I wish to add a little to the whole story that Dennis Hicks put in his letter to the Bitterroot Star dated Feb. 28, 2018. I think he did well on his homework on the profits and losses of the USFS and the Montana State School Trust Timber Lands. He states that the Forest Service costs taxpayers nearly $2 billion per year, while annual net monies on State Timber Land exceed $220 million.
First, I would like to attempt to try and explain why it works this way. First off, they, the State, charges a lot more for the timber because when the Forest Service gets short on finding some place where they can snipe some little limby second growth bull pine and the mills get short of logs the mills will get some higher priced State logs which are also badly cut out.
Now to the history of the State Timber Lands. The way that it has always worked is, the State has sections of land scattered amongst the Forest Service land so they sit and wait for the Forest Service to build a road near or through their land. Then all they have to do is sometimes build a little spur road to get their timber. In past times, they just let the slash rot and make nutrients for new trees. Good deal but no cost. In the past, the State didn’t do any tree planting. The slash and planting may have changed so you see no road building to speak of, no little tree planting. When a fire occurs, it would be my guess that the Forest Service will pick up most of the tab.
Now a little about the Forest Service. Before the big fires of 2000, the minimum bid on timber was $75.00 to $100.00 per thousand board feet. Then the Forest Service was hurting to make the public think that there was a great need for logs but there were only two mills left within a ten-hour round trip haul. The mills were still able to get some logs closer to home.
So now the Forest Service began putting complete give away sales. Now under different pretenses they changed from scaling each log as to the board feet in it to selling the timber by the ton which was weighed at the sawmill. When they scaled the logs, they had a Forest Service Scaler scaling every log that came to the mill and keeping track of where it came from, what logging job, etc.
Back to the minimum bid. The Forest Service started putting up giveaway sales like I previously mentioned. One sale was $1.44 per thousand and another was $1.87 per thousand. These figures on how many board feet were in a ton were Forest Service figures. This price wouldn’t even buy the ink for their copier.
The politicians know the best they can say to get elected is “More Jobs” and the voters buy it. In truth, it takes three men and sometimes two men for a logging job that took about ten men in the not too distance past. Same with the sawmill, three or four men can run the complete thing on one word: technology.
Folks, timber’s gone. They can’t go and find more ‘cause there ain’t no more!
Floyd Wood
Corvallis