USFS grazing and timber

PrairieHunter

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Its' mind-blowing how much money these people squander with something that should have value. 2 billion loss for taxpayers selling wood each year. Though some of you might find it interesting to see the #'s behind some of these projects and overall costs to the taxpayers.






In addition, such sales are costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The Forest Service has estimated that Big Thorne will cost taxpayers more than $13 million dollars – yet based on actual Tongass timber program costs versus timber logged during the past few years, Big Thorne alone could cost more than $102 million. In fact, tens of millions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars continue to flow into the Tongass every year, subsidizing the industrial-scale clear-cutting of our largest national forest.





A quick look at the Forest Service’s analysis of recent timber sales in Region One — which includes northern Idaho and Montana — shows the actual costs.
• The Forest Service estimates taxpayers will lose $1,127,000 on the commercial logging portion of the South Plateau timber sale next to Yellowstone National Park in the Custer Gallatin National Forest. When you add-in the remediation work before and after logging the Forest Service estimates that the South Plateau timber sale will lose $3,184,000!
• Taxpayers would also lose a stunning $4.2 million on the Gold Butterfly commercial logging project in the Bitterroot National Forest.
• The Lost Creek-Boulder Creek commercial logging project on Idaho’s Payette National Forest will lose nearly $22 million.
• The Forest Service estimated that the timber company that logged the East Deer Lodge commercial timber sale in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest received a $2.4 million federal taxpayer subsidy on this project alone.
• Nor is Region One the only place that the Forest Service loses money on commercial timber sales. A report by the Center for a Sustainable Economy found “taxpayer losses of nearly $2 billion a year associated with the federal logging program carried out on National Forest and Bureau of Land Management lands.”

Externalized costs
Adding to these losses are significant “externalized” costs to the public that the Forest Service does not count such as pre-commercial thinning of forests that will later be clearcut; fruitless attempts to keep sediment from newly bulldozed logging roads and clearcuts out of streams; and the equally futile attempt to stop new noxious weed infestations brought in on bulldozers, trucks, and other logging equipment.



Grazing is no better
Despite contributing only 2-3 % of all the beef consumed in the United States, commercial grazing is one of the most heavily subsidized activities on public lands. The program costs taxpayers a minimum of over a billion and half dollars every 10 years, and the minimal fee recoups just one-tenth of the cost of its administration. The cost to beef producers to feed their stock on public lands is substantially less than the cost to feed a pet hamster each month.

Key Findings
1. Receipts from grazing fees were $125 million less than federal appropriations in 2014. Total federal appropriations for the USFS and BLM grazing programs in fiscal year 2014 were $143.6 million, while grazing receipts were only $18.5 million. Appropriations for the BLM and USFS grazing programs have exceeded grazing receipts by at least $120 million annually since 2002. Had the federal government charged the average private forage market rate for non-irrigated lands in the western states, grazing receipts would have been on average $261 million, greatly exceeding annual appropriations.
2. The gap between federal grazing fees and private land fees has widened considerably. The federal grazing fee in 2014 was set at the legal minimum of $1.35/AUM, or animal unit month, which is the amount of forage to feed a cow and calf for one month. The annual federal grazing fee has been set at the minimum required by law since 2007. In 2013, the federal grazing fees of $1.35/AUM were just 6.72 percent of fees charged for nonirrigated private grazing lands in the West, which averaged $20.10 per AUM. The gap has widened considerably since 1981, when the federal fee was 23.79 percent of fees charged on private rangelands. The federal grazing fee is generally also considerably lower than fees charged on state-owned public lands.
3. The federal grazing subsidy is even larger when all costs to the taxpayer are accounted for. Indirect costs for livestock grazing include portions of different federal agencies budgets, such as the USDA Wildlife Services, which expends money to kill thousands of native carnivores each year that may threaten livestock; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which expends part of its budget for listing species as threatened or endangered resulting from harm by livestock grazing; and other federal land management agencies that expend money on wildfire suppression caused by invasive cheat grass that is facilitated by livestock grazing. The full cost of the federal grazing program is long overdue for a complete analysis.

For Immediate Release: February 1, 2023

Media Contacts:


Josh Osher, Western Watersheds Project (406) 830-3099; [email protected]

Chandra Rosenthal, PEER (303) 898-0798, [email protected]



WASHINGTON, D.C. – The federal lands grazing fee was announced yesterday and, for the fifth year in a row, has stayed at bargain-basement prices: $1.35 per cow/calf pair per month for all Bureau of Land Management and western U.S. Forest Service lands. For comparison, a 2019 congressional investigation found that leasing comparable livestock grazing on private ranchlands in the West came at a cost of $23.40 in 2017.
 
Well the grazing portion is easy to fix. They charge a fraction of market value per federal law. Are you suggesting grazing fees should be increased? I don’t know chit about logging so I will butt out on that

Edit: I have noticed you post a lot to show the Usfs in a negative light. Most often they are following federal law as is the case with the grazing program. What’s your point? The Usfs isn’t the most efficient and should be reformed? Shouldn’t exist? Sell their lands? Some of my favorite hunting spots are Usfs lands.
 
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It’s obvious you have researched deeper than I in this issue so I’m just curious…
Being that the premise behind federally subsidized timber sales is directly correlated to fuels reduction and overall forest health, have you came across the hard earned taxpayer dollars spent on wildfire suppression and made any comparisons to that and prevention??
 
I'm not saying I necessarily support all the details of some of these actions, but I can tell you with certainty that Western watersheds project's overt goal is to end grazing and logging completely on federal lands, and they are good at manipulating info and only telling part of the story. I believe in multiple use management, even with its flaws.

The federal government is not a business and its mission is not to profit, but to provide services to the citizens of the country.

It's easy to armchair quarterback and parrot WWP propaganda, but actually learn the full story behind some of these costs and you might change your opinion.

USFS and BLM both have plenty of problems, but many of these issues need to be addressed at the congressional level, or are related to market demands vs. needing to manage forests/reduce fuels even if nobody will buy the timber.
 
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I'm not saying I necessarily support all the details of some of these actions, but I can tell you with certainty that Western watersheds projects overt goal is to end grazing and logging completely on federal lands, and they are good a manipulating info and only telling part of the story. I believe in multiple use management, even with its flaws.

The federal government is not a business and its mission is not to profit, but to provide services to the citizens of the country.

It's easy to armchair quarterback and parrot WWP propaganda, but actually learn the full story behind some of these costs and you might change your opinion.

USFS and BLM both have plenty of problems, but many of these issues need to be addressed at the congressional level, or are related to market demands vs. needing to manage forests/reduce fuels even if nobody will buy the timber.
Well said. My thoughts exactly
 
Funny how reports like this come without annotation to the peer review on the ”study”. Just saying…
 
Congress sets federal grazing rates. The administering agencies have zero role in setting the rate.

Timber sales are put out on bid. Absent placing a minimum bid, which I’m not sure federal law allows them to do, it is what it is.

I’ve yet to see the OP say anything positive about federal land agencies.
 
Congress sets federal grazing rates. The administering agencies have zero role in setting the rate.
Those who continually criticize USFS and other agencies in the context of hating the big bad gubment for squandering tax dollars seem to ignore the legislative role of Congress in misdirecting the criticism. It's as though Civics 101 and elementary studies of US system of government was a course missed.
 

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