Roads still closed, where is our money going?

[DOUBLELUNG]

The National Forest System has over 380,000 miles of roads, nearly all built for the purpose of extracting resources and generating revenue.  Granted, they did a piss-poor financial job and a really great job of extracting economic resources, but there is no way they can maintain even a significant fraction of those roads without that resources revenue stream.  I'd like to see them reduce to an average road density of around 1 mile per square mile in forested areas, and 1 mile per 2 square miles in the national grasslands.  Those levels provide reasonable motorized access, but enough security that deer and elk aren't driven off public onto private during hunting season. 

[grundy53]

The problem is it's very expensive to maintain roads. Those who expect every road that's ever been built to be maintained so it's driveable by the average passenger vehicle, maybe you can somehow be taxed at a higher rate than the rest of us. 

Or they could log... which would easily pay for it and create better habitat.

sent from my typewriter

[gasman]

Here's a novel idea, let start using our renewable resources again and make the money needed to maintain the road, among other things 

and in turn, with good logging practice, it can create jobs, and provide a place for more food to grow for animals, like deer, elk, etc.

which can also lead to spreading out animals in a more wide variance of areas, and increase there population, instead of confining them to small food areas and having an over population of animals for the food that is available to them, kind of like what has happened in the Mt St Helens are.

And with more jobs, that means more tax money collected.........


Maintaining roads and good forest practice can lead to many wonderful things on both sides..... BUT WE GOT TO CUT ALL THE RED TAPE.

[Fl0und3rz]

The problem is it's very expensive to maintain roads. Those who expect every road that's ever been built to be maintained so it's driveable by the average passenger vehicle, maybe you can somehow be taxed at a higher rate than the rest of us. 

And maybe you could pay the extra where you want less roads since that is of higher value to you.

FWIW, it's hard to read anything into it casually, but here is the NFS budget justification.   It appears that historically, road maintenance was only alotted $18M, although there is some confusion as to what happened in the funding process since 2008, and what happened in 2013.  p. 316

http://www.fs.fed.us/aboutus/budget/2015/FS15-FS-Budget-Justification.pdf

That's on an annual budget of about $5-6 billion, or about 0.3%, or not even a penny on the dollar.  And that is not taking into account the 2013 spending levels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Forest_Service

I welcome sanity checks on the figures and math as these are unfamiliar numbers and documents to me.

[elk247]

The problem is it's very expensive to maintain roads. Those who expect every road that's ever been built to be maintained so it's driveable by the average passenger vehicle, maybe you can somehow be taxed at a higher rate than the rest of us. 

Or they could log... which would easily pay for it and create better habitat.

sent from my typewriter

Tens of millions of dollar's worth of timber dies and rots each year. It goes to waste. Deer elk and bear have proven time and again that they can't survive exclusively in an "old growth forest" and eat ferns and salal.

[Fl0und3rz]

The problem is it's very expensive to maintain roads. Those who expect every road that's ever been built to be maintained so it's driveable by the average passenger vehicle, maybe you can somehow be taxed at a higher rate than the rest of us. 

Or they could log... which would easily pay for it and create better habitat.

sent from my typewriter

Tens of millions of dollar's worth of timber dies and rots each year. It goes to waste. Deer elk and bear have proven time and again that they can't survive exclusively in an "old growth forest" and eat ferns and salal.

And the roads that the logging operations create/maintain are separate from funds alluded to above.

[bobcat]

I'm not an economist or a forester, but I would think that if they did begin logging the National Forests again, wouldn't that flood the market with timber and bring the prices down even lower than they are currently? I could see the Forest service losing money by putting up more timber sales and building more roads. Prices are already so low that most private timber companies export their logs to Asia. The state logs stay here but only because they're required to by Iaw.

[bobcat]

I'm not an economist or a forester, but I would think that if they did begin logging the National Forests again, wouldn't that flood the market with timber and bring the prices down even lower than they are currently? I could see the Forest service losing money by putting up more timber sales and building more roads. Prices are already so low that most private timber companies export their logs to Asia. The state logs stay here but only because they're required to by Iaw.

[JimmyHoffa]

They could let users maintain more of the roads.  I bet they'd be surprised how many slides are cleared, culverts unplugged and fallen trees get cleared by hunters.  FS really just needs to do the more intense culvert and bridge maintenance.  My guess is that hunters would keep the rest clear enough for at least high clearance and 4wd.

[Fl0und3rz]

Bobcat:

You add product to a market, and prices may fall, depending on any number of factors.

I would not expect a number of small operations to impact the market as just quick numbers show US jobs on the order of 80,000 and payrolls on the order of $3B (so I'd expect the gross product revenues to be some multiple of that), the increased jobs will have some multiple of increase in demand, and other more cost-prohibitive operations (say shipping from Canada) may be displaced in the market.  And there are the demands in Asia as you note.

[grundy53]

I'm not an economist or a forester, but I would think that if they did begin logging the National Forests again, wouldn't that flood the market with timber and bring the prices down even lower than they are currently? I could see the Forest service losing money by putting up more timber sales and building more roads. Prices are already so low that most private timber companies export their logs to Asia. The state logs stay here but only because they're required to by Iaw.

No way would they lose money.

sent from my typewriter

[Curly]

I think they really need to start logging. Just look at the fires. It should be a crime to let all that fuel build up over time and turn into such giant burns.  :2cents:

[jackelope]

If you want an area to be roadless, to the NP or Wilderness, plenty of roadless areas there, Oh wait, I for got, you don't wan to travel that far to be in a roadless area so you want less roads to accommodate your needs, SORRY, MY BAD

Not sure if you're talking to me or not but the last thing I'm concerned with is how far I have to drive to hunt. I have made 5 trips to the Blues this year plus a trip to Colville. Can't get much further than that from here.

[huntnnw]

This BS is unheard of in ID! roads are cleared and open always!!

[CAMPMEAT]

This BS is unheard of in ID! roads are cleared and open always!!

........................and the hunting is much, much better too. Even with ATV's.