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Fund, and $50 million for priority watersheds and job stabilization. The USFS budget justification document notes that this “represents a change in the management perspective of the national forests…”
    The $50 million for priority watersheds and job stabilization, a new initiative for the USFS, will be handled through a national prioritization process to identify a minimum of three key watersheds that: need improvement, have national significance, provide landscape scale restoration, and that lead to increased employment and outputs of forest products and biomass. The projects will be identified using the Statewide Forest Resource Assessments, watershed condition and input from local communities.

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