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The first paragraph from the appended article from today's Oregonian tells an important story.
Here it is, in a nutshell.
Northwest national forests are hurriedly boosting federal logging to the highest levels in years with a new infusion of cash, even as they close campgrounds and other recreation sites because money for them is drying up.
Forest visitors wonder why there is so little money available for maintaining recreation facilities.
People wonder why they are having to pay ever-rising forest recreation fees while recreational opportunities on the forests diminish and disappear.
The Forest Service says the reason is because of Congressional budget cuts.
Read the appended article and, if you've not already done so, you might question whether the Forest Service is telling the truth.
Scott
--- begin quoted ---
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Cash infusion accelerates NW logging
National forests - The Bush administration action pushes cutting to a high not seen in years
MICHAEL MILSTEIN - The Oregonian
Northwest national forests are hurriedly boosting federal logging to
the highest levels in years with a new infusion of cash, even as they
close campgrounds and other recreation sites because money for them is
drying up.
The push for logging came so fast that some forests could not
accelerate cutting as rapidly as top officials wanted, according to
documents obtained by The Oregonian through the Freedom of Information
Act.
The extra cash for plotting timber sales, road-building, marking trees
and other work to make way for cutting flowed from a legal deal between
the Bush administration and timber industry. It's pumping life into
federal land logging after years of decline.
But dollars for other work in public forests remain scarce. As a
result, U.S. Forest Service is likely to renege on its promise to fix
existing, poorly maintained roads in Washington that violate clean
water laws, for instance. Roads torn apart by storms last winter remain
closed, cutting off access to trailheads and campgrounds.
The new logging money is drawn from forests in other parts of the
country and will underwrite new roads that will carry trucks loaded
with freshly cut trees.
Forest Service logging levels in the Northwest shrank more than 90
percent since the late 1980s, when protections for the northern spotted
owl and other wildlife ended intensive cutting on federal lands.
Now, flush with more money than they have had in years, forests are
scrambling to hire forestry technicians, engineers, timber appraisers
and others. They are also contracting with private companies to carry
some of the load their own workers cannot handle.
"We haven't been hiring this kind of staff in, gosh, more than 10 years," said Lisa Norris of the Mount Hood National Forest.
Federal timber sales require years of environmental reviews before they
can be auctioned, so many forests have only a small stockpile ready to
go and are rushing to plan more.
"We're trying to sell everything we have ready," Norris said.
She said most of the timber sales should bring in enough money to cover their costs.
Counties will benefit
Foresters said they're glad for the chance to speed much-needed
thinning of overgrown stands and bring on new employees to replace
others who will be retiring in the next few years. It will also boost
revenue for counties, which get a cut of timber proceeds.
The push is by no means a return to the logging boom times of the
1980s. Oregon and Washington forests then turned out more than 5
billion board feet of wood -- nearly half the timber coming from all
national forests nationwide.
Even the accelerated logging will stand at less than 20 percent of
those past highs, and will likely come from thinning projects.
But it is part of a drive by the Bush administration to meet the
logging targets of the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, the compromise drawn
up by the Clinton administration that was supposed to protect wildlife
while turning out a reliable supply of wood.
National forests in the Northwest never met those targets, in part
because of continuing environmental lawsuits and in part because they
never got the money to plan enough timber sales.
But in April -- halfway through the budget year -- forests in
Washington and Oregon received an extra $24.7 million to boost logging
levels, raising the timber budget about 32 percent over what they first
received and nearly doubling it from last year.
National forest timber sales bottomed out in 2000 and have been slowly
climbing since. Forests were shooting to sell 600 million board feet
this year.
But the extra money prompted Linda Goodman, the Forest Service's
regional forester, to increase this year's target to 675 million board
feet and set the target for the next two years at 800 million board
feet. Forests in western Oregon and Washington --the area covered by
the Northwest Forest Plan -- could not do it all, so others in eastern
Oregon and Washington were called on to pitch in, too.
But some couldn't log so much, so fast. Regional officials wanted the
Ochoco National Forest in central Oregon to cut 80 percent more timber
next year, but Forest Supervisor Jeff Walter said the forest's ability
to pull that off is "extremely limited."
"This requires a very steep ramp up in both the planning and
implementation organizations," he wrote in a letter to the regional
office, saying the forest would increase logging -- but at a slower
pace.
"Tidying up"
Forest Service officials then set a slower pace for Oregon and
Washington logging, which will go from 675 million board feet this year
to 750 next year and then 800 in fiscal 2009.
Goodman described the cutting in a letter to employees as "tidying up"
forests, which she said have become cluttered like closets.
The doubling of money for logging contrasts with declines in other
Forest Service funding. For instance, money for recreation programs in
Oregon and Washington has dropped nearly 25 percent, from $28.7 million
in 2003 to $21.4 million this year -- and the Bush administration is
proposing a further cut to $19 million next year.
National forests are now looking at closing recreation sites they can no longer afford.
Forest Service officials also acknowledge they lack the money to
maintain and repair failing forest roads in Washington, though they
promised the state Department of Ecology they would. The deteriorating
roads are polluting streams, violating clean water laws.
Spokesman Tom Knappenberger said the agency cannot ask for enough funds
to fix the roads because of limits imposed by the administration.
On the other hand, the administration committed in a legal agreement
with the timber industry -- the result of an industry lawsuit -- to ask
for extra money to boost logging levels.
Regional officials stressed in directives to national forests the logging money could not be used for anything else.
Washington's two U.S. senators and four congressmen, all Democrats,
wrote to the Secretary of Agriculture in June, saying that plans to put
extra money into logging while cutting road maintenance "reflect a
serious misallocation of resources."
Knappenberger said the agency would like to complete more of the road work if it could.
"We're doing the best we can with the money we have," he said.
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- Land management 
