Procurement Contracting in the Affected 

Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 

12 Years of Change

Northwest

Forest Plan

The First Ten Years (1994–2003)

Cassandra Moseley

Pacific Northwest

Research Station DEPA RTMENTOFAGRICULT URE

Forest 

Service

United States 

Department of 

Agriculture

General Technical Report

PNW-GTR-661

January 2006

Cassandra Moseley
Author

Cassandra Moseley is the director, Ecosystem Workforce Program, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, University of

Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-5247. This work was performed under agreement NFS-03-JV-11060000-231 and with funding

from the Ford Foundation and the University of Oregon.

The Forest Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is dedicated to the principle of multiple use management of the Nation’s forest resources for sustained yields of wood, water, forage, wildlife, and recreation.

Through forestry research, cooperation with the States and private forest owners, and management of the

national forests and national grasslands, it strives—as directed by Congress—to provide increasingly greater

service to a growing Nation.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its programs and activities on the

basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, and where applicable, sex, marital status, familial status,

parental status, religion, sexual orientation, genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or part

of an individual’s income is derived from any public assistance program. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all

programs.) Persons with disabilities who require alternative means for communication of program information

(Braille, large print, audiotape, etc.) should contact USDA’s TARGET Center at (202) 720-2600 (voice and

TDD).

To file a complaint of discrimination write USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Avenue,

S.W. Washington, DC 20250-9410, or call (800) 795-3272 (voice) or (202) 720-6382 (TDD). USDA is an equal

opportunity provider and employer.
Abstract

Moseley, Cassandra. 2006. Procurement contracting in the affected counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 years of

change. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-661. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest

Research Station. 36 p.

As part of the 10-year socioeconomic monitoring of the Northwest Forest Plan, this report evaluates changes in Forest

Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) procurement contracting between 1990 and 2002 by asking, (1) How much

and what kind of work did the Forest Service and BLM contract during this period, and (2) who received economic benefits

from this procurement contracting? Procurement contracting is a particular focus of the socioeconomic monitoring because

one expectation of the Northwest Forest Plan was that the Forest Service and BLM would create high-skill, high-wage

private sector jobs in public land restoration through contracting to partially offset job losses in timber production, harvesting, and processing. This report finds that, to the contrary, the Forest Service reduced its contracting of land management

activities on national forests in the Northwest Forest Plan area from a high of $103 million in 1991 to a low of $33 million in

2002. By contrast, BLM spending was fairly constant at just under $20 million annually. Both the Forest Service and the

BLM changed the type of activities that they contracted, shifting from activities associated with intensive forest management such as tree planting in clearcuts to activities associated with ecosystem management. Contractors located near

national forests and BLM lands and rural communities captured a similar proportion of contracts in both the earlier and later

parts of the study period. However, the significant decline in Forest Service contract spending resulted in considerable

decline in the amount of money flowing to rural communities through contracting. Thus, it is unlikely that federal land

management contracting created a net increase in jobs to replace jobs lost in mills and logging operations in public lands

communities.

Keywords: Northwest Forest Plan, monitoring, procurement contracting, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management,

ecosystem management, restoration, rural communities.
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Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

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Introduction

The Northwest Forest Plan (also the Plan) proposed an

annual average timber sale volume of 1.1 billion board

feet in the territory of the northern spotted owl (Strix

occidentalis caurina), a reduction from the annual average

harvest of 3.9 billion board feet between 1979 and 1989

(Warren 2003). However, in creating principles for the Plan,

President Clinton said that, where possible, ecologically

sound timber sales should go forward and, “where this

cannot be met, we need to do our best to offer new economic opportunities for year-round, high-wage, high-skill

jobs” (USDA and USDI: 1994, 3). Ultimately, the Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior chose the particular

features of the Northwest Forest Plan because they felt it

was “the best alternative for providing a sustainable level

of human use of the forest resources while still meeting the

need to maintain and restore the late-successional and oldgrowth ecosystem” (USDA and USDI: 1994, 26-27).

The Plan aimed to restore old-growth forests and the

habitats of old-growth-dependent species. Achieving these

outcomes required that the Forest Service and the Bureau of

Land Management (BLM) undertake new kinds of activities

ranging from surveying for spotted owls to thinning plantations in ways that would restore old-growth characteristics.

In addition, the Northwest Forest Plan called for the Forest

Service, BLM, and other federal land management agencies

to contribute to the well-being of rural communities by

assisting them with long-term economic development and

diversification in order to mitigate the loss of timber jobs.

One way in which the agencies were to accomplish this was

by creating new jobs in the woods through procurement

contracting through which contractors would undertake

the restoration and maintenance activities associated with

ecosystem management.

Given the considerable change in the management

priorities of the federal land management agencies mandated by the Northwest Forest Plan and the stated goal of

compensating for timber job losses, especially in the late

1990s, this report focuses on two central questions:

1. How much and what kind of work did the Forest Service

and the BLM contract between 1990 and 2002, and how

did this work change over time?

2. Who received economic benefits from procurement by

the two agencies, and how did this change over time?

This study answers these questions by evaluating Forest

Service and BLM land management procurement contracting from 1990 through 2002 as part of the larger 10-year

socioeconomic monitoring of the Northwest Forest Plan

(Charnley et al. 2005). It looks particularly at changes in

spending, the types of work contracted, and where the

contracting activities occurred. In addition, it examines

changes in the number of contractors who performed land

management activities for the Forest Service and BLM and

the extent to which they were located in rural communities

in areas dominated by public land.

Background

Procurement contracting—purchases of goods and services—is one of the ways that the Forest Service and the

BLM could accomplish restoration and economic development. Federal land management agencies could also use inhouse crews, timber sale contracts, and, in some cases,

grants and cooperative agreements to undertake land management activities. In addition to timber removal, timber

sale contracts had historically included road construction

and maintenance when roads were required for the removal

of timber. However, most tasks associated with intensive

forest management such as site preparation, tree planting,

and thinning, were performed by in-house crews or contracted out to businesses who hire crews of workers to

perform contracted activities. In addition, other activities

associated with recreation, facilities maintenance, restoration, or monitoring were historically performed by in-house

crews, via contracts or, more rarely, through cooperative

agreements.

The Northwest Forest Plan called for a sharp reduction

in timber sales. It was assumed that procurement spending

on activities related to the associated intensive timber
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-661

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management would diminish with the decline in timber

sales. Procurement spending on service activities associated

with intensive timber management was to have been

replaced with spending on activities such as species surveys and habitat restoration. Before the Northwest Forest

Plan, for example, large crews of contract workers traveled

throughout the region planting trees in clearcut areas

(Brown 2000, Hartzell 1987). With the virtual end of clearcutting, large-scale tree planting became unnecessary.

However, it was assumed that tree planting associated with,

for example, riparian restoration or postfire restoration

might continue or increase. Similarly, road building would

likely diminish under the Northwest Forest Plan, but road

decommissioning and road maintenance might increase.

Also, with fewer timber sales, the road maintenance,

construction, and decommissioning that occurred as part of

timber sales would now have to be done separately through

procurement contracting. The demand for restoration of

late-successional reserves, salmon (Oncorhynchus) habitat,

and fire-adapted ecosystems, new surveying requirements,

and the need to pay for road work outside of timber sales

suggests that funding for procurement contracting should

have at least remained constant if not increased through

the 1990s.

If the agencies were shifting to procuring different types

of work, it would be logical to expect a shift in the contractors who performed this work. We know that contractors

traveled long distances to undertake labor-intensive activities such as tree planting, precommercial thinning, and site

preparation. In contrast, contractors performing equipmentintensive contracts more often worked close to home. Technical contracting patterns were less consistent (Moseley

2002, 2003; Mosley and Shankle 2001). If the Forest Service and the BLM have shifted their contracting emphasis

from labor-intensive activities to equipment-intensive

activities, it would be expected that contractors located

closer to federal lands would be awarded proportionately

more contracts than was the case before the Northwest

Forest Plan was put into place.

The record of decision of the Northwest Forest Plan

changed management priorities for the federal land management agencies. At the same time, President Clinton created

the Jobs-in-the-Woods Program, followed shortly thereafter

by the Hire-the-Fisher Program. These programs sought to

create employment opportunities for people who had been

displaced by the new management priorities that focused

on endangered species protection and ecosystem management. These new programs did not come with additional

funding for the federal land management agencies but,

rather, redirected existing Forest Service and BLM funds

to restoration projects in the Northwest Forest Plan area.

Implementation of the Jobs-in-the-Woods Program

took two forms. First, a number of training programs were

created in western Oregon and Washington and northern

California that were designed to retrain displaced timber

workers to perform new types of restoration and technical

activities. Typically, these training programs involved a

nonprofit organization, a community college, federal land

management agencies, and a local Job Partnership Training

Act agency. Normally, federal land management agencies

provided restoration projects and the money to implement

them by using the training crews. Some of these training

programs only lasted a season or two, whereas others, such

as those created by the Rogue Institute for Ecology and

Economy, the Watershed Research and Training Center,

Redwood Community Action Agency, Columbia-Pacific

Resource Conservation District, and their partners, lasted

for many seasons. Although it is beyond the scope of this

project to discuss these programs in detail, their central

purpose was to create a trained workforce that could undertake new activities for the federal land management agencies while creating high-skill, high-wage jobs for displaced

workers (Anderson 1999, Brodsky and Hallock 1998).

