[House Hearing, 106 Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] THE EFFECTS OF THE ROADLESS POLICY ON RURAL SMALL BUSINESS AND RURAL COMMUNITIES ======================================================================= HEARING before the SUBCOMMITTEE ON RURAL ENTERPRISES, BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES AND SPECIAL SMALL BUSINESS PROBLEMS of the COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION __________ WASHINGTON, DC, JULY 11, 2000 __________ Serial No. 106-67 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Small Business __________ U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 67-682 WASHINGTON : 2000 COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS JAMES M. TALENT, Missouri, Chairman LARRY COMBEST, Texas NYDIA M. VELAZQUEZ, New York JOEL HEFLEY, Colorado JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD, DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois California ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey CAROLYN McCARTHY, New York SUE W. KELLY, New York BILL PASCRELL, New Jersey STEVEN J. CHABOT, Ohio RUBEN HINOJOSA, Texas PHIL ENGLISH, Pennsylvania DONNA MC CHRISTENSEN, Virgin DAVID M. McINTOSH, Indiana Islands RICK HILL, Montana ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania TOM UDALL, New Mexico JOHN E. SWEENEY, New York DENNIS MOORE, Kansas PATRICK J. TOOMEY, Pennsylvania STEPHANIE TUBBS JONES, Ohio JIM DeMINT, South Carolina CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas EDWARD PEASE, Indiana DAVID D. PHELPS, Illinois JOHN THUNE, South Dakota GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California MARY BONO, California BRIAN BAIRD, Washington MARK UDALL, Colorado SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada Harry Katrichis, Chief Counsel Michael Day, Minority Staff Director ------ Subcommittee on Rural Enterprises, Business Opportunities, and Special Small Business Problems FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey, Chairman RICK HILL, Montana DONNA MC CHRISTENSEN, Virgin JIM DeMINT, South Carolina Islands JOHN THUNE, South Dakota DAVID D. PHELPS, Illinois JOHN E. SWEENEY, New York TOM UDALL, New Mexico BRIAN BAIRD, Washington C O N T E N T S ---------- Page Hearing held on July 11, 2000.................................... 1 WITNESSES Rawls, Charles, General Counsel, U.S. Department of Agriculture.. 1 Cook, Adena, Blue Ribbon Coalition............................... 22 Skaer, Laura, Executive Director, Northwest Mining Association... 23 Gladics, Frank, Director, Independent Forest Products Association 25 Larson, Cheryl, L.T. Logging..................................... 39 Steed, Stephen, Owner, Utah Forest Products...................... 40 Vincent, Bruce, Communities for a Great Northwest................ 42 Fiedler, Carl, Associate Professor, University of Montana........ 45 Keegan, Chuck, Director, University of Montana................... 46 APPENDIX Prepared statements: Rawls, Charles............................................... 54 Cook, Adena.................................................. 57 Skaer, Laura................................................. 116 Gladics, Frank............................................... 130 Larson, Cheryl............................................... 143 Steed, Stephen............................................... 149 Vincent, Bruce............................................... 160 Fiedler, Carl................................................ 166 Keegan, Chuck................................................ 170 Additional Material: Prepared testimony of Thomas Michael Power................... 176 THE EFFECTS OF THE ROADLESS POLICY ON RURAL AND SMALL BUSINESS AND RURAL COMMUNITIES ---------- TUESDAY, JULY 11, 2000 House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Rural Enterprises, Business Opportunities and Special Small Business Problems, Committee on Small Business, Washington, DC. The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m. in room 2360, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Rick Hill presiding. Chairman Hill. Okay, we will call the hearing to order, the hearing on the effects of roadless policy on rural small businesses and rural communities. I have a statement and I think I will just enter the statement in the record. Obviously I have a very significant interest in this matter in that Montana has nearly 20 million acres of U.S. Forest Service land. The management of those lands has substantial impacts on the communities, many communities of which are very dependent on those public lands, and the local government units--school districts, county governments--are very dependent on the revenues that come from revenue-sharing arrangements. And then also we have many, many small businesses who rely upon the national forests for their income, directly or indirectly. We use the forests; we live with them. The Forest Service is our neighbor. We recreate on these lands. We make our living off these lands. We are dependent on those lands for the economic base of our communities. So decisions that are made by the Forest Service are very significant. The ranking member is not here yet but when she does arrive, we will allow her to enter a statement in the record. We will proceed with the hearing. Our first witness is the Honorable Charles Rawls. I do make it a standard practice to swear everyone in at hearing so if you will rise and raise your right hand. Let the record show that the witnesses answered affirmatively. Mr. Rawls. TESTIMONY OF CHARLES RAWLS, GENERAL COUNSEL, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, WASHINGTON, DC, ACCOMPANIED BY JAMES FURNISH, DEPUTY CHIEF, NATIONAL FOREST SYSTEM, FOREST SERVICE Mr. Rawls. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is my pleasure to be here this morning. I began my career in Washington about 18 years ago working for the Forest Subcommittee of the House Agriculture Committee and worked with Congressman Marlenee and others at that time. A lot of related issues, most of which--it is hard to retain all that knowledge but anyway, I do know how important these issues are to you and to the people of Montana and I hope that we can convey today that this rule has been done with some sensitivity and done properly. With me this morning I will introduce Jim Furnish. Mr. Chairman, he is the deputy chief for the National Forest System of the Forest Service, and I think will be able to answer a number of your questions about the proposed regulation itself. Mr. Chairman, in May 2000 the Forest Service published a proposed roadless area conservation rule and draft environmental impact statement and draft environmental impact statement, as you know, evaluating options for conserving an inventory of roadless and other unroaded areas on the National Forest System lands. The proposed rule would do several things. First, it would limit road construction or reconstruction in unroaded portions of inventoried roadless areas except in certain circumstances. Second, it would require evaluation during the forest plan revision of whether and how certain roadless area characteristics in inventoried roadless areas and other unroaded areas should be protected in the context of overall multiple use objectives. The Forest Service also prepared and made available for comment an initial regulatory flexibility analysis, IRFA, and a cost-benefit analysis. This hearing is timely inasmuch as the public comment period of all of these documents remains open until July 17. The Reg Flex Act directs agencies, as you know, to prepare and make available for public comment an initial regulatory flexibility analysis for rulemakings that are subject to the notice and comment requirements of 5 U.S.C. 553 or any other law. However, if the agency determines that a rulemaking will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities, the initial regulatory flexibility analysis requirement does not apply but the agency must make a certification of no significant impact and publish it, along with a statement that provides the factual basis for the certification. The Forest Service has indicated that it expects the roadless area conservation rulemaking would not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities, as defined by the Regulatory Flexibility Act. Nevertheless, given the significant public interest in the rulemaking and the comments received on this specific issue during the scoping process, the agency prepared an initial regulatory flexibility analysis. The Forest Service published a summary of the IRFA, along with the proposed rule, made the full IRFA available on the agency's website and sought public comment on its findings. The Forest Service requested comments from businesses, communities, trade associations and any other interested parties that had information or knew of information sources that would be useful in analyzing the potential economic effects of the proposed rule on small entities. And I would direct your attention to the IRFA itself, which certainly I do not have time at the moment to go into all the details of but it does propose several very specific questions. There are four questions dealing with exactly how people believe that the rule will affect small businesses and I would hope that in the comments, those issues are fleshed out for the agency. The Forest Service is also conducting an unprecedented public process to engage the public in a dialogue about the future of roadless areas. The Forest Service conducted more than 180 public meetings during its initial comment period on its notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement and it received more than 50,000 public comments. It is now in the process of conducting more than 400 public meetings across the country on its proposed rule and the accompanying documents. Again that comment period closes on July 17. It is my belief that, to date, the Forest Service has met its legal duties under the Regulatory Flexibility Act. The Forest Service has completed an initial regulatory flexibility analysis. Since the inception of the rulemaking process, the Forest Service has aggressively sought out the participation of other federal agencies through an interagency roadless policy team that includes,among others, the Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy. This active exchange with SBA and other federal agencies has assisted the Forest Service in better understanding the concerns of small entities. Most importantly, these concerns have been published in its findings and invitation for public comment. This is precisely the kind of attention to the concerns of small businesses, communities and other small entities that the act was intended to foster. Beyond that, it is premature for anyone to conclude what additional analysis, if any, will be required under the rulemaking to meet the requirements of the Reg Flex Act. And I would note that the certification of no significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities can be made at the time of the publication of the proposed rule or the final rule, and that is in 605(b). So to sum up, the Forest Service has undertaken a substantial effort to both consider and disclose the potential implications of the roadless conservation rule for small entities. As the Forest Service finalizes the rulemaking, it has pledged to consider and respond to the public comments received, including any information provided regarding small entities. Thus, it appears to me that the purposes and procedures of the Regulatory Flexibility Act are being fulfilled. Mr. Chairman, that concludes my prepared testimony. Mr. Furnish and I would be happy to respond to questions. [Mr. Rawls' statement may be found in appendix.] Chairman Hill. Thank you, Mr. Rawls. I would now like to recognize the ranking member, the gentlelady from the Virgin Islands, for an opening statement and for questions. Ms. Christian-Christensen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I apologize for being late. I want to thank the chairman for providing this additional opportunity for important input on this very important issue, particularly input from the viewpoint of our small business owners who stand to be impacted by any rule that would limit road construction in our forests, as is now being considered. I want to welcome all the panelists. Some of the panelists have traveled very far to be with us this morning and that attests to the importance of this issue to you, your families and your communities. The issue of the president's roadless area initiative is one that is a priority issue under review by the Resources Committee, on which I and several members of this Committee also sit. Once again, it brings into the forefront a discussion on how best to balance the need to manage, preserve and protect our natural resources and the need to sustain and improve economic conditions of potential in the communities that are adjacent or a part of the area in question. Although we in the U.S. Virgin Islands have no forests of the magnitude or economic potential of the ones we will be discussing today, this is not an unfamiliar debate to the community that I represent, so I want to say that I appreciate the deep concerns that this issue raises in the potentially affected communities. The issue of management of roadless areas has been grappled with, debated and fought in the courts for over 30 years. Because of this history and the continued limitations of funding to properly maintain its roads, in 1998 the Forest Service initiated a process to consider changes in how the Forest Service road system is developed, used, maintained and funded. Out of that process came the temporary suspension of road construction in certain unroaded areas and then the president's initiative. The current process, which is the subject of this hearing today, is in response to the president's directive to the Forest Service to engage in rulemaking to protect roadless areas that represent some of the last, best and unprotected wildlands. It is to address, however, the social, as well as the ecological impact. The rule would propose to immediately stop activities that have the greatest likelihood of degrading desirable characteristics of inventoried roadless areas and ensure that these characteristics are identified and considered through the local forest planning efforts. This issue has generated an unprecedented number of public comments on the rulemaking process. I want to commend the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service for the extensive dialogue that they have begun and plan to continue. I trust that a prior statement made at a Resources Committee hearing that there is not yet any preferred alternative means, that the concerns of the public will be duly incorporated into final policy, and that the concerns about social and economic impact which are being raised in this comment period will be given equal weight in the final deliberations. I look forward to hearing the testimony of the witnesses this morning and to working with both Committees to ensure that at the end of this process, we have a policy that achieves the difficult balance between the needs of the environment and community development. Thank you for allowing me to give my opening statement. I would like to ask attorney Rawls, last year, as we said, the National Forest Service announced that they were initiating the rule. You received over 600,000 responses, I understand. My question is one of the major topics identified in what we are discussing today included the economic effects the rule would have on local economies. Have any studies been performed that specifically target local small businesses that rely on resource extraction in the national parks? Mr. Rawls. I will give you a quick answer and see if Mr. Furnish wants to comment further. In reading the initial Regulatory Flexibility Act analysis which has been published and made available to the public, it does go through sector by sector, not only minerals but other sectors of the affected small business community--timber, recreation, and so on. And I guess I would commend that document to the Committee to look at. I believe it is quite good but you can certainly make your own judgments, I think, if you look at it. Ms. Christian-Christensen. There were studies that specifically targeted the local small businesses. Mr. Rawls. Yes, they do. As I say, in a sector-by-sector analysis. I think in fairness, it was pointed out in the analysis that it is difficult for the Forest Service to do this type of work with a great deal of specificity. They do not track exactly the number or names and so forth of the small businesses in the communities that they deal with. So there are limits to the analysis but they did attempt to take a good view of how the rule, proposed rule, would affect these different sectors. Ms. Christian-Christensen. We will look at the document. My second question is about the issue of health and safety of the forests. Opponents of the roadless initiative have argued that the rule prevents the Forest Service from ensuring the health and safety of the forest. It is my understanding that the Forest Service will still ensure the safety and health of the national forests by practicing the proper management of the forest for such purposes. Do you agree that the safety and health of the national forests is a legitimate concern with the roadless policy? Will this roadless policy make it more difficult to ensure the health and safety of the forest? Mr. Rawls. I might ask Mr. Furnish to respond to that. I do not believe that it would. Mr. Furnish. I think we have a number of forest health concerns that overlay the entire National Forest System from the East Coast to the West Coast. The intersection of this issue then with the roadless inventoried areas--yes, there is a connection in that we do have some forest health issues in these roadless areas. There have been some studies that suggest that the mere existence of roads contributes to some degradation to the overall forest health. The lack of roads would also limit or inhibit to some extent the ability of the Forest Service to manage certain resource issues where forest health issues appear. So yes, we are dealing with a portion of the National Forest System. There are certain forest health issues in these roadless areas. Under the proposal that we now have before the public, we would have to manage these forest health issues without the construction of new roads. Ms. Christian-Christensen. As I said in my opening statement, I do not come from a place where there are many forests, but what is better, for instance in the issue of fire prevention? I think some of the other subsequent speakers will speak to the fact that where logging is taking place, the old trees, the diseased trees that may be more likely to promote fires would be gone, whereas in a situation where there are no roads and the practices that the loggers use to keep the trees healthy not being in place would promote more fires or would make it easier for fires to spread. Can you help me understand which view is correct? Mr. Furnish. I do not know that any particular view is correct but at least I would characterize it this way. You have both the source of ignition of fires, often of which are natural-caused, like lightning. Other sources of fire ignitions are humans. There have been numerous studies that have shown that the existence of roads and enabling people to enter the forest sometimes increases fire risk because there are more people available to start fires. So you have that issue. The second really is the condition of the forests. And certainly where you have a lot of dead and downed and dying material, very dense, congested forests, then these are prone to burn hotter and more severely than others and this really, I think, is at the heart of some of this forest health issue, is do we have the capacity to manage the vegetation in such a way that we can minimize the risk of catastrophic wildfires? Mr. Rawls. Mr. Chairman, before we leave this point it did occur to me that we probably should point out on this health and safety issue that under the proposed regulation, a road is allowed to be constructed or reconstructed in an inventoried