Biscuit Fire Recovery Project: Analysis of Project Development,
Salvage Sales, and Other Activities (18-SEP-06, GAO-06-967).
In 2002, the Biscuit Fire burned almost 500,000 acres of the
Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest in southwestern Oregon. In
its wake, the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project (Project) is one of
the largest, most complex postfire recovery projects undertaken
by the Forest Service. Considerable controversy exists over the
Project and its salvage sales to harvest dead trees. GAO was
asked to determine (1) how the Project compares with the Forest
Service's general approach to postfire recovery, (2) the status
of the Project's salvage sales and how the reported financial and
economic results of the sales compare with initial estimates, (3)
the status of other Project activities, and (4) the extent of
reported improper logging and the agency's response. To answer
these objectives, GAO reviewed Project environmental analysis
documents, plans, and activity reports and interviewed agency
officials.
-------------------------Indexing Terms-------------------------
REPORTNUM: GAO-06-967
ACCNO: A61044
TITLE: Biscuit Fire Recovery Project: Analysis of Project
Development, Salvage Sales, and Other Activities
DATE: 09/18/2006
SUBJECT: Disaster recovery
Environmental cleanups
Environmental law
Environmental policies
Forest fires
Forest health
National forests
Policy evaluation
Program evaluation
Timber sales
Wildfires
Salvage
Biscuit Fire Recovery Project
Knutson-Vandenberg Trust Fund
Rogue River National Forest (OR)
Siskiyou National Forest (OR)
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GAO-06-967
* Report to Congressional Requesters
* September 2006
* BISCUIT FIRE RECOVERY PROJECT
* Analysis of Project Development, Salvage Sales, and Other
Activities
* Contents
* Results in Brief
* Background
* Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest Staff Followed the Forest
Service's Postfire Recovery Approach, but Unique Circumstances
Affected the Time Taken and Alternatives Considered for the
Biscuit Fire Recovery Project
* Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest Staff Followed the
Forest Service's General Approach for Planning the Biscuit
Fire Recovery Project
* Unique Circumstances Affected the Time Taken and
Alternatives Considered for the Biscuit Fire Recovery
Project
* Size of Burned Area and Project Increased Complexity of
Analysis and Attention to and Review of Project
* Authorized Management Activities in Inventoried
Roadless Areas Changed over the Course of Planning for
the Project
* Forest Reorganization and Downsizing Began during
Planning for the Project
* Salvage Sales Are Nearly Complete, but a Full Comparison of
Financial and Economic Results with Initial Estimates Is
Difficult
* Forest Service Has Nearly Completed 12 Salvage Sales, but
the Volume Harvested through 2005 Was Substantially Less
Than Estimated
* Forest Service and Other Agencies Spent an Estimated $5
Million for the Biscuit Fire Salvage Sales from Fiscal Years
2003 through 2005, and Forest Service Plans to Spend $5.7
Million of the $8.8 Million in Receipts from Sales
* A Comparison of the Financial and Economic Results with EIS
Estimates Is Difficult
* Other Biscuit Fire Recovery Project Activities Are Under Way, but
Depend on Harvest Activity, Schedules, Sale Revenues, and Other
Funding
* Work Under Way on Brush Disposal, Reforestation, and Road
Maintenance Activities, but Extent of Work Needed Depends on
Levels of Harvest
* Brush Disposal
* Reforestation
* Road Maintenance
* Work Is Under Way on Fuel Management Zones and Wildlife
Rehabilitation, but Funding and Schedules Are Uncertain
* Fuel Management Zones
* Wildlife Habitat Rehabilitation
* Research and Monitoring Are Being Planned, but Funding and
Schedules Are Uncertain
* Adaptive Management Study
* Monitoring
* Forest Made Operational Changes and Assessed Fines to Address
Improper Logging That Occurred in Three Locations
* Forest Staff Made Mistakes Leading to Two Incidents of
Improper Logging but Plan to Better Mark Boundaries
* Babyfoot Lake Botanical Area-Fiddler Salvage Sale
* Kalmiopsis Wilderness Area-Bald Bear Hazard Sale
* Timber Purchaser Improperly Cut Trees That Were Not Burned,
and Forest Staff Followed Contract Procedures in Fining
Company
* Forest Service Pursued Other Claims of Improper Logging
* Conclusions
* Recommendation for Executive Action
* Agency Comments and Our Evaluation
* Objectives, Scope, and Methodology
* Comments from the Forest Service
* GAO Comments
* GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments
Report to Congressional Requesters
September 2006
BISCUIT FIRE RECOVERY PROJECT
Analysis of Project Development, Salvage Sales, and Other Activities
Contents
Tables
Figures
September 18, 2006Letter
The Honorable Jeff Bingaman Ranking Minority Member Committee on Energy
and Natural Resources United States Senate
The Honorable Ron Wyden Ranking Minority Member Subcommittee on Public
Lands and Forests Committee on Energy and Natural Resources United States
Senate
The Biscuit Fire Recovery Project (Project), a large-scale project to
recover areas of the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest burned by the
Biscuit Fire, is one of the largest and most complex postfire recovery
projects the Forest Service has ever undertaken. The Biscuit Fire burned
almost 500,000 acres of federal land in Oregon and California in 2002,
making it the largest fire in the nation outside of Alaska since 1997. 1
In the last decade, the nation has experienced many large fires that have
burned increasing numbers of acres. The 2002 fire season, one of the
nation's worst fire seasons in the last 50 years, burned 6.9 million acres
of public and private forests and rangelands in the United States-more
than any other year except 2000 and 2005.
After large fires on federal lands, federal land managers identify
activities and projects that they believe will help recover forest
resources such as trees and vegetation, roads, recreation facilities,
wildlife habitat, and streams and rivers. Specifically, the Forest Service
within the Department of Agriculture-and other federal land management
agencies-have defined recovery activities to include emergency
stabilization, rehabilitation, and restoration. Emergency stabilization is
conducted within 1 year of a fire through the Burned Area Emergency
Response program to address threats to life, property, or resources; it
includes work
such as seeding and mulching to reduce soil erosion and runoff.2
Rehabilitation is conducted within 3 years of a fire and includes such
work as repairing roads or trails, reforesting or planting trees, and
restoring wildlife habitat. Restoration continues such rehabilitation
activities as reforesting beyond the first 3 years after a fire. The
Biscuit Fire Recovery Project focuses on the long-term rehabilitation and
restoration of the fire area, not emergency stabilization or Burned Area
Emergency Response activities.
During the postfire process, the Forest Service may also consider whether
to leave burned trees and allow the burned area to recover naturally or to
harvest some of the dead and dying trees-called salvage harvesting-with
the intention of generating jobs and economic development, and generating
funds to help pay for the recovery of natural resources or Forest Service
infrastructure, such as roads and trails. According to the Forest Service,
salvage harvesting should be done relatively quickly after a fire, before
the trees begin to decay, which makes the wood less usable and valuable.
Generally, smaller trees lose their commercial value after about 2 years,
and larger trees lose most of their commercial value after 3 or 4 years.
However, considerable scientific controversy exists about whether and how
quickly harvested areas recover compared with unharvested areas, and
experts disagree about whether salvage harvesting the burned timber
provides economic development and generates funding for recovery in
addition to that needed to pay for planning, preparing, and administering
sales. For this reason, we recently recommended that the Forest Service
pursue additional research on the effects of salvage harvesting.3
While the Forest Service does not have a discrete program or agencywide
guidance for managing postfire rehabilitation and restoration activities,
its general approach begins with an evaluation of the condition of forest
resources. For large fires, Forest Service staff can use photographs and
images taken from airplanes or satellites-collectively called remote
sensing data-to identify burned and unburned areas. Then, staff identify
activities that they believe will help rehabilitate and restore damaged
resources, as well as opportunities for salvage harvest. Depending on how
severely or intensely an area is burned, the effects to trees, water,
wildlife, and other resources can vary. According to agency officials,
they may determine that no rehabilitation or restoration work is needed
because natural recovery may be sufficient or the fire may have benefited
some resources that are adapted to wildland fire. Further, some areas that
have burned, such as wilderness areas, may limit management activities.
However, when the staff identify activities they want to undertake and
determine that the activities will significantly impact the environment,
they develop an environmental impact statement (EIS), as required by the
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The EIS identifies the
significant environmental effects of the proposed action and a range of
reasonable alternative actions. If the proposed action includes salvage
sales, the staff conduct a financial and economic analyses of the sales
for each alternative in the EIS; the financial analysis estimates the
agency's expenditures and revenues, and the economic analysis estimates
the jobs and economic income generated. They then issue a record of
decision stating the agency's decision and identifying the alternatives
considered and begin to implement and monitor the selected alternative.
Project activities are typically implemented by the appropriate forest
program, such as Forest Products, Engineering, or Fish and Wildlife, as
part of each program's annual workload.
The Biscuit Fire burned nearly half of the Siskiyou National Forest, which
was administratively joined with the Rogue River National Forest in 2004,
and almost all of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness, which lies within the
Siskiyou forest.4 The area lies within the Klamath-Siskiyou ecoregion, an
area renowned for its abundant ecological diversity and rugged geological
features, as well as being one of the largest areas without roads in the
Pacific Northwest. These areas are managed under the Siskiyou National
Forest Land and Resource Management Plan (forest plan), as amended by the
Northwest Forest Plan-a plan designed to protect species that rely on
old-growth forests, while also producing a sustainable level of timber
from the national forests of the Pacific Northwest.5 The Northwest Forest
Plan designates land allocations, or areas that must be managed for
designated purposes in accordance with specified standards and guidelines.
These allocations include late-successional reserves-areas designed to
serve as habitat for species, such as the Northern spotted owl, that
depend on late-successional and old-growth trees-as well as areas called
"matrix" lands in which most commercial timber harvest is to take place.
The Siskiyou forest plan designates some of these lands as inventoried
roadless areas-areas without roads that were identified by the Forest
Service in wilderness planning efforts. They are managed according to
underlying land allocations, some of which restrict road construction and
timber harvesting.
After the Biscuit Fire, the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest staff
developed the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project and an accompanying EIS. In
July 2004, the Forest Supervisor signed three records of decision for the
Project, one covering activities within inventoried roadless areas, one
covering activities in late-successional reserves outside roadless areas,
and one covering activities in matrix lands outside inventoried roadless
areas. In accordance with the Forest Service's decentralized management
structure-which includes 155 national forests, nine regions, and a
Washington Office-the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest Supervisor
decided which of the alternative actions to implement. The activities in
the records of decision included almost 20,000 acres of salvage logging
with 367 million board feet of timber;6 almost 20,000 acres of brush
disposal-removal of branches and other postharvest debris in the sale
areas; 285 miles of fuel management zones-areas in which trees and brush
have been removed to reduce "fuel" that might burn in future fires; almost
30,000 acres of reforestation, including harvested acres; and about 7,500
acres of wildlife habitat rehabilitation. The records of decision also
called for the Forest Service to monitor certain resource conditions, such
as water quality, and conduct a large-scale study of the effects of fire
on late-successional reserve habitat and the effect of various management
actions on postfire recovery.
The Forest Service's decision to include salvage harvest in the recovery
project, particularly in late-successional reserves and inventoried
roadless areas, was controversial. Experts disagreed on the amount of
timber to harvest, with some asserting that there were large amounts of
timber available to harvest in the fire area, and others asserting that
any salvage harvest would damage the forest. Numerous lawsuits challenged
different aspects of the NEPA analysis, including the adequacy of the
Forest Service's economic analysis of the sales; these suits are still
pending. Meanwhile, a timber industry group was concerned about the time
taken to conduct the EIS and salvage harvest, while environmental groups
said any delay was attributable to the time taken to analyze additional
salvage harvest. In addition, the Forest Service's implementation of the
Project's salvage sales is controversial. As of the end of 2005, the
Forest Service had sold burnt timber in the matrix and late-successional
reserve areas, as well as roadside trees that were considered hazardous
because they could fall. Although the forest staff identified the sale
boundaries and visited the sale sites during harvest operations, instances
of improper salvage harvest occurred. In particular, environmental groups
reported that salvage harvest occurred in a botanical area adjacent to one
of the salvage sale areas and stated that this indicated poor management
of the sales by the forest staff. These groups also dispute the Forest
Service's financial and economic estimates for the salvage sales.
In this context, you asked us to determine (1) how the development of the
Biscuit Fire Recovery Project compared with the Forest Service's general
approach to postfire recovery, (2) the status of the Biscuit Fire Recovery
Project salvage sales and how the reported financial and economic results
of the sales compared with the Forest Service's initial estimates, (3) the
status of other activities identified in the Biscuit Fire Recovery
Project, and (4) the extent and cause of improper logging within the
Biscuit Fire Recovery Project, as reported by the Forest Service, and
changes the agency made to prevent such occurrences in the future.