Second, the federal land management agencies intended to implement the Jobs-in-the-Woods Program

through procurement contracting. The Forest Service and

BLM were exempted from some free and open competition

procurement requirements and allowed to set aside socalled Jobs-in-the-Woods contracts to contractors located in
Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

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Figure 1—Affected counties containing Bureau of Land Management lands, by subregion.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-661

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the Northwest Forest Plan’s affected counties (fig. 1). In

retrospect, it is an open question whether the exemption

had any impact because we now know that most of the

contracting capacity in the Pacific Northwest is located in

these counties (Moseley and Shankle 2001). Nonetheless,

if the exemption did have an impact we would expect contractors in the affected counties to have been awarded a

larger percentage of contract dollars in the mid-1990s than

was the case beforehand.

During the 1990s, summary reports of the Northwest

Forest Plan included information about Forest Service

spending on Jobs-in-the-Woods activities (e.g., USDA Forest Service 1995). By and large, these documents reported

the amount of money spent to perform forest restoration

activities that the agencies designated as Jobs-in-theWoods projects. In addition, these reports typically provided a handful of case studies to highlight agency efforts.

Although the Jobs-in-the-Woods contracts were supposed

to include reporting requirements in which the contractor

was to provide information about the wages they paid to

their workers, this information was never systematically

collected or compiled. However, a 1996 report provided

detailed lists of some fiscal year 1995 projects and, in a few

cases, wages associated with those jobs (USDA and USDI

1996). The document reports that forest workers were paid

an average of $13.48 per hour including benefits for vegetative management (e.g., thinning, tree planting) with

contracts lasting an average of 18 days. For road work, the

average wage was $21.60 per hour, including benefits, and

contracts lasted an average of 27 days. In stream restoration

workers received an average of $20.43 per hour including

benefits, and contracts lasted an average of 18 days (USDA

and USDI 1996: app. vi). Although interesting figures, the

wage reporting was sporadic, and there is no way of

knowing if it is representative of all such work. It is simply

too sparse to draw reliable conclusions about jobs created

or wages paid.

In addition to these reports, a number of nonprofit

organizations and consultants documented the displaced

worker training programs. The Ecosystem Workforce Project’s 1995 and 1996 reports described in some detail the

programs in Oregon including the number of people trained

and their wages. During 1996, in Oregon, for example,

the Jobs-in-the-Woods training programs employed 19

Hispanics and 38 Whites, including 3 women and 54 men

for an average of 36 weeks at $11.09 per hour plus health

insurance for crew members and $14.30 per hour plus

health insurance for crew leaders (Ecosystem Workforce

Project 1996, 1997). In addition, these reports provided

recommendations about how to improve the training programs based on interviews with training program steering

committee members and trainees. However, these reports did

not continue beyond the 1997 field season, focused only on

training programs, and rarely provided information about

contracted activities (e.g., Hallock 1998).

After the Jobs-in-the-Woods Program, a number of

other administrative and congressional programs sought

to create economic benefit by using procurement contracting. A memorandum of understanding between the Forest

Service Pacific Northwest Region, the BLM in Oregon and

Washington, and the Governor of Oregon; the National Fire

Plan (Western Governor’s Association 2001); the Secure

Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of

2000; and the stewardship contracting pilot program all

attempted to create rural community benefit by using

procurement contracting as a source of employment and

business opportunities (Moseley et al. 2002, Moseley and

Toth 2004). If these programs were effective, we would also

expect to see contractors in rural communities and near

federal forest lands capturing proportionately more of the

contract dollars than was the case in the early 1990s. In

addition, with the emphasis of creating rural community

benefit through procurement contracting, we would expect

that spending on procurement contracting would have

remained unchanged or increased.

Hypotheses

With this background information, I developed a set of

hypotheses based on the goals, objectives, and requirements of the Northwest Forest Plan, the Jobs-in-the-Woods

Program, and subsequent federal efforts to create rural

community benefit for public lands communities. I hypothesized that:
Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

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• Money spent on procurement contracting would

be constant or increase between 1990 and 2002

because of the increased need for forest restoration

activities associated with the Northwest Forest

Plan and associated requirements to restore the

habitat of endangered species.

• The type of work procured over time would shift

away from activities associated with intensive

timber management (e.g., tree planting, timber

stand improvement, site preparation) and toward

activities associated with ecosystem management

(e.g., road decommissioning, surveys, and

assessments).

• Procurement contracting for equipment-intensive

work would increase because the need for road

maintenance and decommissioning would remain

the same or increase in order to restore salmon

habit and habitat connectivity and because road

work would be increasingly difficult to fund as part

of a timber sale contract, as there would be fewer

timber sales.

• The location of contracted activities would shift

over time as management priorities changed.

• A change in the type of work would cause a

change in the contractor base, with contractors

who focused on activities associated with timberintensive management dropping out of the

contracting pool while those providing ecosystemmanagement activities increased.

• Contract money would be increasingly concentrated in designated affected counties of the

Northwest Forest Plan because the Jobs-in-theWoods Program called for increasing contract

awards to contractors located in these counties.

• Agencies would award an increasing proportion

of contract dollars to contractors located in rural

communities and in proximity to national forests

and BLM lands in order to provide community

benefits, increase community-well being, and

mitigate the job loss associated with reductions

in timber harvesting.

Methods

Given the limited information that was collected about the

Jobs-in-the-Woods program and its impact, we had to rely

on existing data sources that were not specific to the Jobsin-the-Woods Program to understand how forest management services changed, and whether these changes created

new job opportunities undertaking forest restoration to

replace job loss associated with the end of intensive timber

management. Consequently, in this report, we look at forest

management contracting across the affected counties of the

Northwest Forest Plan. Unfortunately, the data available

cannot provide information about employment, wages, or

job quality. Instead, we can examine Forest Service and

BLM contracting patterns and the businesses that undertook these contracts.

Data

The data for the analysis are drawn from the Federal Procurement Data Center’s database, which includes information from all federal agencies compiled from the SF-279

form that each federal agency must fill out for contracts

with an estimated value above $25,000. Our data set

includes procurement contracts from the Forest Service and

BLM in western Oregon and Washington and northwestern

California awarded between fiscal years (FYs) 1990 and

2002. All data are reported by federal fiscal year. The

analysis does not include any timber sale data.

More specifically, the data set includes contracts

involving land management work in the Northwest Forest

Plan’s affected counties, as defined by the Jobs-in-theWoods Program (fig. 1). The data set includes product service codes that were related to land management, broadly

defined, by using the same criteria as Moseley and Shankle

(2001), Moseley et al. (2002), and Moseley and Toth

(2004). That is, the data set includes contracts related to

forestry and watershed management such as thinning,

brushing, piling, noxious weed control, biological surveying, riparian restoration, and road construction and maintenance. The data set does not include activities such as

building construction or copier repair, nor does it include
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-661

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any purchases of goods. Contracts involving fire suppression are also excluded because they are rarely included in

this database. Unfortunately, prescribed burning is reported

in the same product service code as fire suppression, and

therefore is also excluded.

Measures

The Federal Procurement Data Center records track data by

task order. We defined the value of a contract to be the total

amount of money entered into the database with the same

contract number within each year. We counted a contract

meeting these criteria as a single contract regardless of how

many task orders were involved. The value of the contract is

the sum of the dollars obligated with each task order. We

corrected the contract values for inflation and report data in

2002 dollars.

The Federal Procurement Data Center records the location of work at the county level. Consequently, we report

most information about procurement at the county level

rather than at the forest or BLM district level. At times we

aggregate information at the state or subregion level. To

identify regional variation within the Northwest Forest

Plan area, we created four subregions: west Cascades, east

Cascades, Coast, and Klamath-Siskiyou (fig. 2). Bear in

mind that the subregion categories only include affected

counties of the Northwest Forest Plan. For example, the east

Cascades category does not include all of what might, more

generally, be considered the eastern Cascades. It was not

possible to use Northwest Forest Plan planning provinces

because they were not well correlated with the county or

national forest boundaries, which was how the place of

performance was recorded.

To understand the extent to which local contractors

were awarded contracts, my research assistants and I

calculated the distance between the contractors’ headquarters and the national forests where the work occurred by

using an approach similar to that used by Moseley and

Shankle (2001). We calculated this distance rather than

defining “local” because the definition of local is contextspecific and a regionwide definition would be too arbitrary

for the purposes here. We calculated these distances by

using Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI’s)

ArcView 8.3 GIS software.1 For the Forest Service, we were

able to impute the national forest in most cases from the

county of performance, information about the office that

wrote the contract, or the contract numbers. After deriving

the national forest, we calculated the distance by averaging

the distance in air miles between the weighted center of the

zip code (as provided by ESRI) where the con-tractor has its

headquarters and 25 random points within the national

forest. Because BLM contracting is more centralized, we

could not derive the BLM district from the information

available. Consequently, for BLM contracts, we measured

distance between the contractors’ headquarters and 25

random points on the BLM land within the county where

the work was performed. It is important to keep in mind that

these distances are measured in air miles and are likely to be

considerably shorter than road miles and to vary considerably in travel time because of topography. For example, the

distance from Redding, California, to Ashland, Oregon, is

120 air miles and 135 road miles. By contrast, the distance

from Redding, California, to Crescent City, California, is

123 air miles and 212 road miles (Moseley et al. 2003).

