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Report to Congressional Requesters:

September 2006:

BISCUIT FIRE RECOVERY PROJECT:

Analysis of Project Development, Salvage Sales, and Other Activities:

[Hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-967] AO-06-967:

GAO Highlights:

Highlights of GAO-06-967, a report to congressional requesters.

Why GAO Did This Study:

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.

What GAO Found:

The Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest staff followed the Forest 
Service’s general approach to postfire recovery in developing the 
Biscuit Fire Recovery Project, but several unique circumstances 
affected the time taken and the alternatives it included. For example, 
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. Also, the regulations and guidance 
governing timber harvest and road building in the forest’s inventoried 
roadless areas changed several times, in part due to litigation, 
affecting the amount of timber available for harvest.

As of December 2005, the forest staff had nearly completed 12 salvage 
sales; however, incomplete sales and a lack of comparable economic 
data, among other things, make comparing the financial and economic 
results with the agency’s initial estimates difficult. For fiscal years 
2003 through 2005, the Forest Service and other agencies spent about $5 
million on the sales and related activities. In the next several years, 
the Forest Service also plans to spend an additional $5.7 million to 
remove brush and reforest the sale areas. In return, the agency 
collected about $8.8 million from the sales. While the agency estimated 
that the salvage sales would generate about $19.6 million for 
restoration, 6,900 local jobs, and $240 million in regional economic 
activity, it is premature to compare these estimates with the results 
because the sales are not complete. The Forest Service will generate 
additional expenditures, revenues, and economic activity from two sales 
sold in the summer of 2006. Even when complete sales’ results are 
available, however, a comparison will be complicated by a lack of 
comparable financial and economic data.  

Through December 2005, the forest staff began work on most of the other 
activities identified in the Project but completing them depends on the 
amount of salvage harvest, funding sources, and work schedules. For 
example, the amount of brush disposal work—estimated at 18,939 
acres—will be reduced because the acres of salvage harvest have been 
reduced. Other activities, such as establishing fuel management zones 
to help fight future fires, depend on the Forest Service funding and 
scheduling the work over many years. In addition, a large-scale study 
and monitoring activities are still being planned and yet unfunded. 
Although the forest staff identified the importance of making Project 
results available to the public, they do not separately report on 
Project activities and results from other programs. 

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 in marking its boundaries. Forest staff have 
since developed procedures to better mark boundaries of sale areas. A 
third incident was caused by an error on the part of the company that 
purchased the sale; the company was fined $24,000, and the trees were 
left on the ground.

What GAO Recommends:

Given the size and unique nature of this fire and continuing public 
interest, GAO recommends that the Chief of the Forest Service direct 
the Pacific Northwest Regional Forester and the Rogue River-Siskiyou 
Forest Supervisor to report annually on the Project’s status until 
substantially complete. In comments, the Forest Service agreed with the 
report findings but asked for a time limit for the recommended annual 
report. GAO modified its recommendation.

Contents:

Letter:

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 :
Salvage Sales Are Nearly Complete, but a Full Comparison of Financial 
and Economic Results with Initial Estimates Is Difficult:
Other Biscuit Fire Recovery Project Activities Are Under Way, but 
Depend on Harvest Activity, Schedules, Sale Revenues, and Other Funding:
Forest Made Operational Changes and Assessed Fines to Address Improper 
Logging That Occurred in Three Locations:
Conclusions:
Recommendation for Executive Action:
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation:

Appendixes:

Appendix I:  Objectives, Scope, and Methodology:
Appendix II:  Comments from the Forest Service: 
GAO Comments:
Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments:

Tables:

Table 1: Biscuit Fire Recovery Project Salvage Sale Locations and 
Volumes through December 2005:
Table 2: Biscuit Fire Hazard and Deck Tree Salvage Sales and Volumes 
through December 2005:
Table 3: Estimated Expenditures on Biscuit Fire Salvage Sales, Fiscal 
Years 2003 through 2005:
Table 4: Revenues Collected from Biscuit Fire Salvage Sales through 
December 2005:
Table 5: Work Planned and Completed through December 2005:

Figures :