In conducting our work, we reviewed minutes, briefings, and other forest
documents from the administrative file for the Biscuit Fire Recovery
Project and developed a time line of the decisions made by the Rogue
River-Siskiyou National Forest staff. We discussed the time line with
officials and decision makers at the Forest Service's Rogue River-Siskiyou
National Forest, Pacific Northwest Region, and Washington Office and the
Department of Agriculture to further elaborate on events that affected the
time frames and alternatives considered for the Project. To determine the
status of the Project's activities, we reviewed contracts for work that
had been accomplished, reviewed plans for work not yet accomplished, and
discussed both the contracts and the plans with the forest staff to
reconcile any differences. We reviewed financial and economic analyses of
the salvage sales in the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project EIS and discussed
them with the Forest Service's Regional Economist. However, because of
ongoing litigation, we did not evaluate the adequacy of the economic
analysis. We obtained and analyzed Forest Service expenditures and
receipts from the Biscuit Fire salvage sales, as well as expenditure data
from the Department of Justice and Department of Agriculture's Office of
General Counsel, which provided legal services related to the salvage
sales. We obtained expenditure data for fiscal years 2003 through 2005 and
receipts through December 2005, the last year for which complete data were
available. Finally, we examined internal and investigative reports on
improper logging and interviewed responsible officials about their
responses. As appropriate, we assessed the reliability of the data and
determined that it was sufficient for this report. We performed our work
between November 2005 and July 2006 in accordance with generally accepted
government auditing standards. Appendix I provides a more detailed
description of our objectives, scope, and methodology.
Results in Brief
The Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest staff followed the Forest
Service's general approach to postfire recovery in developing the Biscuit
Fire Recovery Project; however, several unique circumstances affected the
time taken to develop the Project and the alternatives it included. First,
the size of the burned area-and, subsequently, the size of the
Project-complicated the environmental analysis and increased the time
needed to complete and review it. For example, to assess resource
conditions, such as identifying the extent of dead trees, the forest staff
had to rely on remote sensing data that were difficult to interpret and
time-consuming to verify. Second, before, during, and after the
development of the Project and EIS, the regulations and guidance governing
permissible timber harvest and road building in inventoried roadless areas
changed several times, in part due to litigation. According to agency
officials, these changes affected the amount of timber available for
harvest in the inventoried roadless areas and, therefore, directly
affected the range of alternatives considered in the EIS and the time
needed to develop them. Finally, during development of the EIS, the forest
staff reorganized and downsized, although the effect on the EIS is
difficult to quantify. According to the staff, the changes increased their
workload and limited the amount of time they could devote to developing
and implementing the Project. However, according to the Forest Supervisor
and other managers, the forest had enough staff to develop and implement
the various alternatives identified in the EIS.
As of December 2005, the forest staff had nearly completed 12 salvage
sales in the matrix and late-successional reserve areas; however,
incomplete sales information and a lack of comparable economic data make a
comparison of the financial and economic results of the sales with the
agency's initial estimates difficult. For the sales conducted through
2005, purchasers harvested almost 60 million board feet, which is much
less than the 367 million board feet proposed for sale in the EIS. Forest
staff overestimated the timber available for harvest and, in addition,
some timber decayed during the preparation of the EIS and sales, further
reducing the volume of available timber. For fiscal years 2003 through
2005, the Forest Service and other agencies spent about $5 million on the
sales and related activities such as law enforcement. In the next several
years, the Forest Service plans to spend an additional $5.7 million to
remove brush, reforest, and conduct other work in the sale areas. In
return, the agency collected about $8.8 million from the sales. In the
EIS, the sale expenditures and receipts were estimated to be about $24
million and $19.6 million, respectively, and the salvage harvest was
expected to generate about 6,900 local jobs and $240 million in regional
economic activity. However, it is premature to compare the results through
2005 with the estimates because the Forest Service will generate
additional expenditures, revenues, and potential economic activity from
two sales in June and August 2006. Even if complete sale results were
available, methodological differences and lack of comparable economic data
complicate the comparison of the salvage sale results and EIS estimates.
For example, the financial comparison is complicated by the fact that the
reported expenditures through fiscal year 2005 include different
activities, such as the environmental analysis, than the EIS estimates.
Similarly, the economic comparison is complicated by the fact that the
Forest Service does not report the jobs or economic activity resulting
from sales. According to Forest Service officials, the agency does not
conduct the type of analysis needed to report the results because the
primary reason for preparing EIS estimates is to compare the relative
economic effects of salvage alternatives and not to provide a precise
prediction of the outcomes of the sales. However, all else being equal,
given that the volume of timber sold through 2005 is substantially less
than the volume of sales assumed in the EIS for the selected alternative,
we would expect the actual economic results to be less than the EIS
estimate.
Through December 2005, the forest staff have begun work on most of the
other activities identified in the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project but
completing them depends on the amount of salvage harvest, funding sources,
and schedules. Three such activities, reforestation, brush disposal, and
road maintenance, are under way and have funding and time frames
associated with them, but the needed work will change with the amount of
salvage harvest. For example, the amount of brush disposal work-estimated
at 18,939 acres in the records of decision-will be reduced because the
number of acres where salvage harvest occurred has been reduced. Other
activities, such as establishing fuel management zones and rehabilitating
wildlife habitat-both in and outside salvage sale areas-depend on the
Forest Service funding and scheduling the work over many years. In
addition, a large-scale adaptive management study and monitoring
activities are still being planned and not yet funded. As of June 2006,
work contemplated in the study-such as mapping monitoring plots-had not
been started, and the forest staff had not determined how the study would
be funded. According to the Forest Service, these activities can be funded
and implemented many years into the future.
During salvage harvest operations in 2004 and 2005, the Forest Service
reported three incidents of improper logging and took action to prevent
such occurrences in the future. Two of the incidents were caused by Forest
Service errors, and a third was an error on the part of the harvest
company that purchased the sale units. One of the Forest Service errors
was identified by a local environmental group, and the second was caught
by an independent researcher; the purchaser error was reported to the
Forest Service by the purchaser. Both of the Forest Service errors
resulted from mismarked boundaries, one at the boundary of a botanical
area and the other at the boundary of the wilderness area. The forest
staff have since developed procedures to better mark boundaries of sale
areas, and the regional staff have emphasized the need to properly measure
boundaries as well. In the case of the purchaser's error, existing sale
administration processes addressed the mistake. Specifically, in
accordance with the sale contract provisions, the purchaser was fined
$24,000, or $200 for each tree cut, and the trees were left on the site.
In addition to these errors, the forest staff worked with local groups
that monitored the sale areas before and after harvest and followed up on
numerous other claims of improper logging, but determined that the logging
was properly conducted.
Given the size, unique nature, and public interest and controversy
surrounding the fire and the Project, the potential for significant
research results on the effects of postfire management activities, and
potential future changes to Project activities, it is important that the
Forest Service be able to specifically track and provide information on
the Project's status and results. However, because the activities are
being implemented through the agency's regular programs, the forest staff
do not track or report the status of Project activities separately from
other program accomplishments. As a result, although the forest staff
indicated in the Project records of decision that monitoring results would
be made available to the public, they cannot readily report on the status
of Project activities-in particular the activities that will be
implemented over the long term. To help keep the Congress and the public
informed on the Project's status and results-particularly the research
study component of the Project-we are recommending that the Chief of the
Forest Service direct the Pacific Northwest Regional Forester and the
Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest Supervisor to publish an annual
status report on the Project through its completion. In commenting on a
draft of this report, the Forest Service generally agreed with our
findings and the recommendation but stated that the time period for
providing the report should be limited to the next 3-to-5 year period.
Because of the long-term nature of some of the activities in the Project,
we believe the reports should be provided until the Project is
substantially complete. We revised the recommendation accordingly.
Background
The Biscuit Fire began in July 2002 as 5 separate fires in southwest
Oregon in the Siskiyou National Forest, which was administratively joined
with the Rogue River National Forest in 2004. The fire was one of 12 or 13
large fires that burned throughout the Pacific Northwest Region in 2002
due to severe drought conditions; in addition to the Biscuit Fire, fires
burned in the Deschutes, Umpqua, Malheur, and other forests in the region.
In Oregon, the Biscuit Fire burned mostly within the Siskiyou Forest,
which encompasses more than 1 million acres of diverse, steep, and rugged
landscape made up of the Klamath Mountains, the Coast Ranges, the
180,000-acre Kalmiopsis Wilderness, and many roadless areas.7 By September
2002, the fire was being controlled, and Forest Service staff were
conducting Burned Area Emergency Response program projects to stabilize
the most severely burned areas. By November 2002, the fire was declared
controlled, and the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest staff were
beginning their postfire recovery efforts.
In evaluating conditions after the fire, the Rogue River-Siskiyou National
Forest staff determined that some areas were not so severely burned as to
warrant management action. However, in some instances, the forest staff
identified areas that were severely burned and resources that would not
recover as quickly as desired without forest intervention. The fire burned
in a mosaic pattern, with about 30 percent of the area burned lightly,
with little vegetation killed, and about 44 percent burned intensely, with
more than 75 percent of vegetation killed; the remaining acreage burned
with mixed intensity and mixed results (see fig. 1).
Figure 1: Biscuit Fire Map, Vegetation Change
In evaluating postfire recovery projects and activities, the following
laws and regulations affect the approach that the Forest Service generally
takes:
o The National Forest Management Act of 1976 requires the Forest Service
to, among other things, (1) develop a plan to manage the lands and
resources of each national forest in coordination with the land management
planning process of other federal agencies, states, and localities and (2)
revise each plan at least every 15 years. Each forest plan-called a Land
and Resource Management Plan-establishes how land areas within a forest
may be used and governs individual projects or activities that occur
within the forest. Individual projects or activities, such as building a
road or harvesting timber, may take place only if they are consistent with
the plan and after site-specific environmental review, which often
includes public notice, comment, and administrative appeal.
o Under NEPA, agencies such as the Forest Service generally evaluate the
likely effects of projects they propose using a relatively brief
environmental assessment to determine if an EIS is needed. If the action
would be likely to significantly affect the environment, a more detailed
EIS is required. An agency may exclude categories of actions having no
significant environmental impact-called categorical exclusions-from the
requirement to prepare an EIS.8 One purpose of the EIS is to ensure that
agencies have detailed information available to inform their decision
making. Agencies such as the Forest Service give the public an opportunity
to comment on draft environmental assessments and impact statements. In
addition, the Forest Service has established procedures for administrative
appeal of its decisions concerning projects and activities on National
Forest System lands.9 As a general rule, once the administrative appeals
process is complete, the public can litigate in a federal court a decision
about a particular project.
o In 2001, the Forest Service issued a rule for managing its inventoried
roadless areas, which generally include areas without roads that are 5,000
acres or larger, or smaller areas contiguous to designated wilderness
areas.10 This rule, which was intended to provide lasting protection for
inventoried roadless areas within the National Forest System, generally
prohibited road construction, road reconstruction, and timber harvesting.
However, U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming found the rule
unlawful and struck it down in 2003.11 The government did not appeal this
decision and issued a new rule related to the roadless areas in 2005, also
now in litigation. The new rule allows states to petition the Forest
Service to issue regulations establishing management requirements for
inventoried roadless areas within their states. The opportunity for
submitting state petitions is available until November 13, 2006.12
o Projects involving salvage harvests are governed by the Forest Service's
timber sales regulations and procedures. To sell timber, the forest staff
identify the areas that they want to harvest-called sale units-identify
the unit boundaries, and develop a timber sale contract that contains many
standard provisions, such as limits on which trees can be harvested and
requirements to prevent and control erosion. Sale units can be located
along roads to allow access by logging trucks and equipment; logs are cut
and hauled from the slopes by tractors or pulled by cables suspended above
the ground. Sale units that are located farther away from roads-such as
roadless areas-can be logged using helicopters. In such cases, loggers cut
the trees and the logs are then flown out by helicopter. Timber sales are
laid out by timber planners and the sales are monitored by a timber sale
administrator that visits the site to review contract provisions and
harvest operations.
A large fire such as the Biscuit Fire can cause major changes to a
forest's resources and planned program of work such as the amount of
timber to be sold and harvested, campgrounds and trails to be maintained,
and areas of vegetation to be removed or reduced to help avoid future
fires. The Siskiyou forest plan establishes goals and objectives for the
desired future conditions of the forest that describe management of forest
resources and activities such as timber, grazing, recreation, wilderness,
and others. As with all land management activities, postfire recovery
projects must be consistent with the forest plan. In the case of the
Biscuit Fire, postfire recovery projects need to comply with the Siskiyou
forest plan, which was approved in 1989. The projects also need to comply
with the Northwest Forest Plan, a comprehensive document amending several
forest plans adopted in 1994 for the management of federal forest land in
Washington, Oregon, and northern California. Old-growth forests are valued
as habitat that includes large standing, dead, and down-fallen-trees in
various stages of decay. The plan includes a combination of land
allocations managed to protect and enhance habitat for late-successional
and old-growth related species, while providing a sustainable level of
timber sales, as well as standards and guidelines for the management of
these land allocations. These standards and guidelines include
requirements for retaining dead and decaying trees on the ground, as well
as standing dead trees, called snags, that are essential habitat for many
wildlife species. The standards and guidelines also impose restrictions on
timber harvesting and road building in riparian areas-areas along streams,
ponds, reservoirs, and wetlands-to limit the amount of sediment running
into them.
