Broader view needed in gauging clear-cutting's economic impact
Duluth News-Tribune, September 17, 2003 Wednesday
Point of View by JOSHUA DAVIS
Back in 1996, the U.S. Forest Service started gathering community input to revise their management plans for the Superior and Chippewa National Forests.
On Sept. 18 they finished, with the close of the public comment period on these draft plans. Now it's up to the Forest Service to take public concerns into account before they publish the final plan next year.
The forest plans describe how many jobs and how much income will be affected by the timber the Forest Service cuts down. This part of the plan is biased, to the point that it breaks the law and ignores the agency's own regulations.
Under this plan, 31 percent of Minnesota's national forests will be clear-cut in the next 40 years. This increase in logging is driven by multinational timber and paper companies, who want the government to lower the cost of wood by flooding the market with subsidized logs from our national forests.
And that's what these plans would do.
Where's the demand for this product? The Forest Service's biggest mistake is overestimating the amount of people who will have jobs in logging and paper mills. In fact, these numbers are so inflated that we are assuming they are a mistake. The Minnesota Department of Economic Security predicts timber and paper jobs will fall in the next decade, because demand for these products is declining. Subsidized wood from our national forests won't benefit workers, just shareholders.
Worse, the economic analysis they've done only counts market values, the value the forest is worth if we were to put the timber, trails and wildlife up for auction. As if people who enjoy the old trees that Minnesota is famous for would still want to go camping in a clear-cut. Most Minnesotans wouldn't say that clean water, wildlife, recreation and scenery are worthless. But the analysis ignores these values, and rigs the plan to support timber and paper companies.
Considering these values is regarded as the professional standard. In fact, the Forest Service's own research is the leading source of information about the economic value of things that you can't buy at an auction like hiking, wildlife or clean water. These things have economic values that can be calculated by economists.
The Forest Service should have considered the real generator of income and jobs near the national forests — the growing masses of people who have homes or cabins up north who visit or live there because of the scenery and recreation.
In our comments on the plans, we asked that the Forest Service recalculate the economic impacts of the alternatives they studied, using standard tools for estimating value in public lands. They regularly do it in other forests — in fact the courts require them to do so. Without reliable economic figures, this plan cannot produce real economic gains for northern Minnesota.
JOSHUA DAVIS is a forestry organizer for the Sierra Club in Minneapolis.