Figure 1: Biscuit Fire Map, Vegetation Change:
Figure 2: Biscuit Fire Recovery Project Time Line Compared with the 
Forest Service's General Approach to Postfire Recovery:
Figure 3: Unique Circumstances Affecting the Time Taken and 
Alternatives Considered for the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project:
Figure 4: Map of Burned Area with Inventoried Roadless Areas:
Figure 5: Map of Salvage Sales Sold in the Biscuit Fire Recovery 
Project:
Figure 6: Map of Biscuit Fire Recovery Project Fuel Management Zones:

Abbreviations:

EIS: environmental impact statement:
K-V: Knutson-Vandenberg:
NEPA: National Environmental Policy Act:
NOI: Notice of Intent:

September 18, 2006:

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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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;[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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:

[See PDF for image]

Source: GAO analysis of Forest Service data.

[End of figure]

In evaluating postfire recovery projects and activities, the following 
laws and regulations affect the approach that the Forest Service 
generally takes:

* 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.

* 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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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.

* 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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 12]

* 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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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:

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:

[See PDF for image]:

Source: GAO.

[End of figure].

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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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 ¾ 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:

[See PDF for image]:

Source: GAO.

[End of figure]:

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:

[See PDF for image]

Source: GAO analysis of Forest Service data.  

[End of figure]

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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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:

[See PDF for image]

Source: GAO analysis of Forest Service data. 

[End of figure]

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.[Footnote 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:

Sale name: Matrix lands: Briggs Cedar; Date sold: December 2004; Volume 
(in thousand board feet): Sold: 2,341; Volume (in thousand board feet): 
Removed: 1,823; Volume (in thousand board feet): Remaining: 0.

Sale name: Matrix lands: Chetco; Date sold: August 2004; Volume (in 
thousand board feet): Sold: 289; Volume (in thousand board feet): 
Removed: 217; Volume (in thousand board feet): Remaining: 0.

Sale name: Matrix lands: Flat Top; Date sold: November 2004; Volume (in 
thousand board feet): Sold: 6,622; Volume (in thousand board feet): 
Removed: 3,537; Volume (in thousand board feet): Remaining: 0.

Sale name: Matrix lands: Horse; Date sold: July 2004; Volume (in 
thousand board feet): Sold: 2,415; Volume (in thousand board feet): 
Removed: 2,800; Volume (in thousand board feet): Remaining: 0.

Sale name: Matrix lands: Indi; Date sold: July 2004; Volume (in 
thousand board feet): Sold: 6,305; Volume (in thousand board feet): 
Removed: 4,244; Volume (in thousand board feet): Remaining: 300.

Sale name: Late-successional reserves: Berry; Date sold: July 2004; 
Volume (in thousand board feet): Sold: 12,834; Volume (in thousand 
board feet): Removed: 9,923; Volume (in thousand board feet): 
Remaining: 0.

Sale name: Late-successional reserves: Fiddler; Date sold: July 2004; 
Volume (in thousand board feet): Sold: 14,482; Volume (in thousand 
board feet): Removed: 10,613; Volume (in thousand board feet): 
Remaining: 0.

Sale name: Late-successional reserves: Hobson; Date sold: July 2004; 
Volume (in thousand board feet): Sold: 7,319; Volume (in thousand board 
feet): Removed: 3,810; Volume (in thousand board feet): Remaining: 0.

Sale name: Late-successional reserves: Lazy; Date sold: August 2004; 
Volume (in thousand board feet): Sold: 5,581; Volume (in thousand board 
feet): Removed: 875; Volume (in thousand board feet): Remaining: 4,706.

Sale name: Late-successional reserves: McGuire; Date sold: June 2005; 
Volume (in thousand board feet): Sold: 2,104; Volume (in thousand board 
feet): Removed: 866; Volume (in thousand board feet): Remaining: 0.

Sale name: Late-successional reserves: Steed; Date sold: August 2004; 
Volume (in thousand board feet): Sold: 6,074; Volume (in thousand board 
feet): Removed: 4,572; Volume (in thousand board feet): Remaining: 0.

Sale name: Late-successional reserves: Wafer; Date sold: August 2004; 
Volume (in thousand board feet): Sold: 688; Volume (in thousand board 
feet): Removed: 436; Volume (in thousand board feet): Remaining: 0.