Postfire recovery projects are funded by various sources, principally
appropriations and trust funds. The Forest Service conducts its
rehabilitation and restoration activities through existing programs,
including its forest management, watershed, recreation, wilderness, and
construction programs, among others. To fund such activities, the agency
uses appropriations from sources that include its National Forest System,
capital improvement and maintenance, and wildland fire management
accounts.13 In addition, the Forest Service uses the Knutson-Vandenberg
(K-V) trust fund that collects receipts generated from timber sales to pay
for reforestation and timber stand improvement in areas harvested for
timber, as well as wildlife habitat and other improvements in sale
areas.14 It also uses the Salvage Sale Fund, which collects receipts
generated from salvage sales, to pay for future salvage sales. Other
sources of funds, such as gifts, bequests, and partnerships, also fund
postfire recovery projects.15
Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest Staff Followed the Forest Service's
Postfire Recovery Approach, but Unique Circumstances Affected the Time
Taken and Alternatives Considered for the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project
Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest Staff Followed the Forest Service�s
Postfire Recovery Approach, but Unique Circumstances Affected the Time
Taken and Alternatives Considered for the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project
In developing the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project, the Rogue River-Siskiyou
National Forest staff followed the Forest Service's general approach for
postfire recovery efforts, but several unique circumstances, combined,
affected the time taken to develop the Project and the alternatives
included in it. First, the size of the burned area-and subsequently the
Project-complicated the environmental analysis and the time needed to
complete and review it. For example, to assess resource conditions, such
as identifying the extent of dead trees, the forest staff had to rely on
remote sensing data that were difficult to interpret and time-consuming to
verify. Changes in the remote sensing data throughout the development of
the Project caused the salvage sale volumes in the different EIS
alternatives to change. Second, before, during, and after the development
of the Project and the EIS, the regulations and guidance governing
activities that could occur in the inventoried roadless areas changed
several times, in part due to litigation. Changes that allowed salvage
harvest in the inventoried roadless areas directly affected the
alternatives considered in the EIS and the time needed to develop them.
Third, during development of the EIS, the forest staff were reorganized
and downsized, although the effect on the EIS is difficult to quantify.
According to the forest staff, the changes increased their workload and
limited the amount of time they could devote to developing and
implementing the Project. However, according to the Forest Supervisor and
other managers, the forest had enough staff to develop and implement the
various alternatives identified in the EIS.
Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest Staff Followed the Forest Service's
General Approach for Planning the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project
In the wake of the Biscuit Fire, the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest
staff followed the Forest Service's general approach to postfire recovery
planning for large fires. The Forest Service does not have a national
program directing postfire recovery efforts or nationwide guidance on the
development of recovery projects after a fire. However, according to
Forest Service officials, regions and forests that had experienced past
large fires with severe damage to their resources followed a general
approach of assessing the conditions of forest resources after the fire,
identifying projects needed to rehabilitate and restore damaged resources
and opportunities for salvage harvest, and following the steps documented
in the Forest Service's NEPA manual, which include implementing and
monitoring the chosen project. Figure 2 shows the time line of events in
the development of the Project compared with the Forest Service's general
approach.
Figure 2: Biscuit Fire Recovery Project Time Line Compared with the Forest
Service's General Approach to Postfire Recovery
Generally, to determine management actions to recover a burned area,
forest staff assess the postfire conditions and evaluate various actions
that could help to achieve their forest plan's desired conditions. For
large fires and recovery projects specifically, as shown in figure 2,
forest staff (1) assess the resources in the burned areas; (2) develop a
proposed action to recover resources, which can include multiple
activities; (3) issue a Notice of Intent (NOI) to prepare an EIS; (4)
develop and analyze alternatives to the proposed action; (5) issue a draft
EIS and solicit public comments on the draft; and (6) issue a final EIS
and record of decision to make a formal decision about the project.16 At
this point, the forest staff implement and monitor the project, although
it may be appealed or subject to litigation. Some projects can be finished
within a few years after the fire; others may be implemented years after
the fire.
In the case of the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project, the forest staff wrote a
formal postfire assessment, published in January 2003, 3 months after the
fire was declared controlled. The Biscuit postfire assessment was
conducted by a team of forest resource specialists, with expertise in
forestry, recreation, engineering, hydrology, soil science, and fish and
wildlife. The team visited key areas burned by the fire to view and
measure the effects of the fire and to determine how severe the effects
were on different resources. They then identified potential work to repair
damaged resources. During this assessment, the team also held multiple
meetings to gather the public's input on what to do to repair the damage
caused by the fire.
In January 2003, after the Biscuit postfire assessment was completed,
forest officials began the NEPA process by identifying members of an
interdisciplinary team made up of about 30 resource specialists from the
Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest and other units of the Forest
Service. Over the next few months, the team developed the purpose and need
for the recovery work and then developed a proposed action, or a set of
activities to be conducted in the area. In March 2003, the forest staff
published an NOI in the Federal Register announcing that it would prepare
an EIS for the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project. In it, the forest staff
identified the purpose and need for action in the Biscuit Fire area:
recovery of potential economic value through salvage harvest; restoration
of vegetation altered by the fire-in particular, reforestation; protection
of late successional habitat from future fire and insect damage;
protection from future fire through hazardous fuel reduction; and learning
about postfire management activities. The Project originally proposed in
the NOI included salvage harvest on about 7,000 acres of matrix lands,
totaling 90 million board feet; fuel reduction on 16,000 acres including
late-successional reserve lands; meadow habitat treatments; road closures
and repair; and reforestation on about 30,000 acres.
As shown in figure 2, from March through October 2003, the
interdisciplinary team developed alternatives for the proposed action and
analyzed their effects on the environment. According to forest and
regional officials, the team sought to develop a range of alternatives
that were reasonable, including a range of salvage options, fuel reduction
alternatives, and other activities. According to the Department of
Agriculture's Office of General Counsel, the agency is given discretion in
developing a reasonable range of alternatives but typically develops two
or more alternative ways of meeting the purpose and need of the
proposal-in addition to an alternative that considers no action. During
the process of developing alternatives, the team also identified projects
in the Biscuit Fire area that could be conducted under categorical
exclusion, including repairing recreational trails and sites; road
maintenance such as replacing culverts; reforestation of burned areas
identified as plantations-areas managed for harvest; and salvage
harvesting trees that posed a hazard along roads. The team and the forest
staff documented these categorically excluded projects separately and
conducted them in 2003 and 2004 as the EIS for the Biscuit Fire Recovery
Project was being developed. In addition, the forest staff held "deck"
sales in which they sold trees that had been cut by firefighters during
suppression activities and piled up or "decked." According to Forest
Service officials, because the environmental effects of cutting the trees
occurred during the firefighting, an emergency activity, and the hauling
would have limited environmental effects, the deck sales were not subject
to a NEPA analysis.
The Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest staff issued its draft EIS for
the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project in November 2003, a year after the fire
was controlled, and allowed public comment through January 2004, as shown
in figure 2. Approximately 23,000 public comments were received,
summarized, and incorporated into the final EIS, which was issued in June
2004. A month later, in July 2004, the forest staff issued three records
of decision-one each for the inventoried roadless areas, the matrix areas
outside inventoried roadless areas, and late-successional reserves outside
inventoried roadless areas. According to Forest Service officials, the
decision to issue three records of decision was made to separate the more
controversial projects-specifically the salvage sales in the inventoried
roadless areas-from the less controversial projects to allow the latter to
move forward without appeal and litigation. With the issuance of the final
EIS and records of decision, an emergency situation determination approved
by the Pacific Northwest Regional Forester in June 2004 became effective
for the salvage sales in the matrix and late-successional reserve areas.
The determination stated that the government would lose approximately $3.3
million if the sales were delayed for the full 105-day appeal period. The
decision did not apply to the inventoried roadless area sales because,
according to agency officials, the forest staff were not ready to conduct
these sales at the time of the decision. Although the region was the first
in the country to define an emergency under the economic criteria in the
Forest Service regulations, the Biscuit Fire was not the first recovery
project to which the region applied this argument.17
Overall, the general approach to postfire recovery efforts does not have
specific time frames associated with it. According to Pacific Northwest
Region officials, the NEPA analyses conducted in the region can take from
1 to 3 years to complete. Figure 2 shows that the development of the
Biscuit Fire Recovery Project took about 1 3/4 years, after the fire was
controlled, to complete, from November 2002 through July 2004. The records
of decision were issued in July 2004, and the forest staff awarded the
first of several salvage sales the same month. The emergency situation
determination allowed the forest staff to begin implementing the Project
immediately, without waiting up to 105 days for the appeal process to
conclude. However, according to Forest Service officials, because the
harvest season in this region typically ends in September, the purchasers
did not have time to schedule the Biscuit Fire harvest into their
workloads, and most of the salvage sale harvest occurred in 2005-3 years
after the fire. This delay in the salvage harvest concerned all parties
involved because of the additional loss of the commercial value of the
trees. One of the key lessons identified in a regional evaluation after
the 2002 fire season was that the identification of potential salvage
sales should begin immediately after a fire. At the national level, in
December 2004, an interregional committee published a strategy for
postfire recovery, which identified challenges for managing postfire
environments and proposed potential actions to improve the identification
of salvage sales after large fires. According to Forest Service Washington
Office officials, these actions have not yet been implemented because the
agency has instead been focused on formulating broader restoration policy
that encompasses postfire recovery actions.
Unique Circumstances Affected the Time Taken and Alternatives Considered
for the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project
While the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest staff followed the general
approach for postfire recovery on Forest Service lands, three unique
circumstances affected the time taken to develop the Project EIS and the
alternatives that were included in it. First, the size of the fire and
proposed recovery activities increased the complexity of the analysis and
review of the overall Project. Second, changes in the regulations and
guidance for inventoried roadless areas that occurred during development
of the Project caused alternatives to be added to the analysis and
increased the time taken for the analysis. Third, the forest staff planned
and implemented a major reorganization and downsizing during the
development of the Project. Combined, these unique circumstances affected
the time taken to develop the Project EIS, although it is difficult to
distinguish the individual effect of each circumstance. In addition, the
size of the fire and the changes to the management activities allowed in
the inventoried roadless rules caused changes in the amount of timber
considered for salvage sale in the Project alternatives and added two
alternatives to the EIS. Figure 3 shows the events surrounding each unique
circumstance compared with the events in the development of the Project.
Figure 3: Unique Circumstances Affecting the Time Taken and Alternatives
Considered for the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project
Size of Burned Area and Project Increased Complexity of Analysis and
Attention to and Review of Project
The first circumstance unique to the Biscuit Fire that affected
development of the Project was the size of the area burned by the fire
and, subsequently, the size of the area included in the Project. The size
increased the complexity and amount of work needed to analyze and review
resource conditions, Project alternatives, and potential impacts. While
the fire burned almost 500,000 acres, the forest staff excluded the
Kalmiopsis Wilderness in the postfire recovery work, leaving about 320,000
acres of nonwilderness area for evaluation. Normally, to assess the
conditions of resources burned in a fire, forest staff conduct site
visits, take measurements and samples of different resources and
conditions, and identify potential rehabilitation and restoration
activities. For large fires, they can use aerial photographs and satellite
images. However, the Biscuit Fire was much larger than other fires that
were considered large, causing the forest staff to conduct the postfire
assessment and to use different sources of remote sensing data to assess
the condition of forest resources. The size of the fire and Project also
increased the attention and amount of review the Project received.
The forest staff decided to conduct a postfire assessment of the Biscuit
Fire because of the large area that had been burned and needed to be
assessed to determine what recovery actions were needed. However,
according to forest and regional officials, while the data gathered and
analyzed during the assessment were useful in moving forward with
recovery, writing the formal report added time to the process. Forest
officials involved in the Biscuit postfire assessment stated that because
the fire was so large, and access was limited due to the lack of roads and
steep terrain, they could only conduct limited site visits to gather
information on the condition of forest resources that had been burned and
those that remained unburned. The assessment, according to the officials,
was useful for the purposes of getting a head start on gathering data on
these resource conditions, which were ultimately useful in the NEPA
analysis. At the same time, forest and regional officials acknowledged
that the assessment did not help them narrow the range of projects to be
conducted and was time-consuming and expensive, causing several weeks of
delay in the NEPA analysis. According to these officials, the postfire
assessment-while useful in soliciting public comments about what should be
done to recover the burned area-contained a wish list of projects that
could be done regardless of funding sources and schedules. As such, the
assessment may have set expectations too high about what could be
practically accomplished, given funding and time. According to the Forest
Supervisor, the postfire assessment should have focused on time-sensitive
projects to facilitate the NEPA process. In response to the lessons
learned from the 2002 fire season, the region will conduct postfire
assessments separately from the assessment of salvage opportunities and
will deploy a rapid assessment team to quickly identify salvage
opportunities after a fire to prevent delay and decay of trees that can be
harvested.
The size of the burned area and the increased complexity of the assessment
was also reflected in the need to use remote sensing data to adequately
assess the resources in such a large area. Changes to the sources of data
added time to the EIS development and affected the salvage harvest volumes
being considered in different alternatives. Given the size of the burned
area and Project area, the forest staff used aerial and remote sensing
data, in addition to site visits to verify the data, to assist in the
analysis of vegetation conditions, burned timber available for salvage,
and wildlife habitat conditions. Overall, the data helped the staff in
covering a large area but also required additional analysis work that
added to the time needed to develop the EIS. The interdisciplinary team
started using aerial photographs taken at the end of the fire, as shown in
figure 3, to identify potential areas for salvage harvest. The team used
these photographs to identify patches of dead trees that were a certain
size and density; however, because the locations seen in the photographs
were inaccurately identified and details were insufficient at times, the
forest crews did not always find enough dead trees when they visited the
sites. By June 2003, the wildlife staff on the team determined that
satellite images taken of the burned area more clearly showed areas of
dead timber than the aerial photographs. Because the team did not want to
use two sets of data-the aerial photographs and the satellite images-the
team selected the satellite images as the data set for the EIS analysis.
