Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl - DRAFT

y an estimate of the price that would have been bid for the timber. Theappropriate price to use in this computation is the price that would occur if therecovery plan is not implemented.The Forest Service and BLM provided the FWS estimates of the reduction infederal timber available for sale that would result from their plans, fromimplementation of the ISC strategy, and from the proposed designation ofcritical habitat for the spotted owl. The FWS used these estimates to deriveestimates of timber productivity factors (in board feet per acre) for the HCAacreage and the acreage proposed for inclusion in the critical habitat in eachnational forest and BLM district. These factors were used to estimate thereductions in timber harvest (assuming that annual timber harvests would be,on average, equal to the amount available for sale) that would result from theDCAs proposed in the recovery plan. Productivity factors were adjusted toreflect differences in the proportion of land suitable for timber included in theDCAs as compared to the proportion in the HCAs in each forest. In addition toestablishing the DCAs, the draft recovery plan would impose restructions ontimber harvest on federal lands outside the DCAs, an area called the matrix.The draft recovery plan guidelines for management of the matrix are quitesimilar to those of the ISC strategy. For purposes of making preliminaryestimates of the effects of the draft recovery plan, it was assumed that it wouldhave similar effects on timber harvest within the matrix, a reduction of about0.7 billion board feet per year.It is important to note that the estimated reductions in future timber harvestare based upon the assumptions underlying the baseline estimates of theharvest under the final plans. In general, factors that would tend to reduce theharvest under these plans also would tend to reduce the harvest under thedraft recovery plan, reducing estimated harvest levels for both the baseline andthe draft recovery plan. The estimated annual timber harvests for the finalplans, the current owl management regime (Forest Service and BLM implementationof the ISC strategy), and the effect of the Endangered Species Act includingthe designation of critical habitat, and the recovery plan are in Table H.9.To provide better estimates of the timber harvests under the recovery plan, theForest Service and BLM will be asked during the public comment period toestimate the annual timber harvest levels under the recovery plan using thebest site-specific information on timber yields available.The estimated loss due to the timber harvest foregone in the DCAs is $470million per year. This estimate is based on the reduction in timber harvestcaused by withdrawal of the land in the DCAs and on estimates of 1995 timberprices developed by the Forest Service using the Timber Assessment MarketModel (TAMM) for conditions expected under the final plans (USDA 199 la).2. Estimating Employment Effects.Substantial effort has been made in recent years to develop techniques forestimating the employment effects of reductions in the rate of timber harvest.In its economic analysis of proposed critical habitat, the FWS, with assistancefrom the Forest Service, developed job response coefficients for use in estimatingthe employment effects of the designation of critical habitat for the owl.These coefficients were developed by the Forest Service using IMPLAN, aninput-output model that simulates the transactions between various sectors ofthe economy. Adjustments were made during the development of these jobcoefficients to reflect the log flows among counties. Adjustments also weremade in the coefficients to remove the effects of the large metropolitan areasfrom the county coefficients. This was done to produce estimates of job lossesthat would measure the impacts within the rural regions whose economies aremost closely related to timber production. A more detailed description of the574