Sale name: Total; Date sold: ; Volume (in thousand board feet): Sold: 
67,054; Volume (in thousand board feet): Removed: 43,716; Volume (in 
thousand board feet): Remaining: 5,006.

Source: Forest Service Automated Timber Sale Accounting System.

[End of table]

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: Hazard sales: Raspberry; Volume removed (in thousand board 
feet): 2,565.

Sale name: Hazard sales: Indigo; Volume removed (in thousand board 
feet): 1,798.

Sale name: Hazard sales: Qcamp; Volume removed (in thousand board 
feet): 11.

Sale name: Hazard sales: River Six; Volume removed (in thousand board 
feet): 1,851.

Sale name: Hazard sales: Baby Onion; Volume removed (in thousand board 
feet): 1,517.

Sale name: Hazard sales: Bald Bear; Volume removed (in thousand board 
feet): 3,251.

Sale name: Hazard sales: Game Horse; Volume removed (in thousand board 
feet): 3,105.

Sale name: Hazard sales: Chetco; Volume removed (in thousand board 
feet): 594.

Sale name: Deck sales: North; Volume removed (in thousand board feet):  
339.

Sale name: Deck sales: South; Volume removed (in thousand board feet):  
198.

Sale name: Deck sales: Chetco; Volume removed (in thousand board feet): 
32.

Sale name: Deck sales: North End II; Volume removed (in thousand board 
feet): 138.

Sale name: Deck sales: Buckskin II; Volume removed (in thousand board 
feet): 45.

Sale name: Deck sales: Dasher II; Volume removed (in thousand board 
feet): 46.

Sale name: Deck sales: Total; Volume removed (in thousand board feet):  
15,489.

Source: Forest Service Automated Timber Sale Accounting System.

[End of table]

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,[Footnote 21] 
the forest staff identified the following two reasons that the amount 
sold is much less than they had estimated:

* 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.

* 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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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: Forest Service[A]; 2003: $1,250,000; 2004: $2,489,000; 2005: 
$906,000; Total: $4,646,000.

Agency: Agriculture[B]; 2003: 12,000; 2004: 13,000; 2005: 9,000; Total: 
34,000.

Agency: Justice[C]; 2003: 0; 2004: 87,000; 2005: 226,000; Total: 
313,000.

Agency: Total; 2003: $1,262,000; 2004: $2,600,000; 2005: $1,100,000; 
Total: $4,993,000.

Sources: Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, and Department of 
Justice.

Note: Numbers may not add due to rounding.

[A] Includes 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.

[B] Includes 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.

[C] Includes attorney salaries, including 29.54 percent for benefits 
and travel. According to department officials, the funds were taken 
from existing budgets.

[End of table]

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:

Sale type: Hazard and deck sales; Sale receipts: $4,528,933; Deposits: 
Brush disposal: $411,371; Deposits: Road maintenance: $175,074; 
Deposits: Other: $33,285; Deposits: Total: $5,148,664.

Sale type: Matrix and late-successional reserve sales; Sale receipts: 
$2,245,145; Deposits: Brush disposal: $826,424; Deposits: Road 
maintenance: $362,507; Deposits: Other: $256,068; Deposits: Total: 
$3,690,145.

Sale type: Total; Sale receipts: $6,774,078; Deposits: Brush disposal: 
$1,237,795; Deposits: Road maintenance: $537,582; Deposits: Other: 
$289,353; Deposits: Total: $8,838,809.

Source: Forest Service Automated Timber Sale Accounting System.

Note: Numbers may not add due to rounding.

[End of table]

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.[Footnote 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: Brush disposal--activity fuel treatment (acres); Work 
planned: 18,939; Work completed through December 2005: 554.

Project activity: Reforestation (acres); Work planned: 30,278; Work 
completed through December 2005: 706.

Project activity: Road maintenance (miles); Work planned: 559; Work 
completed through December 2005: 307.

Project activity: Fuel management zone creation (miles); Work planned: 
285; Work completed through December 2005: 15.

Project activity: Wildlife habitat restoration--seeding (acres); Work 
planned: 6,800; Work completed through December 2005: 715.