This added time to change the underlying maps in its Geographic
Information System, which the forest staff used to prepare maps for the
EIS analysis. In addition to adding time for analysis, the data changes
had an effect on the EIS alternatives being considered by the team. For
example, the maximum amount of timber estimated as available for salvage
harvest decreased from about 1 billion board feet in the draft EIS issued
in November 2003 to about 600 million board feet in the final EIS issued
in June 2004, due to the use of more accurate satellite data, more field
verification of data, and application of strict salvage guidelines for the
late-successional reserves.
Finally, the size of both the fire area and the Project resulted in
additional review by Forest Service regional officials and Department of
Agriculture officials, as well as increased attention by state officials.
The additional review included two evaluations by the region's
Environmental Review Committee-a group responsible for examining more
complicated EIS documents in the region for substantive concerns and to
ensure compliance with Forest Service regulations. The Environmental
Review Committee reviewed the EIS in February 2004 and again in April 2004
before its issuance. According to regional staff, the evaluations
identified the need to revise the document, and these revisions required a
few additional weeks to complete. In addition, the review included visits
and several briefings for the Undersecretary and Deputy Undersecretary of
Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment and key state and tribal
officials to apprise them of the status of the EIS (see fig. 3). According
to the Undersecretary, large, controversial fires and recovery projects
such as the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project elicit additional attention from
department officials because of increased congressional interest. These
briefings took some time, but according to the Forest Supervisor, did not
affect the time needed to produce the EIS.
Authorized Management Activities in Inventoried Roadless Areas Changed
over the Course of Planning for the Project
The second circumstance unique to the Biscuit Fire that affected the
development of the Project was the uncertainty of the regulations and
guidance governing road building and salvage harvest activities in
inventoried roadless areas, which affected the alternatives in the Project
EIS and the time needed to analyze them. Figure 4 shows the inventoried
roadless areas in the fire area.
Figure 4: Map of Burned Area with Inventoried Roadless Areas
As can be seen from figure 3, the regulations and guidance governing
activities in inventoried roadless areas changed several times. The first
change occurred in December 2002. Regulations promulgated in 2001 would
have limited road building and timber harvest in inventoried roadless
areas; however, in May 2001, the U.S. District Court for the District of
Idaho prohibited the Forest Service from implementing the regulations.
Subsequently that year, to help provide guidance for addressing road and
timber management activities until land and resource management plans are
amended or revised, the Forest Service issued an interim directive that
allowed some road building and timber harvest activities in the areas with
the approval of the Chief of the Forest Service or a Regional Forester. In
December 2002, immediately after the fire was controlled and as the forest
staff developed the postfire assessment, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Ninth Circuit reversed the Idaho district court's decision, effectively
reinstating the 2001 regulations. The plaintiffs petitioned the appellate
court to rehear the case, which the court denied in April 2003. During
this time, the interdisciplinary team was developing its proposed action
and began developing its EIS alternatives. In April 2003, the team had
identified seven alternatives, the largest of which included 386 million
board feet of salvage harvest from matrix, late-successional reserve, and
inventoried roadless areas. However, by May 2003, after the appellate
court declined to rehear the plaintiff's case, the team narrowed the
alternatives to five, the largest of which included 104 million board feet
from matrix lands and fuel reduction work and did not include salvage
harvest in the inventoried roadless areas.
In July 2003, a convergence of events led the forest staff to develop two
new alternatives with larger salvage harvest amounts, including amounts in
the inventoried roadless areas. That month, the 2001 regulations were
again enjoined, this time by the U.S. District Court for the District of
Wyoming.18 Second, the Forest Service's interim directive on inventoried
roadless areas expired and was not reinstated until July 2004. During this
time, forest supervisors were authorized to make road and timber
management decisions within inventoried roadless areas consistent with the
applicable land management plan. And third, an Oregon State University
report identified 2 billion board feet as available for salvage harvest in
the Biscuit Fire area, many times greater than the largest draft EIS
estimate. According to Forest Service officials, the amounts differed
because the purpose of the Oregon State University report was to identify
all timber available for salvage regardless of legal or other restrictions
on harvest. The district court's decision came a week after the Oregon
State University report and during the same week that the Forest
Supervisor and Project leader visited Washington to brief Forest Service
Washington Office staff, Oregon congressional delegation members, and
Department of Agriculture officials on the five alternatives in its
EIS-none of which included salvage harvest in the inventoried roadless
areas. The forest officials providing the briefing received several
comments about the need for more logging that would include harvest in the
inventoried roadless areas. According to forest and regional officials,
the failure to consider at least one alternative proposing salvage harvest
within inventoried roadless areas might have made the EIS vulnerable to
legal challenges based on the idea that the alternatives the Forest
Service considered did not include a reasonable range of alternatives.
Despite concerns about completing the EIS quickly to allow any salvage
harvest to occur as quickly as possible, forest and regional officials
determined that an estimated 8-week delay to conduct the analysis of new
alternatives would be acceptable. Between the end of July and October
2003, the interdisciplinary team developed two additional alternatives
that included about 1 billion board feet and about 500 million board feet
of salvage harvest respectively for the draft EIS.
Forest Reorganization and Downsizing Began during Planning for the Project
The third circumstance unique to the Biscuit Fire that affected the
development of the Project was a reorganization and downsizing of the
Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest staff. Since the 1990s-before and
after the two forests were administratively combined-the Siskiyou and
Rogue River National Forest workforce declined as timber harvest amounts
declined. Their annual operating budget dropped from $33.6 million in
fiscal year 2001 to $25.1 million in fiscal year 2006. The number of staff
also dropped, falling from 619 at the beginning of fiscal year 2002 to 400
at the start of fiscal year 2005.19
Beginning in January 2003, just as the forest staff issued its postfire
assessment, the staff reorganized to address decreasing budgets and staff
numbers. As shown in figure 3, the forest staff issued a strategic
business plan in November 2003, just as the draft EIS was released and the
two forests joined as one administrative unit. More than 150 positions
were identified that could be officially abolished to achieve the
reorganization option the Forest Supervisor selected. The forest staff
began identifying positions to be abolished in August 2002, identifying 35
positions to be placed on the Forest Service's Workforce Reduction and
Placement System list, which allows the employees to receive priority in
moving to vacant positions elsewhere in the Forest Service. After its
strategic business plan was issued, the forest staff began officially
abolishing positions in June 2004. From that month through October 2004,
48 positions were abolished.
The effect of this downsizing and reorganization on the development of the
EIS is difficult to quantify. According to forest staff involved with the
interdisciplinary team that developed the EIS, they worked on both the EIS
and Project in addition to their ongoing daily responsibilities. They
contrasted this experience with a previous large fire on the forest's
lands-the Silver Fire in 1987-for which there was dedicated staff for the
EIS and recovery project. However, according to the Forest Supervisor and
other managers, the forest had enough staff to develop and implement the
various alternatives identified in the EIS. The Forest Supervisor stated
that he directed staff to place priority on the Project and, according to
the Regional Forester, additional staff were available to help the team,
if needed.
Salvage Sales Are Nearly Complete, but a Full Comparison of Financial and
Economic Results with Initial Estimates Is Difficult
As of December 2005, the forest staff had nearly completed 12 salvage
sales in the matrix and late-successional reserve areas; however,
incomplete sales information and a lack of comparable economic data make a
comparison of the financial and economic results of the sales with the
agency's initial estimates difficult. For the sales conducted through
2005, purchasers harvested almost 60 million board feet, which is much
less than the 367 million board feet proposed for sale in the EIS. Forest
staff overestimated the timber available for harvest and, in addition,
some timber decayed during the preparation of the EIS and salvage sales,
further reducing the volume of available timber. For fiscal years 2003
through 2005, the Forest Service and other agencies spent about $5 million
on the sales and related activities such as law enforcement. In return,
the agency collected about $8.8 million from the sales. From these
receipts, the Forest Service plans to spend an additional $5.7 million in
the next several years to remove brush, reforest, and conduct other work
in sale areas. In the EIS, the sale expenditures and receipts were
estimated to be about $24 million and $19.6 million, respectively, and the
salvage harvest was expected to generate about 6,900 local jobs and $240
million in regional economic activity. However, it is premature to compare
the results through 2005 with the estimates because the Forest Service
will generate additional expenditures, revenues, and potential economic
activity from two sales in June and August 2006. Even if complete sale
results were available, methodological differences and a lack of
comparable economic data complicate the comparison of the salvage sale
results and EIS estimates. For example, the financial comparison is
complicated by the fact that the EIS expenditure estimates are based on
different activities than the reported expenditures through fiscal year
2005; adjustments can be made to allow a comparison, but they are
complicated. Similarly, the economic comparison is complicated by the fact
that the Forest Service does not report the economic results of sales. The
analysis needed to report such data can be done, but according to Forest
Service officials, the agency does not conduct this type of analysis
because the primary reason for preparing EIS estimates is to compare the
relative economic effects of salvage alternatives and not to provide a
precise prediction of the outcomes of the sales.
Forest Service Has Nearly Completed 12 Salvage Sales, but the Volume
Harvested through 2005 Was Substantially Less Than Estimated
As of December 2005, the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest staff
completed 12 salvage sales identified in the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project
EIS and records of decision. After the EIS and records of decision were
released in July 2004, the forest staff finished preparing and completed
12 sales totaling about 67 million board feet of timber on almost 3,700
acres of land in the matrix and late-successional reserve areas, as shown
in figure 5.
Figure 5: Map of Salvage Sales Sold in the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project
One sale occurred in 2004; the others occurred in 2005. Although several
lawsuits were filed against the sales, they generally did not delay the
implementation of the salvage sales in the matrix areas. A timber industry
trade association and timber companies filed the first case against the
Project alleging, among other things, that the Project violated the
National Forest Management Act by failing to implement required
reforestation activities. Environmental groups also filed lawsuits against
the Project alleging, among other things, that the Forest Service: (1)
allowed unauthorized personnel to mark trees for harvest, (2) performed an
inadequate NEPA analysis, and (3) lacked authority to issue the emergency
situation determination.20 Two court orders stemming from this collection
of cases affected the timing of Project activities. First, the U.S.
District Court for the District of Oregon issued a preliminary injunction
on August 3, 2004, prohibiting certain salvage activities from proceeding
because the sales contracts failed to require Forest Service
personnel-rather than purchasers-to identify standing dead trees within
the sale area that were not to be harvested for environmental reasons. The
court lifted this injunction on August 20, 2004, after the agency amended
the contracts. Second, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
issued an emergency stay prohibiting the late-successional reserve sales
from proceeding pending resolution of an environmental group's appeal of a
district court ruling in favor of the Forest Service. The emergency order
was in effect from September 7, 2004, through March 7, 2005. This period
included the winter months during which sales activity can be impossible
because of weather conditions and, when possible, may be restricted to
limit the risk of spreading a particular fungus along wet roads. The
forest staff provided a waiver to begin harvesting in March 2005 rather
than June, the usual end of the restrictions on salvage harvest
activities.
Table 1 shows the volume of timber sold and harvested on the 12 sales as
of December 2005. According to Forest Service staff, the majority of the
timber volume harvested occurred in 2005. In general, the volume harvested
was less than the volume sold because the sales were "scaled" sales that
allowed the purchasers-with the concurrence of the timber sale
administrator-to leave trees that did not have good timber and pay only
for the timber removed from the sale units. In the case of the Horse sale,
the harvested volume was greater than the sale volume because additional
trees died after the sale contract was awarded but before the harvest was
complete. According to a forest official, these trees posed a hazard to
the loggers in the sale unit, so the timber sale administrator added them
to the sale contract.
Table 1: Biscuit Fire Recovery Project Salvage Sale Locations and Volumes
through December 2005
Volume (in thousand
board feet)
Sale name Date sold Sold Removed Remaining
Matrix lands
Briggs Cedar December 2004 2,341 1,823 0
Chetco August 2004 289 217 0
Flat Top November 2004 6,622 3,537 0
Horse July 2004 2,415 2,800 0
Indi July 2004 6,305 4,244 300
Late-successional
reserves
Berry July 2004 12,834 9,923 0
Fiddler July 2004 14,482 10,613 0
Hobson July 2004 7,319 3,810 0
Lazy August 2004 5,581 875 4,706
McGuire June 2005 2,104 866 0
Steed August 2004 6,074 4,572 0
Wafer August 2004 688 436 0
Total 67,054 43,716 5,006
Source: Forest Service Automated Timber Sale Accounting System.
Through 2005, the agency had sold nothing in the inventoried roadless
areas but decided in spring 2006 that it would offer two sales-Mike's
Gulch and Blackberry-in these areas. In the records of decision, the
forest staff had identified salvage harvest units in the inventoried
roadless areas of the forest with a total of 194 million board feet
available. In laying out salvage sales, the forest staff planned to offer
about 38.1 million board feet in the two sales and determined that the
remaining harvest units did not have enough merchantable timber left for
sale. The forest staff selected the sale areas that had the better timber
volume and would have the least effect on roadless and potential future
wilderness values. Mike's Gulch was advertised and sold in June 2006; the
forest staff sold 261 acres with about 9.3 million board feet for about
$300,000. In August 2006, the forest staff sold almost 7.9 million board
feet on 274 acres in the Blackberry sale for almost $1.7 million.
