Clearcut on the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest. Photo by Vicki Anfinson
If Trump and Musk really want to cut the Forest Service’s budget they need to go where the money is actually being wasted. That would be the Forest Service’s enormously subsidized logging projects that cost billions of federal tax dollars while inflicting significant damage on the environment, wildlife, and fisheries. All to enable the private timber industry to profit off the public resource of our national forests.
The Forest Service’s own economic analysis shows the actual costs of recent timber sales in Region One, which includes Montana and northern Idaho.
+ Taxpayers will lose $3,184,000 on the South Plateau clearcutting project next to Yellowstone National Park in the Custer-Gallatin National Forest, which we are suing to stop.
+ Taxpayers will lose a stunning $4.2 million on the Gold Butterfly logging project in the Bitterroot National Forest, which we are also in court trying to stop.
+ The Lost Creek-Boulder Creek clear-cutting project on Idaho’s Payette National Forest would have lost nearly $22 million — but we stopped it in court.
Photo by US Forest Service.
A 2019 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.”
But that was before Congress gave the Forest Service tens of billions from the Infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act for more logging. That’s on top of their $6 billion annual budget. When the Forest Service recently told me that they are out of money, I asked what happened to those billions. They said they spent it all. That is what they do so they get more money next time.
Photo by US Forest Service.
Commercial logging increases wildfire intensity
The Forest Service claims that logging reduces wildfire risk, but more than more than 200 independent scientists found that logged areas actually aggravate wildfire growth and intensity. How? Because logging allows more sunlight and wind to dry out the forest and makes them more flammable.
It’s a proven fact that the best way to fireproof homes in forested areas is by clearing out nearby brush and using non-flammable building materials — not by clear-cutting forests miles from any homes.
Logging Road, Helena- Lewis and Clark National Forest. Photo by Helena Hunters and Anglers.
Conclusion
If Musk really wanted to save taxpayers’ money, he should target the billions of dollars needlessly spent clear-cutting our dwindling old-growth forests for timber industry profits and they’d have plenty left to keep employees to provide real public services such as clean campgrounds, outhouses, and well-maintained trails.
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Source: Counter Punch