roadless area if the manager on the ground determines that the road is needed to protect public health and safety in cases of imminent threat of flood, fire and other catastrophic events, it says that without intervention would cause the loss of life or property. So I think that that might be relevant, too, in thinking about how the rule would deal with those concerns. Ms. Christian-Christensen. Thank you. I do not have any further questions at this time, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Hill. I thank the gentlelady. I have a few questions and then I am going to come up there. I do not see so well, so I am going to--I have some maps that I want to refer you to and ask some questions specifically about that. Is it true that the Department of Agriculture believes that this proposal will not have a significant economic impact, Mr. Rawls? Mr. Rawls. Well, the Forest Service in its analysis says that they do not believe it will have a significant impact on-- significant economic impact on a significant number of small entities. Chairman Hill. And why does it believe that? Mr. Rawls. I think for two reasons. One is I think that their best case analysis is that the numbers are not there. They have not been able to---- Chairman Hill. The numbers of what are not there? Mr. Rawls. The number of either entities or the economic effects. Chairman Hill. That you do not possess the numbers or the numbers do not exist? Mr. Rawls. Well, that they have not been able to determine that the significant effect would be there on those numbers. Do you understand what I am saying? Chairman Hill. But I want to be clear about this. Are you saying that you do not possess the information, so you cannot make the analysis, or that your analysis indicates that there are not enough entities? Mr. Rawls. I think what they have said is that based on the information they have, they do not find the significant effects. Chairman Hill. Are you saying that if the Forest Service is not in possession of this information, it has no obligation to try to obtain it? Mr. Rawls. I do not know that I would say that and I would say that what I appreciate about what the Forest Service did was that they, in recognizing the importance of these concerns, they have asked. They have published the initial analysis and have asked for comment. I think in reading the documents, you will see that they really want this information. Chairman Hill. You would agree that the Forest Service is not only obligated to obtain this kind of information because of the Reg Flex Act. It is also under NEPA, under the social and economic impacts under NEPA it is required to obtain that kind of information, as well, is it not? Mr. Rawls. I have not really looked at NEPA to prepare for this hearing. Mr. Furnish. I could answer that. Yes, we are required to assess the social and economic impacts of any proposal. Chairman Hill. The difference, of course, under the Reg Flex Act is that you are required to try to mitigate those impacts as they might occur to small businesses as a consequence of this rule if it is determined that the rule would affect it. Is that not correct, whereas under NEPA, you are not necessarily required to address the specifics of small business. Mr. Furnish. In the event that the rule is perceived to have a significant effect on a substantial number of business entities, then there is some obligation to pursue mitigation of those effects. Chairman Hill. Is the question then---- Mr. Rawls. Mr. Chairman, before you move on, because I am not sure that Reg Flex would require the agency to address necessarily the small business---- Chairman Hill. The proposed alternatives to minimize the impacts on small business. Mr. Rawls. Well, they need to look at alternatives but I take it you agree at the end of the day, they simply need to lay that out, display it and get---- Chairman Hill. Which leads to the next question. Has the Forest Service proposed any alternatives as a consequence of the initial regulatory flexibility analysis? Mr. Rawls. I cannot recall exactly how that is written. Frankly it is a difficult issue because---- Mr. Furnish. Let me ask you to be as specific as possible. Are you asking whether or not any new alternatives have been prepared that would be analyzed for the final environmental statement as a direct result of this IRFA? Chairman Hill. That is correct. Mr. Furnish. No. Chairman Hill. Does the Forest Service know how many small businesses participate in the small business timber set-aside program? Mr. Furnish. Yes, I think we have some estimates of those. Without pulling a number out of thin air, I think they number in the hundreds. Chairman Hill. The reason I ask that question is in the initial analysis it indicated that it did not have good data in order to be able to project the impacts. So my question is do you have that information in order to develop an analysis of how it impacts small businesses? Mr. Furnish. I think impact is viewed in the context of the Regulatory Flexibility Act, would be viewed somewhat differently than under NEPA. I think our view is that this regulation does not propose to directly regulate small business and as such, the number of businesses or communities directly impacted under the context of NEPA, the Regulatory Flexibility Act, is quite limited. Chairman Hill. The conclusion I draw from what you just said is that you are saying that since you are not directly impacting these businesses, you did not bother to assess how many businesses would be impacted. Is that what you are saying? Mr. Furnish. I think I am suggesting that we are not directly regulating the businesses. Chairman Hill. That is what I thought you said. Does the Forest Service know how many small businesses or businesses, for that matter, have perfected mining claims in the national forests? Mr. Furnish. How many businesses have perfected mining claims? Chairman Hill. Yes. Mr. Furnish. Are you including individual persons as a business? Chairman Hill. Yes, I am. Mr. Furnish. I would enumerate those in the thousands. Chairman Hill. Right. If I might step down, I have a couple of maps I want to draw your attention to. Mr. Furnish. Certainly. Chairman Hill. In essence, what you are suggesting is that these regulations do not directly impact businesses, so therefore you do not have to develop alternatives. These maps came from the Forest Service and I apologize to members at the podium; I can turn it and show it to you briefly. The blue areas on this map--this is a map of Forest Service lands in Montana--the blue areas are the areas proposed under the new roadless, unroaded initiative and the red squares are perfected mining claims that exist. And I think you made reference to the fact that this numbers literally in the thousands. Mr. Furnish. Yes. Chairman Hill. And I think this dramatizes that. Now, I want to point out the white areas in these forests are not areas left to multiple use. For the most part, these are now wilderness areas. Mr. Furnish. Yes, I recognize that. Chairman Hill. And the blue areas are now the areas that would fall under this new roadless initiative. If this regulation inhibits these people from being able to access their property, do you think that they are being directly impacted by that regulation? Mr. Furnish. I am unclear as to how this proposal would directly affect their ability to perfect their mining claims. Chairman Hill. The question is where they could access them. I mean this proposed regulation is to decommission roads, to stop the maintenance and reconstruction of roads and to stop the construction of new roads. If these people--the question is if these people cannot access their property as a consequence of this regulation, are they being impacted? Mr. Furnish. I believe there is an exclusion in the proposed rule that permits road construction for existing rights. Chairman Hill. That is the question. My question is if they are going to be denied access to their property as a consequence of this rule, if they are, would it impact them? The answer is yes or no. Mr. Furnish. I am just not sure I agree with the premise of the question. Chairman Hill. Next question is in the IRFA you suggested that relatively small numbers of timber sales would be impacted by the rule. This is a map of the Lewis & Clark National Forest, the Jefferson Division. Mr. Furnish. Yes. Chairman Hill. This dark green area, striped area, is wilderness study area. The green area is wilderness area and the gray areas are the proposed new roadless areas in this particular forest. Mr. Furnish. Yes. Chairman Hill. I think you can see from this that on a combined basis, this consumes 90 percent, 95 percent of this division of the forest. Would you agree with that? Mr. Furnish. Yes, at least the combination of all three. Chairman Hill. The combination of all three. Mr. Furnish. It incorporates the vast majority of the available national forest. Chairman Hill. What I want to point out to you is all these small dark blue and dark green areas here, right here, are timber sales that have occurred in areas that are proposed to be designated as unroaded or roadless areas. Would it be correct to conclude that those sales would no longer be permitted under this proposed regulation? Mr. Furnish. It is possible but I do not believe that is a correct assumption. Chairman Hill. It is likely, though, is it not? Mr. Furnish. Well, I do not even know that I would characterize it as likely. It is certainly possible in that historically we accomplish much of our timber sale activity in conjunction with road construction, but there are other ways to harvest timber without new road construction. Chairman Hill. When the moratorium was announced, there were scheduled sales in these areas, were there not? How many of those sales went forward during the moratorium period? Mr. Furnish. I do not have those figures at my disposal. Chairman Hill. I will tell you that none did. Would it surprise you if none did? They were all suspended? Mr. Furnish. No, that would not surprise me. Chairman Hill. Lastly, if you notice, these are dark blue squares here. Mr. Furnish. Yes. Chairman Hill. Those are lands owned by somebody other than the federal government--other government agencies. Mr. Furnish. Okay. Chairman Hill. And you can see that in some instances those would be entirely landlocked. Mr. Furnish. Yes. Chairman Hill. If those, in this instance, the state of Montana, cannot access its property as a consequence of this roadless initiative, would you say that this regulation has an impact on that local government or that government unit? Mr. Furnish. I just do not agree with the conclusion. I do not think there is any provision---- Chairman Hill. I am just saying if that occurred, would it have an impact? I am not saying that it is necessarily going to but I am saying if it occurred, would it have an impact? Mr. Furnish. Yes, it could have an impact on certain isolated parcels. Again, whether that would be considered a substantial impact I think is an open question in the context of the entire state of Montana. Chairman Hill. The administration's assertion is that these are pristine areas and they need to be maintained as pristine areas. Is that correct? Mr. Furnish. I think some would be characterized as such. I do not know if that would necessarily be a blanket condition of all areas. Chairman Hill. It is the word that the President used when he announced the initiative. I would not want to quarrel with him. This happens to be the road in the Lolo National Forest, another national forest in Montana. These areas that are in the checkerboard with the dark lines around them are proposed new roadless areas or areas to be incorporated into this new rule. These red lines here are all roads that currently exist in those roadless areas. Mr. Furnish. Yes. Chairman Hill. Could you explain to the Committee how an area could be designated as roadless or unroaded and have this many miles of road? Mr. Furnish. I think that is why we have taken pains to be very careful about describing these as unroaded portions of inventoried roadless areas. Since these areas were inventoried back in the late '70s, we have had two decades of management. There were cases, such as you are portraying here on the map, where there was active management in some of these inventoried roadless areas. That is why there has been road construction, harvest units, et cetera, in these inventoried roadless areas. The purpose of this rule is to apply to those unroaded portions of the inventoried roadless areas. So to the extent that they have been roaded, the proposal would not apply to those areas. Chairman Hill. Well, this map was prepared by the Forest Service to describe the areas that would be impacted and you can see that there are significant areas that would be impacted here that currently have roads on them. And I want to further draw your attention to these small colored areas within these boundaries. These are all areas that have been actively timber harvested within these roadless or unroaded areas. Mr. Furnish. I might add our estimates are about 10 percent of the inventoried roadless area has been actively managed in the last 20 years. Chairman Hill. Lastly, I draw your attention to the purple squares. Mr. Furnish. I believe those are state of Montana. Chairman Hill. Those are state of Montana lands. In some instances the state of Montana lands are totally surrounded by what would now be unroaded or roadless areas. Again I would draw the attention, and I think you probably are aware of the fact that Montana has a constitutional mandate that these lands be managed for its economic benefit, as opposed to other benefits. Mr. Furnish. Yes. Chairman Hill. If these designations would in some way restrict the state of Montana from fulfilling its constitutional obligation, if it would---- Mr. Furnish. That is a very big if. Chairman Hill. I understand it is a big if but if it did, that would have a direct impact, would it not? Mr. Furnish. Well, our proposal, as written, honors these constitutional privileges for not only states and other public ownerships but also private ownerships to access their property. Chairman Hill. I can show you map after map of forests in Montana that show the following things, and that is that these areas have been actively, actively managed. They have existing roads. As I understand the proposed rule, the rule would give priority to the decommissioning of roads in these inventoried roadless or unroaded areas; is that correct? Mr. Furnish. I believe we have another rule developing a roads policy for the agency that addresses that issue. I do not believe that the roadless proposal is explicit about that issue. Chairman Hill. You raise an important point. The important point that you raise is that you really do have to take the context of these various regulations together, do you not? I mean you are developing a transportation policy, you are developing a plan for these roaded and unroaded areas. Mr. Furnish. Yes. Chairman Hill. Congress has been trying to get the Forest Service to address a management plan for the forest health issues, the catastrophic fire issue out there, which we have been promised for some time and it has not been developed. You have the Interior Columbia Basin Ecology Management Plan. You really have to put all these into context, into a collective context, do you not, in order to understand what the total impact would be? Mr. Furnish. There is---- Chairman Hill. Would you agree with that? Mr. Furnish. There is a relationship among the various initiatives, yes. Chairman Hill. Do you not believe that the analysis of whether or not this should be subject to the Regulatory Flexibility Act ought to be taken in the context of all of these different management initiatives that are taking place simultaneously, as opposed to segregating them one from another? Mr. Furnish. I will leave the counsel to comment on that. Mr. Rawls. Mr. Chairman, the act certainly does not require that, so I think the short answer is no. I think it is a good policy idea for the Forest Service to be trying to look at these policies in conjunction with one another and I believe that they are doing that but I do not believe that the act requires it. Chairman Hill. If, in essence, the argument is that the impacts are being mitigated by a rule that is being developed in another area, so therefore we do not have to worry about it, then do you not believe then that you have to look at those together? I mean you cannot have it both ways, Mr. Rawls. You cannot say well, we have another rule development going on over here, so we do not have to address the impacts on small business there or local governments, and then not look at them in concert with one another. And I would suggest to you perhaps that the administration purposely developed these initiatives independent of one another so as to avoid its responsibility under Reg Flex. Would you respond to that? Mr. Rawls. I think you are giving us too much credit. Mr. Furnish. I would be happy to respond to that. That is absolutely false. Chairman Hill. Lastly, and then I will let others ask questions here, would you provide for the Committee correspondence, e-mails, that kind of activity that has occurred between the Forest Service and the Small Business Administration from the point at which you initiated this proposed rule with regard to the issue of Reg Flex so that the Committee can have the full knowledge--this is an oversight hearing--the full knowledge of what communications have occurred between the SBA and the Forest Service with regard to this issue? Mr. Furnish. I believe that we would. That is within your authority to ask for that and we can certainly do that. Chairman Hill. Thank you. I thank the Committee for indulging me that much time. Mr. Rawls. Mr. Chairman, before you more on, I am sorry but we focussed on--I said there were two reasons the Forest Service did not think that Reg Flex was applicable and we focussed on the first part of that. The second part Mr. Furnish mentioned but I think it is worth noting again, and that is the notion that this proposed regulation does not directly regulate small entities and I think that that is certainly where the law is developing. There is an Eleventh Circuit case and a case here at the D.C. Circuit that is very clear on that and I thought before we left the subject that I should mention that that would be the second, most important reason, in answer to your question. Chairman Hill. And I saw that in your testimony and I made note of that, actually. It was repeated throughout the initiative analysis. The point I was trying to make, however, is that there are people who are going to be directly impacted--directly impacted--by these regulations, or at least could be. Governments can be directly impacted. Property owners could be directly impacted. People with mineral rights, oil and gas rights, private property owners who have in-holdings--all of those people could be directly impacted. Communities could be directly impacted by the increased fire hazard associated with the decision to not manage, the fire impacts. Those are direct impacts. And I know that you have drawn that conclusion. I think it is the wrong conclusion. I think you have drawn it substantially because you made the decision in the beginning that you were not going to be subjected to it, so the Forest Service basically did an analysis to justify that. But there are direct impacts here and that was my point. The Chair would now like to recognize Mr. Phelps. Mr. Phelps. No questions. Chairman Hill. Mr. Udall. Mr. Udall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The roadless policy proposes to terminate the construction of new roads in roadless areas. The roadless policy will not close any existing roads or trails; nor will it block legal access to private or state lands. There are already over 380,000 miles of official roads of the national forests, enough to encircle the earth 16 times. Recently, the National Forest Service announced that currently they have an $8.4 billion maintenance and reconstruction backlog in its road system. It could be argued that the timber industry is not profitable enough to pay for the current road upkeep. What indications are there that more cutting and road construction will provide funds to alleviate the backlog if the current system has not been able to keep pace? Mr. Furnish. I do not believe there are any indications. Mr. Udall. It could also be argued that the $8.4 billion backlog will only increase with more road construction for timber cutting. Does it make sense to continue road construction for timber cutting when currently we cannot maintain the current system of roads? And two, the degradation of the current road system will only be environmentally detrimental to the surrounding forests, making it unsuitable for timber cutting. Mr. Furnish. If I might, I would just like to digress a moment and provide some important---- Mr. Udall. Please do. Mr. Furnish. (continuing) Historical context. I think in the post-World War II years when the forests were largely unroaded, we went through several decades of active development and I think I would characterize the Forest Service as being a road development agency and we characterized our roads as forest development roads. I think the road, the transportation policy that was alluded to earlier is an effort on our part to transition from a road development agency to a road management agency and particularly as it relates to the contribution of timber harvest to the development of and management of the road system, it is worth noting that the timber industry not only constructed a great portion of this road system but also maintained through contractual obligations much of that road system. When we were operating at nearly 12 billion boardfeet a year, it was a very active system--a lot of new roads being constructed, a great deal of roads being maintained and managed. With the current level at about 3 billion boardfeet per year, a great deal has changed in that equation and I think the Forest Service has found that we have experienced a great deal of loss with the lack of contribution from timber industry in managing our road system and we have to seek a new way into the future. I think both this roadless proposal, as well as our transportation policy initiative, are intended to redirect our energies and strategies in that effort. Mr. Udall. So really what you are trying to do is deal with a situation where the cut was much higher---- Mr. Furnish. Yes. Mr. Udall. And now it is much lower and you are trying to find the right balance in terms of roads. Mr. Furnish. Yes. Mr. Udall. And clearly if the cut is--you said 12---- Mr. Furnish. 