It seemed an offer the Forest Service couldn’t
refuse: The government gets the best price for its timber, and the
buyer never cuts down any trees. Yet on March 21, the agency
rejected an environmental group’s high bid of $28,875 for 275 acres
of fire-damaged trees in the eastern Cascades of Washington near
the Canadian border. Instead, it accepted the second-highest bid to
ensure that the trees are cut.
“Their decision
makes terrible business sense,” said Mitch Friedman of the
Northwest Ecosystem Alliance. “We offered them more money and also
said we would preserve the public’s resource.”
But Sam Gehr, supervisor of the Okanogan
National Forest, told the Seattle Times that he awarded the
contract to a local logging company because the rules require the
trees be cut. “The fact that they weren’t going to fulfill the
contract obligation was the key to our choice,” he
said.
Gehr sold the estimated 750 trailer-loads
of timber to Double A Logging for $28,000. The sale cost the agency
$300,000 to prepare. Friedman said his group plans to appeal the
decision.
*Richard Hicks
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Forest Service Economics 101.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
