But even if the new Forest Service numbers bear some relation to reality - which, frankly, we doubt - the argument that opening vast swaths of federally protected land to extractive industries is an economic winner remains bankrupt in more ways than one. And getting too mired in columns of figures risks playing into the hands of those who are happy to ignore long-term good for short-term profit.

Under the more environmentally friendly Clinton administration, the Forest Service figured that the money spent by tourists visiting national forests added $111 billion a year to the national gross domestic product. The latest figuring, which current officials claim is more precise, places the economic contribution of that behavior at a mere 10 percent of the previous amount.

That just doesn't feel right.

Even granting that such numbers require a lot of assumptions that may or may not be true, and even assuming that the Clintonistas had inflated their results a bit as a favor to their tree-hugging political base, such a plummeting revision in value can only cause one to wonder if we are being low-balled by an administration that has no reputation for letting facts get in the way of its plans.

The White House has often been criticized for twisting information in order to win its cases, most notably on environmental matters such as global warming. Thus it is reasonable to be suspicious of these new numbers.

That is especially true in this case, when figuring based on how much money a visitor spends within 50 miles of a forest fails to include the millions, if not billions, spent on outdoor equipment and on travel to and from, money spent much more than 50 miles away but that would not have been spent without the promise of a preserved national forest at the end of the trail.

Add to that the other economic and environmental benefits of forest preservation - cleaning the air, filtering and slowing the flow of water, sheltering wildlife, preventing dust storms and landslides - and it remains the most short-sighted of balance sheets that would chop down a national forest for any amount of money.