Although somewhat less accurate information than a

contractor would have available when considering whether

and how to bid, this was the most accurate information I

could calculate from the available data.

In addition to analyzing distances between the contractors’ headquarters and the national forests or BLM lands as

a measure of local benefit, I also examined awards to contractors based on the population of the community where

they were located. Following Census Bureau definitions, I

defined a rural community as a city having fewer than 5,000

residents (U.S. Census Bureau 2002). I included unincorporated communities in this category as well. Again following

Census Bureau definitions, I defined urban areas to be cities

with populations above 50,000. I created two additional

categories: 5,000-9,999 and 10,000-50,000 to describe

awards to contractors in midsized communities.

1

 The use of trade or firm names in this publication is for

reader information and does not imply endorsement by the

U.S. Department of Agriculture of any product or service.
Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

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Figure 2—National forests within the affected counties of the Northwest Forest Plan, by subregion.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-661

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I divided the product service codes provided by Federal

Procurement Data Center into three categories—labor intensive, equipment intensive, and technical—based on the

type of work that contracts with particular product service

codes were likely to involve. Activities such as tree planting

and thinning were classified as labor intensive. Activities

involving heavy equipment, such as road maintenance,

were considered equipment intensive. Technical work

includes activities such as species surveys or environmental

assessments. This was a rough categorization that undoubtedly created error that is not easily estimated. My conversations with Forest Service and BLM procurement technicians

sug-gested that some product service codes involve a wide

variety of work types. For example, “other natural resource

and conservation services” includes technical work such as

species surveys, but also includes nontechnical work such

as rock crushing. In addition, the way the agencies choose

product service codes differs over time and from person to

person.

In addition to reporting the data on an annual basis, I

also chose three 3-year periods for detailed analysis: 1990-

92, 1995-97, and 2000-2002. When analyzing data by

using this format, I reported data in 3-year aggregations.

I did this to increase my confidence that I was reporting

trends and not the impact of random year-to-year changes,

which can be considerable in procurement contracting.

I chose the first 3-year period because it is the first 3 years

of the study period. It is also prior to the Northwest Forest

Plan. I chose the middle 3 years based on consultation

with people who have long been observers of the Northwest Forest Plan and the Jobs-in-the-Woods Program. They

believed that these 3 years were the years the Forest Service

and the BLM were most focused on the Jobs-in-the-Woods

Program. Finally, I chose 2000-2002 because these are the

final years of data available and they represent years in

which attention had largely shifted to other programs,

especially the National Fire Plan, stewardship contracting,

and county payments.

Analysis

To understand the regional contracting market and the contractors involved in it, we calculated a variety of descriptive

statistics by using the value of contracts, the number of

contracts, the type of contracts, and the distance between

contractor headquarters and the location where the work

occurred. Formal statistical tests were kept to a minimum.2

Although the BLM and the Forest Service follow the same

procurement laws, past studies have suggested that their

procurement practices are quite different and thus the two

agencies needed to be analyzed separately (Moseley et al.

2002).

Findings

Procurement Spending

To test the first hypothesis—that spending would remain

constant or increase—I calculated total annual BLM and

Forest Service spending on contracting. Between 1990 and

2002, the Forest Service and the BLM together procured

$1.06 billion in land management services in the Jobs-inthe-Woods affected counties. The Forest Service spent $750

million and the BLM, $256 million. Forest Service spending declined throughout the period, whereas BLM spending

remained fairly constant (fig. 3). A time-series analysis

confirmed what the figure suggests: the slope estimate for

Forest Service funding was negative, large, and statistically

significant, whereas the BLM funding showed no significant trend. Note that, in this trend over time and those discussed below, there are only 11 to 12 observations, which

means that trends are unlikely to be statically significant

simply because of the small number of years in the study

 A lack of statistical significance does not necessarily

imply a lack of a trend. Thus, from this point forward, the

results of time-series analysis are not discussed explicitly,

and trend results should be considered descriptive rather

than predictive. It also is important to keep in mind that

2 Moseley and Reyes (in prep) offer a more methodologically sophisticated analysis of changes in awards to public

lands contractors.
Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

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we are not describing a sampling of contracts but rather the

universe of ecosystem management contracts issued during

the period, limited only by data entry errors and omissions.

Thus we can be more confident of apparent trends than we

might if the analysis were based on a small sample of the

contracts.

Forest Service spending peaked in 1991 at $103

million and then declined almost continually until 1998,

when there was a brief increase before it began to decline

again to a low of $33 million in 2002. The 1998 peak may

have been the result of funds for restoration made available

after the January 1997 flood that occurred in western

Oregon and northern California. The number of contracts

that the Forest Service issued declined (fig. 4), as did the

total dollar value of contracted work, although at a slightly

faster rate. This can be seen by the number of contracts

falling slower than the total spending by viewing the

average contract value, which increased slightly over the

study period (fig. 5)

Bureau of Land Management spending on procurement

contracting was more consistent throughout the period,

averaging just under $20 million per year. However,

spending bumped upward in the middle of the study period,

with the BLM spending $37 million in 1997. The BLM

issued about the same number of contracts each year, but

the level of procurement spending fluctuated from year to

year. Consequently, average contract value varied with the

value increasing whenever the agency spent more money

procuring services (figs. 4 and 5).

Procurement by Type of Work

The Northwest Forest Plan shifted management priorities

away from intensive forest management and toward

ecosystem management, including increased requirements

for species surveys. With these changes, as the second and

third hypotheses suggest, we might expect to see a decline

Figure 3—Total annual land management procurement spending, Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM), fiscal

year 1990 through 2002.
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Figure 4—Total number of land management contracts, Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM), fiscal

year 1990 through 2001.

Figure 5—Annual average contact value, Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM), fiscal year 1990

through 2001.
Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

11

in labor-intensive activities such as tree planting and site

preparation and an increase in equipment-intensive activities such as road reconstruction and decommissioning and

technical activities such as species surveys. This section

explores how the type of work contracted by the Forest

Service and BLM changed between 1990 and 2002. However, definitive analysis is difficult because product service

codes are generalized and procurement staff may not be

consistently classifying contracts across units. For example,

some staff placed road work in “other forest and range

improvements/nonconstruction,” whereas others used the

category “maintenance/alteration/repair of roads, streets,

and bridges.” In addition, some product service codes

belied neat categorization because they include both

technical activities such as surveys and equipmentintensive activities such as rock crushing. In addition,

because terms are generalized, it is difficult to determine if

an activity is performed for the purpose of intensive timber

management or ecosystem management. For example, “tree

thinning” might include precommercial thinning, timber

stand improvement, plantation thinning to improve timber

production or to diversify habitat, fire hazard reduction, or

aspen (Populus spp.) regeneration.

Forest Service—

Forest Service procurement spending in all three major

categories (labor, equipment, and technical) declined

during the 1990s (fig. 6). Contracting of labor-intensive

work diminished most dramatically, from $140 million

during the 3-year period from 1990 through 1992 to $37

million from 2000 through 2002, a 75-percent decrease.

Equipment-intensive and technical contracting declined

by one-third between 1990-1992 and 2000-2002. The

Forest Service spent the most money on labor-intensive

contracting in the early 1990s, but by the mid-1990s,

spending on equipment-intensive work had surpassed

labor-intensive contracting, although equipment-intensive

contracting declined in absolute terms as well.

Figure 6—Contract dollars by work type, Forest Service, fiscal year 1990 through 1992, 1995 through 1997, and 2000

through 2002.
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Spending in some product service codes declined, and

spending in other codes increased. Tree planting decreased

by the greatest percentage of any work type. Other types

of labor-intensive work associated with intensive forest

management such as seedling production and the vaguely

defined “land treatment practices” also waned (table 1).

Interestingly, tree thinning also declined despite the

increasing emphasis on fire hazard reduction in the late

1990s and the funding of the National Fire Plan beginning

in 2001. Although much of the Northwest Forest Plan area

is temperate rain forest and therefore not particularly fire

prone, the Klamath-Siskiyou Mountains and the eastern

Cascades are fire-adapted ecosystems. Furthermore, much

of the national forest land in northern California is located

in fire-adapted ecosystems, but spending on thinning from

2000 through 2002 was less than spending in the early

1990s (Moseley et al. 2003). Similarly, the agency spent

less on thinning in the Klamath-Siskiyou and eastern

Cascades region in 2000-2002 than it did in 1990-1992,

although spending on thinning rose from 1996 through

2002. In fact, comparing total contract spending with

thinning contract spending, we see that thinning fell more

quickly than other spending in the early 1990s, fell at the

same rate as other spending during most of the study period,

and only became a larger proportion of total spending

beginning in 2001 (fig. 7).