In addition to the salvage sales that resulted from the Biscuit Fire
Recovery Project EIS and records of decision, the forest staff completed
eight salvage sales of timber using a categorical exclusion that did not
require the preparation of an EIS. These sales involved trees that the
forest staff identified as hazardous because they could fall on roads. In
addition, the forest conducted six deck tree sales. The hazard and deck
tree sales were sold in 2003, while the development of the Biscuit Fire
Recovery Project was ongoing. The deck sales were completed in 2003, while
the hazardous trees were harvested primarily in 2004. Table 2 shows the
individual sales and timber volumes harvested.
Table 2: Biscuit Fire Hazard and Deck Tree Salvage Sales and Volumes
through December 2005
Sale name Volume removed (in thousand board feet)
Hazard sales
Raspberry 2,565
Indigo 1,798
Qcamp 11
River Six 1,851
Baby Onion 1,517
Bald Bear 3,251
Game Horse 3,105
Chetco 594
Deck sales
North 339
South 198
Chetco 32
North End II 138
Buckskin II 45
Dasher II 46
Total 15,489
Source: Forest Service Automated Timber Sale Accounting System.
Although all salvage sales planned in the EIS and records of decision are
not complete, the acres and amount of timber salvaged in the matrix and
late-successional reserve areas were much less than anticipated by the
forest staff in the EIS. In the records of decision, the forest staff
estimated that it would sell about 367 million board feet of salvage
timber, which would be removed from 18,939 acres. Through December 2005,
44 million board feet have been removed from 3,700 acres, and an
additional 15 million board feet have been removed from the hazard and
deck tree sales. In a March 2006 report,21 the forest staff identified the
following two reasons that the amount sold is much less than they had
estimated:
o Overestimation: The original amount of timber available for harvest was
overestimated for three reasons. First, the forest staff had difficulty
applying the legal requirements in the Northwest Forest Plan to protect
late-successional reserve habitat and riparian corridors. The staff had
adjusted the timber volume estimates in the EIS to remove
late-successional reserve habitat and riparian reserves. After the
issuance of the EIS and records of decision, when the staff planned the
sales, they discovered more riparian areas that needed protection and
identified more trees that they needed to leave to meet habitat
requirements. Second, the forest staff discovered that the hazard salvage
sale volumes had not been removed from the EIS volumes. Third, the volume
estimates based on remote sensing data were inaccurate-when the forest
staff visited the sale sites and viewed the actual trees rather than
photos or images, the trees were either alive or not large enough for
sale.
o Decay: The amount of timber that would be lost to decay was
underestimated. Although the forest staff estimated decay rates
accurately, the EIS estimate was based on one-third of the timber harvest
occurring in 2004 rather than 2005, when most of the salvage harvesting
actually occurred. In planning the sales, the forest staff determined that
more trees had decayed than they had estimated in the EIS. As such, they
removed some sale units and acres because the trees no longer had
commercial value or there were too few trees with remaining value to make
the sale unit economical to harvest.
In addition, the March 2006 report identified 8,174 acres from inventoried
roadless areas that had not been harvested due to ongoing litigation. In
April 2005, the Forest Service agreed with plaintiffs in one of the cases
pending before the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon not to
harvest in the inventoried roadless areas until a new roadless rule had
been finalized.22 The rule was finalized in May 2005. In August 2005, the
state of Oregon and two other states-California and New Mexico-filed a
lawsuit asserting that the Forest Service rescinded the 2001 roadless rule
without carrying out the environmental analysis NEPA requires.23
Throughout 2005, the Forest Service held ongoing discussions with the
Governor of Oregon to delay action on inventoried roadless area sales to
await a decision on one of several lawsuits before the U.S. District Court
for the District of Oregon challenging the adequacy of the EIS for the
Biscuit Fire Recovery Project. According to Forest Service officials, they
were trying to avoid further litigation concerning the roadless area
sales. In February 2006, the district court rejected the challenge. In
June 2006, after the forest staff auctioned the first inventoried roadless
area sale-Mike's Gulch-an environmental group challenged this sale in
district court, alleging that the Forest Service violated NEPA by not
preparing a supplemental EIS to review significant new information
concerning adverse environmental effects of salvage logging within
inventoried roadless areas. The court refused to issue a preliminary
injunction against the sale, holding that the environmental group was
unlikely to prevail. In July 2006, the plaintiffs in the states' roadless
rule case moved for a temporary restraining order against the sale. After
the Mike's Gulch purchaser agreed not to start operations until August 4,
2006, the plaintiffs withdrew the motion. The purchaser began harvesting
on August 7, 2006. The purchaser of the Blackberry sale began harvest on
August 28, 2006.
Forest Service and Other Agencies Spent an Estimated $5 Million for the
Biscuit Fire Salvage Sales from Fiscal Years 2003 through 2005, and Forest
Service Plans to Spend $5.7 Million of the $8.8 Million in Receipts from
Sales
From fiscal years 2003 through 2005, the Forest Service reported that it
spent an estimated $4.6 million to plan, prepare, and administer the
salvage sales in the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project, while other agencies
spent an estimated $350,000. Forest Service expenditures include NEPA
planning, salvage sale preparation, and administration for fiscal years
2003 through 2005, and indirect activities that support the Forest
Products program-such as information technology, budget, financial, and
public affairs activities.24 Other agencies' expenditures were for
activities related to Biscuit Fire salvage sales, including Department of
Agriculture and Department of Justice attorneys' legal services in
litigation over the salvage sales through 2005.25 Table 3 shows the Forest
Service's and other agencies' estimated expenditures on the Project
salvage sales by fiscal year. Appendix I discusses the methodology used to
estimate Forest Service expenditures.
Table 3: Estimated Expenditures on Biscuit Fire Salvage Sales, Fiscal
Years 2003 through 2005
Agency 2003 2004 2005 Total
Forest Servicea $1,250,000 $2,489,000 $906,000 $4,646,000
Agricultureb 12,000 13,000 9,000 34,000
Justicec 0 87,000 226,000 313,000
Total $1,262,000 $2,600,000 $1,100,000 $4,993,000
Sources: Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, and Department of
Justice.
Note: Numbers may not add due to rounding.
aIncludes law enforcement overtime and travel, but not regular law
enforcement salaries because these are not tracked by sale. According to
Forest Service officials, the funds were not new funds but were taken from
existing budgets.
bIncludes Office of General Counsel salaries, including 32.85 percent for
benefits. According to General Counsel officials, the funds were not new
funds but were taken from existing budgets.
cIncludes attorney salaries, including 29.54 percent for benefits and
travel. According to department officials, the funds were taken from
existing budgets.
As the Project's salvage sales are not complete and work will continue
through at least fiscal year 2006, additional expenditures for the salvage
sales can be expected. Also, the forest staff plans to spend $5.7 million
in the next several years to remove brush, reforest the sale areas, and
repair and maintain roads. This figure is based on collections of salvage
sale receipts collected and deposited into the K-V Fund, Brush Disposal
Fund, road maintenance account, and other accounts to pay for work in the
Biscuit Fire salvage sale areas. The Brush Disposal Fund is a permanent
fund created to allow the deposit of funds to pay for certain brush
disposal work on all timber sales, including salvage sales. Forest Service
staff complete brush disposal work using funds collected as an additional
charge to the purchaser based on the amounts paid for the trees harvested.
The funds are deposited in the Brush Disposal Fund, and the agency
generally seeks to spend them within 3 years of the completion of the
sale. The road maintenance account is a trust fund created with
purchasers' deposits for roadwork that is then conducted by the Forest
Service.
In total, for the 12 salvage sales and 14 hazard and deck sales completed
through 2005, the forest staff collected more than $8.8 million. Of this
amount, about $3.7 million was collected from the Project's salvage sales,
while more than $5.1 million was collected from the sale of hazard and
deck trees. Table 4 shows the revenues generated for the Project's sales,
as well as the hazard and deck tree sales.
Table 4: Revenues Collected from Biscuit Fire Salvage Sales through
December 2005
Deposits
Sale type Sale Brush Road Other Total
receipts disposal maintenance
Hazard and deck $4,528,933 $411,371 $175,074 $33,285 $5,148,664
sales
Matrix and $2,245,145 $826,424 $362,507 $256,068 $3,690,145
late-successional
reserve sales
Total $6,774,078 $1,237,795 $537,582 $289,353 $8,838,809
Source: Forest Service Automated Timber Sale Accounting System.
Note: Numbers may not add due to rounding.
Of the total receipts collected, about $6.8 million was collected as
revenue for the sales, and about $2.1 million was collected as deposits
for brush disposal, road maintenance, and other work. From the $6.8
million, the forest staff deposited $3.7 million into the K-V Fund for
reforestation and other rehabilitation work associated with the sale and
the fire; most of the remaining funds were deposited into the Salvage Sale
Fund to support future salvage sales in the region. Of the $2.1 million in
deposits, about $1.2 million was deposited into the Brush Disposal Fund,
$538,000 was deposited for road maintenance, and about $290,000 was
deposited for other purposes that include contracts for companies that
weigh and measure the harvested trees-called scaling contracts.
A Comparison of the Financial and Economic Results with EIS Estimates Is
Difficult
While the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project contains estimates of the
financial and economic results of the salvage sales for each proposed
alternative, a comparison of the estimates with the results is difficult.
First, the incomplete sales mean that financial and economic data for the
salvage sales are also incomplete, which makes a comparison of the sales'
financial and economic results with the EIS results premature.
Furthermore, even with complete sales data, the comparison of the
estimates with final sales' results is complicated by methodological
differences related to the way the expenditure estimates and results are
calculated and a lack of comparable economic data.
The Biscuit Fire Recovery Project EIS estimated that the salvage sales
planned under the alternative selected by the Forest Supervisor would cost
about $24 million to prepare, administer, and reforest and would generate
about $19.6 million in revenues for the government-about $13 million from
sales receipts and $6.6 million for brush disposal deposits. These funds,
according to the Project EIS, would be available to help pay for postfire
recovery activities. In addition to financial revenues for the federal
government, the EIS estimated the economic effects of the salvage sales
for each alternative. The Project EIS estimated the direct and indirect
economic effects of the sales in each alternative for five counties in
southwest Oregon-Coos, Curry, Douglas, Jackson, and Josephine-and examined
the economic sectors affected by the salvage sales, such as wood
manufacturing, construction, and retail trade. The EIS estimated that the
salvage logging in the selected alternative of the EIS would generate
about 6,900 local jobs and $240 million to the regional economy related to
the harvesting and processing of the timber.26
Because the Forest Service held two additional salvage sales for the
Project in 2006, it is premature to compare the forest's financial and
economic results with the estimates in the EIS. With additional sales, the
Forest Service will have additional, unknown expenditures and revenues,
making the total results on all sales unknown and incomparable with the
estimated results. A comparison of the results through 2005 with the EIS
estimates could be made if the estimates were available on a sale-by-sale
basis; however, according to a Forest Service official, the EIS estimates
are averaged across the sales and are reported as a total only, not
separately for each sale. Unlike typical timber sales that have
well-defined units and volumes, the EIS estimates were necessarily
formulated using several broad assumptions about the salvage sale units
and the timber volume available in them, as well as harvesting methods and
average purchaser costs. Because the forest staff ultimately ended up
changing sale units and recombining units in different sales, the units in
the EIS estimate differ from those ultimately sold. According to a Forest
Service official, these assumptions and average prices would cause the
estimate to be less precise, but they had to be made because the size of
the fire and the number of sales prevented the forest staff from making
more precise estimates. Similarly, the economic estimates cannot be
compared with the sale results because the appropriate regional data, such
as jobs created by salvage sales, cannot be calculated until the sales are
complete.
Although a comparison of the financial results of the Project's salvage
sales is premature because the sale results are incomplete, an examination
of the volume and prices paid-both components of revenue-indicates that
the EIS overestimated volume and underestimated prices received for
potential sales. The amount of timber volume sold and removed from the 12
salvage sales was much less than the EIS estimated was available. The EIS
estimated that 173 million board feet out of the total 367 million board
feet, or 47 percent of the total timber volume estimated for sale, would
be available in the matrix and late-successional reserve areas, while the
remaining 194 million board feet would be available in the inventoried
roadless areas. By the end of 2005, the forest staff had sold 67 million
board feet from the matrix and late-successional reserves. With regard to
price, the EIS estimated that the timber sales would generate receipts of
$37 per thousand board feet. The actual price received for the 12 salvage
sales averaged $47 per thousand board feet, while the actual price
received for the hazard sales averaged $293 per thousand board feet and
for the deck sales averaged $397 per thousand board feet. The difference
in prices received reflects some difference in quality due to the fact
that the hazard and deck trees were removed a year or so earlier. It also
reflects the fact that the hazard sales are near a road and deck sales are
already logged, which would mean a purchaser would have minimal or no
logging costs.