12 billion. Mr. Udall. 12 billion boardfeet to 3, you do not need nearly as many roads in order to deal with that situation. Mr. Furnish. I think that is a fair summary, yes. Mr. Udall. Now supporters of the roadless initiative have argued that these areas are roadless because the timber industry has no interest in those areas, one of the reasons being that some of those areas are unsuitable for timber production. In your opinion, what percentage of the areas designated under the roadless policy is currently suitable for harvesting? Mr. Furnish. I am reluctant to select a numerical figure. If that is of particular interest, maybe we can do a little research before the hearing is over and try to provide a specific number. I think what is interesting is that I think there are a variety of reasons why many of these areas remain roadless after 100 years of national forest management by the Forest Service. It is oftentimes because they are sometimes the least desirable or least effective in terms of theirtimber production potential. We have tried our best to disclose the impacts of this roadless proposal on the timber harvest activities in these areas and generally speaking, we estimate this to be 1 to 2 percent of our current national program. Mr. Udall. I would like those figures if you can get that together. Mr. Furnish. Yes, we can certainly provide that. Mr. Udall. Specifically, I have three national forests in my district--the Carson, the Santa Fe and the Sebola--and I wonder for that particular question on percentage of areas designated under roadless policy is currently suitable for harvesting. If you could get me those figures, it would be very helpful. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Hill. Mr. Baird. Mr. Baird. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would also appreciate the data that Mr. Udall requested, particularly for the GP, the Gifford Pinchot. Of interest to me is some further definition of suitable for harvesting. I am particularly interested in mature old growth versus late successional versus second growth, that kind of thing. Mr. Furnish. Yes. Mr. Baird. I am interested in the issue of fire control in these areas and I know that on the one hand, people assert that well, if people get into the woods via these roads that that poses a significant fire hazard; they are more likely to have humans cause fires through various human activities, be it automobiles or discarded cigarettes or campfires or what-not. Mr. Furnish. Yes. Mr. Baird. Conversely, though, there is concern about this possible mass conflagration that nobody can get into to put out and I actually share that concern a little bit. Could you comment on that a little bit for us? Mr. Furnish. Well, I alluded to that earlier. I would say that I think the Forest Service has certainly strived to perfect the art of initial attack on fire ignitions where no roads exist. We have, of course, the storied smokejumpers but we also have developed some of the newer technology with helitac crews and that type of thing. And I would say that today the Forest Service enjoys about a 98.5 percent success rate on initial attack. Certainly when conditions are such, when you get ignitions, if they are accompanied by low humidity, high temperature, high winds, it stresses any organization to effectively prevent large project fires from developing, and this would be true regardless of whether they were in roaded terrain or unroaded terrain. Mr. Baird. I may have missed it; you may have commented on this earlier. One of the concerns I hear is that the president's Northwest Forest Plan established a certain level of boardfeet for harvest, which has not been met and there is concern that the roadless plan would perpetuate that. Would you offer some comments on that? Mr. Furnish. I think the impact of this roadless proposal on that particular issue is very minimal. Mr. Baird. How so? Mr. Furnish. I can't give you a number here right now, but at least our analysis is that most of the national forests in the Douglas fir zone, including Gifford Pinchot, would be minimally impacted by this roadless proposal. Mr. Baird. That would be helpful if you could get me some data on that. Minimally impacted because other environmental constraints--i.e., salmon protection and spotted owl--have already set aside so much or minimal impact because of the level of harvestable timber, or both? Mr. Furnish. It is a number of contributing factors there. I think one is the implications of the Northwest Forest Plan itself, with the establishment of late successional reserves and riparian reserves, have limited the harvest significantly. And then when you overlay the roadless areas, which in many cases are quite minimal in the Pacific Northwest, then you begin to look at the interface between the roadless inventory and these other allocations of land; the doubling up of impact there is very minimal. Mr. Baird. If you could get me that information, that would be very helpful, either in graphic and visual form through maps--that would probably be the most conducive to an analysis. Mr. Furnish. Okay, we can do that. Mr. Baird. I am assuming from what you are saying that given that there is no logging taking place in these areas currently, that you do not see this as having--I mean there is plenty of logging in the Pacific Northwest obviously but in the areas that are particularly affected by the roadless plan, you do not see it as having a short-term adverse impact on economic conditions right now, or am I inaccurate? Mr. Furnish. Well, I would say in the vast portion of the United States that is true. Certainly the impacts of this proposal on the Tongass National Forest in Alaska would have been dramatic and significant. I think that had a great deal to do with the exclusion of the Tongass National Forest from the provisions of this, prohibition on road construction, as well as the Tongass Timber Reform Act, which was some legislation that we felt had an influence on that determination. And it is true that particularly in areas in the inter- mountain West, notably Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and to a lesser degree Montana, where larger portions of the national forests are still in this inventoried roadless condition, then you would have much larger impacts on potential timber harvests. Mr. Baird. In the Northwest, the Doug fir and the hemlock forests less so? Mr. Furnish. Very little impact. And I would say nationally we have estimated this would be about 1 to 2 percent of our national program would be precluded if road construction were prohibited in inventoried roadless areas, but that percentage does rise. I think the highest in Utah is estimated to be about 8 percent. Mr. Baird. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Hill. I thank the gentleman. I want to go back for just a moment to this issue of the backlog of maintenance in the forests. There is an estimate that it is about $8 billion worth of backlog of maintenance of roads in the national forests. But if we talk about the typical logging road, the gravel road that exists in the forest, what does it cost per mile to maintain those roads? Mr. Furnish. Well, something on the order of maybe $80 to a few hundred dollars per year. Chairman Hill. Per mile? Mr. Furnish. Per mile, yes. Chairman Hill. The reason I make that point is that if you took the whole 380,000 miles of road and you multiplied it times that cost, you do not get to $8 billion. You do not even get close, do you? The point is that the $8 billion number has a lot to do with the highways and main arterial roads and bridges that exist in these national forests. Mr. Furnish. Yes. Certainly more---- Chairman Hill. And that is where the big numbers are. Mr. Furnish. It is more costly to construct, much more costly to maintain. Chairman Hill. At a hearing in the Resources Committee I think Mr. Dombeck suggested that probably $100 million a year additional funding would provide the Forest Service enough money to maintain the roads it cannot currently maintain. Would that number surprise you? That would be doubling, incidentally, the budget I think you now have for road maintenance. Mr. Furnish. That sounds a little low to me. Chairman Hill. How many miles of road are you maintaining with your current road maintenance budget? Mr. Furnish. Well, we are striving to maintain all of it, but to varying degrees. I think certainly you would understand that a road that is on the system that is in a closed status would require very little maintenance, as opposed to an arterial road. Chairman Hill. The question, earlier you made the comment that timber companies maintain the roads under contract because they were using them to haul logs and obviously they had an impact. Mr. Furnish. Yes. This was often in the form of cooperative deposits of cash that they would give the agency or---- Chairman Hill. Or credits. Mr. Furnish. Or they would actually do the maintenance themselves. Chairman Hill. What percentage of the use of the Forest Service roads is timber company use? Mr. Furnish. Today? Chairman Hill. Today. Mr. Furnish. Probably less than 5 percent. Chairman Hill. So 95 percent or more of the use of these roads is other than for the purpose of timber harvest, is it not? Mr. Furnish. I think that would be a fair estimate. Chairman Hill. Well, if only 5 percent is for timber harvest, then 95 percent---- Mr. Furnish. Yes, it is a fair estimate. Chairman Hill. Fair estimate. So who are those 95 percent? Mr. Furnish. I would characterize them mostly as recreationalists and/or people who live in, around and near national forests that use the national forest roads to travel. Chairman Hill. And fire safety, fire suppression? Mr. Furnish. Yes. Obviously there is a certain amount of that that is actually Forest Service usage of roads, as well. Chairman Hill. My point simply is that if we start decommissioning roads, elimination of roads, stop maintenance of roads, proportionately 95 percent of the impact is going to be on recreationalists, not timber companies, is it not? Mr. Furnish. I think I agree, as I understand your question. Chairman Hill. And that is the point. Earlier you said that the argument is made that when people get in the forest, they increase the impact, the likelihood of fire. Mr. Furnish. That can be true, yes, that oftentimes the increase in fire ignitions is associated with human activity. Chairman Hill. Is it the goal of the Forest Service then to stop people from being able to access the forests so as to reduce the hazard of fire to the forests? Mr. Furnish. No. Chairman Hill. Okay, I just wanted to make sure that that was not the case. But 95 percent of the impacts of this policy are actually going to be on recreationalists, which brings me to another point and a big one. That is that---- Mr. Furnish. I am not sure I follow that. Chairman Hill. To what degree did you analyze the impacts on small businesses such as snowmobile dealers, off-the-road vehicle dealers, outfitters, those kinds of people, those kinds of small businesses that also depend upon the access to the forests and these roads that provide the access to the forests? To what degree did you analyze the potential impacts that this policy would have on those businesses? Because this would be a direct impact. If they cannot get access to the forests in the way that they had before, this regulation is a direct impact on that business. To what degree did you try to analyze that in this initial regulatory flexibility analysis? Mr. Furnish. The IRFA that the Forest Service has completed and posted on the website and summaries and that kind of thing are available, sought to illustrate the connections between this policy proposal and the existence of these businesses. I think what we felt was that because there was no direct regulatory effect on these businesses, that the ability to assess the direct impacts of this was very difficult to do. We acknowledge that there is an indirect and sometimes speculative nature to the impacts of a regulation proposal like this and we sought to address those in the IRFA. The impacts on these aspects of society and the economy are also included in our draft EIS on the roadless proposal. Chairman Hill. Thank you very much. Any other members wish to ask questions of this panel? Go ahead, Mr. Baird. Mr. Baird. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a follow up on the issue of roadless areas in relationship to ORVs and snowmobiles, the policy we are discussing today as I understand it is on stopping further construction of roads. Mr. Furnish. That is true. Mr. Baird. If the impact of that were to be analyzed for its economic impact on snowmobiles and ORVs, could one not also see that as a subsidy for those businesses; i.e., if the federal government constructs roads that are a benefit to those business, the federal government is subsidizing those businesses? Mr. Furnish. Oh, boy, I do not know about that. I think the extent of our analysis would show that for instance, let's take the timber industry. We tried to acknowledge that if the Forest Service were planning to do logging in these inventoried roadless areas and the lack of road construction would preclude that, there would be an impact on the timber industry and timber production. On the other hand, if we were seeing to accentuate the values of these roadless areas for other activities, it might actually have a benefit to activities such as snowmobiling, four-wheel-driving, that kind of thing. Mr. Baird. But to the extent that the roads do not currently exist, it would be hard to say it has an adverse impact on existing business. Mr. Furnish. Yes, that is our view because we are not--the policy does not close roads; it only precludes the construction of new roads. So as to the use of the existing road system, this policy does not affect that. Mr. Baird. That was the question. Thank you. Mr. Udall. Mr. Chairman. Chairman Hill. Yes, Mr. Udall. Mr. Udall. Thank you. We have recently in my home state had a devastating--well, a number of forest fires but a devastating forest fire in the largest one in the state, the Cerro Grande fire. And I recently took a tour of the Santa Fe watershed, which is thousands of acres, with the National Forest Service and they told me that the watershed which provides 40 percent of the water for the city of Santa Fe and if you had a fire like the Cerro Grande fire it would shut down the water treatment plant and effectively eliminate that water for the city, that 40 percent of its water supply. So one of the questions I think is in these areas where you have the urban/forest interface and you have potential disasters that could occur to a watershed or to just an area that is close to a city where you could get flooding after a fire and create disasters, are you dealing with this in any way in terms of the roadless policy? Is there any recognition of the problems in terms of urban/forest interface and how you are trying to deal with that in terms of the roadless initiative? Mr. Furnish. Yes, I think it is one of the reasons why the Forest Service is actively pursuing through our cohesive strategy on fire and that type of thing, that we have to develop other alternative means to manage vegetation beyond simply a timber sale contract. I, too, am concerned about the Santa Fe watershed and I know I have looked at maps of the area and I am aware that the headwaters of the Santa Fe watershed are also in wilderness, and then there is a mix. On the one hand, as we try to preserve as pristine conditions as possible as we can in municipal watersheds, we have to be cautious that we do not set up a situation such as you described, and I think that is one of the reasons we have this exclusion in the regulation that in the event of imminent threat to life and property such as might exist there, if it were essential that roads be constructed, there would be a provision to do so. Mr. Udall. Is the Forest Service working on a proposal or some kind of disaster prevention proposal that would deal with these kinds of forest/urban interface situations with watersheds, with possibilities for flooding after a fire, that kind of situation? Mr. Furnish. Yes. Well, forgive me. I just returned from about a three-week vacation and I know that when I left, there was a lot of discussion going on as a result of the Cerro Grande incident to look at identifying several communities throughout the West and I am not aware of the current status of that, of some special bill that would move through that would give the Forest Service and other federal agencies an opportunity to demonstrate with communities and state governments the proper techniques to manage vegetation in these urban interface areas and I am sorry I just am not aware of the current status of that effort. But I know that that was intended to address that issue. Mr. Udall. But you are working on some kind of proposal like that? Mr. Furnish. We are very concerned about the issue generally and I think that Los Alamos served as a wake-up call in that there are large numbers of communities that are in this very condition today. And I might add I remember when I was a kid being very dramatically impacted by the Deadwood fire of 1959 and it was on the cover of Life Magazine and others and it was again a very serious situation. I only use that to illustrate that this issue has been with us 40 years and longer and it will continue to be with us as long as people live in forested environments. Mr. Udall. And as we have population increase and we have growth, we are going to see more of that in the West. I do not think there is any doubt that you are going to see more growth in what I guess has been described as the urban/forest interface, wouldn't you say? Mr. Furnish. Yes, I agree with that. Mr. Udall. Opponents of the roadless initiative have argued that the initiative will effectively end logging in national forests because of increased costs associated with harvesting forests in roadless areas. Does the initiative permanently end all logging in the roadless areas of the national forests or is it possible that if there is a sharp increase in demand at some future date, the National Forest Service will build temporary roads to harvest the forests and meet the demand? Mr. Furnish. Well, the proposal as written today does not envision that. That was certainly one of the considerations that I think we fleshed out in the draft EIS and a lot of the public comment that we have received would encourage the Forest Service to apply a prohibition to timber harvest, as well. We felt we put our best proposal on the table, which was to consider those types of activities in the context of local forest planning and not to take the more dramatic measure of precluding timber harvest in inventoried roadless areas, as well. So I certainly would not agree with the conclusion that this proposal would, for all intents and purposes, end logging. There are lots of ways that you can do logging and I would say it certainly would accentuate the challenge that lies in the Forest Service. Where we have significant issues to deal with related to timber management in inventoried roadless areas, to be able to do that without new road construction I think is something we are going to have to learn how to do well. Mr. Udall. Have you, as part of this roadless initiative, have you supplied members of Congress with maps and acreage and a description within their districts, what you are talking about in terms of the breadth of this proposal? Mr. Furnish. Well, we have certainly endeavored to do that and have made maps available both at a national, state and local national forest level. We have also conducted briefings here on the Hill periodically to keep people abreast of the proposal, the nature of the proposal, allow for a good dialogue about the impacts. Mr. Udall. I would very much like to see the proposals for Northern New Mexico and have a briefing on it. Mr. Furnish. I noted that you wanted particular information on the Carson, Santa Fe and Sebola? Mr. Udall. Sebola, yes. Mr. Furnish. We will try to provide that and also for Congressman Baird for the Gifford Pinchot. Mr. Udall. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Hill. I just want to clarify this one point and I think in response to Mr. Udall you said that the roadless proposal does not, of itself, propose the decommissioning of any roads. Mr. Furnish. That is correct. Chairman Hill. However, the transportation plan does call for the decommissioning of roads. Mr. Furnish. I think it calls for a process to determine how, when and where those decisions would be made. Chairman Hill. The point is that when taken together, the transportation plan is going to provide for the decommissioning of roads in these inventoried roadless areas and unroaded areas and that is the purpose. I guess I have some concern about the insistence on looking at these as independent initiatives because they cannot; they really have to be taken in the context of a larger initiative. In fact, I think we have a memo, an internal memo from Chief Dombeck that talks about a strategic planof the Forest Service and how these individual elements are part of that comprehensive strategic plan. Mr. Furnish. What is the date on that memo? Chairman Hill. I will provide that for you. Mr. Furnish. I was just curious. Chairman Hill. I will provide you a copy of the letter before the end of the hearing. I guess what I would ask for you is to provide a copy of that strategic plan, if you would, to the Committee so that the Committee can look at how these issues, how these initiatives are related to one another. Mr. Furnish. Yes. Chairman Hill. I think that when you take them in that context, I think an argument certainly could be made that they are all interrelated and that the purposes are that they are interrelated, that they are not separate initiatives, and therefore that the Reg Flex ought to apply to the overall initiative, not to the individual aspects of the initiative. I know you do not agree with that point but I would like to get that into the record. Mr. Furnish. You are correct. I might note that your General Accounting Office, I believe, is conducting a review presently of the strategic plan and approach that the Forest Service is taking to management of national forests. That is ongoing as we speak. Chairman Hill. Thank you. And if there are no further questions, we will excuse this panel. Thank you very much for your testimony and I will call the second panel up. The second panel is Adena Cook, Blue Ribbon Coalition, Laura Skaer from the Northwest Mining Association, and Frank Gladics, director of the Independent Forest Products Association. I would like all of you to rise so that you can be sworn in. Make note that all the panelists answered in the affirmative. Ms. Cook, you may proceed. TESTIMONY OF ADENA COOK, BLUE RIBBON COALITION, POCATELLO, ID Ms. Cook. The Blue Ribbon Coalition has many members who are small businesses who depend on access and available recreation opportunities in the national forest land. The Clinton-Gore roadless initiative and related proposed rules propose a grave threat to the existence of these businesses. I would like to emphasize that these are programmatic rules and they only provide the general framework for other, site- specific on-the-ground actions that take place. So, in and of themselves, they do not close roads or trails but they set the gears in motion so that roads and trails are at risk and can be closed. While the roadless initiative allows a full spectrum of recreation opportunities in roadless land, eight of the nine criteria assume that human activity negatively impacts the resource; for example, soil, water and air. This says presumably few or no ground-disturbing actions should occur in roadless areas, and this can mean directly closures. While the roadless initiative did claim to analyze economic impacts per the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act, that review was inadequate and did not analyze OHV recreation. OHV recreation in national forests is supported entirely by a national network of small businesses. These businesses generate significant revenue where there is nearby national forest land and the revenue in many states surpasses easily the $100 million threshold that defines a major impact. Here are some statistics from a few states. In Idaho, off- highway motorcycles are popular and the motorcycle value of the retail marketplace in Idaho is $107 million with the off- highway and dual purpose portion being 64 percent of that population. And it has 130 motorcycle sales outlets. Snowmobiling, it is estimated an economic impact of $151 million and there are 55 small businesses who just sell and service snowmobiles and it does not take into consideration the tourism. In Montana the estimated value of the motorcycle retail marketplace is $75.5 million and half of that is dual-purpose or off-road. In 1994 in Montana a snowmobiling study was done that estimated $103 million economic benefit to the state. And in Wyoming in 1995 the Department of Agriculture for the state there estimated $189.4 million benefit from snowmobiling. So these are big numbers but there is a human face behind all of these numbers. They represent hard working families who work long hours to make a success of their business and serve the recreating public. I would like to tell you about a couple. Kurt's Polaris in Seeley Lake, Montana has five employees and annual gross sales of $2.5 million. This area has been impacted already by road closures and Kurt says that this is very bad for business. This is a small business but there are bigger businesses. In Denver, Colorado there is Fay Myers Motorcycle World. It employs a staff of 90 and has annual gross sales of $25 million. Half of that is dependent on off-road sales in public lands. Fay Myers has enthusiastically supported organizations and their employees serve on the state trails committee. It is not just limited to western states. Midwestern states are also at risk. The Shawnee National Forest has a lot of equestrian campgrounds and there are significant economic impacts to those campgrounds and I would encourage the folks in that part to submit specifics for the record. Most western states and midwestern states, too, to some degree, can demonstrate well over $100 million in economic impact. Congress deserves a report on the impact of the national forest proposed rules on all of these small businesses and each rule should be analyzed and there should be a cumulative report prepared to show the overall impact. Thank you. [Ms. Cook's statement may be found in appendix.] Chairman Hill. Thank you, Ms. Cook. Ms. Skaer. TESTIMONY OF LAURA SKAER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NORTHWEST MINING ASSOCIATION, SPOKANE, WA Ms. Skaer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee. The Northwest Mining Association has 2,500 members in 42 states. We represent every facet of the mining industry and we are actively involved in exploration and mining on national forest lands, especially in the West. More than 90 percent of our membership is small business or work for small businesses. Mineral activities on national forest lands account for between $2 and $4 billion annually and the mining industry provides the nation's highest paid nonsupervisory wage jobs, which are one of the cornerstones of western rural communities and lead to the creation of much nonminingsupport and service business in these communities. They also provide substantial state and local tax revenues that provide for the infrastructure. We became very similar with the requirements of the Regulatory Flexibility Act, the RFA, in 1997 when we successfully sued Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt and the BLM over their failure to comply with the law when they promulgated some illegal bonding regulations. The small businesses in the natural resource industries and the rural communities dependent on those industries need your help, Mr. Chairman. We believe the Forest Service is on a mission to turn our national forests into museum dioramas without natural resource production and without human visitors. As you mentioned, in recent months this administration has proposed a number of related rulemakings or policies--the transportation plan, the roadless area, Interior Columbia Basin. While we believe each one of these initiatives by itself is damaging to small business and the economic health of rural communities, taken together, their impact is devastating and will result in the demise of numerous small businesses and untold hardships on rural western resource-dependent communities. We agree with you that these are merely subparts of a single major action and a June 30 letter from Chief Dombeck to his employees confirms that these are all part of a single strategy. We believe they purposely divided this significant action into three or four subparts for the sole purpose of avoiding its legal mandate and responsibilities under NEPA, the Reg Flex Act and SBREFA to analyze those impacts. In each of the rulemakings that we have mentioned, the Forest Service takes the position that the RFA does not apply or that they are not directly regulating small entities or that it will not have a significant impact. It really appears they have spent more time trying to think of reasons why they do not have to comply with the act than honestly analyzing the impacts of these proposals. We believe they misunderstand or are consciously ignoring the requirements of the RFA. You see, the trigger mandating an IRFA is not whether the proposed rule directly regulates small entities. Rather, is it a rule that requires public comment under the Administrative Procedures Act or any other provision of law that will have a significant impact on small entities? The answer in this case is a resounding yes. The assertion that the roadless area rulemaking does not directly regulate small entities flies in the face of the plain language of the proposed rule. It will directly regulate small entities by imposing new standards and otherwise attempting to limit valid existing rights under the General Mining Law and authorized activities under relevant forest plans. Quite frankly, a prohibition on road-building on 43 million acres of national forest lands is, in fact, a prohibition on mining. This is a very direct regulatory impact, particularly if your business is exploring for minerals and mining on national forest land. It strains the Forest Service's credibility to say that a rule of this nature will have no direct regulatory impact. The proposed rule is completely silent on how the Forest Service will preserve access for exploration and mineral development activities within the roadless areas affected. They state that reasonable access would be provided according to applicable statutes but nowhere do they define or describe reasonable access. Modern methods of exploration require geologists to have motor vehicle access to potentially mineralized areas. They do not have any discussion of how they will provide that. We do not believe that the cost-benefit analysis nor the IRFA meets the letter or the intent of the RFA. It is seriously flawed in many respects. The overall credibility of the IRFA is seriously diminished by the notable absence of hard data or facts substantiating the many assumptions used throughout this and other related documents and, too, by just blatant omissions. While the proposal would make the production of some minerals simply uneconomic, further development of most leasable minerals, including goal, potash, phosphates, would essentially be disallowed on over 43 million acres of Forest Service-administered lands. When combined with 42 million acres of national forest wilderness areas already designated roadless by Congress, this proposal would essentially disallow mineral production on over 85 million acres of National Forest Service- administered lands. Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, we believe that the proposed rule, when coupled with the roads that the Forest Service intends to close under related initiatives, will ensure that there is no road to a viable economic future for the hundreds of small communities in or near our national forests. If the federal government wishes to turn its forests into parks, then they must correctly analyze the impact on small businesses. In 1999 the District Court in Florida had a case where NMFS was attempting to protect a species of shark and in holding that they had violated the Regulatory Flexibility Act, that court held that although preservation of Atlantic shark species is a benevolent laudatory goal, conservation does not justify government lawlessness. We believe the Forest Service must repropose the rule for comment after preparing an adequate IRFA that meets the statutory requirements of the Reg Flex Act. Thank you. [Ms. Skaer's statement may be found in appendix.] Chairman Hill. I thank you. Mr. Gladics, you may proceed. TESTIMONY OF FRANK M. GLADICS, PRESIDENT, INDEPENDENT FOREST PRODUCT ASSOCIATION, BEND, OR Mr. Gladics. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. I represent about 60 percent of the small family-owned forest product companies in the West and upper Midwest. As a class, we purchase 65 percent of the Forest Service timber sales over the last decade. In the last two years it has been closer to 88, 89 percent each year. That data comes from the Small Business Administration, who tracks Forest Service sales. I would tell you that the Forest Service has the ability, because they track on several sales whether a purchaser is small business or not, to understand who buys their timber and who does not and who would be impacted by this proposal. I am here today because I believe the agency has concocted a scheme through a series of four regulations that would devastate my industry and I believe they are purposely trying to avoid having to do a regulatory flexibility analysis so that the economic truth comes onto the table so that policymakers like yourself can make a reasonable decision about the environmental portion of this versus the economic portion. In fact, I do not really want to get into an argument about whether the rule is good or bad, but I think procedurally they are flawed and they should do something about it. They have four components of this scheme: a GPRA strategic plan proposal, which directs the agency to move away from multiple use. That came out last fall. Then a National Forest Management Forest Planning Act, which directs ecosystem restoration to pre-Europeansettlement conditions be the first priority of the agency. Well, right there it tells me that they are going to move away from access to the forests. The transportation and road rule directs the road closures of all roads the agency cannot afford to maintain, plus the roads they do not want to keep open. And then finally, the roadless proposal, which is two components: the RARE II areas, which they say there will be no road construction or reconstruction, and then the unroaded portions of the forests that they will deal with in the forest plans. When you take all those four in total, the companies I represent can only conclude that there will be little or no timber harvesting on the National Forest System when that package is put in place and we believe that because of what we have read in the roadless EIS and Appendix A on page 20, which said the procedural provisions would be applied to 54 million acres of inventoried roadless area, not the 43 that we banter about, as well as up to 95 million acres of National Forest System land. Well, folks, that is 77 percent of the National Forest System. That is a huge impact. If you look on Table 1 of my written testimony I have the data on how much timber small businesses purchased. I also made an attempt, using the Forest Service TSPIRS report, which is their economic report of what their timber sale program produces, to see what would happen if you lost half the suitable base, which is where timber can be harvested in national forests. And it shows that we would fall to a total economic activity of $600,000 from nearly $4.8 billion in 1991. That is a lot more than $100 million a year. The problem with the assessment I see from the Forest Service is first of all, they are not using their forest plans to assess this proposal against. Forest plans say we would harvest 7.35 billion boardfeet a year; they have been harvesting 3 or less. They are trying to compare the impact of this proposal against what they did last year and the year before; we believe they should do it against their forest plan. And Mr. Udall, I do have the data on how much of the roadless areas are in suitable base. This is from a Forest Service report from 1999, National Forest System Roads and Use Report, which was a draft report on the Internet. There are about 62 million acres that were RARE II originally. Of that, there are 9 million acres of inventoried roadless area that was in the suitable base as of 1995. So that is 25 percent of the RARE II areas that were used to help support the forest plans. If you lose that, you have to rewrite your forest plans; you reduce the amount of timber you are going to sell. That is a problem. I would like to throw up just a couple of maps here to help you understand what that means, and I will use just two and save one for another speaker that is on the next panel. In Montana the Forest Service controls 73 percent of the timber that small businesses depend on. That map is their roadless maps that you have seen. It has wilderness in green hatch. Any of the brown or tan areas are RARE II areas. The green dots are small businesses. The orange dots are large businesses. And if you look at that, the policy, just the RARE II part of the policy, would put 56 percent of the national forest lands in Montana off-limits. Now, if the EIS is telling me there is another 95 million acres of National Forest System land that could