Among the equipment-intensive activities, the Forest

Service spent considerably more procurement dollars in

the early 1990s on road construction than compared to

later periods. In later years, road maintenance spending

increased, although not enough to make up for the earlier

decline in road construction procurement spending (table

2). This is contrary to what we might have predicted given

the need to maintain and obliterate roads to protect and

restore habitat. In technical contracting, contracting of

endangered species surveys was greater in 1995-1997 than

1990-1992, but spending had fallen off by the early 2000s.

Additionally, spending for contracted environmental

assessments was greatest during the early 1990s and

declined after that (table 3). Other natural resource and

conservation services was a large component of the technical contracting, but it is broadly and inconsistently used

and may include activities ranging from owl surveys to rock

crushing.

The patterns of decline in Forest Service land management procurement contracting suggest that, overall, the

Forest Service did not replace procurement associated with

intensive timber management with equivalent amounts of

surveying, restoration, and maintenance activities to meet

the requirements of the Northwest Forest Plan. Although

the types of activities that the Forest Service contracted

did change, and, after the mid-1990s, contracting was less

related to intensive forest management and more related to

restoration and maintenance, the overall decline in contract

spending overwhelms these shifts.

Bureau of Land Management—

The BLM procurement spending remained fairly constant

throughout the 1990s, but the type of work that the BLM

procured changed. Contract labor, equipment, and

technical work received fairly equal funding in the early

1990s and early 2000s. Despite the mid-1990s spike in

spending, some finer grained shifts in emphasis occurred

during the study period (fig. 8).

As with the Forest Service, labor-intensive work

associated with intensive timber management declined for

the BLM. But, thinning (probably largely associated with

fire hazard reduction) largely replaced tree planting by the

early 2000s. For example, spending on tree thinning more

then doubled between 1990-92 and 1995-97, whereas

spending on tree planting diminished to less than a third

during the same period (table 4). As striking, the BLM

procured little road construction or maintenance work in

the early 1990s, probably because this sort of work was

performed as part of timber sales or with in-house crews.

However, by the mid-1990s, the BLM was procuring road
Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

13

Table 1—Labor-intensive contracting by type of work, Forest Service

Period (fiscal years)

Type of work 1990-1992 1995-1997 2000-2002 Total

Dollars

Forest tree planting 64,245,564 15,010,386 5,698,765 84,954,715

Tree thinning 24,280,214 12,391,675 13,487,390 50,159,279

Other range-forest improvements/nonconstruction 16,106,851 13,552,183 6,692,122 36,351,155

Land treatment practices 15,816,828 6,925,658 4,124,375 26,866,862

Site preparation 5,039,510 5,200,455 2,598,344 12,838,308

Seedling production-transplanting 8,195,281 3,430,146 745,510 12,370,937

Other wildlife management 1,776,439 1,804,961 1,244,904 4,826,304

Seed collection-production 2,605,088 1,264,339 675,715 4,545,142

Forest-range fire rehabilitation 937,687 938,671 1,267,770 3,144,128

Maintenance repair alteration/restoration 0 1,096,901 127,000 1,223,901

Fisheries resources mangement 190,337 325,692 327,988 844,018

Pesticides support services 460,256 0 357,367 817,623

Recreation site maintenance/nonconstruction 394,718 66,786 0 461,504

Surface mining reclamation/nonconstruction 0 178,853 0 178,853

Survey line clearing 33,012 0 100,610 133,622

Landscaping-groundskeeping 107,158 0 11,090 118,248

Fire protection 32,051 0 14,228 46,279

Insect and rodent control services 28,886 0 0 28,886

Fish hatchery services 0 0 4,065 4,065

Total 140,249,881 62,186,706 37,477,242 239,913,829

Figure 7—Indexed comparison of total land management procurement and thinning, Forest Service, fiscal year 1990

through 2002.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-661

14

Table 2—Equipment-intensive contracting by type of work, Forest Service

Period (fiscal years)

Type of work 1990-1992 1995-1997 2000-2002 Total

Dollars

Construction/highways, roads, streets, bridges 44,487,080 34,289,706 27,538,187 106,314,973

Maintenance-repair-alteration/highways, roads, streets,

bridges 15,748,807 26,698,318 22,231,944 64,679,070

Construction/recreation nonbuilding structures 12,026,855 4,991,407 3,353,793 20,372,056

Aerial fertilization-spraying 14,763,648 1,404,981 1,445,625 17,614,254

Construction/other conservation 1,425,189 446,273 132,145 2,003,607

Aerial seeding 517,503 0 504,066 1,021,569

Maintenance-repair-alteration/tunnels and subsurface

structures 254,981 0 746,951 1,001,933

Construction/tunnels and subsurface structures 145,584 196,873 357,846 700,303

Range seeding-ground equipment 47,436 67,037 0 114,473

Maintenance-repair-alteration/other conservation structures 19,257 39,197 0 58,454

Total 89,436,342 68,133,791 56,310,557 213,880,690

Table 3—Technical contracting by type of work, Forest Service

Period (fiscal years)

Type of work 1990-1992 1995-1997 2000-2002 Total

Dollars

Other natural resource management and conservation 19,863,012 13,944,294 17,023,978 50,831,285

Professional services/land surveys-cadastral 2,797,729 1,007,662 134,146 3,939,537

Study/plant/animal 2,079,519 2,903,883 496,396 5,479,798

Study/environmental assessments 1,937,250 573,908 725,124 3,236,281

Other environmental services/studies/analytical support 568,780 1,573,643 319,243 2,461,667

Study/archeological-paleontological 1,537,029 165,022 53,797 1,755,848

Other special study and analyses 845,401 451,608 926,553 2,223,561

Study/natural resource 164,072 79,292 282,813 526,176

Study/scientific data 0 271,486 58,516 330,002

Research and Development (R&D)-natural resource-landapplied research 0 315,230 0 315,230

Study/soils 16,506 201,819 0 218,325

Study/feasibility-nonconstruction 72,655 101,535 0 174,190

Study/air/water quality 52,840 145,218 0 198,059

Study/recreation 135,335 0 0 135,335

Research-insect and disease control-basic research 0 134,529 0 134,529

Study/geotechnical 41,265 0 102,512 143,778

Independent investigation services/air/water pollution 0 57,851 86,382 144,233

R&D-other 70,513 0 0 70,513

Study/chemical-biological 0 0 70,122 70,122

Study/grazing-range use 0 35,419 0 35,419

Total 30,181,906 21,962,400 20,279,582 72,423,887
Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

15

Figure 8—Contract dollars by work type, Bureau of Land Management, fiscal year 1990 through 1992, 1995 through

1997, and 2000 through 2002.

Table 4—Labor-intensive contracting by type of work, Bureau of Land Management

Period (fiscal years)

Type of work 1990-1992 1995-1997 2000-2002 Total

Dollars

Tree thinning 11,985,064 25,320,713 26,733,325 64,039,102

Forest tree planting 23,857,317 6,916,537 1,316,689 32,090,543

Land treatment practices 2,508,148 16,196,447 1,885,556 20,590,151

Other range-forest improvements/nonconstruction 37,290 106,772 1,988,981 2,133,043

Seed collection-production 47,436 1,121 451,387 499,944

Other wildlife management 283,461 0 101,911 385,372

Recreation site maintenance/nonconstruction 0 136,329 173,981 310,310

Seedling production-transplanting 78,985 193,949 0 272,934

Maintenance-repair-alteration/restoration 40,254 7,084 199,187 246,525

Wildhorse-burro control 0 0 189,000 189,000

Landscaping-groundskeeping 0 10,626 62,585 73,211

Survey line clearing 0 0 62,000 62,000

Tree breeding 0 30,697 0 30,697

Fisheries resource management 0 12,987 15,000 27,987

Surface mining reclamation/nonconstruction 0 0 13,584 13,584

Total 38,837,955 48,933,262 33,193,186 120,964,404
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-661

16

work while other equipment-intensive activities, such as

aerial spraying, were declining (table 5). In addition, the

BLM increased procurement of surveys and environmental

assessments in 2000-2002, whereas they were rare earlier

(table 6). The magnitude of this trend is difficult to measure,

however, because of the practice of classifying surveys

along with other types of work, under the product service

code, “other natural resource management and conservation.” Spending on procurement in this category was high

in the early 1990s but smaller in later years. It is not clear

whether this change is a result of a change in contracting

activities or categorization practices.

Forest Service and BLM compared—

The shift from timber management to ecosystem management changed the procurement contracting of both the

Forest Service and the BLM. The type of work that both

agencies procured changed in similar ways. Both agencies

procured fewer services associated with intensive timber

management, such as tree planting and site preparation,

and bought more surveying and road maintenance services.

Here, however, is where the similarities end. Procurement

spending by the BLM was nearly constant and followed

the pattern hypothesized at the beginning—that funding

would hold steady to suit the requirement of the Northwest Forest Plan for ecosystem management. But, this was

not the case for Forest Service; its spending declined from

a peak of $103 million in 1991 to a low of $33 million in

2002.

