Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl - DRAFT

are generally much lower than for commercial harvest and that migrantlaborers often are used for such work. If the employment created by a silviculturalprogram is to benefit workers displaced from the harvesting timber,employment preferences may need to be made a requirement of the contractslet for such work.5. Estimating the Economic Effects of Salvage.As described in section III, the recovery plan allows limited salvage within theDCAs. Forest Service and BLM timber salvage sales averaged more than 650million board feet per year during the 1980s. A rough estimate of the economiceffects of allowing salvage was made by assuming an annual potential salvageof 600 million board feet total, of which the DCAs would contain approximatelyone third. The guidelines for salvage in DCAs are set forth in section III. C. Itwas assumed that the guidelines would allow 10 to 20 percent of the potentialsalvage, leaving the rest of the dead trees to contribute to maintenance ofhabitat conditions. Annual salvage in DCAs could yield 20 to 40 million boardfeet. The total job coefficients for the timber counties range from eight to justmore than 17 jobs per million board feet, averaging 15.7. At the average totaljob coefficient, salvage in DCAs could support 315 to 630 workers.6. Estimating the Effects on County Revenues.In its analysis of the effects of the critical habitat designation, the FWS developedmethods to estimate the price effect of restrictions in timber harvest andits effect on the federal receipts from the remaining timber volume. The FWSalso worked with the Forest Service and BLM to develop the computationalmethods needed to allocate the estimated federal timber sale revenues to thecounties with which federal receipts are shared. These methods were used toestimate the effects of the DCAs in the recovery plan on the timber revenuesthat would be received by the counties. These estimates are inTable H. 13.These preliminary estimates do not include the effects of asset losses on thetax bases of the counties.Table H.12. Economic effects of silviculture in designated conservation areas.TimberAcres Removed AnnualTreated Annually EconomicAnnually (million Employment Benefitboard feet) Uobs) ($mllilon)10,000 19 120 525,000 48 302 1350,000 96 600 26100,000 192 1200 53Target Acreage: 450,000 acres currently unsuitable for owl habitat580