be impacted, I have to conclude that a lot of that is in suitable base. And my estimation is when we are done with those four proposals, if they are all implemented, we will be down to about 10 percent of the forest land base in Montana that would be open to timber harvesting. Now, look at where some of those green dots are and how much land is encumbered just by RARE II and tell me that there are companies who are not going to go out of business, yet the Forest Service has steadfastly refused to admit that. They say all minor impacts. Well, I have to tell you to a small community that has one sawmill in it, it is not a minor impact. If you go to Wyoming you will see much the same thing, only there are not as many large businesses in Wyoming. Look at the Big Horn, which is in the center of the state there. It is all wilderness and RARE II and then the Shoshone, which is over by the national park, Yellowstone. Those forests are going to go out of the timber business and there are three mills there that disappear. They will not have a timber supply source. I think that the Forest Service owes it to the local leadership, political leadership, to address that. And the third thing that I wanted to point out to you today that I am very upset with is the effect on county government. Counties receive 25 percent of the gross receipts. Congress is working on a bill to try to make them whole--S. 1608 and H.R. 2389. The Forest Service in their EIS said, ``We do not have to deal with this because there is a bill in Congress.'' Well, that bill has not passed and this administration has basically put every roadblock in front of that bill that they could. So on one hand, they are saying, ``Oh, do not worry about it; Congress is going to do it.'' On the other, they are saying, ``We do not have to assess the impact of that.'' That is fundamentally bad public policy and quite frankly, I think it is immoral for the agency to do that. And we see that in this EIS, step after step. The agency has not wanted to tell us what the impacts are and I think it is because they do not have the professional integrity right now to do that. I have talked to people in the Forest Service and I have said, ``You know your forest plans say 7 billion boardfeet'' and the answer is, ``You know we cannot give that assessment because the impacts would be too great and would make us do many more steps in this process.'' That is bad. The SBA--we have gone to the Office of Advocacy. We have asked them for help. We have two conference calls. The first one was very good. The second one, we got told, ``We do not think there is a problem here.'' And the absence of the SBA Office of Advocacy at this hearing tells me something. I do not think that either of these agencies want to truly let the policymakers understand what the impacts of these proposals are, and I think that is bad public policy and I request that both my oral and written be put into the record of this hearing. Chairman Hill. Without objection. [Mr. Gladics' statement may be found in appendix.] Chairman Hill. I recognize the gentlelady from the Virgin Islands. Ms. Christian-Christensen. I do not think I have any questions, Mr. Chairman. I just want to thank the panelists for coming and say that we will, as both Committees look at this issue before us, we will certainly take into consideration the impacts that you have outlined for us and that we will work to ensure that at the end, we have a policy that addresses both the environmental as well as the economic impact. Chairman Hill. The gentleman from South Dakota, do you have any questions? Mr. Thune. I thank the chairman for holding the hearing in the first place and do not have a question per se at the moment, although I would reserve the opportunity to ask one at a later date. But I just appreciate the fact that you are homing in on this aspect of the roadless policy because I think it is one that oftentimes gets overlooked and I know it is a major concern in my state of South Dakota in the Black Hills and an issue which we have dealt with extensively. And my own view is, and I would sort of concur with what Mr. Gladics said here, that it would appear to be that this is a policy that ultimately the hope is we will end with zero harvest and thatis something that we cannot certainly accept in our state. We have a significant number of jobs that would be impacted--small employers, people who are desperately trying to make a living--and have, in the context of a multiple use management plan, worked vigorously to come up with a balanced approach to all the various issues that affect the resource there. My frustration has been throughout this process that we do not have the local input that is necessary and these edicts continue to come down from Washington, in contradiction in a lot of respects to the will and desire of the people who are really trying to be good stewards of the resources there. So it is very interesting for me to hear from you all about the specific effects on small businesses. That is an aspect of this that I think clearly we need to continue to pursue and I appreciate the chairman for homing in on that and would hope that as this process continues to move forward that some of the things that have been suggested here will be pursued. I think the Reg Flex Act and this policy's impact on small businesses needs to be further pursued and I would hope that before it is all said and done, we would get a chance to do that. I thank the chairman. Chairman Hill. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Phelps. Mr. Phelps. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, also for holding this hearing--very valuable for all of us. Ms. Cook, as we have spoken before, the Shawnee National Forest is in my district, Southern Illinois, and even though it seems that the U.S. Forest Service has indicated that even though timber is pretty much idle there--timber production has been for the last few years--the emphasis, I think they tried to assure to the communities, would be on multi-use recreational items. I think we have even seen some type of hindrance to the development of potential there, with the roadless initiative even coming into play. I have witnessed the Forest Service making decisions even on county roads and also on private ownership roads within the national forests---- Ms. Cook. That is correct. Mr. Phelps. Which is a disadvantage and it is unfortunate that we have private ownership within the forest, which complicates all kinds of policies that come into play. My question--maybe I should have asked it to the panel that just left--in your estimation, have you had satisfactory response from the U.S. Forest Service when they put roadblocks up on private roads or county roads that seem to be at least not proven yet whose jurisdiction? The county says it has always been a county road, the state does not lay claim, but yet the Forest Service has authority over shutting the road down, even before the roadless initiative is even implemented. Ms. Cook. Thanks for asking the question. This has been problematic in many of the counties in the West where it has been advantageous for county roads to remain open and historically they have been public roads and the Forest Service has gone in and usurped, as we claim, the county jurisdiction and closed those roads. And it is not just limited to the West, as you indicated. In fact, Pope County, Illinois is suing the Forest Service over jurisdiction of county roads in Pope County and many county roads that you would term trails have been closed to various kinds of recreation and there is a great economic impact. The southern part of Illinois, moving from resource-based timber harvest to a recreation base for their economy, supports what we call equestrian campgrounds. These campgrounds cater to horse users who come in and camp and then they have access to the trails in the national forests for the horses. And these campground owners want to maintain the trails, they want to be good stewards of the land, but they have been precluded from doing so by the Forest Service, who has said, ``No, no, you cannot go in and maintain those trails because we have not designated them and put them on the system; we have to go through that paperwork first.'' And now this roadless thing comes down the pike and they said, ``No, no, we cannot have those trails on the system until the roadless inventory is done and we can see that this is appropriate.'' So I do not know the numbers for southern Illinois but I know those numbers can be provided to the Committee and I will urge those folks to do so. Mr. Phelps. Thank you. That is the frustration I am dealing with. Pope County is--there are 102 counties in Illinois and they have more county road miles than any other county, with less property tax resources to address their problems, and yet the authority is being demonstrated by the U.S. Forest Service at a time when recreation supposedly was to have a little more emphasis with development, with hands-on from all sides, multi- use--the 1992 management plan, which stated that. So I just want to state that for the record. Thanks for your response. Mr. Gladics. Mr. Phelps, may I spend just a second? The Forest Service recreation use shows about 859 million recreation visits a year. Two percent of those are into wilderness where we have no road. We have a policy here that is proposing essentially to turn at least 59 million acres, the RARE II areas, into wilderness-like recreation areas, where you will not have roads. Another 95 million acres could potentially be impact, according to the EIS. As your counties see that recreation use gravitate away from the forest onto their road system because those recreationists are going to go somewhere and in a forest like the Shawnee with all the in-holdings, those counties are going to see huge increases in their road maintenance costs because the Forest Service will push those people away from the forests. Most recreation is driving for pleasure and if 88 percent is related to a vehicle somehow, this policy has some real not only economic impact but environmental impacts that we believe people ought to look at. And we think we ought to be talking about those before the draft is done. The draft comes due next week and there are lots of questions that the agency has not been able to answer for people. Mr. Phelps. Thank you. Good point. Chairman Hill. Mr. Udall. Mr. Udall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, members of the panel, for coming and we very much appreciate having you here. I guess my first question here is for all of you, if you wish to comment. The Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act authorizes the multiple use of the national forests. Multiple use refers to timber cutting, as well as recreational uses. The act also states that the combination of these uses should not necessarily be one that gives the greatest dollar return. My question is supporters of the roadless policy argue that road construction for timber cutting has resulted in the rapid loss of open spaces. Could it be argued that for years, the timber industry has taken precedence in national forest use over recreational uses and that this contradicts the multiple use doctrine and it is time to swing the pendulum over to recreational uses and, in effect, find a balance, a better balance between the two? Mr. Gladics. I will take a shot at that if you would let me. I think, because of the tenor of the debate that you have heard over the last decade, you could believe that timber is the primary thing that occurs on national forests. But, in fact, if you go back through their forest plans and you look at those, you will find that timber is a very small component of what happens on theNational Forest System. It just happens to be the most controversial component. And what we are seeing now in the swing of the pendulum, which you suggest might be worthwhile, is we are seeing a swing by this agency in this cluster of four rules to do away with multiple use. The GPRA plan basically says ecosystem restoration will be the prime directive of the Forest Service. The NFMA forest planning regs say the same thing: we are going to restore ecosystems to pre-European settlement conditions. Now, we probably all have a different image of what that means but I would portend to you that it does not mean roads and it does not mean recreation and it does not mean fishing and hunting. It means large tracts of land set aside where humans can walk in maybe or ride a horse in. Now if you look at the total percent of acres harvested in the RARE II areas over the last 20 years, it has been like 2 percent of what was planned to be managed when they planned for 25 percent of the timber sale program to come out of those RARE II areas. So I would suggest to you that the move away from multiple use may more dramatically affect the nontimber users than the timber users. And when you think about that in terms of fire and forest health, I defy you to show me that recreationists like to go use fire-burned areas for recreation. I have fought fire for the Forest Service. I worked in the Forest Service for eight years. When you have a road system, you can get in to fight the fires. When you do not have a road system, you either wait for the fire to come out of that unroaded area or you build a road in with a Cat saying it is fire line. You do not do any environmental impact statement when you start building fire line with a bulldozer. You say there is the fire, here is where we can cut it off, and you get much more environmental impact than when you carefully design a road system. If you look at other countries of the world's forests, they have three and four times the road density in their forests to manage their forests than our country does. I know 380,000 miles seem like a lot of miles of road but take the time to compare it to some of the European forests, which people think are fairly well managed, people think provide a variety of outputs, and you will find four or five miles of road per square mile of forest. In our country, our system has about 1.5 or 6 miles per square mile of forest. And it is just a question of whether you believe that you can manage better than these natural events or not, and I think the fires in Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado this summer show us that we have some impacts that we had better figure out how to deal with. And we are throwing one of the tools out of the toolbox by saying we do not want multiple use and we do not want timber harvesting in our national forests. Ms. Skaer. Mr. Udall, I would concur with Mr. Gladics that these initiatives are pushing us away from multiple use. One important multiple use that you did not mention is mineral production and mineral exploration in the forests. And I think that all of this is pretty synergetic with recreation because I think as Ms. Cook could attest, much of the recreation that takes place in our national forests utilizes logging roads or roads that were primarily for logging or old mining roads or current mining roads. Many hikers, many hunters, many fishermen will use these roads to drive to a location and then hike to their favorite hunting spot or their favorite fishing hole. I think you are going to find there are a lot of people who are looking at this and saying, ``Oh, this is going to be less roads, less environmental impact, more area for me to enjoy this pristine wilderness area.'' People are going to wake up and find that the combination of these two policies are going to mean that instead of being able to drive into a forest and then be able to hike or to hunt, they are going to find out that they now have a 15- or 20-mile hike just to get to the point where they used to start their hike. So I think that the whole multiple use concept is being violated by these proposals and that we--you know, multiple use does not mean all uses at the same time. It means that the forests are available to a multitude of uses. Multiple use management has been congressionally mandated and if public policy is going to move away from multiple use management, that is for the Congress of the United States to decide, not for an administrative agency to do on a de facto basis. Ms. Cook. I really appreciate the question and it is very appropriate. How does this fit in with multiple use in National Forest Management Act? But my response is at what level of planning should this balance be established? We are looking now at a level of planning where the balance is way above whatever NFMA intended. I submit that the balance needs to be established at the local forest level through the local forest planning process. You do your analysis of the management situation and your landscape analysis. You look at where you are now on an individual forest basis and you go through and you identify areas that are roadless and apply the standards that now exist toward protecting these areas and you go on and identify other areas for commodities and so on, and that is at the level that you balance commodity use and recreation use and all the other competing uses and values that we have in our public lands, not at this Washington, D.C. top- down level. Mr. Udall. I appreciate your answers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Hill. Mr. Baird. Mr. Baird. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Gladics, as I understand IFPA, these are significantly folks who are involved in--they are not the major timber companies; they are not folks who have large private holdings of land. So a significant portion of the timber that they are able to harvest comes from federal---- Mr. Gladics. Absolutely. I have 55 members. I have two members that own more than 10,000 acres of land. One of them owns about 80,000 acres; the other owns about 30,000 acres. Of that membership, up until 1995, I would have sat here and said they are wholly dependent on federal timber. From 1995 until now, they have scratched to find whatever timber sources are available anywhere they could. And yes, I have some that were within the president's forest plan that were impacted, but most of my membership exists outside the spotted owl forests and most of them have watched the federal timber programs dwindle to the point where they are on the open market trying to survive as small businesses in places where their competitors control the timber. So if we do not have federal timber, it does not take a total loss of their volume to drive them out of business. If you are running a mill and you only have 80 percent of what you need to run one shift, you will not be economically viable if you lose that 20 percent or 30 percent you are getting from the federal government. Now, I still have some members that are 80-90 percent federally dependent and I have members in the states, the intermountain states, that are going to be devastated by this. And I have to tell you it is very difficult for me to sit here and watch the Forest Service say, ``Oh, it is inconsequential; it is only a couple of mills'' when it is mills in communities that have been there for four and five generations, who have been good neighbors with the agency and good neighbors in their communities and good community citizens, to watch the folks here in D.C. just go, ``They don't matter.'' It gets a visceral reaction from me. I do not have any respectfor the Forest Service leadership right now to blow by those people without telling you, the political thought leaders, what this policy really means. And I am very disappointed that the SBA, who is supposed to advocate for small business, does not seem to be anywhere in this game right now. Even though we have asked them to help us on this issue, they got called off. They went and met with the Forest Service and the second conference call we had, ``This not a problem.'' And I just said, ``Well, we think it is going to drive a lot of our folks out of business.'' Mr. Baird. Certainly in my district and elsewhere that I have seen these mills are often the primary employer in an area and really almost the sole employer. If they go, the rest of the small businesses that provide---- Mr. Gladics. Absolutely. These mills generally got in place many times because the agency encouraged them to be there. The agency said, ``You have a mill here; wouldn't you put a mill in this town because we are going to sell timber forever.'' And I think you will hear from Mr. Steed on the next panel that up until three years ago, four years ago, they were begging people to build mills in his area and he went to a huge risk to build that mill, to have this agency now change their mind. And I believe that the policymakers ought to understand what those impacts are and ought to have a rational discussion of how do you deal with that? Mr. Baird. For those of us who are concerned about protecting the remaining old growth that we have, concerned about ecosystem integrity and things, and simultaneously concerned about the small mill owners and the rural communities that are so dependent on them, do you have any thoughts about what the solution here is? Mr. Gladics. Well, I know some of my friends from the big business community that still do buy federal timber may be upset with this concept but at the beginning of this administration when the president had his meeting out in Portland, we proposed to them that yes, you are going to go from 5 billion down to 1 or 2; if you do that, it ought to be focused at small business. Now up at this point, small business, depending on what forest you are on, gets between 20 and 80 percent and there is always 20 percent guaranteed to big business. Mr. Baird. Say that again. There is a 20 percent guarantee to big business? Mr. Gladics. It is open. Twenty percent that is open, that anybody can bid on. Mr. Baird. I see. Mr. Gladics. If you modify that without addressing are you going to sell timber or not, you have not done anything to help small business. We could get 100 percent of nothing and not be here. And right now, that is the way it is heading on many forests, is they are sitting there right now because they do not know what this policy is going to be, they are not going to take any risks, they are not selling any sales. And for many of my mills, this year or next, we are out of business. You do not have to cut that flow off very long before you destroy a business. And that has been what is so frustrating about this process. We have had this roadless moratorium for two years, 18 months, and now we are going to go into another moratorium on 95 million acres that we have to wait till the forest plan to find out whether they are going to sell timber in those ``unroaded areas.'' Well, during that time period it is the small businesses that are destroyed. And I believe if you look at Region III, New Mexico and Arizona, you now have people even in the environmental community saying, ``Gee, maybe we need some sawmills down here to deal with these overly dense forests.'' Well, it is awfully hard to convince somebody to invest money after you just ran them out of business to come back. And if I had anything, I would look at some of these states that have a huge percent in that category and I would say, ``We ain't going to do them all; it is not going to be all the RARE II areas. It is not going to be those unroaded areas.'' The thing that worries me right now is the vice president has said if he is elected, there will be no timber harvesting in those areas. Well, that sounds an awful lot like the decision has been made to me and a lot like this process may be meaningless. The president's press secretary about a week ago, a week and a half ago, said that they have already set these away from harvesting. Mr. Baird. The chairman is---- Mr. Gladics. It is hard for us to deal with. Mr. Baird. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. I would like to follow up outside, not here but at some point chat with you about some ways we might be able to make this---- Mr. Gladics. Happy to talk with you. Chairman Hill. Mr. Baird, I think you have asked the most pertinent question that has probably been asked and I think if you wait till the next panel, I think there are some suggestions on where we go. Mr. Baird. I will not be able to. Chairman Hill. The one thing that would be a big mistake is to make a decision now to dramatically restrict the access to this resource before we decide what the appropriate way to manage it is, and that is what my objection is to this initiative. I do not advocate building another mile of road anywhere, and I am not opposed to removal of roads if that is the appropriate thing to do for the forest. But to make a decision to basically eliminate the access and basically, in concert with that, to make the decision that you are not going to try to actively manage the problem is absolutely the wrong decision. I just have a couple of questions and then we will move on to the other panel. Mr. Gladics, we have seen a dramatic increase in imports from Canada in wood products, haven't we? Mr. Gladics. Yes. Chairman Hill. And why is that? Mr. Gladics. That is because you have seen a dramatic decrease in the amount of timber lumber capacity mills in this country and the Canadians essentially are 95 percent public timber and they subsidize their mills by selling them stumpage at about a third of the open market rate on this side of the border and I can provide you that data. They are winning market share because we are not managing our lands. Chairman Hill. Which is an adverse impact on our balance of trade? Mr. Gladics. Yes. Chairman Hill. And has impact on employment and mills in Montana. Mr. Gladics. Absolutely. Not only Montana, sir. That ripples all the way down through the intermountain states and the West Coast states. Chairman Hill. Montana is a net importer today of wood products. Mr. Gladics. Yes. Chairman Hill. Which is hard to believe. The reason I point that out is that in their initiative analysis, they did not do any analysis of the impacts from a trade perspective, did they? Mr. Gladics. No. Chairman Hill. They say it is going to cost 535 jobs. Do you think that that is an even reasonable estimate? Mr. Gladics. I can come up with 535 jobs in the state of Utah alone, using their data, sir. Chairman Hill. In the draft EIS it says the Forest Service basically characterizes forest workers as uneducated, unstable and unmotivated, easily moved to other segments of the economy. In fact, if I quote, it says, ``Many people enter the wood products industry because it provides opportunities to earn high wages without having a high level of education. If equivalent jobs were readily available, these individuals would be happy to take advantage of them.'' How would you characterize that? Mr. Gladics. As one of the single most disrespectful statements I have seen in a federal document. I think if you had substituted the words ``black'' or ``Hispanic,'' this Congress would have run whoever wrote that out of town fairly quickly. They have no regard for rural Americans, sir. Chairman Hill. Well, I know people who work in the forest and they love the job of working in the forest. I know some of them who have college degrees, masters degrees, and they choose it because they love it. They love the outdoors and they love being part of it. Mr. Gladics. In my membership, I think I have two companies out of 55 that are not multi-generationally managed and most of those sons and daughters who came back to the business went to college, got degrees in something other than forestry but came back because the family business and that community meant so much to them. The treatment they are receiving by the Forest Service is just reprehensible. Chairman Hill. I read that to say another thing, too, and that is they have already made the decision that these jobs are not going to be there and they are trying to say that they do not matter. The DEIS goes on to say that ``Timber-dependent communities are the least prosperous.'' Would you say that is true? Mr. Gladics. No. I would say that if you look at it in terms of wages per person, dollars per hour that they make, and compare that to a recreation-based or a service-based community, you would find that the timber industry jobs and the natural resource jobs tend to pay a higher dollar per hour amount by about a third. Yes, these are small communities. There is no doubt about it. And there are not a lot of services and amenities that you find in a university town, for instance, but they are good communities and they are good people. Chairman Hill. Ms. Cook, you said that, and I want to go back to this, that this plan would theoretically, at least, affect over 70 percent of the roads in the national forests. Is that correct? Ms. Cook. That is correct. Chairman Hill. That means that the Forest Service has already indicated that 95 percent of the use of these roads is other than for timber purposes. Ms. Cook. That is right. Chairman Hill. Recreation purposes. Ms. Cook. And that is our great concern, that the major impact of these proposals is on recreation and public access. Chairman Hill. That is exactly right. I just want to ask you each one last question and then I will excuse the panel. I will start with you, Ms. Cook. The industries that you are talking about--snowmobiling, off-road vehicles, those recreationalists--will this initiative have more than $100 million impact on those industries, in your opinion, tourism? Ms. Cook. Absolutely. I am not an expert in this and I did not have very much documentation to support my testimony but what I did have was accurate and what I did have was solid. And it just concerns snowmobiling and it just concerns off-road motorcycling and it did not concern driving for pleasure or ATVs, which is a growing segment of the economy. And in each case just running simple numbers through came up with over $100 million in each western state. Chairman Hill. In each state? Ms. Cook. In each state. So we are at something of a quandary here that we need more accurate documentation on the effect of federal proposals on these businesses. And I would like to say one additional thing. That is small businesses are the backbone of this country and a small businessman--some of you maybe come from a small business background--have a lot in common with each other, whether they operate out of a city or a small town or are resource-based, and they are hard working people and they share a commitment to their chosen line of business that goes beyond their choice of business. They do not just work at a job. They put in 12-, 15- hour days, 80-hour weeks and they really believe in what they are doing. Frank alluded to that with regard to the timber community and I can allude to that with regard to the recreation community. These people like to get out and enjoy the public lands and that is why they are in the business that they are and they work at it 80 hours a week. Chairman Hill. Thank you, Ms. Cook. Ms. Skaer, in your judgment would the impact of this initiative be more than $100 million on the industry that you represent? Ms. Skaer. Mr. Chairman, there is no question that that is the case. In fact, if you take a look at what I characterize as a rather sloppily prepared initial regulatory flexibility analysis, they tried to make an estimate based on likely potential discoveries in the future within these roadless areas and the Forest Service estimates that over $400 billion of gold, silver, lead and zinc would be placed off-limits---- Chairman Hill. $400 billion? Ms. Skaer. Yes. This is in the cost-benefit analysis and the initial regulatory flexibility analysis that the Forest Service published and then concludes that there is no significant impact. And then if you look at---- Chairman Hill. I guess around here $400 billion is not a big impact. Excuse me for interrupting. Ms. Skaer. To small mining companies and individual geologists who depend on access to these lands to explore for these mineral deposits, that is fairly significant. The food chain in the U.S. mining industry today is that you have a few major companies that actually run the mines and do the mining but the development of that is by small individual geologists, two or three company geologists who go up. With coal, in just Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming they estimate $6.6 trillion of coal resources could be impacted by this proposal. I think both of those numbers are in excess of $100 million. Chairman Hill. Mr. Gladics. Mr. Gladics. Absolutely. If you look at the EIS and it says 54 million plus a potential other 95 million acres, you have to conclude that the timber program will disappear. Right now it is producing about $4.2 billion worth of employment activity. There is no way you cannot assume $100 million. Chairman Hill. Let me just ask one last question and then we are going to have to recess because that means that we have votes, and there is going to be a series of votes. I apologize to the next panel. If the administration and the SBA were willing to sit down and try to do a real analysis would you commit to working with them to try to help them obtain the information that they have not been able to obtain in order to do an appropriate analysis? And I would ask each one of you if you would answer that for the record. Ms. Cook. Ms. Cook. Absolutely. I would be more than happy to do so and I would put the officials in touch with all kinds of people with better information than I have right now--industry people, state people, and so on. Ms. Skaer. We would welcome the opportunity. Mr. Gladics. Absolutely. Chairman Hill. Mr. Thune, did you have a question that you wanted to ask this panel? Go ahead. Mr. Thune. I do not want to make anybody late for votes, Mr. Chairman, but let me just say again, and I would echo what the chairman said about the draft EIS and its characterization of loggers. I found that to be--I was shocked. I found it to be absolutely reckless, at a minimum, and hostile, worst case, to a lot of hard working people in rural areas of this country. But let me, if I might, Mr. Gladics, understand that you do represent some folks in South Dakota and I noticed you did an assessment of impact on Montana, Wyoming, other places. Have you done any analysis of how this would impact the Black Hills? Mr. Gladics. The RARE II portion for the Black Hills is a very small portion because that forest does not have much RARE II land, although they have an existing timber sale, which will be stopped by this policy, which is a 23 million boardfoot sale which Pope & Talbott will lose, which is no small amount of timber for a company like that. The real question for South Dakota comes in the unroaded areas and what portion of that will the Forest Service put off- limits in the future and that is where we would like to see maps that they have not produced. Where are those areas? What is the likelihood? What is the impact of that? If you put 77 percent of the National Forest System off- limits, and that is an average for each forest, the Black Hills will cease to have a timber industry. You will have one small mill left. Probably somebody like Lindy's down in Custer would survive. Your two major mills, the Nyman's Mill and Pope & Talbott cannot survive in that forest if 70 percent of the forest is off-limits. Mr. Thune. That is about, in my state, the numbers that I have seen, about 1,200 jobs, which is, in a state like South Dakota, that is the real deal. But I would just say that, Mr. Chairman, in response to your previous line of questioning, I am disappointed to hear that there have been overtures made toward SBA and that you are getting a blind eye turned toward the impact of this and I would suggest that this panel get in touch with the Office of Advocacy and insist upon finding out what they are willing to do to do an analysis here. And my understanding is you have already requested some information about any exchange of information that has already occurred between USDA and SBA but as the primary advocate for small businesses in this country, we are talking about a policy which clearly is going to have a dramatic impact on a number of small businesses in your state and in my state and many other states that members represent here and it is a concern to a good number of people. I would hope that we---- Mr. Gladics. We would like to see that on all four of these rules. It is not just the roadless rule that they have not produced economic---- Chairman Hill. We do have to vote. I would just comment that we did not learn until Friday that the Small Business Administration would not be at this hearing. We had every expectation they would be here and that we could ask them some of the questions that we all wanted to. We intend to ask questions in writing. If the gentleman has some questions he would like to be included, he can do that. I agree with the comments that we really need to look at these in the greater context. We have 10 minutes left on this vote. It is just one vote. We will return here; we will be back here by 20 after and we will have the third panel. I want to thank these panelists for appearing. Your testimony has been very valuable. Your comments are very valuable and we appreciate your input. Thank you very much. The Committee will be in recess until 20 after. [Recess.] Chairman Hill. We will call the hearing back to order and call our final panelists forward. Cheryl Larson; is Cheryl here? Stephen Steed, Bruce Vincent, Carl Fiedler and Chuck Keegan. Let me ask that you stand and take the oath. Let the record show that all the panelists answered in the affirmative. We will start with you, Cheryl. TESTIMONY OF CHERYL LARSON, L.T. LOGGING, EUREKA, MT Ms. Larson. Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, I grew up in the Tobacco Valley of Northwestern Montana. For 100 years members of my family and community have farmed, ranched and logged the valleys, hills and mountains of our area, yet strangely enough, our air, water and scenic beauty are still touted as some of the most pristine of the continental United States. Our small towns of Rexford, Eureka, Fortine and Trego are a microcosm of economic interdependence, much like the interdependence we see in the natural world around us. Seventy-five percent of the land base in our county is taken up by the Kootenai National Forest, so policies which direct its management have an enormous impact not only on my small business of L.T. Logging but also on all of our small businesses, schools, roads, and other county services. Today we are literally besieged by a flood of federal policies reflecting a basic change in the way our national forests are managed, or not managed, as the case may be. The president's roadless initiative is the epitome of all these policies put together. What we object to most is not the prohibition of new road-building but the way it, along with the many other proposals and rule changes, restricts our local managers from doing their jobs. We are also insulted by the language with which it is written, language which we feel is biased against the work we do, reveals the bigotry the planners feel toward us as a people, and appears to be an invitation to environmental groups to litigate active forest management out of existence. We in the West are fed up with being chastised for working hard to provide the public with the products that are taken so very much for granted. The planners have not even paid lip service to the value of these products and therefore have grossly misjudged the costs and impacts to our businesses, communities and the nation at large. In our town we are being forced to witness logs being shipped 500 miles down out of Canada to supply our local mill while our loggers go without work and our forests are busy laying up kindling for the next well placed lightening strike, the next careless camper or a Forest Service employee's futile attempt to fight fire with fire. We are not fooled by the crafty language in the roadless DEIS and proposed rule change. Like a wolf in sheep's clothing, it appears harmless enough but spells out the death knell for hundreds of small towns across the West. How long will you here in Washington sit back and watch western communities burn to the ground while the social, economic and cultural fabric of our lives are being torn asunder? The list is growing longer every day. The homes and livelihoods of rural peoples of California, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana have become the sacrificial lambs in the vain, unrealistic dream of recapturing the past. We can no longer endure the proclamations of an administration that is bent on redeeming its image for the history books at the expense of our children's futures. My sons attend school in buildings that are woefully deteriorated. The drastic reduction of PILT funds in recent years prevents us from refurbishing them or making them accessible, in compliance with the unfunded mandates of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The further cuts this policy dictates will also jeopardize our ability to attract quality teachers. How sadly ironic that one of those buildings bears the name Roosevelt, whose aged facade and inadequate facilities bears silent witness against President Clinton's latest folly. This policy can best be summed up in a statement made on page A-18 of the roadless summary, which reads in part, ``The costs are primarily associated with lost opportunities.'' Lost opportunities resulting in lost skills, aggravating the dangerous trend away from self-reliance. Lost opportunity to prepare our children for the future. Lost opportunities to instill in following generations a mature relationship with the land. I have not traveled all this distance to ask for hand-outs. I am here to ask your help in ensuring that we will not be further limited in our ability to help ourselves. I would like to thank you all for this opportunity to testify before you. Thank you. [Ms. Larson's statement may be found in appendix.] Chairman Hill. Stephen. TESTIMONY OF STEPHEN STEED, OWNER, UTAH FOREST PRODUCTS, ESCALANTE, UT Mr. Steed. Mr. Chairman and members of the House Small Business Subcommittee, my name is Stephen Steed and I manage a company called Utah Forest Products. It is a small business in southern Utah, in Escalante next to the Grand Staircase National Monument, which some of you may have heard about. If no harvest proposal is made and the Forest Service roadless policy is implemented, my company will be forced out of business. We employ 120 men and women through our company and our logging contractors. Thirteen of these people are Native Americans and 16 are women. Our direct and indirect payroll totals $2.9 million per year and we utilize 13.5 million boardfeet of federal logs a year to keep our mill operating. Our family began working in the timber industry in Idaho and southern Utah in 1832. Our family has survived in the town of Escalante for over 42 years in the lumber business. In 1961 my dad upgraded our mill with the help of an SBA-guaranteed loan. A second loan was made to make improvements in 1972 and then, in 1975 when our mill burned, my mother rebuilt the mill with another SBA-guaranteed loan. I am proud to tell you that all three of those loans were paid off in full. In 1977 Allied Forest Product, a company in Oregon, purchased our family company and later sold it to Kaibab Forest Industries in 1993. Allied closed our operation in Escalante to facilitate the continued existence of a Kaibab sawmill in Panguitch, Utah. In 1993, my partners and I purchased a large Forest Service SBA set-aside timber sale and received a Department of Agriculture rural economic development grant for $18,000. That grant was spent on the design of a new sawmill and over the years, we have received both encouragement and financial assistance from the federal government. Today we face a proposal and an agency bent on destroying everything that my family has worked for for over 165 years. I know it is not this Committee's job to oversee natural resource issues but it is your job to provide oversight to ensure that the Small Business Administration and the Forest Service complete accurate economic assessments of the policies that impact small business. I believe if the true impacts of the roadless policy are honestly articulated that our political leaders will not allow the Forest Service to finalize these wrong-headed policies. In the Forest Service's roadless EIS, the only references to the economic impacts on our communities are in Table 3-54 that indicates between 46 and 59 direct jobs could be lost in communities near the Dixon, Fishlake and Manti-Lasal National Forests and in Table 3-55, which indicates that our counties have a low resilience to economic disruption. In reality, there are 14 small family-owned sawmills in Utah that depend on federal timber. I have a map up here. The dots show you where those little lumber mills are located. There are no large businesses in Utah. They are all small businesses and they are all family-owned small businesses. These sawmills directly employ over 406 people and indirectly employ another 200 loggers and truckers. Over half the sales planned for this year in the three southern Utah forests were in RARE II roadless areas. Over 67 percent of the forest lands in national forests in Utah are either in wilderness or within the boundaries of RARE II roadless areas. Without this volume, most of these companies will go out of business. In the small town of Escalante where my family has thrived for four generations, 63 of 248 students that go to preschool and K through 12 are children of employees at Utah Forest Products. Mr. Chairman, we are a family who has benefitted from federal programs to encourage rural economic development and it is troubling and incredibly sad to learn that this administration so despises rural America. It is sad for thousands of families who work in these small forest product companies but, more importantly, it is sad that I have to tell the school children of Escalante that the federal government and this Congress does not care enough about them to even honestly tell us what the economic impacts of these policies will be. I will be happy to answer any questions you might have and I appreciate the opportunity to testify. Thank you. [Mr. Steed's statement may be found in appendix.] Chairman Hill. Bruce, you can proceed. TESTIMONY OF BRUCE VINCENT, COMMUNITIES FOR A GREAT NORTHWEST, LIBBY, MT Mr. Vincent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Representative Hill, you are my representative and I am very glad for that. I would especially like to thank Ms. Christian-Christensen for being here as a minority leader and sticking around. We have all traveled a long way and we appreciate you being here to hear us. I am a fourth generation Montanan. I am a third generation practical applicator of academic forest management theory. Some people call that a logger. I am a co-owner of Vincent Logging and serve as volunteer president of Communities for a Great Northwest and I am going to focus my remarks on the Clinton- Gore roadless initiative because the subject of impact from this initiative has been very, very difficult to get our arms around. You heard today some answers like we get at home. Except for rare instances, Forest Service personnel have been unable to answer our questions about impact. We are told some forests, there are going to be management plans that are scrapped by the initiative immediately. We are told some forests, there is no immediate management plans being scrapped. The one I live on, the Kootenai National Forest, is one of those. But hundreds of thousands of acres of Montana alone would have been managed for forest health and/or commodity output in the future and future management cycles. The Forest Service readily admits in our area that the economics of managing areas without roaded access will preclude millions of acres from many necessary management options and forest restoration. How is this going to impact small businesses? That is a question we have and we get answers like you heard from Mr. Rawls this morning. ``We don't have the information. We are not really sure.'' The answer we are given most often is they simply do not know, and we are supposed to comment on this proposal. As indicated by the Forest Service employees union opposition to the initiative, they do not enjoy shrugging their shoulders any more than we enjoy getting a shrug for an answer at home. In some instances we are certain that small business is going to be impacted. One example is in my town. That example is the Treasure Mountain Recreation Area in Libby. We have known for decades that we need to diversify our economy beyond the commodity management industries and experts in recreation have told us that we have an excellent opportunity to attract regional tourists and become an attractive setting for new businesses if we offer amenities built upon our abundant natural beauty and terrain. Right now 93 percent of the recreational use of our 2.5 million acre forest has been identified as road access required activities, like scenic driving, wildlife viewing, berry picking, and stuff like that. To add to these opportunities we identified world class snow quality on a mountain by town, world class scenic splendor on a mountain by town. That mountain was Treasure Mountain. As a complete year-round recreation area with a light footprint on the ecosystem, all the buildings would be in towns, so we would not impact the mountain that we look at every day. We can bolster the three- month tourist season of our area and improve the potential to attract start-up, expanding or relocating small light manufacturing or technology businesses--the future we are told we should be seeking. With tens of thousands of volunteer man-hours, our community formed a Sustainability Task Force, an economic Development Council, a specific committee to make this dream a reality. $226,000 in local money and grant money has been spent in preparing for an EIS. You can imagine the hollow pit in our stomach when the Forest Service confirmed in May that the Treasure Mountain Recreation Area proposal will be killed by the roadless initiative. Our hopes were not the only thing that was dashed, either. As important to long-term planning with a government that owns 80 percent of the county that you live in is trust. For 10 years we have worked with the local Forest Service on this project and others trusting that we would be dealt with in good faith. This initiative, the roadless initiative, and the news that our project was going to be killed landed in our table of collaborative trust like a Scud missile launched from the Oval Office. To compound the insult, the horrendous socioeconomic language that you have heard about in the DEIS attacks hard working, innovative, entrepreneurial people in our culture. I am one of them. I have a masters degree in business, a civil engineering degree. I chose to live in Libby, Montana and perfect the art of logging in the forest that I live in and love and to be called an overpaid, undereducated social misfit is a tragedy beyond belief for me, my family and my culture. There is indeed going to be some impact with this ruling. How much impact? Except for killing to potential of Treasure Mountain Recreation Area, the Forest Service has said they do not know. That, ladies and gentlemen, makes it a bit difficult for us to comment on this initiative with certainty. I would like to suggest that a new look at the impact of federal actions on our rural communities be considered. The Forest Service is not proposing this initiative in a vacuum. There is simultaneous revision of many things you have heard about earlier today--the Forest Service travel management plan, Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project, continuing impacts from endangered species like the salmon, grizzly bear, lynx, white sturgeon, bull trout, bag-hugging monkey flower, bastard flax, and a host of others. We have air quality issues because we are a high mountain valley. They are going to be contributed to when we turn our forests down instead of managing it. We had the EPA in town because we have asbestos-related illnesses detected in the '70s and '80s by that agency but not acted on until 1999. No single issue stands alone in impacting the struggling small businesses of our area. Taken together, however, the cumulative effect of all the federal action during the last decade have yielded a county that leads our state in unemployment, and our state leads the nation in poverty. We are 50th in per family per capital income. We just blew Mississippi's doors off and we are not proud of it. Since 1990, my community has seen a 75 percent reduction in community returned from the Kootenai National Forest. My family business has shrunk from one that employed 65 families 10 years ago to one that now employs five. We are not the exception. We are the rule in our area and we are told that tourism is our future but every time we attempt something like Treasure Mountain or another tourist-broadening approach, that effort meets the same restrictions as our basic industries have met. I would like to suggest that the federal agencies be required to complete not just an action-specific report, and they have been woefully short on this roadless initiative, but a cumulative effects analysis. Such an analysis would consider how actions like this impact our community businesses with all other regulatory actions taken into consideration. Cumulative effects analysis is a requirement of law when discussing endangered species and yet when my community asks the federal government to do a cumulative effects analysis on the grizzly bear because we had competing agencies saying there was impact and there was not impact, we wanted an answer, similar to this. And the answer we were given when we asked for analysis is ``We are not required to by law. The model would be too complex to do, so we do not have to do it.'' And they did not. No single action has accomplished this situation in my town. The roads to the closed sawmills and stud mills and mines and Main Street businesses and our diseased and dying forests are paved with incremental impacts. Individually, the impacts may seem small but collectively, we have closed businesses and our jobs and our families have paid the price. The roadless initiative is one more proposed action that will have impact. It has been woefully understudied. It shouldbe further studied as a specific action under the Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Act and within the concept of cumulative effects. I thank you for allowing me to testify today. [Mr. Vincent's statement may be found in appendix.] Chairman Hill. Thank you, Bruce. I would just comment that when the Interior Appropriation Bill--under the leadership of Mr. Nethercutt, we asked that the Interior Columbia Basin Management Plan be subject to the impact analysis on small business and the administration has threatened to veto that bill because of the existence of an amendment that would require that. Carl, if you would care to proceed. TESTIMONY OF CARL FIEDLER, RESEARCH ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, SILVICULTURE AND FOREST ECOLOGY, SCHOOL OF FORESTRY, UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA, MISSOULA, MT Mr. Fiedler. My name is Carl Fiedler. I am associate research professor at the University of Montana School of Forestry. Chairman Hill, ranking Committee member Christian- Christensen, I appreciate the chance to testify today on the conditions of western forests and the potential ecological and economic benefits associated with treating these conditions. The out-by-10 a.m. fire policy followed for years by federal agencies and that was referred to earlier this morning in testimony has been very effective but there has been a side effect that is not desirable and it has dramatically affected particularly ponderosa pine and pine fir forests of the West. Previously open stands have filled in with small and medium size trees. These trees serve as ladder fuels that allow normally low intensity fires to torch into the overstory and become lethal crown fires. And this is a big deal because pine and pine fir forests occupy up to about 40 million acres of the American West. The widespread perception of these in the American press and TV and newspapers is that this is simply a problem of too many small trees and that rectifying this problem is expensive. Federal officials have widely recommended a treatment called thinning from below, a treatment that calls for thinning little trees up to about six, eight or 10 inches. Professor Keegan and I recently conducted a study to evaluate the ecological and economic implications of this thin- from-below prescription, compared to an approach determined by what a sustainable stand should look like, then choosing treatments to achieve that condition. This comprehensive prescription includes a thinning from below to remove these ladder fuels. It also includes an improvement cut to reduce the composition of shade tolerant species and a modified selection cut that lowers stand density sufficiently to secure regeneration of ponderosa pine, to ensure the sustainability of the stands, and it also spurs development of large trees, which are especially resistant to fire. We applied each of these prescriptions to a hypothetical or an average stand based on the average of inventory records from over 500 stands in Western Montana. The result was a small amount of wood removed from the thin-from-below treatment worth less than the cost of treatment. The comprehensive treatment produced 4,000 boardfeet per acre and left the stand vigorous, resistant to fire and visually appealing. And I would refer you to the three posters arrayed here on the table in the rear of the room. And I would mention that not just small trees were removed in this treatment. There are several really important reasons to implement the comprehensive treatment that we looked at and especially to do so on a broad scale. The first of these is that the long-term sustainability of the huge acreages of ponderosa pine and pine fir forest are at risk. Ponderosa pine trees are well adapted to surviving surface fires but not crown fires, and I would refer you to two posters that Professor Keegan will hold up here in a minute. The first of these two is a picture taken in 1982 in central Montana in the Bull Mountains of central Montana, the heart of pine country. The second photo is taken from nearly the same spot and unfortunately, it was transposed in the making of these posters as an aftershot. This was taken in 1998, approximately 12 years after this fire, and this area is still essentially treeless. The landscape-scale fires of recent years, such as the Cerro Grande in New Mexico, the Early Bird in Montana and the Lowman Complex in Idaho are really harbingers of bigger and hotter fires to come. Will the next fire be in the Tahoe Basin in California and Nevada? Will it be in Ruidoso, New Mexico, Sholo, Arizona? And will this next event claim human lives? Will we do something about it? Many ecologist benefits derive from comprehensively treating hazardous conditions in our forests. Equally important to these and with these are the associated benefits of employment of woods workers in rural communities and production of substantial volumes of timber to help offset increasing domestic dependence on imported wood. So what are the long-term implications of current conditions in Western forests? I would first relate what the eminent conservationist Aldo Leopold referred to when he defined ecosystem health. His definition was a system that can recover after a disturbance is healthy. Based on this definition, many pine forests in the West are neither healthy nor sustainable. The good news is that we have silvicultural treatments available to treat these problems. What is needed is timely, strategic-level implementation of comprehensive treatments based on location, extent, and severity of hazardous conditions. However, given that inventory data are incomplete or not yet analyzed, particularly for roadless areas, this is currently not possible across all National Forest System lands. It seems imprudent to make irreversible decisions now that may affect the long-term sustainability of some of these areas when inventory information on ecological conditions will be forthcoming in a few years. The American public is not well served by decisions made absent such information and certainly our forests deserve better. Thank you. [Mr. Fiedler's statement may be found in appendix.] Chairman Hill. Thank you, Carl. Chuck. TESTIMONY OF CHARLES KEEGAN, DIRECTOR, FOREST INDUSTRY AND