Location of Procurement Spending

In addition to spending by type of activity, I also examined

spending by geographical location, because I hypothesized

that the agencies would shift the location of their land management activities as priorities changed, although it was not

clear in advance in what ways geographic shifts would

occur. I used spending per acre of Forest Service or BLM

land to portray how spending differed across the region and

over time. Forest Service and BLM procurement spending

at the county level was not distributed evenly across the

study area and changed over time. In this section, I examine

Forest Service and BLM spending based on the location

where the work was performed.

Forest Service—

Of the $750 million that the Forest Service spent procuring

land management services on national forest land in the

Northwest Forest Plan’s affected counties between 1990

and 2002, $368 million (49 percent) was spent on national

forests in western Oregon, $201.4 million (27 percent)

in western Washington, and $180.3 million (24 percent) in

northern California. Procurement spending differed considerably by county. In counties with national forest land,

Forest Service procurement spending ranged from a low of

$3 per acre in Jefferson County, Oregon, to a high of $783

per acre in Thurston County, Washington, with a countylevel average of $70 per acre from 1990 through 2002.

Table 5—Equipment-intensive contracting by type of work, Bureau of Land Management

 Period (fiscal years)

Type of work 1990-1992 1995-1997 2000-2002 Total

Dollars

Construction/highways, roads, streets, bridges 293,683 12,525,987 3,050,386 15,870,056

Maintenance-repair-alteration/highways, roads, streets, bridges 221,474 5,349,729 4,539,898 10,111,101

Aerial fertilization-spraying 4,998,988 1,586,878 0 6,585,866

Construction/recreation nonbuilding structures 3,329,655 25,785 642,961 3,998,401

Maintenance-repair-alteration/other conservation structure 3,963 3,300,984 241,000 3,545,947

Construction/other conservation 109,643 974,359 164,000 1,248,002

Range seeding-ground equipment 0 0 171,549 171,549

Total 8,957,407 23,763,722 8,809,793 41,530,922
Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

17

Extremely high per-acre spending in areas such as

Thurston County is likely the result of having Forest

Service offices but relatively little acreage in a particular

county. Among counties with more than 50 percent Forest

Service land, the county-level average was $27 per acre,

whereas the county-level average spending per acre for

counties with less than 50 percent national forest lands

was $80 per acre. This suggests that Forest Service procurement spending is not simply based on acreage of Forest

Service land. In some cases, proportionately more spending

occurred in counties with less Forest Service acreage than

in counties with extensive Forest Service acreage.

In interpreting these results it is important to remember

that the figures refer to procurement spending not national

forest budgets or spending. Therefore, the differences in

spending could be because, in areas with a higher concentration of Forest Service land, the national forests might be

able to support in-house crews and rely less on contracting.

Alternatively, less procurement spending per acre reflects

lower per-acre national forest budgets for areas with a high

concentration of national forest land.

Regardless of the differences in spending across the

region, the total amount of spending dropped across the

study region between 1990 and 2002. Spending in western

Oregon declined slightly more quickly than spending in

western Washington and northern California (fig. 9).

Between 1990 and 2002, Forest Service spending in

western Oregon fell by 62 percent, whereas it declined in

northern California by 56 percent and in western Washington by 60 percent. In addition to changes at the state level,

spending declined at somewhat different rates in different

subregions. Spending in the western Cascades and KlamathSiskiyou regions diminished the most (71 and 62 percent,

respectively), whereas the reduction was less pronounced in

the coast and eastern Cascades, declining only by 41 and

54 percent, respectively (fig. 10). This variation is somewhat surprising given the National Fire Plan’s focus on fire

hazard reduction in the 2000s, which would have suggested

that spending would have been increasing in the eastern

Cascades and Klamath-Siskiyou regions. Finally, spending

differed at the county level as well. It is striking that peracre spending declined in nearly every county (fig. 11). In

some counties, per-acre spending declined dramatically. For

example, in Coos County, Oregon, national forest per-acre

spending declined by about 80 percent, from $42 per acre

in 1990-92 to $8 per acre in 2000-2002. In Gray’s Harbor

County, Washington, national forest spending fell from $11

per acre to $4 per acre. And per-acre spending fell from $8

to $3 per acre in Trinity County, California.

Table 6—Technical contracting by type of work, Bureau of Land Management

 Period (fiscal years)

Type of work 1990-1992 1995-1997 2000-2002 Total

Dollars

Other natural resource management and conservation 5,641,738 1,420,609 4,338,989 11,401,337

Study/environmental assessments 0 0 1,319,065 1,319,065

Study/wildlife 195,236 0 680,673 875,909

Research/other natural resource 872,977 0 0 872,977

Study/archeological-paleontological 109,698 35,792 516,159 661,649

Fire prevention and control 0 0 597,733 597,733

Other environmental services/studies/analytical 41,026 396,445 89,488 526,958

Study/endangered species-plant/animal 209,616 0 280,423 490,039

Professional services/land surveys-cadastral 261,392 0 7,000 268,392

Study/geological 0 0 103,123 103,123

Other special study and analyses 0 0 38,618 38,618

Research and development-subsurface mining 0 25,229 0 25,229

Total 7,331,684 1,878,075 7,971,271 17,181,030
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-661

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Figure 9—Annual procurement spending by state, Forest Service, fiscal year 1990 through 2002.

Figure 10—Annual procurement spending by subregion, Forest Service, fiscal year 1990 through 2002.
Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

19

Figure 11—Procurement spending per acre, Forest Service, fiscal year 1990 through 1992 and fiscal year 2000 through 2002.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-661

20

Bureau of Land Management—

The BLM concentrated its contracting procurement more

heavily in Oregon than did the Forest Service. Virtually all

(97 percent) of the $256 million of procurement spending

from 1990 through 2002 occurred for services performed in

Oregon, where nearly all of the BLM forest land is located

(fig. 12). Among the subregions, spending shifted from the

wetter areas of the coast and western Cascades in the early

1990s to the dryer areas of the Klamath-Siskiyou and

eastern Cascades by the 2000s. The BLM spent very little

money in the east Cascades subregion in the early and mid1990s, but spending began to increase after 1997 (fig. 13).

Although BLM focused its spending in Oregon, at the

county level, the per-acre spending varied considerably

and somewhat independently of the total BLM acreage in

the county. Ignoring King County, Washington, which is

where Seattle is located, spending in 1990-2002 ranged

from $1,319 per acre in Clatsop County, Oregon, to just

1 cent per acre in Deschutes County, Oregon, a county

where the BLM owns 30 percent of the land. This extreme

range likely results because on one end are counties with

BLM offices but limited acreage, and on the other are counties where BLM ownership is primarily rangeland. In six

counties where BLM owns more than 1 percent of the land,

the BLM made no procurement investments between 1990

and 2002, including one county with more than 15 percent

BLM land. In addition, the BLM invested about $2 per acre

in Lake County, Oregon, where the BLM manages almost

60 percent of the land. In both Deschutes and Lake Counties, the BLM largely manages rangelands.

The variation in procurement across the counties shows

that until the mid-1990s, the BLM concentrated its procurement spending in the Oregon and California (O&C) counties of Oregon that contained high-production forest lands.

After the mid-1990s, funding became even more concentrated in the counties of southern Oregon, which are O&C

counties but are more arid than counties farther north. For

example, the BLM spent $26 per acre in the early 1990s

Figure 12—Annual procurement spending by state, Bureau of Land Management, fiscal year 1990 through 2002.
Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

21

in Jackson County, but this figure rose to $46 per acre in

the early 2000s (fig. 14). By contrast, BLM spending in

Coos County declined from $44 per acre to $25 per acre

between the same two periods. This suggests that the BLM

has shifted its focus from the most productive forest lands to

those forests at higher risk of wildfire. This geographic shift

in spending matches the changes in the type of work that

the BLM is procuring, especially its increased spending

on thinning.

The BLM and Forest Service compared—

Both the BLM and Forest Service spent their procurement dollars unevenly across the landscape. The BLM

concentrated procurement spending on certain subregions

more than did the Forest Service. In the early 1990s, the

BLM directed spending toward the productive O&C lands,

whereas in the 2000s, it shifted its spending south and

east toward forests with higher fire hazard. The Forest Service, however, tended to spread procurement spending in

counties across the study area. However, the Forest Service

spent more per acre in counties with less national forest

land than it did in counties with larger amounts of Forest

Service land. Regardless of where procurement spending

occurred, the sharp drop in Forest Service procurement

spending across the region remains the most salient trend.

Changes in contractors

With changes in contracting expected with the rise of ecosystem management, I hypothesized that contractors involved in contracting would change as well. To measure

this expected change, I examined the number of contractors, contractor turnover, and market concentration over

time.

Forest Service—

In addition to declining Forest Service spending on contracting regionwide, the number of contractors awarded

contracts declined as well. During 1990-92, the Forest

Service awarded contracts to 962 contractors. By 1995-97,

that number had fallen to 684, a decline of 29 percent.