Even when the salvage sales are complete and final data are available on
sale expenditures, revenues, and economic results, certain methodological
factors complicate the comparison of the sale results with the EIS
estimates. Specifically, the Forest Service's estimated expenditures and
those estimated in the EIS were calculated for different purposes and,
therefore, do not contain the same items. For example, the EIS estimates
do not include expenditures on NEPA, indirect costs, or law enforcement
and litigation, while the forest's estimated expenditures for fiscal years
2003 through 2005 do include these expenditures. According to a Forest
Service official, the purpose of the EIS is to compare alternatives and
assess the differences among alternatives, therefore certain costs that
are the same for each alternative, such as NEPA and indirect costs, are
not included. On the other hand, the expenditures reported by the forest
staff for fiscal years 2003 through 2005 include those expenditures that
can be allotted to salvage sales-such as NEPA expenditures-for the purpose
of showing full expenditures related to the Biscuit Fire salvage sales. A
comparison of these amounts would be complicated by adjustments and
assumptions that would need to be made to facilitate the comparison.
With regard to the economic analysis, even at the completion of the sales,
the Forest Service does not conduct the type of analysis needed to report
the actual economic results of the sales, which would allow a comparison
with the estimates. The needed analysis would require the collection of
appropriate economic data, as well as formulation of appropriate economic
models to clearly separate the effects of salvage sales on jobs and on the
economy of the region from effects of other concurrent regional and
national factors. This retrospective analysis is difficult but could be
done; however, according to a Forest Service official, the agency does not
typically conduct the analysis needed to report these results because the
primary reason for preparing EIS estimates is to compare the relative
economic effects of salvage alternatives and not to provide a precise
prediction of the results of the sales. However, given that the volume of
timber sold through December 2005 is substantially less than the volume of
sales assumed in the EIS for the selected alternative, we would expect the
actual economic results of the sales to be less than the EIS estimate, all
else being equal.
Other Biscuit Fire Recovery Project Activities Are Under Way, but Depend
on Harvest Activity, Schedules, Sale Revenues, and Other Funding
The Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest staff have begun implementing
other activities in the Project's records of decision but completing these
activities depends on the extent of salvage sales, workload schedules,
salvage sale revenues, and other funding. In the Project's records of
decision, the forest staff included numerous activities to help burned
areas recover, including postsale activities such as reforestation that
would be conducted in salvage sale areas. Table 5 shows the key activities
included in the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project records of decision and the
amount of work planned and completed for each through December 2005. The
forest staff have begun work on reforestation, brush disposal, and road
maintenance but the extent of this work depends, in large part, on the
amount of salvage harvest activity that occurs. The forest staff have also
begun work on fuel management zones and wildlife habitat activities-which
are planned for both within and outside the salvage sale areas-but
completing this work depends on uncertain schedules and funding sources.
In addition to the activities in table 5, the records of decision for the
Project proposed a large-scale study of postfire management activities
such as salvage harvest and fuel management zones, and monitoring of the
Project's activities. The forest staff are still planning these
activities, which are not yet funded.
Table 5: Work Planned and Completed through December 2005
Project activity Work planned Work completed
through December 2005
Brush disposal-activity fuel treatment 18,939 554
(acres)
Reforestation (acres) 30,278 706
Road maintenance (miles) 559 307
Fuel management zone creation (miles) 285 15
Wildlife habitat restoration-seeding 6,800 715
(acres)
Wildlife habitat restoration-meadow 700 0
encroachment reduction (acres)
Source: GAO analysis of Forest Service documents.
Work Under Way on Brush Disposal, Reforestation, and Road Maintenance
Activities, but Extent of Work Needed Depends on Levels of Harvest
Through December 2005, forest staff had begun work on brush disposal,
reforestation, and road maintenance activities. These activities have
funding sources because the Forest Service collects and deposits sale
revenues for brush disposal and reforestation activities and because much
of the road maintenance work is conducted by the sale purchaser. However,
the amount of work that the forest planned to accomplish for each of these
activities has changed as a result of the amount of timber sold and
harvested in the Biscuit Fire salvage sales. For example, the amount of
brush disposal work-an estimated 18,939 acres in the records of
decision-will be reduced because the acres where salvage harvest will be
done have been reduced.
Brush Disposal
As shown in table 5, the forest staff have accomplished 554 acres of brush
disposal, also referred to as slash disposal or activity fuel treatment.
After a salvage sale, forest staff are responsible for brush disposal,
which usually entails burning piles or areas that are covered with
vegetative debris from the sale such as stumps, chunks of wood, broken
tree tops, tree limbs and branches, rotten wood, or damaged brush
resulting from salvage logging operations. In general, under the Biscuit
Fire salvage sale contracts, the purchasers were required to create piles
of such debris on the acres logged before the forest staff conducted their
brush disposal work.
While the forest staff had planned to accomplish almost 18,939 acres of
brush disposal, they have revised the total amount needed to about 3,000
acres because the acres sold for salvage harvest were much less than
anticipated-about 3,700 acres through December 2005. The forest staff do
not need to conduct brush disposal if the anticipated salvage sales do not
occur. In addition, the forest staff said that they will not conduct work
on every single acre of a salvage sale unit because, in some cases, the
treatment is not needed. As of the end of December 2005, the forest staff
have collected $826,000 in the Brush Disposal Fund for the Biscuit Fire
salvage sales.
Reforestation
As of December 2005, the forest staff had planted 706 acres of trees. The
Forest Service plants trees to help reforest areas where trees have been
removed by natural events such as wildland fire, or by timber harvest,
that might not recover naturally. In the Project records of decision, the
forest staff estimated that they would plant trees on about 30,000 acres,
including 18,939 acres in the areas that would be salvage harvested, and
about 11,000 acres that had been burned but not harvested. On the
harvested acres, the forest staff plan to conduct reforestation work after
the salvage sales are closed and brush disposal is completed. The
estimated 30,000 acres of planting will be reduced because the forest
staff will not need to plant acres that were planned for salvage but will
not be harvested. In addition to the reforestation activity identified in
the Project records of decision, the forest staff replanted 8,935 acres
through 2005 under a categorical exclusion to restore plantations-areas to
be managed for future timber harvest-destroyed by the Biscuit Fire. This
work was funded from appropriated funds and reforestation trust funds.
In general, planting work that occurs in salvage sale areas is funded from
sale revenues collected and deposited into the K-V Fund, while planting
outside of sale areas is funded through the forest's appropriated funds
for vegetation management. For sale area reforestation, the K-V plans
identified about $4.6 million worth of work to plant the harvested areas.
About $2.7 million was deposited into the K-V Fund for planting
activities, although the plans are not yet final and, according to forest
staff, funds can be shifted to projects needing them until the plans are
final. The Forest Service retains these funds for use in the salvage sale
area and generally uses them within 5 years after the sale is closed to
complete reforestation. During the 5 years after a sale is completed,
forest staff inspect the areas to determine the extent of growth of
planted seedlings and naturally grown seedlings. In some cases, the Forest
Service determines that sufficient numbers of trees have grown in the area
naturally, and the planned reforestation work will not be needed.
According to agency guidance, if this occurs before the sale is
administratively closed, the K-V funds can be
used to fund other activities planned for the sale area, such as wildlife
habitat restoration.27
Road Maintenance
As of December 2005, 307 miles of the 559 miles of road maintenance had
been completed. Road maintenance activities, which include blading,
grading, and gravel replacement on Forest Service roads, were conducted by
the purchasers as part of the salvage sale contracts. The 559 miles
identified in the records of decision include all the roads in the
forest's road system; however, according to forest engineers, not all
roads will receive treatment because only the roads used by purchasers
while they are harvesting the Biscuit Fire salvage sales are maintained
under contract. Furthermore, some roads may receive two or more treatments
because roads that are used for two or more sales are maintained under
each contract. In addition to the road maintenance planned for the
Project, 176 miles of roads were maintained by the purchasers during and
after the hazard and deck sales-some of them the same roads that were
treated under the Project sales.
In addition to the maintenance performed by the purchaser, the purchasers
made deposits into a road maintenance account. The forest staff will use
these deposits to pay for work, such as asphalt resurfacing, on roads used
by multiple purchasers. The deposits were collected in addition to the
price paid for the salvage sale and were based, in part, on the volume of
timber harvested from each sale. As of December 2005, more than $360,000
had been deposited in the road maintenance account to be used to maintain
roads in the future.
Work Is Under Way on Fuel Management Zones and Wildlife Rehabilitation,
but Funding and Schedules Are Uncertain
As of the end of 2005, the forest staff had also begun fuel management and
wildlife rehabilitation activities identified in the Biscuit Fire Recovery
Project records of decision, but completing these activities will depend
on the Forest Service funding and scheduling the work over many years (see
table 5). As of June 2006, the forest staff have not specified funding
sources or work schedules for completing these activities.
Fuel Management Zones
As shown in table 5, by the end of 2005, the forest staff had completed
almost 15 miles of fuel management zones.28 These fuel management zones
are concentrated along roads and ridges, as well as the perimeter of the
Biscuit Fire. They are areas where vegetation or fuels-trees and brush
that act as fuel for wildland fires-have been reduced to help create a
space where firefighters can be more successful suppressing future fires.
Maintaining them requires periodic efforts to burn or cut down brush and
trees that grow in the areas. The Project's records of decision show that
the forest staff plan to maintain about 285 miles of these fuel reduction
zones in the matrix, late-successional reserves, and inventoried roadless
areas, as shown in figure 6.
Figure 6: Map of Biscuit Fire Recovery Project Fuel Management Zones
The forest staff do not have a schedule for developing fuel management
zones and have not requested additional funds for the work. According to a
forest official, most of the work to date has been incidental to salvage
sale work in areas where salvage sales touched on identified fuel
management zone areas. The official explained that creating and
maintaining fuel management zones identified in the records of decision
must be done in addition to fuel reduction work needed in areas adjoining
developed or urban areas, called the wildland-urban interface. The
official stated that funding priorities for fuel reduction work are
concentrated in the wildland-urban interface because this is where human
life and high value property are most at risk. The forest staff has
identified numerous projects in this area that need to be completed, and
the fuel management zone work would not have as high a priority for
funding.
Wildlife Habitat Rehabilitation
By the end of 2005, the forest staff had accomplished 715 acres of
seeding-scattering grass seeds in meadows to increase the amount of
vegetation and enhance native grasses-to improve wildlife habitat. In
addition to seeding, wildlife restoration work can involve removing trees
and shrubs to reduce their encroachment into grasslands and meadows. Such
work provides forage for grazing wildlife, including deer and elk, and
provides habitat for birds such as the purple martin.
In the Project records of decision, the forest wildlife staff planned to
accomplish 6,800 acres of seeding and 700 acres of meadow encroachment
work. As with fuel management zones, the forest staff have not scheduled
or requested additional appropriated funds to accomplish the work. While
the staff included about $1.3 million of projects in K-V plans for the
Biscuit Fire salvage sales, salvage sale revenues were sufficient to fund
about one-third of the planned work. Forest staff stated that it is still
possible for K-V funds to become available to fund wildlife projects if
the funds are not used for reforestation or planting work; however, if K-V
funds are not available, the wildlife projects planned for the Biscuit
Fire area will compete for funding with other wildlife projects outside
the fire area.
Research and Monitoring Are Being Planned, but Funding and Schedules Are
Uncertain
The Project records of decision include a large-scale adaptive management
study of postfire activities, such as salvage harvest and prescribed
burns, and monitoring of the progress and results of the Project. These
activities will be implemented over many years and depend on other
activities to be accomplished. The forest staff are still planning these
activities and completing them depends on schedules and funding sources.
Although the staff have developed a tentative schedule for the monitoring
program, they have not developed a schedule for the adaptive management
study. The study includes some activities that are part of the forest's
regular work but also includes work that would be desirable if funding can
be identified. Similarly, while some monitoring work was intended to be
conducted as part of the forest's regular program work, several of the
monitoring items have been designated as desirable depending on funding
sources.
Adaptive Management Study
At the time of our review, the forest staff had just begun planning for
the large-scale adaptive management study included in the Project. The
study includes a management experiment to learn about and adapt different
management actions in postfire vegetation across a broad landscape. The
objectives of the study are to compare the results of different postfire
management strategies designed to restore and protect habitat for
late-successional reserves and old-growth related species. With the help
of Forest Service researchers, a study plan was written to design the
study, identify comparable areas of the forest in which to conduct
different treatments, design the vegetation treatments, and identify
monitoring needed for the projects. The treatments include salvage and
replanting, natural recovery, and prescribed burns, which will set the
areas on different pathways for recovery that will be monitored for
significant differences.
Completion of the study depends on the completion of other Project
activities. The treatments cannot be completed unless other
activities-namely the salvage sales and fuel management zones-are
completed. In addition, one of the treatments included in the study
involves prescribed burning, but the forest staff have not yet issued a
record of decision for prescribed burning activities that it studied in
the EIS. Completion also depends on activities being conducted in the
areas chosen for the study. The EIS identified 12 areas of about 3,000
acres each as locations for the study. At the time of our review, because
the acres of salvage sale had been reduced, about half of the study areas
were available. According to the researchers who designed the work, the
study is still viable, despite the reduction in areas subject to different
treatments.
Implementing the study depends on the forest staff scheduling the
activities identified as needed and determining which forest program will
conduct and fund the work. The Project EIS outlined the study's activities
and identified those that the forest staff could undertake in their normal
workload and additional activities that should be accomplished but were
not funded. The Pacific Northwest Research Station paid for and conducted
initial work in the area by gathering remote sensing data of the burned
area to establish a baseline for future assessments of vegetation
conditions and how the three different treatments may affect the
vegetation differently. While there is still time to set up the study, the
Pacific Northwest Research Station recommended that a committee or board
be established to ensure that the needed activities are conducted. The
forest officials had not taken action on this recommendation at the time
of our review.