Project activity: Wildlife habitat restoration--meadow encroachment 
reduction (acres); Work planned: 700; Work completed through December 
2005: 0.

Source: GAO analysis of Forest Service documents.

[End of table] 

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.[Footnote 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.[Footnote 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:

[See PDF for image]  

[End of figure] 

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:

* planting sites and site preparation,

* the number of snags and down trees retained on salvage sale sites,

* activities to mitigate the effect of noxious weeds,

* marking used during salvage sales to ensure compliance with harvest 
requirements and marking guides,

* activities to mitigate threats to threatened and endangered species, 
and:

* 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:

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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:

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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 h [Hyperlink, http:// 
www.gao.gov.] ttp://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staff have any questions, please contact me at (202) 512-
3841 or n [Hyperlink, nazzaror@gao.gao.gov] azzaror@gao.gov. 
[Hyperlink, nazzaror@gao.gov] Contact points for our Offices of Public 
Affairs and 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.

[Signed by] 

Robin M. Nazzaro Director, Natural Resources and Environment:

[End of section]

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.[Footnote 29] 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.[Footnote 30] 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.

[End of section]

Appendix II Comments from the Forest Service:

USDA United States Department of Agriculture:
Forest Service: 
Washington Office: 
1400 Independence Avenue, SW:
Washington, DC 20250: 

File Code: 1420: 
Date: SEP 07 2006

Ms. Robin Nazzaro:
Director: 
Natural Resources and Environment: 
U.S. Government Accountability Office:
441 G Street, N.W.: 
Washington, DC 20548:

Dear Ms. Nazzaro:

The Forest Service has the following comments on the Biscuit Fire 
Recovery Project Draft, GAO-06-967. Most of the comments are an attempt 
to clarify the document. Our suggestions are as follows:

PAGE 13:

First bullet; line 2: after the words environmental assessment, add "to 
determine if an environmental impact statement is needed.." and at the 
end of the sentence add "is needed."

First bullet; line 7: change environmental analysis to environmental 
impact statement.

First bullet, lines 8-14: reword the last part of that paragraph to 
read as follows: "The Agency gives the public an opportunity to comment 
on draft environmental 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. As a general rule, once the administrative appeals process is 
complete, the public can litigate in federal court a decision on a 
particular project."

Last bullet, lines 1-4 (continues to page 14), reword as follows: "In 
2001 the Forest Service issued a rule for managing its inventoried 
roadless areas, which include lands that meet Forest Service roadless 
area inventory criteria. In general these areas are 5000 acres or 
larger, or if smaller, are contiguous to an existing Wilderness area. 
These areas were previously considered for wilderness potential as part 
of the Roadless Area Review and Evaluation (RARE) initiated in 1972 and 
again in the 1979 RARE 11 study. Neither of these efforts was 
successful in resolving issues that surround management of inventoried 
areas. The 2001 rule was intended to provide lasting protection .." 
(the rest of this sentence remains unchanged).

Footnote 8: begin the sentence with "Some" to make it clear that the 
included list is not all exhaustive.

Caring for the Land and Serving People:

Printed on Recycled Paper:

PAGE 19:

Lines 11-12: we suggest that the phrase "one with the minimum work 
needed to meet forest plan standards and guidelines .." could be better 
worded. It might be more appropriate to say "but typically evaluates 
two or more alternative ways of meeting the purpose and need of the 
proposal.."

Overall the report provides a good view of what happened up to last 
December. An explanation of the additional activities, including 
litigation, controversies, and protests that occurred since then would 
provide the readers an understanding of the complexities of trying to 
manage fire projects. Also, although there is some discussion on the 
differences in the projected volumes that might be harvested and those 
that will ultimately be harvested, the report does not make it clear 
that the planning processes and appeals do greatly reduce the final 
volumes. The estimated volumes damaged are mostly fairly accurate. It 
is the identification of resource values along with decay associated 
with lapsed time that decreases the final harvest.

The recommendation to report progress to Congress will in some extent 
take care of updating the information provide in the report which is 
the status as of December 2005. As some minor work may be done in this 
large area, we would recommend that the time frames on the report to 
Congress be limited to the next 3-5 year period.