By the early 2000s, the number had fallen further to 509,

another 26 percent. This follows the pattern of Forest

Figure 13—Annual procurement spending by subregion, Bureau of Land Management, fiscal year 1990 through 2002.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-661

22

Figure 14—Procurement spending per acre, Bureau of Land Management (BLM), fiscal year 1990 through 1992 and fiscal

year 2000 through 2002.
Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

23

Service procurement spending, although spending fell

more steeply than the number of contractors did. Forest

Service procurement fell by 41 percent between the first

two periods and 25 percent between the second two.

To understand more fully the reduction in the number

of contractors working for the Forest Service, we matched

contractors by their unique DUNS numbers or names and

office locations and we compared contractors who worked

in one period (e.g., 1995-97 only) with those who worked

in two periods (e.g., 1990-92 and 1995-97). This method

may underestimate the number of repeat contractors

because a company could have changed its name and

reapplied for a DUNS number during the intervening

period.3

 This allows for a calculation of contractor turnover; it does not, however, explain why contractor turnover

occurred. These reasons could be many. Contractors could

go out of business or they could stay in business but stop

contracting with the federal land management agencies.

These changes could be the result of natural attrition in

forestry contracting, the result of changes in the amount of

procurement that the agencies were undertaking, or changes

in the type of activities the agencies were procuring.

By comparing businesses that appear in only one

3-year period with those that appear in two 3-year periods,

we found that, of the 962 contractors awarded contracts

during 1990-92, 213 (22 percent) were also awarded contracts in 1995-97 and 103 (11 percent) were awarded

contracts during 2000-2002. Of the 760 contractors who

stopped working for the Forest Service during 1990-92 and

1995-97, 415 (55 percent) were replaced by new contractors

and 345 (45 percent) were not. Similarly, during 1990-92

and 2000-2002, of the 859 contractors that left the contracting market, 406 (47 percent) were replaced by other contractors and 53 percent of them were not replaced (table 7).

3

 All contractors working for the federal government

must have a DUNS number. A DUNS number is a unique

number that Dun and Bradstreet issues that allows Dun and

Bradstreet subscribers to track companies, their subsidiaries,

and affiliates and check a company’s credit records.

If we compare the awards to contractors that worked

for the Forest Service for two periods with those that only

worked for one period, we find a marked difference. In

general, contractors who worked for the Forest Service

during more than one period were likely to capture larger

contracts and more contract value. The 202 contractors that

worked for the Forest Service in both 1990-92 and 1995-97

earned an average of $502,000 from 1990 through 1992,

whereas contractors that only worked between 1990 and

1992 earned an average of $204,000. This suggests that, as

contracting declined in the early 1990s, the largest contractors were more likely to continue to work for the Forest

Service than the smaller ones. Here, a “large contractor”

means one that does a large amount of business for the

Forest Service and a “small contractor” is one that does a

small amount of business for the Forest Service measured

in total dollars awarded during the period in question. We

cannot identify the actual size of the contractor from the

data available. Potentially, a small contractor could, in fact,

be quite large, but only perform a small amount of work for

the Forest Service. This pattern holds when we compare

1990-92 and 2000-2002 (table 7). Although the larger contractors appeared to survive from one period to the next,

they too received less contract value from the Forest Service. For example, returning contractors earned an average of

$548,000 during 1990-92, but only an average of $303,000

during 2000-2002.

Another way to consider changes among the pool

of contractors working for the federal land management

agencies is to examine market concentration, that is, the

extent to which contract awards are concentrated in the

hands of a few contractors or dispersed more or less evenly

among many contractors. Examining the market concentration of contractors working for the Forest Service shows that

fewer contractors appear in all size classes and the market

concentration of contractors was largely unchanged during

the study period (table 8). Ranking the contractors by the

amount of money that they were awarded in each period,

we find that 18 contractors (1.9 percent) were awarded 25

percent of the contract value region wide in 1990-92 and
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-661

24

the 768 contractors with the smallest total awards together

were also awarded 25 percent of the total contract value.

Again, contractor size is measured by total amount of Forest

Service award. During 2000-2002, 2.0 percent of contractors were awarded 25 percent of the work, only a minor

change from 1990-92. This implies that, in both periods,

roughly 20 percent of the contractors received 75 percent

of the contract value. A chi-square test confirms that there

was no statistically significant change in the market concentration across the three periods.

The number of contractors working for the Forest

Service declined over the course of the study periods as

Forest Service spending declined. The market concentration

and high contractor turnover suggests that larger contractors (measured by how much business they do with the

Forest Service) were more likely to survive the declining

contracting opportunities, whereas smaller contractors were

more likely to disappear from the Forest Service contracting

market and be replaced with other contractors in later

periods.

Bureau of Land Management—

Bureau of Land Management contracting shows a different pattern than that of the Forest Service. Instead of

decreasing, the number of contractors working for the

Table 7—Comparison of contractors that appear in one period with those who appear in two periods, Forest Service

Period (fiscal years)

 1990-1992 1995-1997 1990-1992 2000-2002 1995-1997 2000-2002

Appearing in both periods

Number of contractors 213 213 103 103 171 171

Percentage of contractors 22.1 31.1 10.7 20.2 25.0 33.6

Total dollars to those contractors $106,827,000 $72,949,000 $56,401,000 $31,216,000 $67,003,000 $61,231,000

41% 48% 22% 27% 44% 54%

Average dollars to contractors $502,000 $342,000 $548,000 $303,000 $392,000 $358,000

Appearing in one period

Number of contractors 749 471 859 406 513 338

Percentage of contractors 77.9 68.9 89.3 79.8 75.0 66.4

Total dollars to those contractors $153,054,000 $79,334,000 $203,480,000 $82,852,000 $85,280,000 $52,836,000

59% 52% 78% 73% 56% 46%

Average dollars to contractors $204,000 $168,000 $237,000 $204,000 $166,000 $156,000

Table 8—Concentration of contracting awards by size of contractor, Forest Service

 Period (fiscal years)

Quartile 1990-1992 1995-1997 2000-2002

Number of Percentage of Number of Percentage of Number of Percentage of

contractors contractors contractors contractors contractors contractors

1st 18 1.9 17 2.5 10 2.0

2nd 48 5.0 49 7.2 23 4.5

3rd 128 13.3 113 16.5 64 12.6

4

th 768 79.8 505 73.8 412 80.9

Total 962 100% 684 100% 509 100%

Note: This table groups contractors by size of the contractors’ awards. The largest contractors that together capture one quarter of the contract

value are in the first quartile. The smallest contractors that together capture one quarter of the contract value are in the fourth quartile. Thus, for

example, the largest 18 contractors in 1990-1992 captured the same total value as the smallest 768 contractors.

chi square p < 0.932.
Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

25

BLM increased between 1990 and 2002. For 1990-92,

the BLM awarded contracts to 162 contractors. In 1995

through 1997, that number dropped to 136, but increased

to 198 for 2000-2002. This pattern is surprising because

BLM spending peaked in the 1995-97 period.

During 1990-92, the BLM awarded 50 percent of the

contract value to 10 percent of the contractors. By 2000-

2002, the BLM awarded 50 percent of the contract dollars

to 7.6 percent of the contractors, a 2.4 percentage point

increase in concentration (table 9). However, this was not

a statistically significant difference.

The BLM experienced similar rates of contractor turnover as the Forest Service (table 10). About 20 percent of

contractors working for the BLM during 1990-92 were also

working for the BLM during 1995-97, and 10 percent of

contractors working during 1990-92 were still working

for the BLM a decade later. Contractors that worked for

the BLM during 1990-92 and 2000-2002 were awarded,

on average, $688,000 in the first period and an average

of $972,000 a decade later. By contrast, contractors that

worked during only one period were awarded, on average,

a total of $297,000 during 1990-92 and $180,000 a decade

later. The BLM’s long-term contractors captured a much

larger percentage of the BLM’s procurement spending than

did the Forest Service’s long-term contractors.

Forest Service and BLM compared—

The Forest Service and the BLM had similar turnover rates

in their contractor base throughout the study. In addition,

market concentration did not change much for either

agency, although it perhaps increased somewhat in the

mid-1990s. The general decline in Forest Service procurement spending resulted in constant market concentration,

suggesting that larger contractors did not dominate the

Forest Service contracting market in the early 2000s to

any greater degree than they did in the early 1990s.

Contracting for Both Agencies

Given the similarity of the activities that the Forest Service

and the BLM contract, it may be that some of the same

contractors work for both agencies. Working for both

agencies could have created some stability as the Forest

Service’s contracting spending declined.