Monitoring
The Biscuit Fire Recovery Project records of decision identify a number of
monitoring activities, with three purposes: (1) to assure that all aspects
of the Project are implemented as intended, (2) to determine that certain
critical activities have the desired effect, and (3) to allow changes to
occur if activities are found to have been implemented incorrectly or have
undesired effects. The records of decision and the final EIS identify some
of the monitoring activities, as required to meet policy or standards,
while the final EIS identifies other monitoring activities as desired,
which refers to monitoring that would provide important information for
future projects and administrative studies.
At the time of our review, the forest staff reported that they had
conducted some of the monitoring associated with salvage sales from the
records of decision, which included monitoring
o planting sites and site preparation,
o the number of snags and down trees retained on salvage sale sites,
o activities to mitigate the effect of noxious weeds,
o marking used during salvage sales to ensure compliance with harvest
requirements and marking guides,
o activities to mitigate threats to threatened and endangered species, and
o specific aspects of activities identified for protecting threatened and
endangered species.
According to forest staff, this monitoring is carried out by timber sale
administrators as they visit and inspect sale sites. Their findings are
included in inspection reports that are part of the timber sale contract
files. The administrators can also determine whether best management
practices have been followed for the timber sales, which include actions
to reduce soil erosion and runoff from sale areas. According to forest
staff, these practices can be separate activities or they can be part of
the design of the timber sale. For example, a best management practice can
include designing a timber sale to use cable or helicopter logging rather
than tractor logging to reduce soil disturbance and erosion.
For the other monitoring identified in the records of decision, the forest
staff have drafted a plan that states whether each activity is required to
meet policy or standards, suggests the frequency with which monitoring
should take place, and outlines monitoring parameters and techniques. For
example, the plan identifies the need to monitor noxious weed treatments
after 1 to 5 years and after 5 to 10 years by using field visits to
examine treated sites to determine whether treatments have removed
populations of weeds. The plan does not, however, identify which forest
staff will conduct the monitoring or which forest funds will be used to
accomplish the work.
The Project records of decision stated that monitoring results would be
made available to the public. The unique nature of the Biscuit Fire and
the significance of the Project activities underscore the importance of
this information for showing the Congress and the public the extent of
recovery work accomplished and remaining to be done. However, monitoring
the status of the Project's activities is not included in the monitoring
plan. Further, the forest staff do not report annual accomplishments for
the Biscuit Fire separately from their other program accomplishments. The
activities in the Project are being implemented by the forest's regular
programs, including Forest Products, Natural Resources, and others.
Although a forest monitoring report for 2004 includes activities conducted
in the Biscuit Fire, forest staff did not comprehensively report on the
status of activities in the Project such as salvage sales, reforestation,
road maintenance, wildlife habitat rehabilitation, fuel management zones,
and others. Without such information, the forest staff cannot report on
the status and results of the Project, as described in the records of
decision.
Forest Made Operational Changes and Assessed Fines to Address Improper
Logging That Occurred in Three Locations
During the hazard and salvage sales conducted in areas burned by the
Biscuit Fire, the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest staff received and
investigated numerous complaints of logging in areas where it should not
have occurred. The forest staff confirmed three instances of improper
logging and determined that two were the result of errors on the part of
the forest staff, and one was an error by the timber purchaser. The forest
staff attributed most of the other alleged cases of improper logging to
disagreements over the definition of a riparian area and, after further
review, dismissed them. Forest Service officials admit that the confirmed
cases of improper logging were serious errors and have taken steps to
prevent such occurrences on future salvage sales.
Forest Staff Made Mistakes Leading to Two Incidents of Improper Logging
but Plan to Better Mark Boundaries
The forest staff acknowledge that mistakes resulted in improper logging in
two cases, one that occurred in the Babyfoot Lake Botanical Area adjacent
to the Fiddler salvage sale-one of the 12 salvage sales in the Biscuit
Fire Recovery Project-and another in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness Area
adjacent to the Bald Bear hazard sale. In both cases, forest officials
identified actions to improve the marking of boundaries for timber and
salvage sales.
Babyfoot Lake Botanical Area-Fiddler Salvage Sale
Babyfoot Lake is a 350-acre area within the Siskiyou National Forest
designated as a botanical area because it contains several rare species
such as Brewer's spruce, a spruce that grows in southwest Oregon and
northern California. Botanical areas are specific management areas
designated in forest plans that require natural management and allow
researchers to study plants in their natural state. As such, timber
harvest should not occur in the area. However, during the Fiddler salvage
sale, about 16 acres of the botanical area adjacent to the sale were
harvested. This incursion was discovered by members of a local
environmental group in August 2005. A total of 292 tree stumps were
counted within the area.
According to the District Ranger in whose area the incident occurred and
who investigated the incident, a series of occurrences led to the improper
logging:
o During the fall of 2003 and spring of 2004, the Fiddler sale was being
planned on maps and on the ground. In December 2003, the timber officer
responsible for the Fiddler sale left the forest staff and from that time
through January 2005, the position was filled by two detailees from
different ranger districts and by the District Ranger.
o In the fall of 2003, the Forest Service staff used maps and a global
positioning system to paint and flag the boundary of the Fiddler sale
units, including a unit near Babyfoot Lake. During the winter, the timber
staff discovered that the botanical area was included in the sale unit on
the map. The boundary that should have followed a ridge top next to a road
was instead drawn farther down the hill in the botanical area. The map was
corrected, and the timber staff determined that they would need to repaint
and remove flags from the unit boundaries in the spring when the weather
improved and they could visit the site.
o In the spring of 2004, the correct boundary of the Fiddler sale units
was painted by helicopter-a new technique that was being tested on the
Biscuit Fire areas-following the correct boundary from the map. However,
no one removed the flags and paint from the incorrect boundary, resulting
in two boundaries marked on the sale unit. The timber sale
administrator-the staff person responsible for monitoring the sale units
during the salvage operations-did not notice this discrepancy while
reviewing the sale units just before the sale.
o During harvest operations in 2004, the timber sale administrator and the
purchaser followed the flags and painted trees, not the helicopter-painted
boundary, which was the correct one.
The District Ranger determined that this was a mistake on the part of the
timber staff and that the amount of communication among the timber staff
and oversight over the salvage sales were insufficient. She stated that
the staff were working quickly to plan sales and to prepare for sales as
soon as the records of decision with an emergency situation determination
were signed. The sales were sold 2 weeks after the records of decision
were signed.
The District Ranger stated that several simple actions were needed to
avoid similar problems in the future. In a report to the Forest
Supervisor, she stated that future sales should ensure that botanical
areas are marked on the sale map and flagged to distinguish them from the
sale boundaries. It was further suggested that timber sale procedures
include a checklist of items-such as botanical areas-for timber sale
administrators' reviews. In November 2005, the Department of Agriculture's
Office of Inspector General confirmed the error on the part of the forest
staff and stated that the proposed solutions sounded reasonable. According
to forest timber staff, the staff used an updated checklist to review the
layout of the Mike's Gulch sale held in June 2006. The sale units did not
contain a botanical area but bordered a research natural area that is to
be marked.
The District Ranger also asked for an assessment of actions that could be
taken to mitigate the damage that occurred from the salvage cutting and
has implemented some actions already. For example, the Forest Service did
not burn the slash in the area, as it normally would after a salvage
harvest, leaving the trees to decay naturally. As of June 2006, the
assessment and several actions had been recommended. For example, one of
the recommendations is to expand the boundaries of the botanical area to
include several areas of live Brewer's spruce outside the current
boundary; agency officials say this action would require the preparation
of an environmental analysis or EIS and perhaps an amendment to the
Siskiyou forest plan.
Kalmiopsis Wilderness Area-Bald Bear Hazard Sale
In 2003, the Forest Service sold hazardous trees along roads in the
Biscuit Fire area. One of the sales-the Bald Bear sale-occurred along a
road on the boundary of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness Area. Although timber
harvest and mechanized activities such as the use of chain saws are not
allowed in wilderness areas, about 16 trees within the Kalmiopsis
Wilderness Area were cut during the hazard sale. The District Ranger who
investigated this incident found the following:
o The road in the Bald Bear sale runs along the boundary of the Kalmiopsis
Wilderness Area; the boundary follows a ridgeline but where the terrain
flattens, the boundary is along the road. The boundary signs were burned
and difficult to see.
o The timber staff that marked the boundary for the sale called the forest
staff to verify the boundary and were told it was on the ridge. The timber
staff followed a line through the flat area, rather than the road, and
included a portion of wilderness in the sale area.
o The timber officer did not confirm at the site that the boundary was
accurate, which was important given its close proximity to the Kalmiopsis
Wilderness Area.
o An outside researcher informed forest staff about the boundary error.
The timber sale administrator directed the purchaser not to cut the area
until the boundary could be checked; however, when the administrator
arrived at the site, the trees had already been cut.
The District Ranger stated that the logging was a result of mistakes on
the part of the forest staff and the purchaser. Specifically, she noted
that checking the boundary was the timber officer's responsibility and
acknowledged that the timber staff did not discuss the proximity of the
Kalmiopsis Wilderness Area with the purchaser. Either of these activities
might have identified the mismarked boundary. In addition, she said the
purchaser failed to control its workforce after receiving notification of
the mistake.
The District Ranger asked the timber staff to identify actions to prevent
this problem in the future. She noted that the regional staff issued a
letter in 2004, prior to the incident, emphasizing the need to better
identify forest boundaries. According to forest timber staff, in marking
the Mike's Gulch sale in June 2006, the forest staff used surveyors to
identify the forest's boundaries with private lands, and planned to have
the surveyor mark the boundaries of the research natural area. The
District Ranger stated that she had her staff prepare a range of options
to mitigate the damage caused by the improper logging and, as of June
2006, had decided to leave the trees and stumps untouched since they are
near the road and not part of the pristine environment.
Timber Purchaser Improperly Cut Trees That Were Not Burned, and Forest
Staff Followed Contract Procedures in Fining Company
During the Wafer sale-another of the 12 salvage sales from the Project
records of decision-the purchaser cut 120 live, or "green," trees in
error. The purchaser caught the mistake and brought it to the attention of
the Forest Service timber sale administrator. The timber sale
administrator halted the sale and put the purchaser in breach of contract.
The purchaser stated that the cutting crew was inexperienced and,
therefore, made the mistake. The forest's contracting office required the
purchaser to pay $200 per tree, or $24,000, in penalties, and the green
trees were left in the forest.
This incident of improper logging was investigated by a Forest Service law
enforcement officer. According to the law enforcement official, because
the purchaser reported the improper logging, it is not likely that the
purchaser was attempting to steal the green trees. In addition, the forest
staff took action in response to the improper logging by putting the
purchaser in breach of contract. The sale contract clearly stated that all
green trees were to be protected. However, according to Forest Service
officials, accidental harvest of green trees can sometimes occur in large
salvage sale operations. While timber sale administrators inspect sales
periodically, they neither inspect the cutting operations on a day-to-day
basis nor control the purchaser's operations.
Forest Service Pursued Other Claims of Improper Logging
In addition to these three incidents, Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest
officials received numerous reports of improper logging from local
environmental groups who monitored the salvage sale operations. According
to a forest official, timber sale administrators and other forest staff
investigated these claims. The majority of these claims involved logging
in riparian reserves, which are 174-foot buffers on each side of a stream
or waterway that protect riparian habitat and water quality. Forest
officials stated that the agency's definition of a riparian area differs
from the definition used by the environmental groups. The Forest Service
defines a riparian area to be a channel with some evidence of sediment
having been moved, while the environmental groups identify a riparian area
as a depression in which water may flow. In reviewing these areas, forest
staff said they identified one riparian area that had been salvage
harvested and should not have been. However, it is difficult to know when
the stream appeared because according to forest staff, after logging, the
runoff from rain and precipitation is much higher and new "streams" are
created. Also, during wet years, more streams are created from the
increased runoff.
Another claim of improper logging had to do with salvage harvesting in a
botanical area. The same environmental group that discovered the Babyfoot
Lake harvest reported to the Forest Service that logging from the Steed
sale overlapped into the Sourgame Botanical Area. The forest staff
investigated this incident and determined that the environmental group had
used the larger of two boundaries, identified as alternatives, in the EIS
for the Siskiyou forest plan. The record of decision for the plan chose
the smaller area as the botanical area.
Conclusions
The Biscuit Fire Recovery Project generated considerable public interest
and controversy, particularly over treatment of the postfire landscape.
With the near completion of the Project's salvage sales, it is apparent
that much less was sold and removed through the salvage sales, changing
the need for such projects as brush disposal and reforestation. It remains
to be seen how much of the other recovery work-wildlife habitat
rehabilitation, fuel management zones, monitoring, and the adaptive
management study-will be accomplished given the lack of specific funding
and schedules. As the Project's activities are implemented over the next
several years, accountability for their accomplishment rests with the
Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest staff. One of the Project activities
with potentially significant results is the proposed large-scale adaptive
management study, which offers an opportunity to gather scientific
information with broad implications for recovery actions and postfire
salvage harvest elsewhere on Forest Service lands. Successful
implementation of the study and other Project activities will take
commitment on the part of the forest staff to coordinate the work over
several years. In light of the size and unique nature of the Biscuit Fire,
and continuing public interest in the recovery of the area, it is
important that the forest staff communicate the results of the Project to
the Congress and the public. The forest staff-and the Forest
Service-recognize the importance of providing information on the Project's
status and results to the public but do not report results in such a way
that makes the information readily available. Regular tracking and
reporting of the status of the Project's activities and results are
needed.
