Читать книгу The Best-Laid Plans - Randal O'Toole - Страница 14

Some argue that the Forest Service has merely been “captured” by the industry it was supposed to regulate, namely, the companies that purchased timber from the national forests.⁷ But the timber industry could not have its way with the Forest Service either, particularly on the question of the nondeclining flow policy. The industry managed to convince Congress to allow departures from nondeclining flow in the National Forest Management Act, but the industry could not budge the Forest Service from its policy.

The explanation for this can also be traced to the Forest Service’s budget and, eventually, to the Knutson-Vandenberg fund. Given the nondeclining flow rule, timber sales on many national forests with large old-growth inventories were limited by how fast the second-growth forest could grow. This meant that investments in thinnings, fertilization, and other activities that stimulated the growth of second growth could lead to immediate increases in old-growth cuttings. In essence, the Forest Service was using nondeclining flow to hold timber harvest rates hostage to get Congress to appropriate more money for timber management. Congress responded in 1976 by allowing the Forest Service to use K-V funds for those management activities.

It is possible that no one in the Forest Service was consciously aware of the influence the K-V fund had on these controversies or on agency decisionmaking in general. But most were aware that K-V formed a huge part of the agency’s budget, particularly after 1976, when Congress expanded the use of K-V funds to include nonreforestation activities. In 1977, K-V collections exceeded $100 million, more than the appropriation for timber sales, and collections more than doubled over the next 11 years. Including three other funds that worked similarly to K-V—timber revenues used for specific purposes such as road maintenance, brush disposal, and timber salvage sales—timber sales contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to national forest budgets. The K-V funds were the most valuable because they were highly discretionary: they could be spent on any sale area improvements. This encouraged wildlife, recreation, watershed, and other experts inside the Forest Service to support timber sales.

Congress did not intentionally write the Knutson-Vandenberg Act to give forest managers incentives to lose money on timber sales. When the law passed in 1930, there was little support for national forest timber sales in Washington, D.C. The Depression had wiped out the value of private timber inventories, and major timber companies actually lobbied to prevent the Forest Service from driving down prices still further by flooding the market with cheap wood. Senator Vandenberg and Representative Knutson’s original goal was to ensure that there would always be funds for reforestation despite the Depression that was deepening at the time the law was passed.

After World War II, however, rising demand for wood and diminishing private timber supplies made the industry more supportive of national forest timber sales. In addition, timber made excellent pork barrel because sawmills were highly visible parts of a region’s economy. So Congress enthusiastically funded timber even when it was reluctant to fund other parts of the Forest Service program. In 1972, Weber State University economist Richard Alston reviewed 19 years of budget requests and found that Congress had given the Forest Service more than 95 percent of its requests for timber funds, but less than 80 percent of its requests for wildlife funds and only 70 percent of its requests for recreation, watershed, and reforestation funds.⁸

While the Forest Service was aware that Congress liked to fund timber sales, it was even more aware that the K-V fund allowed the Forest Service to turn every dollar Congress appropriated for timber sales into at least one more dollar for reforestation and other activities. No other resource provided that opportunity. By 1980, when forest planning began under the National Forest Management Act, all the biases resulting from the Knutson-Vandenberg Act were deeply ingrained in the Forest Service.

Natural selection explains how the idealistic young people who began working on forest plans straight out of school ended up biasing all their FORPLAN models so strongly toward more timber cutting. In any institution, a process of natural selection favors those who work best in that institution. In the Forest Service, the people who truly believed that all timber grows fast, that timber prices will rise rapidly, and that wilderness recreation benefits from new road construction were more likely to be promoted than the doubters.

This process of natural selection did not immediately affect the young FORPLAN planners, but it had worked on many of the people who submitted the data to use in FORPLAN. Most timber yield tables, for example, were designed by timber staff who had worked in the agency for years. Few of the economists, planners, and computer jockeys who ran FORPLAN had the expertise to question the yield tables, so they merely entered the numbers into the computer.

Economics was different. Few if any forests had staff economists before 1979, so the economists hired to work on the plans had to develop their own resource value and cost data. Even so, they usually followed guidelines set by the regional offices, leading to a situation in which all forests in a given region tended to make the same mistakes. National forest planners attended frequent meetings of planners in their regions during which the regional leaders presented the rationale for the numbers they used, with no dissenting views presented. Skeptics were sometimes allowed to go their own way. But often, as in the case of the Oregon and Washington economists who questioned the assumption of rising timber prices, they were told to follow the rules.

Forest planners were given more discretion to prepare some sorts of data, such as the relationships between timber and other resources. But any data or assumptions that threatened to reduce timber sales would be met with sharp criticism and require extensive documentation. Data or assumptions that supported high levels of timber sales would produce a pat on the back. With the presence of promised promotions and, in some cases, cash bonuses for getting the plans done on time, planners soon realized that those payoffs were more likely to come about if they supported timber. No doubt many reasoned—with some justification, as it turned out—that they needed to make some compromises so they could advance far enough in the agency to really make a difference.

The natural selection process eventually worked on the planners. One frustrated FORPLAN modeler in Montana quit the Forest Service and moved to Hawaii to surf. Some got jobs in other agencies. But those who could bend their ideals stayed in the Forest Service and a few went on to become district rangers and forest supervisors. The results would be surprising to everyone.