Table 9—Concentration of contracting awards by size of contractor, Bureau of Land Management

Period (fiscal years)

Quartile 1990-1992 1995-1997 2000-2002

Number of Percentage of Number of Percentage of Number of Percentage of

contractors contractors contractors contractors contractors contractors

1st 5 3.09 1 0.74 2 1.01

2nd 12 7.41 8 5.88 13 6.57

3rd 24 14.81 15 11.03 31 15.66

4th 121 74.69 112 82.35 152 76.77

Total 162 100% 136 100% 198 100%

Note: See note for table 8.

chi square p < 0.805.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-661

26

In 1990-92, 162 contractors worked for the BLM and

962 worked for the Forest Service. Consequently, up to 162

contractors could have worked for both agencies. Of those,

93 (57 percent) worked for both the BLM and the Forest

Service. In 1995-97, 77 of 136 (56 percent) worked for both

agencies, and in 2000-2002, 73 of 198 (37 percent) worked

for both agencies. Thus, BLM contractors work fairly

frequently for the Forest Service. However, most Forest

Service contractors did not work for the BLM. This follows

logic as there were many more Forest Service contractors

than BLM contractors. This means, however, that most contractors worked for only one agency. In 1990-92, 91 percent

worked for one agency, in 1995-97, 90 percent and in 2000-

2002, 89 percent worked for one agency.

The contractors that worked for both agencies were

awarded, on average, more contract value than those contractors that work for only one agency. For example, the

average total award ranged from $1.3 million in 1990-92

to $900,000 in 2000-2002 for contractors who worked for

both agencies, whereas contractors that only worked for one

agency averaged between $140,000 for the BLM in 2000-

2002 to $205,000 for the Forest Service in 1990-92. The

contractors are larger than average, even when we consider

their income from only one of the agencies (table 11).

Location of Contractors Over Time

Given the Northwest Forest Plan aim of providing jobs in

the woods through procurement contracting to replace jobs

lost from cutbacks in federal timber harvesting, as well as

the number of other policy initiatives over the last decade

that have sought to create economic benefit for rural communities located near national forests through procurement

contracting, I hypothesized that contractors in the Planaffected counties and contractors near national forests and

in rural communities would capture an increasing proportion of contracts and contract value over time.

Distances contractors travel to work—

One way to measure whether local communities are

capturing contracting benefits is to measure the distance

between the contractor office and the national forest or

BLM district where the work was performed. If, over time,

the average distance decreased, then this implies that contractors closer to national forests or BLM districts are

getting more of the contracts.

Forest Service—

Throughout the study period, contractors working in western Oregon, western Washington, and northern California

were concentrated along the Interstate-5 corridor (fig. 15).

The amount of money captured by contractors declined

nearly everywhere over time. However, figure 15 suggests

that the reductions were greater for contractors with offices

in the Willamette Valley of western Oregon and the central

valley of California.

Table 10—Comparison of contractors that appear in one period with those who appear in two periods, Bureau of Land

Management

 Period (fiscal years)

 1990-1992 1995-1997 1990-1992 2000-2002 1995-1997 2000-2002

Appearing in both periods

Number of contractors 33 33 18 18 45 45

Percentage of contractors 20.4 24.3 11.1 9.1 33.1 22.7

Total dollars to those contractors $22,539,000 $43,586,000 $12,390,000 $17,496,000 $39,640,000 $25,754,000

Average dollars to contractors $683,000 $1,321,000 $688,000 $972,000 $881,000 $572,000

Appearing in one period

Number of contractors 129 103 144 180 91 153

Percentage of contractors 79.6 75.7 88.9 90.9 66.9 77.3

Total dollars to those contractors $32,593,000 $30,989,000 $42,742,000 $32,478,000 $34,935,000 $24,220,000

Average dollars to contractors $253,000 $301,000 $297,000 $180,000 $384,000 $158,000
Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

27

Table 11—Comparison of contractors that performed work for the Forest Service (FS) with those that

performed work for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)

Period (fiscal years)

1990-1992 1995-1997 2000-2002

Performed work for both Forest Service and BLM

Number of contractors 93 77 73

Percentage of all contractors 9.0% 10.4% 11.5%

Percentage of BLM contractors 57.4% 56.6% 36.9%

Percentage of FS contractors 9.7% 11.3% 14.3%

Average FS dollars to these contractors 875,002 530,318 454,814

Average BLM dollars to these contractors 469,691 759,537 445,063

Average combined dollars to these contractors 1,344,694 1,289,854 899,877

Performed work for Forest Service only

Number of contractors 869 607 436

Average dollars to these contractors 205,415 183,605 185,472

Performed work for BLM only

Number of contractors 69 59 125

Average dollars to these contractors 165,950 272,724 139,877

All contractors

Number of contractors 1,031 743 634

Average dollars to all contractors 185,549 173,390 156,547
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-661

28

Figure 15—Location of contractors awarded contracts on national forests by total award per zip code, fiscal year 1990

through 1992 and fiscal year 2000 through 2002.
Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

29

Consequently, in the affected counties, the mean distance that contractors traveled to work on national forest

lands decreased from 131.1 air miles in 1990-92 to 107.9 in

1999-2001, a statistically significant difference (p < 0.001).

This implies that the Forest Service, on average, awarded

contracts to communities closer to national forests in 1999

through 2001 than was the case a decade earlier. Recall that

I am measuring the distance between a contractor’s headquarters and the national forest where the work occurred in

air miles, and I could not calculate mean distances for 2002

because of a lack of contract numbers for 2002.

When looking at the data set as a whole, the distances

that contractors traveled appeared to decline, making the

Forest Service appear to have made proportionately more

local awards. However, a more detailed statistical analysis,

which is reported in Moseley and Reyes,4 shows that the

overall decline in mean distance traveled is the result of

the shift in work type and the location of work and not

likely the result of efforts to increase local contractor capture of particular types of work. After controlling for work

type, the location where the work was performed, and other

factors, the expected distance actually increased compared

to the control year of 1990. The apparent decrease in

overall distance is largely attributable to a shift in the type

of work that the Forest Service contracted over time. In

particular the shift from labor-intensive to equipmentintensive activities reduced overall distance because

equipment-intensive contracts are more likely to be

awarded to nearby contractors than are labor-intensive

contracts. Once we control for this shift, the decrease in

distance disappears.

Bureau of Land Management—

Even more so than for the Forest Service, the contractors

working on BLM districts in the study area appear to have

been concentrated along the Interstate-5 corridor (fig. 16).

4

 Moseley, C.; Reyes, Y.E. [N.d.]. Forest restoration and

forest communities: Have local communities benefited from

eco-system management? Manuscript in preparation. On

file with: Cassandra Moseley, Ecosystem Workforce

Program, 5247 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403.

Compared with the 1990s, the maps suggest that contractors from southern Oregon performed more work on BLM

lands in the study area in the early 2000s. This follows

logic as the BLM greatly increased its procurement spending in southern Oregon in the 2000s compared to a decade

earlier, and there has long been local contracting capacity

in southern Oregon (Moseley and Shankle 2001).

Similarly, fewer contracts were awarded to contractors

located in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, although

contractors from the Willamette Valley still received a

considerable proportion of the contract value (fig. 16).

As with the Forest Service, the distance that contractors traveled to work on BLM lands appeared to decrease

between the early 1990s and the early 2000s. Overall, the

difference in mean distance that contractors traveled in

1990-92 and 1999-2001 was 47 air miles (p < 0.009). As

with the Forest Service, however, this decline can largely

be explained by a shift in the type of work contracted and

the location where the work was performed. An analogous

statistical test to the one performed for the Forest Service

finds no statistically significant change in the distance the

contractors traveled to work on BLM districts in the study

area.

Forest Service and BLM compared—

The analysis of the distance between national forest and

BLM units and contractor headquarters suggests that there

was little if any increase in awards to local contractors over

time. The Forest Service and the BLM initially appeared

to increase awards to nearby contractors but statistical

analysis suggests that this was not the case. Nearby Forest Service contractors may have suffered somewhat less

than distant contractors as contracting declined because

equipment-intensive contractors were more likely to be

local than labor-intensive contractors, and equipmentintensive contracting declined more slowly than laborintensive contracting. Still, local equipment and local

labor contractors did not appear to be anymore likely to

be awarded contracts at the end of the study period than

they had been a decade earlier.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-661

30

Figure 16—Location of contractors awarded contracts on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands by total award per zip

code, fiscal year 1990 through 1992 and fiscal year 2000 through 2002.
Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

31

Contract awards to rural communities—

One goal of the Northwest Forest Plan was to create

economic benefits for rural communities that were affected

by reduced federal timber harvests. Thus, it is important

to understand not only whether local businesses came to

capture more work, but also if businesses located in rural

communities came to capture more work.

From 1990 through 1992, the Forest Service awarded

24 percent of its contract value to contractors in rural communities, whereas it awarded 25 percent of its contract

value to contractors located in rural communities in 2000

through 2002. However, the percentage of the contract

value awarded to contractors in towns with populations

between 5,000 and 10,000 declined by one percentage

point. Consequently, contractors located in communities

of fewer than 10,000 captured the same proportion of Forest Service procurement dollars in the two periods. These

shifts were not large enough to be statistically significant

(table 12).

As with the Forest Service, the change was not statically

significant for BLM contractors. In 2000-2002, contractors

in rural communities captured seven percentage points

more contract value than they did in 1990-92 (table 13). At

first glance, this appears to be a considerable shift. The

percentage of contract value awarded to communities with

unknown populations, declined from 10 percent in 1990-92

to 5 percent in 2000-2002. If most unknown communities

are rural communities (because large communities are more

likely to have been identified), then the actual shift over the

study period would be much smaller.