MANUFACTURING RESEARCH, UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA, MISSOULA, MT Mr. Keegan. Good afternoon. I am Chuck Keegan. I am director of forest industry and manufacturing research in the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the School of Business Administration at the University of Montana. Vice Chairman Hill, ranking minority leader Christian- Christensen, I very much appreciate the opportunity today to speak to you about some key natural resource issues that have potential to influence employment in small businesses throughout the Western United States. I would like to follow up very briefly, building on the testimony of Dr. Fiedler and deal in particular with three issues. First of all, I would like to contrast the financial aspects of the two alternative restoration prescriptions to which Dr. Fiedler referred. I would then like to illustrate the potential for positive employment impacts from the broad scale implementation of forest restoration prescriptions in the Western United States. And then finally, I would like to offer some of my concerns over the current roadless proposal. So Carl, would you hold that first figure up? First of all, let me very quickly compare the financial aspects of the comprehensive versus the thin-from-below prescription. The comprehensive prescription, this is expressed in net dollars per acre for the timber products produced in the development of a prescription developed by Dr. Fiedler and some ecologists strictly to treat a stand. The comprehensive prescription is in blue and the thin-from-below is in pink. It does not require much explanation to see that the blue line amounts to somewhere between $500 and $1000 per acre, depending on logging systems, terrain involved, and the thin-from-below prescription is negative, as Dr. Fiedler mentioned, and loses several hundred dollars per acre. So what we have here is a prescription in blue that deals comprehensively with an ecological situation and also generates a positive revenue flow for a typical site in Western Montana of $500 to $1000 an acre. Focussing then on employment in rural areas, the fact that these comprehensive prescriptions not only put the stand ecologically in a much better condition but also generate a positive cash flow should allow then for broad scale application of these kinds of prescriptions in Western forests. And the broad scale implementation of these is what would have some large scale potential to sustain and to even increase employment in the Western United States. If I could have that second poster quickly, Carl, it is a figure that is included in my testimony. I will not offer much explanation except to say that the last portion of that shows labor intensity or employment per unit of timber harvested and what you can see is that the forest products industry in Montana has been becoming more labor intensive in the last decade and part of the reason for that is because of changes in the way timber is harvested to pay more attention to social and biological concerns. Well, then when we take the next step and we look at these restoration prescriptions and we see prescriptions that are designed again not to produce timber at the lowest possible cost but to produce a desire future forest condition, then we see an opportunity to even increase the labor intensity involved in the woods and add employment in woods workers. So we have a dual benefit to employment through broad scale implementation of these restoration prescriptions and that is one, that we are providing raw materials for manufacturing by the mills in the area and we also are producing the timber in a more labor intensive fashion. I might also add that, as has been pointed out by some people on the earlier panels, jobs in forest management, timber harvesting and processing are among, if not the highest paying components of the economy in much of the rural West. Finally, some brief comments on the roadless issue itself. First of all, I want to say that I am not here to support building a lot of new roads necessarily. It makes sense to focus in the immediate future on those portions of the national forests that are roaded if we are talking about restoration prescriptions. Those are the areas that can be treated most immediately and most economically. Those are the areas that have the most immediate threat to human life and property. However, given that we know that we have a very broad scale forest ecosystem health problem throughout the Western United States, it is almost certain that the roadless areas have large areas that are ecologically out of balance, out of whack. And a very key point that I want to make in concluding here is that we do not know very much about these roadless lands. Inventory data on many of these lands are either incomplete or have not been analyzed, and this is certainly the case for Idaho and Montana, two states that have the largest acreage involved. Nearly 30 percent of the acreage involved in the recent roadless proposal is in Idaho and in Montana. So my final thought to this group today is that before we have adequately analyzed the inventory in terms of both the ecosystem health of these lands and, in addition, for the potential commercial timber value that might be on those lands, the resolution of the roadless issue is, to say the least, grossly premature. Thank you. [Mr. Keegan's statement may be found in appendix.] Chairman Hill. Thank you, Mr. Keegan. Does the gentlelady have any questions? Ms. Christian-Christensen. I want to thank the panel for their patience in allowing us--I do not vote, but allowing the chairman to vote and still coming back to give their testimony and for traveling so far to do so. I guess I have a few questions just to help me better understand and wade through the differing opinions. The logging industry, and many of you have claimed that local economies depend on the tax base provided by the logging of public lands but supporters of the roadless initiative claim that local economies do not depend upon logging on public lands. They claim that in the states with the most commercial federal timber land, logging and wood products employment represents only a minor share of overall jobs. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1997, according to them, only 3 percent of all the jobs in Idaho are related to wood products; in Oregon, on 4.6 percent. And in Colorado, where federal forests account for a large amount of the land base, only a half percent of employment is related to all wood products. Based on those statistics, some would suggest that the timber industry is exaggerating the negative economic effects of the roadless area initiative. Can you help me to respond to those who would suggest that the negative effects are being exaggerated? Mr. Vincent. I would like to start, if I could. I am not an economist and---- Ms. Christian-Christensen. Me either. Mr. Vincent. Chuck Keegan from the University of Montana can help you out probably better with the very specifics. Some of these early documents, including the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project that we have mentioned earlier, had very specific information about the town that I call home. In that document, they indicated, I believe, that less than 15 percent of our local economy was timber industry-related. Where they got their information from was a phone book survey. It did not yield incredibly accurate data. When they were questioned on it, they issued a supplement to that portion of the document and I believe the supplemental represented a little bit more reality, which is between 65 and 75 percent of our local economy. There are 17,000 people in my county. While that may be a minuscule part of America's economic engine, to our area it is incredibly important. So percentages--when they begin throwing them around, it is very, very easy to discount entire segments, entire minorities, particularly when you paint a picture of them as discountable-- necessary, in fact, to discount the overpaid, undereducated social misfits, because it is better for the environment and our society if they are no longer around. So this document paints a picture one, using horrendous language about who we are as a culture, and then misconstruing statistics to make it seem like we are not really impacted, anyway, and if we are, it is better for us and the rest of America, anyway. Someone told me one time we need to beware of statistics and I hesitate to use this but it seems like the appropriate time. Statistically, everyone should have one breast and one testicle. And sometimes when information like 1 percent or 2 percent of our nation's economy is used, it can be incredibly badly misused and humans pay a price for that misuse. Mr. Keegan. I would like to address it briefly, I guess from a couple of different standpoint, not quite as colorfully as Bruce did. I guess my first comment would be that we need to be careful how we are looking at an economy from a couple of standpoints. One is is it a job that is creating wealth and creating other jobs, or is it a job that is derived from creating wealth and creating other jobs? And jobs in the forest products industry are generally export jobs in the local areas and generally lead to the creation of other jobs. So we need to look at an area's economic base, rather than just the percentage of jobs that are involved. And I think we need to look at the geographic scale at which you are looking at things, and certainly some of the areas that you mentioned, the forest products industry would be a fairly small percentage of total jobs or even total economic base. Some of them, on the other hand, for example, Libby, Montana or Lincoln County, Montana, the forest products industry, in spite of its problems, remains overwhelmingly the largest segment of the economic base, so we need to consider that. But I think what is more important here is the notion that we are being given some kind of a false choice here, that we are either going to have timber jobs or we are going to have recreation jobs. Dr. Fiedler and I are here to talk about a broad scale program that would put the forests in better condition ecologically than they are today and sustain and probably increase the number of high-paying forest products jobs. So I think the notion that it is either we are going to have healthy forests and recreation-based jobs or timber jobs is just a false choice. That has been a part of this whole discussion. Ms. Christian-Christensen. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I do not have any questions at this point. Chairman Hill. Thank you very much. I want to continue with the comments that you just made, Dr. Keegan, because I think it is really important here for the Committee and for the record to reflect the fact that you have looked at this issue together, you and Dr. Fiedler, from the perspective of both the ecology and the economy. And the point I want to make here is that the status quo is bad for both. What is happening right now in our national forests, at least the forests that you are referring to, is that the forest is destroying itself. Is that correct, Dr. Fiedler? Mr. Fiedler. In many cases the conditions that are prevalent out in the landscape today are situations where it is not a question of if but when, in terms of fire. Chairman Hill. We have a catastrophe on the horizon and the health of the forest and the condition of the forest is deteriorating and when the fires occur, it is going to be a catastrophic event, or at least it could be a catastrophic event. This is bad from the ecological point of view. We could do a lot better. Mr. Fiedler. I also look at the testimony today and the nature of this panel is that when we look at the roadless areas, we just do not have good information, and that is what I think concerns me more than anything or as much as anything. And I think your observations are correct in terms of the forest conditions but it certainly behooves us to know what it is we are dealing with. And when we either, at this point, lack complete inventory information or very current right now is some of this information just now being analyzed and this rush to make a decision, absent this information, is not well thought out. Chairman Hill. Dr. Keegan, the point you made is that Libby, Montana, some of our rural communities have been adversely impacted, substantially adversely impacted from an economic perspective with the status quo. The point I am getting at is what you are suggesting to do, the solution has both a positive ecological impact and a positive economic impact, or it has that potential. It seems to me we ought to choose that. Now I showed some maps earlier where I showed the overlay of mining claims and I showed the overlay of timber harvest in roadless areas and the existence of current inventoried roads in roadless areas. I am not sure; I have not figured out how the roadless area can have roads. But one of the things I asked for was an overlay of the proposed roadless areas with the acreage that has been identified by the General Accounting Office, the 40 million acres or 39 million acres that are subject to catastrophic fire loss, and the Forest Service could not provide me with that. That is what you are saying, is that before we make a decision--isn't that what you are saying? Mr. Keegan. Exactly. Chairman Hill. Before we make a decision about access, we ought to make a decision about what the condition is and what the solution is. I mean it is a cart-before-the-horse situation, is it not? Mr. Keegan. Absolutely. Maybe Carl will be more specific but we are within a few years of having infinitely better inventory information on these lands. Nothing is going to be done in most of these lands in the next year, two, three, four years, so it would seem to make sense to me to wait until we can analyze not only the satellite data but the on-the-ground inventory data and be able to make some very specific statements about the condition of these, whether it be for commercial purposes or for forest ecosystem health or fire concerns. Chairman Hill. And at the university you have been leaders in developing and applying new technology to get a better understanding of this whole set of issues; is that not right? Mr. Keegan. Carl and I will not pass ourselves off as the people that are working from outer space but we are working on the ground to do that sort of thing. We are working with the inventory plots on the ground in Montana and in New Mexico at this very moment to try to get a handle on the degree of the forest ecosystem health problem and the potential treatment costs that might be involved and, in fact, where it is located--the kinds of information you are asking for. Chairman Hill. Bruce, I think in Montana 17 mills have closed in the last decade and one closed in Libby, a big mill. How many people lost their jobs in the closure of that mill in Libby? Mr. Vincent. In the sawmill, the one that Stimson was operating, just the plywood plant, at one time there were 1,200 families employed there. Our county as a unit, during the last 10 years, has lost, I believe, just under 1,800 industrial base jobs as a county. Mr. Keegan. They have lost a lot. I do not have a number off the top of my head. Mr. Vincent. You had Champion and the mines that have shut down. Our local newspaper reports it as 1,700 jobs. Chairman Hill. Out of population of 17,000. Mr. Vincent. Out of a population of 17,000. And those are the wage-earning jobs that also have benefits so that we can provide appropriate medical care, keep our local hospital going, pay appropriate wages to our instructors, who are now also 47th or 48th in the nation in their income. The impact on small business and Main Street America impacts everything. I would like to make a comment on one thing you said about the cart before the horse. Possibly the biggest issue when we talk about this roadless initiative at home is not the roadless question at all. You earlier mentioned that you are not promoting building one more mile into a place. We live there. We love the joint. Part of the reason this is a vigorous debate is because as imperfect as we have been, we have done a decent enough job to keep the place beautiful and look like it does in the year 2000. It seems to many that we are now being penalized for keeping it so beautiful. Now people want to make a decision about the last best place from 3,000 miles away. So not only is it the cart before the horse but many people think it is the wrong horse. It should not be a single horse in one office. It should be a team of horses working locally. It is taking the decision out of the decision-making process at home. We have been sitting at the table with the Forest Service, putting in thousands of hours trying to decide what each microecosystem--because these are not 43 million acre patches; they are microecosystems--what should they look like, how can we manage them? And to make one broad-based decision that removes so many options from us is a tragedy. Chairman Hill. Cheryl, what impact have these federal transportation policies had on your school? You mentioned something about the budget of your school but could you elaborate on that a little bit? Ms. Larson. Well, our oldest son is handicapped. He is in an electric wheelchair. And our high school was built when my mother was a student, so it is not accessible and our small district does not have the funds to make it accessible. That takes thousands and thousands of dollars. He has already gone through the grade school system but now he is going through the high school and it is a big nightmare every day. Chairman Hill. Challenges. Well, the tragedy of this situation is that I believe this initiative is motivated by politics, rather than by good policy, but it is going to have significant consequences if it goes through without thinking thoroughly through what all the impacts of this are going to be. We often talk about the war in the West but it just seems like we are engaged in this whole series of battles right now, just trying to make common sense out of the public land management decisions. Lincoln County--what is it?--97 percent of the land in Lincoln County? Is that the right number? Mr. Vincent. A little over 78 percent is owned by the federal government, another 7 percent by the state. Eighty-five percent is publicly owned. I have three of my kids here. We are talking about their future and when we talk about it is not if; it is when this stuff burns, there are things we can do to help the forest and help our community and help the wildlife, the habitat for the species that we commune with, if we do it right. But we are not going to do that with the decisions made from 3,000 miles away. Mr. Fiedler. One last comment on the inventory issue is that in any aspect of our personal lives or at any level of government, I think we do not make decisions based on not getting information, and none of us would make a decision saying I do not want more facts; I do not want to know the various sides of the issue before making a decision. And I think that is what is going on here and it does not need to be, as Dr. Keegan just mentioned here a minute ago, we have inventory information either being collected as we speak here or that is being analyzed and we are involved in some of it ourselves and it just seems so premature to do this now when, in a few years, we will have better information to make a more informed decision. Chairman Hill. I thank all the members of the panel for your testimony. It has been very, very valuable. I also apologize for how long the hearing has taken but we wanted to give everybody the opportunity to make their statements for the record. And I apologize for the fact that we did have to go vote, but occasionally we do have to do that part of the job, too. The hearing record will be open for 14 days. We are going to be providing requests in writing for some additional testimony from the Department of Agriculture and from the Small Business Administration and we are hopeful that they will provide the documentation that we have asked for. Thank you all and the hearing is adjourned, subject to 14 days. Thank you very much. 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