Two major conservation groups come up with very different figures for the losses. None of the above. The Forest Service fudges its data in two ways. The rest are kept by the Forest Service to spend mostly on timber-related activities or paid in the form of road construction rather than in cash. The only problem is that the agency is never going to earn any income to pay back those investments.
Investments are only worthwhile if they result in more income later.
The Wilderness Society accounted for the roads problem but not the receipts problem. The Sierra Club overestimated many costs. But the Club counted all landline location and two-thirds of road maintenance costs against timber, when half is a more reasonable estimate of both. In the end, the final numbers count for less than the simple fact that everyone now agrees that most forests, and the Forest Service as a whole, loses money managing a resource that most private landowners and many other public agencies manage at a profit. The real question is how to fix this problem.