Under the road credit program, companies get road credits from the Forest Service when they build roads used to get access to the timber.
Companies use the credits to purchase the timber they cut down on public lands.
A company may use the credits to serve in place of a cash deposit on the timber it wants to purchase, and can apply those credits to any timber sales within that particular national forest. The credits are supposed to cover the companies' costs of building and recon-structing logging roads, but may be more generous than that. That's because the companies don't need to report their actual costs for building the roads, but are reimbursed according to the Forest Service's cost estimates. But environmentalists charge that logging roads erode and damage the very wilderness that campers and fishermen seek. The forest industry insists that the road credit program does not constitute corporate welfare.