One hundred and two years ago next month, President Theodore Roosevelt and his forester friend Gifford Pinchot established the U.S. Forest Service as a reaction to what they saw as grave threats to the nation’s forests: concentration of land in the hands of powerful corporations; depletion of natural resources; damage to soil, land and water from extractive industries; and waste and inefficient use of these resources.
The idea behind creating a system of national forests, and their earlier iteration as the forest reserves, was to put these lands under public ownership, protected from private exploitation and managed in the public interest. The irony, of course, is that during the next century, many of these lands were still exploited by private interests, leaving just the mess in public lands.
Today we remember the early years of the agency with reverence for the visionary leadership of Pinchot and Roosevelt. We recall these two men and their words any time the agency makes a questionable move or whenever a seemingly digressive policy or rule change comes out of Washington, D.C. — whether actually from the agency leaders or those above them — hoping the wisdom of Roosevelt and Pinchot will console and counsel us. But as forward thinking as they were, as Professor Char Miller noted in his opening speech at last month’s conference, the agency itself was born as a reaction to then-current conditions. And that’s still a game the agency plays today.
U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth, in his 2004 Earth Day speech, unveiled his “Four Threats” to the 193 million acres of national forest land: fires and fuels; invasive species; loss of open space and unmanaged recreation. Anyone familiar with the agency might say he missed a couple: diminishing budgets, because the agency’s federal appropriations continue to fall each year, and “analysis paralysis”, a termed coined by Bosworth himself to convey the time-consuming chaos that comes out of most legal appeals to proposed Forest Service activity. Together, these six issues are the biggest threats facing the Forest Service today. The agency’s position, always pragmatic, is to address these challenges head on, though its methods, often conciliatory toward the governing administration, can leave some scratching their heads.
The agency’s budget for 2007 says the agency’s six strategic goals for 2007 are to: reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires; reduce the impacts of invasive species; provide outdoor recreation opportunities; help meet energy resource needs; improve watersheds; and conduct other mission-related work. The budget also acknowledges that the agency’s primary focus has shifted to restoration and recreation, requiring new management solutions and more engagement of the public in its conservation priorities.
Fiscally, the agency’s budget has been cut by 2.5 percent to $4.9 billion — pennies compared to the overall federal budget. The recreation, wilderness and heritage line item has been cut by 4 percent from 2006, wildlife and fish management is down 7 percent and land management planning is down 4.5 percent. Law enforcement is up 25 percent and forest products management is up 10 percent. Wildland fire management, which makes up 43.2 percent of the agency’s total budget, is up .9 percent to roughly $1.7 billion. Capital improvement and maintenance, which is just 9.3 percent of the overall budget, is down 12 percent to $3.82 million, or slightly more than 1 percent of its overall $346 million maintenance backlog. So, as more money is spent fighting fires, less will be spent maintaining roads, facilities and recreational infrastructure.
The budget also includes a dramatic cut in money for campgrounds, an icon of the national forest system. The agency has said it will evaluate each of its 15,000 campgrounds, trailheads with bathrooms and other developed recreation sites, valuing each against its maintenance costs. Individual forests will be responsible for conducting these recreation-site facility master plans by the end of next year. In some cases, where the costs outweigh the benefits, services such as bathrooms, trash collection and picnic tables will be removed.
These and other changes reflect how the agency is adapting to outside changes. The population of the United States just hit the 300 million mark, and more people need homes in which to live. Those new communities are moving ever closer to undeveloped forest lands, forcing the Forest Service and other land management agencies to spend more money protecting the homes and suppressing wildfires. The window of time between when land managers learned that it’s better to let fires burn naturally and when they felt the pressure to again put them out to protect nearby communities was short, but sweet.
The other societal change affecting the forest service is recreation — more and more people are getting out in the woods to participate in a larger variety of activities. The most popular of those activities are no longer the pastimes of “dharma bums” — tent camping, hiking and climbing — but are instead gear- and resource-intensive.
Downhill skiing has grown exponentially in the last few decades, and today there are 134 developed ski areas on national forest lands. Between 2000 and 2002, there were an average of 35.8 million skier days on national forests. Off-highway vehicle use has grown as well, from 5 million users in 1972 to 51 million in 2005. The incredible proliferation of illegal and social OHV trails, accidentally or purposefully cut into national forest lands, is creating a nightmare situation of soil erosion, invasive species and wildlife harassment.
Meanwhile, a report from the National Park System shows that camping is significantly down in national parks: between 1995 and 2005, tent camping dropped 23 percent, backcountry camping fell 24 percent and RV camping was down 31 percent. But a report from the RV industry shows that young families are the fastest-growing segment of RV buyers. How that translates into changes in low-impact camping on national forests is unknown, but the recreation-site facility master plans will surely shed some light on that.
While adjusting to shifts outside the agency, the Forest Service has been busy pushing its own internal shifts. The Forest Service, in keeping with its populist nature and its adherence to the Bush administration, has wholeheartedly embraced the new model of cooperative conservation touted by President Bush. As stated in the FY07 budget “The increase in collaboration reduces duplicative efforts between the Forest Service and its partners and enables the Forest Service and its partners to accomplish more without costing the American public more money.” The document goes on to say that the budget reflects these ideas in several ways — though it’s difficult to tell where or how.
Better proof is Chief Bosworth’s creation of the National Partnership Office and the positions of regional partnership directors. Together these agency employees facilitate partnerships between the Forest Service and nonprofits groups, local agencies and governments and other federal land management agencies by helping “partners” navigate the maze of regulations involved in commingling money, staff and work. The office and agency policy people have also been pushing for legislation that simplifies these partnerships, such as stewardship contracting and other partnership authorities.
The advantages of such an approach are that contentious issues — such as timber sales, forest plans and restoration or thinning projects — between land managers and locals and activists can be turned into productive, trust-building opportunities. And for the Forest Service, some or part of the cost of such activities, which has been lost in budget cuts, can be made up by cost-sharing agreements. These other funds can come from a variety of sources, including counties, states, other agencies or even private foundations or corporate America through nonprofits.
This new way of doing business is expected to continue. It’s what Mitch Freidman was speaking about in his talk at last month’s conference, and it’s what wasn’t happening a decade and longer ago, when Jack Ward Thomas was in charge of the U.S. Forest Service.
Collaboration won’t do much to change population growth or the dynamic geography of a shifting country. It can’t stop forests from needing some fire or people from desiring to ski or ride motorized toys. And if anything, it gives the president license to keep cutting budgets under the assumption that partners will pick up the tab on projects those partners want done. But it also puts “the people” back in Pinchot’s famous line “the greatest good of the greatest number for the longest time” — which could balance out the agency’s newest rule, the one that now excludes long-term forest plans from public review. You can expect some “analysis paralysis” on that one.
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