Contract awards to affected counties—

From 1990 through 2002, the BLM awarded 93.2 percent of its contract value to contractors located in the Jobsin-the-Woods affected counties. Between 1990-92 and

1995-97, the percentage increased from 89.1 percent to

95.8 percent. In 2000-2002, the percentage declined

again to 92.5. The increase in awards to contractors

from the affected area during the mid-1990s suggests

that the Jobs-in-the-Woods Program had a small impact

on the BLM contract awards (fig. 17). However, because

the BLM already awarded the vast majority of its contract

value to contractors located in affected counties, this component of the Jobs-in-the-Woods Program could only have

had a limited impact.

Table 12—Percentage of contract value by contractor’s community size, Forest Service

 Period (fiscal years)

Community population (1998) 1990-1992 1995-1997 2000-2002

Real dollars Percent Real dollars Percent Real dollars Percent

<5,000 62,214,306 23.9 38,198,939 25.1 28,881,673 25.3

5,000-9,999 30,601,624 11.8 26,696,085 17.5 12,163,213 10.7

10,000-50,000 68,300,970 26.3 28,176,899 18.5 26,644,073 23.4

>50,000 63,567,462 24.5 37,461,403 24.6 35,952,384 31.5

Unknown 35,196,197 13.5 21,749,570 14.3 10,426,038 9.1

Total 259,880,559 100.0 152,282,897 100.0 114,067,381 100.0

chi square p < 0.6750.

chi square p < (excluding unknown) 0.540.

(performed on percentages).
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-661

32

Overall, the Forest Service awarded less contract value

to contractors from affected counties than the BLM—83.0

percent and 93.2 percent, respectively. The percentage of

contract value awarded to contractors from affected areas

did not change appreciably between the early and mid

1990s. In 1990-92, the Forest Service awarded 82.7 percent

of its contract value to contractors located in affected

counties, whereas in 1995-97, it awarded 82 percent. By

2000-2002, the Forest Service had increased its awards to

contractors from affected counties to 85.0 percent of total

contract value (fig. 18). These results suggest that the

policies aiming for greater rural economic benefit through

Table 13—Percentage of contract value by contractor’s community size, Bureau of Land Management

 Period (fiscal years)

Community population (1998) 1990-1992 1995-1997 2000-2002

Real dollars Percent Real dollars Percent Real dollars Percent

<5,000 14,385,214 26.1 32,058,861 43.0 16,402,807 32.8

5,000-9,999 2,415,056 4.4 4,562,597 6.1 3,215,747 6.4

10,000-50,000 16,043,681 29.1 19,244,444 25.8 11,537,590 23.1

>50,000 16,952,290 30.7 16,358,451 21.9 16,355,417 32.7

Unknown 5,335,600 9.7 2,350,705 3.2 2,462,689 4.9

Total 55,131,841 100.0 74,575,059 100.0 49,974,251 100.0

chi square p < 0.1420.

chi square p < 0.2910. (excluding unknown).

(performed on percentages0 ).

Figure 17—Contract awards to Jobs-in-the-Woods-affected counties, Bureau of Land Management, fiscal year 1990 through 2002.
Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

33

increased procurement contracting targeted at affected

counties had little impact.

Conclusions

The report began with seven hypotheses based on the goals

and objectives of the Northwest Forest Plan and subsequent

federal forest programs. The procurement habits and contracting markets of the BLM and the Forest Service changed

considerably between 1990 and 2002. In some ways,

procurement contracting changed as hypothesized, whereas

in other ways, it did not.

Hypothesis 1 was that total spending would increase

or remain the same. Contrary to this hypothesis, Forest

Service procurement spending declined markedly. The

decline in Forest Service spending was surprising because

it was initially hypothesized that the Northwest Forest Plan

would lead to new demand for studies, surveys, and restoration activities, and a decline of timber sales to fund road

maintenance and decommissioning. By contrast, the BLM

maintained its procurement spending with some variation

throughout the study period. The continuation of BLM

procurement spending suggests that the hypothesized

need for contracted services may have been correct and that

the Forest Service faced other barriers to spending. Other

studies suggest, in fact, that reductions in forest-level budgets were a primary cause of decreases in contract spending

(see footnote 4) (Stuart, in press). This reduction in Forest

Service contract spending is the dominant finding of the

study and, in several instances, this decline overwhelmed

other hypothesized changes that might have come with the

Northwest Forest Plan, such as changing type of work or

increasing opportunities for public lands communities.

Figure 18—Contract awards to Jobs-in-the-Woods-affected counties, Forest Service, fiscal year 1990 through 2002.
GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-661

34

Hypotheses 2 and 3 were that the type of work

procured over time would change, in particular increasing equipment-intensive activities associated with road

and salmon restoration. Both agencies reduced their

procurement from activities associated with intensive

timber management and shifted spending to activities

associated with ecosystem management as expected based

on the changing management priorities of the Northwest

Forest Plan and other subsequent programs, such as the

emergency funds that followed the 1997 flood and the

National Fire Plan. Forest Service spending declined in

nearly all categories but fell in categories associated with

ecosystem management more slowly than in categories

associated with timber management.

Hypothesis 4 was that the location of contracted

activities would shift over time as management priorities

changed. The BLM shifted its spending noticeably across

the landscape over the study period. In particular, the BLM

shifted its spending from the productive timber counties

to the more arid areas with higher fire hazard in response

to changing management priorities in the late 1990s. The

Forest Service tended to spread its spending more evenly

across its land, with little proportional shift over time.

For the Forest Service, the most noticeable trend was the

decline in contract spending across all national forests.

 Hypothesis 5 was that a change in the type of work

would cause a change in the contractor base. With the

decline in Forest Service spending, the number of contractors working for both agencies declined from 1,031

in 1990-92 to 634 in 2000-2002. Although there was no

increase in market concentration, the analysis of contractor

turnover suggests that larger contractors were more likely to

survive the declining contracting opportunities, whereas

smaller contractors were more likely to disappear and be

replaced by other contractors in later periods. Ultimately,

however, the data available could not illuminate the causes

of contractor turnover rates, and thus we do not know

whether a change in contractor base was a result of natural

changes in the industry or a byproduct of changing federal

procurement habits.

Hypotheses 6 and 7 were that contract money would

be increasingly concentrated in designated affected

counties of the Northwest Forest Plan, and the Forest

Service and BLM would award an increasing proportion

of contract dollars to contractors located in rural

communities and in proximity to federal lands. The

variety of programs designed to create rural community

benefit appear to have produced few results (see also

Moseley et al. 2002 and Moseley and Toth 2004). The

BLM slightly increased its awards to contractors from

affected areas during 1995-97, compared to 1990-92.

But, the increase had fallen away by 2000-2002. Moreover,

the Forest Service did not increase its awards to affected

counties during the same period. Neither the BLM nor the

Forest Service significantly increased their awards to

contractors in communities with fewer than 5,000 people.

However, the BLM’s procurement of land management

services likely created an economic boost to rural and small

communities in the mid-1990s. Unfortunately, the impact

was also short lived; by the 2000-2002 period, the BLM’s

awards to rural contractors had declined to $16.4 million

from a high of $32.1 million in the 1995-97 period. Both

the BLM and the Forest Service increased their awards to

nearby contractors and decreased their awards to distant

contractors. However, this was attributable to a shift in the

type of work that the agencies procured (see footnote 4).

The Forest Service’s dramatic decline in procurement

spending far outweighed any proportional increases in

contract capture that the rural and local contractors may

have experienced.

Implications

The BLM’s relatively consistent spending on land management contracting likely created a relatively stable

economic environment for some contractors during an

otherwise significant transition in the activities associated

with federal land management, especially the decline in

timber harvest on both national forests and BLM lands. The

Forest Service’s decline in investment in land management
Procurement Contracting in the Affected Counties of the Northwest Forest Plan: 12 Years of Change

35

contracting, however, is the most prominent trend in this

monitoring project because the Forest Service had spent far

more than the BLM at the beginning of the study period.

Because of this decline in spending, it is likely that many

contractors and their workers had to undergo the type of

adjustments that loggers and other timber sale purchasers

did. Rather than land management contracting being a

source of economic opportunity for loggers and mill

workers, the decline in spending may well have created

additional worker displacement, although data are not

available to measure such a potential trend directly.

Acknowledgments

I thank Yolanda Reyes, Mikhael Balaev, Shanna FrenchMoore, and Adam Lake for their help with data entry,

cleaning, analysis, and mapping and Jean Stockard, Ken

Hudson, Jessica Green, Martin Tusler, and Neil Bania for

statistical advice. I also appreciate the feedback I received

from Marcus Kauffman, Jean Stockard, Michael Hibbard,

Nancy Toth, Timothy A. Max, Jim Baldwin, and Pat

Cunningham, who reviewed draft manuscripts. I also thank

the BLM and Forest Service contracting officers and technicians who were willing to answer questions about the

minutiae of the data tracking practices. Finally, I am

grateful to Susan Charnley for supporting this project,

providing timely data, and reviewing drafts.

English Equivalents

When you know: Multiply by: To find:

Miles (mi) 1.609 Kilometers

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