Sincerely,

[Signed by]

DALE N. BOSWORTH:
Chief:

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.

[End of section]

Appendix III: 

GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments:

GAO Contact:

Robin M. Nazzaro (202) 512-3841 or [Hyperlink, nazzaror@gao.gov] 
azzaror@gao.gov:

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.

(360651):

FOOTNOTES

[1] GAO reported on the federal government's efforts to suppress the 
Biscuit Fire in GAO, Biscuit Fire: Analysis of Fire Response, Resource 
Availability, and Personnel Certification Standards, GAO-04-426 
(Washington, D.C.: Apr. 12, 2004). 

[2] GAO reported on this program in GAO, Wildland Fires: Better 
Information Needed on Effectiveness of Emergency Stabilization and 
Rehabilitation Treatments, GAO-03-430 (Washington, D.C.: Apr. 4, 2003).

[3] GAO, Wildland Fire Rehabilitation and Restoration: Forest Service 
and BLM Could Benefit from Improved Information on Status of Needed 
Work, GAO-06-670 (Washington, D.C.: June 30, 2006).

[4] There are 155 nationally proclaimed forests, some of which have 
been joined administratively to enable better management, resulting in 
123 administrative units.

[5] The Siskiyou National Forest and the Rogue River National Forest 
have separate forest plans that were approved in 1989 and 1990, 
respectively. 

[6] A board foot is the volume of a piece of wood 1-foot square and 1- 
inch thick. 

[7] The fire also burned a small portion of the Six Rivers National 
Forest in California and the Medford District of the Bureau of Land 
Management.

[8] Some Forest Service activities that are subject to a categorical 
exclusion include actions to (1) repair and maintain roads and trails, 
(2) regenerate an area to native tree species, including site 
preparation, and (3) maintain and repair recreation sites and 
facilities.

[9] Under these regulations, an appeal must be filed within 45 days of 
the public notice of decision and the appeal must be decided within 45 
days after the appeal period closes. The project may be implemented on 
or after15 days following the appeal decision. The regional forester 
decides appeals of project decisions by forest supervisors within the 
region. Regardless of appeals, that portion of a project determined to 
be an emergency situation may proceed immediately. Emergency situations 
include those where immediate implementation of a decision is necessary 
to provide relief from hazards threatening human health and safety or 
natural resources, or situations that would result in substantial loss 
of economic value to the federal government if delays occurred. 

[10] Under the Wilderness Act of 1964, the Forest Service undertook a 
planning effort to identify roadless areas to be added to the 
wilderness system and those to be opened to development, called the 
Roadless Area Review and Evaluation. It undertook a second evaluation, 
called the Roadless Area Review and Evaluation II beginning in 1977 and 
completed it in 1979.

[11] Wyoming v. USDA, 277 F. Supp. 2d 1197 (D. Wyo. 2003), vacated as 
moot 414 F. 3d 1207 (10TH Cir. 2005).

[12] As of July 2006, the Department of Agriculture had agreed to work 
with three states--Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina--to 
make state-specific rules governing inventoried roadless areas. Three 
states--California, New Mexico, and Oregon--have filed a lawsuit 
challenging the repeal of the 2001 rules, and Oregon and Washington 
filed petitions with the Department of Agriculture asking that states 
be allowed to follow the 2001 rules.

[13] We are exploring with the Department of Agriculture the 
availability of these appropriations for the purpose of funding 
rehabilitation and restoration projects.

[14] The Knutson-Vandenberg (K-V) Act of 1930 (16 U.S.C. 576-576b) 
established a trust fund to collect a portion of timber sale receipts 
to pay for reforesting areas from which timber is cut. The 
reforestation projects eligible for such funding include growing trees 
for planting, planting trees, sowing seeds, removing weeds and other 
competing vegetation, and preventing animals from damaging new trees. 
The act was amended in 1976 to allow the Forest Service to use these 
funds for other activities, such as creating wildlife habitat. It was 
amended again in 2005 to authorize expenditures within the entire 
Forest Service region in which the timber sale occurred.

