Forest privatization would kill benefits

Garin Hovannisian (“Forest care better in private
hands,” Oct. 29) did a good job thinking constructively about
the causes and solutions to Southern California forest fires.

But, while he makes some interesting points about public versus
private ownership of land, both his analysis, applying very basic
economic principles of free markets to the specific issue of forest
management, and the facts he used to back up his analysis were
seriously flawed.

Hovannisian preaches free-market privatization of the timber
industry as the simple economic solution to the forest fire
problem. He explains that privatization’s effectiveness is a
function of an accountable private entity’s need to preserve
capital (in this case, forested land from fire damage) as opposed
to a non-accountable government agency with no such incentive.

The private entity ““ in his example, the timber industry
““ will have a greater incentive to protect the resource
because they will lose capital if the resource is destroyed.

The argument is based on a founding principle of property rights
in the United States, but in this case it is over-applied. The
principle essentially states that a private owner will find the
most efficient and productive use for his or her property.

However, throughout the country ““ and especially in the
West ““ we, as a society, have recognized the need to preserve
lands for a multitude of uses and users, and thus we hold some
property in the public trust. There are good reasons for doing
this, which Hovannisian misses in his focus on forest fire
protection.

There is little doubt that ineffective management techniques
contributed to the force of the current fires. Debates over
controlled burns, fire science and timber removal have created a
major problem for publicly managed forests.

These debates stall the decision-making process inherent in
democratic organizations, especially when the organization has the
responsibility to preserve an array of uses for the resource,
including recreation and habitat preservation.

Hovannisian does have a point about the perils of public
ownership. It can contribute to the fires we had this month. From
here, however, he jumps to the conclusion that private parties
would do a better job. A better job of what? It is true that a
timber company will have a high incentive to maintain capital, or
at least to not let a fire liquidate its capital, but they have no
incentive to promote diverse uses of the forests.

Without strict government regulations, timber companies have no
incentive to preserve ecosystem services (such as water
purification received from a functioning forest), recreational uses
or habitats for endangered species.

Hovannisian sums up all these ancillary benefits as
environmental concerns. Using citations from a free-market
economist’s book and a timber industry’s Web site, he
says that environmentalists, which he implies are a small, whining,
anti-capitalist minority, have nothing to worry about.

He claims private hands are better managers of the environment,
as evidenced by one sentence in a book about the number of trees in
the United States. Since when is the quality of the environment
based upon the number of trees?

Keystone species, biomass or biodiversity are better but still
incomplete measures ““ and have all declined under the
free-market system. The environment is a vast entity that makes
life possible. If you put it into a free-market system, you have to
know what you are talking about.

The best example of Hovannisian’s flawed argument is his
example of environmental stewardship, Pacific Lumber Company
(PALCO). I know a brief op-ed does not require months of research,
but even a cursory Web search beyond PALCO’s official Web
site would prove the foolishness of Hovannisian’s
article.

PALCO was once a sustainable timber company that provided stable
jobs for the communities bordering its property. In fact, PALCO
used to be a great example for Hovannisian’s argument.

However, in 1986 the company merged with MAXXAM, Inc. MAXXAM
abruptly ended the sustainable timber practice and liquidated
Pacific Lumber’s assets, i.e. old-growth forests.

You see, the free market encourages many types of economic
activities and motives, including resource liquidation and
competitor predation. PALCO stepped up logging operations and
threatened the habitat and ecosystem function of much of Northern
California’s Headlands forest.

To give private companies full rights to manage our forests
merely to prevent fires would not only fail to decrease fire risk,
but would significantly decrease the benefits we receive from a
functioning forest ecosystem.

Kapla is a second-year law student.