Logging Subsidies

* “New Approaches on the Forests” (editorial, Aug. 2) noted that the U.S. Forest Service predicts that its timber sales program will cost $200 million next fiscal year. Additional expenses include logging road construction and maintenance, timber research, restoration costs and more. The Forest Service funnels the vast majority of timber sales revenue into off-budget slush funds to pay for more logging. Out of every $10 that Congress appropriates to cover expenses incurred by allowing timber corporations to chop down our public forests, less than $1 goes back to taxpayers’ pockets. The timber sales program in our national forests now operates at a net loss of $1.2 billion annually.

The editorial correctly observed that “federal logging subsidies are nearing an end.” This will be accomplished when Congress passes the National Forest Protection and Restoration Act, which will end deforestation of our national forests and will redirect logging subsidies into worker retraining, ecological restoration, community assistance and taxpayer savings.

CHAD HANSON, Exec. Dir.

John Muir Project

Pasadena