[15] The most significant partnership is the one established by the 
Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000. 
Under this act, the agency can use resource advisory committee funds, 
which are provided to forests for local stewardship projects chosen by 
resource advisory committees. Under the act, counties may receive 
certain annual payments in lieu of those that the county would have 
received for timber harvests occurring on national forests within the 
county. The county may reserve a portion of these funds for special 
projects that benefit federal lands. These projects are to be proposed 
by local resource advisory committees and must be approved by the 
Forest Service, which can then carry out approved projects using the 
reserved funds.

[16] The agency may or may not follow similar steps for smaller fires 
or fires with less controversial activities. In such cases, Forest 
Service officials may plan smaller projects or they may not plan any 
activities if they do not expect to receive funding.

[17] The use of an economic rationale to support an emergency situation 
determination was upheld in November 2004 in League of Wilderness 
Defenders v. U.S. Forest Service, Civ. No. 04-488-HA (D. Or. 2004). The 
use of an economic rationale was deemed "not an impermissible reading" 
of the Appeals Reform Act, Earth Island Institute v. Pengilly, 376 F. 
Supp. 2d 994, 1008-1009 (E.D. Cal. 2005). The Pengilly decision struck 
down the regulation authorizing regional foresters to make emergency 
situation determinations. Id. at 1009. The Chief of the Forest Service 
is now the only official authorized to make such determinations.

[18] In May 2005, the Department of Agriculture repealed the 2001 
roadless rule, issuing a new one in its place. In July 2005, the U.S. 
Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit vacated the district court 
decision, holding that the dispute giving rise to the original opinion 
had become moot with the repeal of the 2001 rule.

[19] The figures for fiscal years 2001 and 2002 combine the budget and 
staffing for the two forests.

[20] The industry association case was mostly dismissed, while certain 
parts were voluntarily withdrawn. Most of the environmental claims were 
rejected by the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. The 
environmental groups' appeals are pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals 
for the Ninth Circuit as of September 2006.

[21] Forest Service, Response to Appropriations Committees' Questions 
(Washington, D.C.: March 2006).

[22] The plaintiffs in turn agreed to a stay of the court's 
consideration of claims that the Biscuit Fire Recovery Project 
inventoried roadless area record of decision violated the 2001 rule.

[23] Washington and Wyoming joined the lawsuit later.

[24] Because the Forest Service does not account for expenditures on a 
sale-by-sale basis, the forest staff identified expenditures based on 
their knowledge of the work conducted during fiscal years 2003 through 
2005 and estimated regional and Washington Office expenditures based on 
the percentage charged for regional and Washington Office costs against 
the forest's salvage sale plans. Under Forest Service direction, 
forests collect an assessment for regional and Washington Office 
activities for the Salvage Sale Fund. Each forest calculates its own 
assessment rate. In fiscal years 2001 through 2005, the rate for the 
Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest was 5.2 percent.

[25] Within the Department of Justice, the Environment and Natural 
Resources Division defends Executive Branch agencies in environmental 
challenges to government programs and represents the United States in 
matters concerning the stewardship of the nation's natural resources 
and public lands. The division paid attorney salaries and travel 
expenses to defend challenges to the Project from existing resources.

[26] To generate these estimates, the Forest Service assumed that all 
salvage-related activities would be located in the area, and the local 
job market and wood-processing sector could respond to this new demand. 
To the extent that the salvage-related activities displace other 
regional work, these estimates would be reduced.

[27] In 2005, the Congress amended the K-V act to specifically 
authorize the expenditure of funds for watershed restoration; wildlife 
habitat improvement; control of insects, disease, and noxious weeds; 
community protection activities; and the maintenance of forest roads 
within the Forest Service region in which the timber sale occurred.

[28] These figures do not include work conducted for the hazard sales.

[29] The Forest Service used to report on the full costs of the timber 
program using the Timber Sale Program Information Reporting System. 
Changes to the agency's accounting system and lack of interest caused 
the agency to stop producing the reports.

[30] We did not include the annual payment made to local governments 
under the Secure Rural Schools and Community Security Act of 2000. The 
act established an alternative payment for counties that share federal 
timber receipts. For fiscal years 2000 through 2006, the counties could 
choose to receive payment based on the 25 percent amount established 
under the act of May 23, 1908 or an average of the three highest 25 
percent payments made during 1986 through 1999. 

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