Recommendation for Executive Action
To help keep the Congress and the public informed on the status of the
Biscuit Fire Recovery Project and the significant research work on the
postfire effects of salvage and nonsalvage management actions, we
recommend that the Chief of the Forest Service direct the Rogue
River-Siskiyou National Forest Supervisor and the Pacific Northwest
Regional Forester to provide an annual public report on the status of the
activities included in the Project. The report should provide an update on
the status of work accomplished and still planned for each of the
activities in the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project EIS and records of
decision: fuel treatments, prescribed burning, salvage harvest, vegetation
and wildlife restoration, roads and water quality, and the large-scale
study. The agency should produce such reports until the Project is
substantially complete.
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation
We provided the Departments of Agriculture and Justice with a draft of
this report for review and comment. The Forest Service provided written
comments on behalf of the Department of Agriculture (see app. II). The
Department of Justice had no comments on the draft report. In its
comments, the Forest Service said that the report provided a good view of
the process, events, and Project through December 2005. The agency
generally agreed with our recommendation for the issuance of an annual
update on the status of Biscuit Fire recovery activities but suggested
that the time period for producing the report be limited to the next 3- to
5-year period. We stated in the recommendation that the reports should be
produced annually until the Project is complete and that may be 5 years or
longer given the nature of some of the recovery activities. For this
reason, we hesitate to provide a specific time limit but believe there is
value to providing the agency with some discretion about when they
discontinue the report. Therefore, we revised the recommendation to state
that the reports should be provided until the Project's activities are
substantially complete.
The Forest Service also stated that an explanation of the litigation,
controversies, and protests that occurred since December 2005 would
provide the readers an understanding of the complexities of trying to
manage fire projects. The report describes the status of sales through
2006, the emergency situation determination used to expedite the sales,
the effects of litigation on the sales, and delays in the inventoried
roadless area sales. We believe this discussion is sufficiently
descriptive of these events and, therefore, did not make any changes to
the report in response to this comment. The Forest Service also said that
the report does not make it clear that the planning processes and appeals
do greatly reduce the final timber harvest volumes. While the planning
process was a factor in the time taken to develop the EIS, we did not
evaluate the effects of the process on timber volumes because it was not
one of the objectives of this report. Also, the report does not discuss
the appeals process because the Forest Service used an emergency situation
determination, which eliminated the appeals process for 11 salvage sales.
Finally, the Forest Service also provided several clarifications of
technical information that we incorporated in the report as appropriate.
As agreed with your offices, unless you publicly announce the contents of
this report earlier, we plan no further distribution of this report until
18 days from the report date. At that time, we will send copies of this
report to interested congressional committees, the Secretary of
Agriculture, the Attorney General of the United States, the Chief of the
Forest Service, and other interested parties. We will also make copies
available to others upon request. In addition, the report will be
available at no charge on the GAO Web site at http://www.gao.gov.
or [email protected] Congressional Relations may be found on the last page
of this report. GAO staff who made major contributions to this report are
listed in appendix III. . Contact points for our Offices of Public Affairs
and
Robin M. Nazzaro Director, Natural Resources and Environment
Appendix I
Objectives, Scope, and Methodology
Our objectives were to determine (1) how the development of the Biscuit
Fire Recovery Project compared with the Forest Service's general approach
to postfire recovery; (2) the status of the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project
salvage sales and how the reported financial and economic results of the
sales compared with the Forest Service's initial estimates; (3) the status
of other activities identified in the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project; and
(4) the extent and cause of improper logging within the Biscuit Fire
Recovery Project, as reported by the Forest Service, and changes the
agency made to prevent such occurrences in the future.
To determine how the development of the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project
compared with the Forest Service's approach to postfire recovery efforts,
we developed information on the (1) general approach used by the Forest
Service to assess postfire conditions and identify rehabilitation and
restoration projects and (2) detailed process used by the Rogue
River-Siskiyou National Forest to develop the Biscuit Fire Recovery
Project. To develop information on the general approach, we first reviewed
available Forest Service guidance and directives on postfire management
and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). There is no final guidance
on postfire rehabilitation and restoration activities and, therefore, we
reviewed guidance for the Pacific Northwest Region and a draft national
strategy developed by the Interregional Ecosystem Management Coordination
Group to describe the general postfire recovery process. We also
interviewed Forest Service officials at headquarters, the Pacific
Northwest Region, and the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest about the
general approach. To develop the details of Project development, we
reviewed meeting minutes of the Project's interdisciplinary team and a
forest advisory group during the development of the Project and its
environmental impact statement (EIS) in 2003 and 2004. We also interviewed
forest and regional staff involved in the development and review of the
Project and EIS. To facilitate the interviews, we developed a time line of
key events, which we provided to officials before the interviews. We also
interviewed the key decision makers in the process-the Forest Supervisor,
Regional Forester, Deputy Chief for the National Forest System, and
Undersecretary and Deputy Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural
Resources and Environment to determine their roles in the process and in
the final records of decision for the Project.
To determine the status of the Project's salvage sales, we obtained and
analyzed information on the sales proposed in the Project's records of
decision. We gathered sale data from the Forest Service's Automated Timber
Sale Accounting System including sale name, acres sold, volume harvested,
receipts, and receipts disposition. We also gathered this information for
sales held prior to the issuance of the Project EIS-sales of hazard trees
and trees cut from fire lines during the active fighting of the Biscuit
Fire. We gathered this information as of December 2005 to ensure that we
captured volume harvested and receipts paid for timber harvested in the
fall of 2005 but for which the financial data were captured a month or two
later. To determine whether the timber receipts data were reliable for our
purposes, we interviewed Forest Service financial officials about the
Timber Sale Accounting System and operations and controls over data and
data reliability, as well as reviewing the system documentation. Through
this process, we determined that the data are reliable for reporting the
status of the Biscuit Fire salvage sales and receipts.
To gather information on the Forest Service's expenditures on the
Project's salvage sales, we had to identify what activities and budget
line items are related to salvage sales because the Forest Service does
not report financial data on a sale-by-sale basis. We gathered information
for fiscal years 2003 through 2005 because this was the period during
which the Forest Service conducted work to plan and implement the Project
and its salvage sales and because 2005 is the last fiscal year for which
complete financial data are available. To identify what activities are
associated with salvage sales, we reviewed the Forest Service timber sale
preparation handbook that describes what activities to include in the
financial analysis of a timber sale. We also interviewed Forest Service
personnel about what activities and expenditures should be included in a
full accounting for a timber sale, including a salvage harvest sale.
Finally, we obtained and reviewed previous Forest Service reports that
referred to the total cost of its timber sale program and reviewed the
activities and expenditures included in those estimates.1 We then worked
with the financial staff of the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest to
identify the expenditures for a range of activities included in these
reports: NEPA planning, timber sale preparation, timber sale
administration, reforestation activities, timber
stand improvement activities, and forest indirect expenditures.2 Most of
these expenditures occurred from two budget line items-one for
appropriated timber funds and one for the Salvage Sale Fund. We also
included an estimate of regional and Washington Office expenditures.
Because the Forest Service does not account for the costs of timber sales,
we had no basis to allocate regional and Washington expenditures and as a
result, used the forest's assessment rate for regional and Washington
Office costs for the Salvage Sale Fund. The rate, 5.2 percent, was charged
to all Salvage Sale Fund plans by the forest staff in fiscal years 2001
through 2005 to collect funding to pay for regional and Washington Office
activities. Finally, because law enforcement and litigation are activities
directly related to salvage sales, we obtained expenditures from the
Forest Service's law enforcement regional office located in Portland,
Oregon, and from the Department of Agriculture's Office of General Counsel
and the Department of Justice's Environment and Natural Resources Division
for their work related to litigation and other legal services for the
salvage sales. The law enforcement expenditures represent overtime and
travel expenditures for officers who worked on the Biscuit Fire salvage
sales; the expenditures for the Departments of Agriculture and Justice
represent salaries for the attorneys involved in litigation and other
legal services. To determine the reliability of the Forest Service data,
we interviewed Forest Service financial officials responsible for the
Foundation Financial Information System and the auditors responsible for
reviewing the Forest Service's annual financial statements to determine if
there were any material weaknesses relevant to the data. We determined
that there were none and that the data are reliable for our purpose of
reporting Biscuit Fire salvage sale expenditures. We are relying on the
reported expenditures of the Departments of Agriculture and Justice.
We reviewed the Forest Service's estimated financial and economic results
for the proposed salvage sales in the Project EIS and discussed specific
aspects of the estimates with the Forest Service's Regional Economist, the
primary official responsible for these analyses. We attempted to compare
the financial results of the actual salvage sales with the Forest
Service's estimated financial results. However, because during the course
of our analysis the Forest Service held two more salvage sales in the
summer of 2006, the financial results-expenditures and receipts-of the
sales available to date were incomplete. We also determined that there are
methodological differences in the calculation of expenditures. We
determined that the Forest Service does not report economic results, and
we could not make the comparison of economic results and estimates,
although such a comparison could be made if the appropriate analysis were
conducted. We attempted to adjust the EIS estimates to make a comparison
based only on the sales conducted through 2005 by disaggregating the EIS
estimates by sale. The disaggregated results would have enabled us to use
only the results of comparable EIS sales as the basis of comparison with
the results of sales actually sold though 2005; however, we determined
that the EIS estimates, which were based on broad averages across the land
types, could not be disaggregated and attributed to individual sales.
To determine the status of other recovery project activities, we
interviewed forest staff responsible for the activities included in the
records of decision and identified the sources of information available to
document the status. Different program staff are responsible for
conducting the activities in the Project, which include planting, seeding,
road maintenance, fuel management zones, research, and monitoring
activities. For activities other than research and monitoring, we compiled
and summarized the work conducted through December 2005, reviewing
contracts for planting work, accomplishment reports for brush disposal
work and wildlife rehabilitation activities, and maps for fuel management
zones. Where they were available, we reviewed plans for work to be
accomplished in the future. We presented this information to the
appropriate forest staff and confirmed the data with them. To determine
the status of the landscape-scale research study, we interviewed the
forest and Pacific Northwest Research Station officials who developed the
research proposal in the EIS. The officials provided an update of the
status, which we then confirmed with forest officials. Finally, we
obtained a copy of the most recent monitoring schedule and discussed the
monitoring program with the forest's timber manager.
To determine the extent and cause of reported improper logging, we
obtained and reviewed Forest Service reports on the three incidents in the
Babyfoot Lake Botanical Area, Kalmiopsis Wilderness, and Wafer sale to
determine the facts of the incidents. We then reviewed an Office of
Inspector General report on the Babyfoot Lake incident and two law
enforcement reports on the wilderness and Wafer sale incidents to
determine other views of the incidents. We visited the Babyfoot Lake site
to view the correct boundary and the improperly harvested area. We
interviewed Forest Service officials responsible for the day-to-day
oversight and operations of timber sales, representatives of a local
environmental group monitoring the salvage sales and responsible for
discovering the Babyfoot Lake incident, and law enforcement and Office of
Inspector General officials who reviewed the cases to determine the Forest
Service's response to the incidents. To determine the Forest Service's
response to other claims of improper harvest, we reviewed a file of
letters and agency responses. We also reviewed reports from a third-party
monitor who visited sale sites that had been harvested and viewed the
results of operations.
We performed our work in accordance with generally accepted government
auditing standards from November 2005 through July 2006.
Appendix II
Comments from the Forest Service
The following are GAO's comments on the Forest Service's letter, dated
September 7, 2006.
GAO Comments
1.We revised the report accordingly. We stated that the EIS is required
rather than needed.
2.We revised the report accordingly.
3.We revised the report accordingly.
4.We revised the report accordingly.
5.We revised the report accordingly.
6.We revised the report accordingly.
7.The report describes the status of sales through 2006, the emergency
situation determination used to expedite the sales, the effects of
litigation on the sales, and delays in the inventoried roadless area
sales. We believe this discussion is sufficiently descriptive of these
events and, therefore, did not make any changes to the report in response
to this comment. While the planning process was a factor in the time taken
to develop the EIS, we did not evaluate the effects of the process on
timber volumes because it was not one of the objectives of this report.
Also, the report does not discuss the appeals process because the Forest
Service used an emergency situation determination, which eliminated the
appeals process for 11 salvage sales.
8.We disagree that the report should be limited to the next 3 to 5 years
because some of the activities in the Project are likely to extend beyond
that period of time. For this reason, we continue to believe that such a
time limit should be based on the Project's completion. We do believe
there is value to providing the agency with some discretion about when
they discontinue the report. Therefore, we revised the recommendation to
state that the reports should be provided until the Project's activities
are substantially complete.
Appendix III
GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments
GAO Contact
Robin M. Nazzaro (202) 512-3841 or [email protected]
Staff Acknowledgments
In addition to the individual named above, David P. Bixler, Assistant
Director; Susan Iott; Rich Johnson; Mehrzad Nadji; and Dawn Shorey made
key contributions to this report. Joyce Evans, Lisa Knight, John Mingus,
Cynthia Norris, Alison O'Neill, Kim Raheb, Jena Sinkfield, Jay Smale, and
Gail Traynham also made important contributions to this report.
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