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RESPONSES BY FEDERAL AGENCIES TO THE

REPORT ON FEDERAL TIMBER SALES

INTRODUCTION

The Special Subcommittee on the Legislative Oversight Function of the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs and the Subcommittee on Public Works and Resources of the House Government Operations Committee, sitting jointly, held hearings from November 14 through November 30, 1955, and on February 21 and 22, 1956, on Federal timber policy in the Pacific Northwest. The title "Joint Committee on Federal Timber" was selected to simplify the problems of the public in communicating with the two subcommittees. The House subcommittee review was undertaken as a followup to the 1953 report by the Comptroller General on the sale of Governmentowned timber in the Pacific Northwest, and was authorized by a vote of the subcommittee.

The Senate committee had been called upon to make investigations. of proposed changes in Bureau of Land Management right-of-way regulations. Members of the committee had also received other complaints on Federal timber sales programs. Some of these complaints dealt with Indian timber sales and others related directly to the Comptroller General's report. Because the subject matter crossed the lines of Interior's subcommittee organization, the chairman assigned the work to the Subcommittee on the Legislative Oversight Function, and hearings were tentatively scheduled.

The two subcommittee chairmen agreed, in the interest of preventing duplication of effort and to provide a saving of the taxpayers' money, to hold joint hearings.

The purpose of the hearings was to examine Federal timber policies, This report stressed the business aspects of the management of Federal timber lands.

Indian timber sale policies present some unique problems. In some instances suggestions made for federally owned timber lands also were applicable to the lands managed by the Federal Government for the Indian people.

The report covers the national forests under the jurisdiction of the Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture, and the Oregon and California revested grant lands, the Coos Bay Wagon Road grant lands, and public domain lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management in the Department of the Interior, as well as certain Indian reservations under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior. The area covered was northern California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana, where the major portion of the timber-sale activities of the Federal Government is concentrated.

The purpose of the hearings was to go into the areas where the sale of timber is a major Federal function to obtain firsthand information on timber management and policies. California, Oregon, and Washington contain 77 percent of the Federal timber and are the areas where most pressing problems were reported.

On May 15, 1958, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, having received no summary report or direct advice on the various recommendations made in the 1956 report, requested the Department of Agriculture, Department of the Interior, Bureau of the Budget, and the Civil Service Commission to present a report by June 30, 1958.

The letter said in part:

Please describe the nature of the action taken for each recommendation adopted. If the recommendation is still under study, please advise the steps that have been taken to date and the expected date for adoption of the recommendation. For those recommendations you prefer not to adopt, please state the reasons for your decision.

This report sets forth the responses by the various agencies.

OUR PUBLIC FORESTS AND THEIR IMPORTANCE

Except for the Thirteen Original States, virtually all of the land in private ownership in the United States came out of the Federal domain as a result of a national policy enunciated in the early days of the Republic. The purpose of this policy was to provide every citizen an opportunity to acquire land upon which to live and earn a living. The policy was in direct contrast to European development where large landed estates were controlled by a few.

As a result of this policy three-fourths of the continental United States is in private ownership and one-fourth remains in Federal ownership. In the latter part of the 19th century considerable interest was expressed in continuing under Federal management substantial blocks of the public domain to provide parks, public forests, recreation and grazing areas, and areas for watershed protection. This policy recognized that up to that time, lumbering had not been carried forward under a program which included stability of land ownership or conservative use of the land. It also recognized that successful management of timber cutting could be carried out by the Federal Government if timberlands were retained by it.

We have set aside a system of national forests, totaling 160 million acres. An additional 180 million acres (mainly rangeland) is under the Bureau of Land Management; 57 million acres representing lands belonging to the Indians are administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. There are 14 million acres in national parks which are reserved from lumbering and excluded from all calculations. There are additional lands under the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Defense, Bureau of Reclamation, and other agencies, but their total commercial timberland holdings are insignificant. In all, there are 484 million acres of commercial timberland in the continental United States, of which 99 million acres (or roughly one-fifth) are in Federal ownership.

The commercial timberland acreage in the national forests represents the largest public holding-81 million acres. The national forests were created from the public domain. A minor amount of

acreage has been purchased, mainly in the Eastern United States. The express purpose for the creation of the national forests was to improve and protect the forests, to secure favorable conditions of waterflow, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessity of citizens of the United States.

The Bureau of Land Management holdings comprise only 5,513,000 acres of commercial timberland, the majority of which is in Washington, Oregon, and California.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs manages 6,945,000 acres of commercial timberland for the Indians, most of which is in the West. There are two basic classes of land-tribally owned and allotted. The lands are supposed to be managed first and foremost for the benefit of the Indians. They are not Federal lands but lands belonging to Indians— part of the residual estate they retain of the almost 2 billion acres in the continental United States.

The situation in the West as to ownership and control of timber is markedly different from the situation in the East.

The West, with only 25 percent of the commercial forest land, has 70 percent of the saw timber. The East has 75 percent of the commercial-forest area, but only 30 percent of the saw-timber volume. The West has 85 percent of the softwood saw-timber volume.

In the East farm and non-forest-industry land holdings constitute 74 percent of the commercial forest area, and in the West they comprise only 22 percent of the area. On the other hand, in the East Federal ownership of commercial timberland is only 7 percent of the total, while in the West the Federal ownership represents 61 percent of the total.

The forest industries of the Nation, which include sawmills and pulp mills, plywood plants and other specialty wood industries, own 13 percent of the commercial forest land in the East; in the West they own 12 percent. (See Figure 1, p. 4.)

The forest industries of the Nation always have been, and are today, primarily dependent for their raw materials on lands owned or controlled by others. In the East it is to the farm and non-forestindustry ownership to which they turn for their raw materials. In the West to a greater and greater extent they will have to look to Federal lands to secure much of their raw materials.

In Oregon, California, and Washington 381 owners, a fraction of 1 percent of the 94,384 owners, own 54 percent of the private timberland. There are, however, some 3,000 sawmills alone in these three States, in addition to numerous plywood, hardboard, and pulp mills. Federal policies which limit or diminish the availability of timber to the non-timber-owning segments of the industry would have a real impact on the economy of the West.

Further, these public lands have important uses other than timber production. Multiple uses such as recreation, water production, grazing, and mineral development go on side by side with timber production.

There are numerous problems in the West created by these many demands upon Federal lands. The Congress has set forth a broad policy designed to provide that the benefits from public ownership will be more widespread than if the lands were in private ownership. These lands have been retained in Federal ownership to provide a plan of management which will promote the wise use of the land,

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