The Future of America’s National Forests Depends on Revised Laws and a Restored U.S. Forest Service

Guest post by Les Joslin

Few would dispute the notion that the National Forest System and the U.S. Forest Service are impaled on the horns of a dilemma of dysfunction. On one horn is the lack of a clear-cut role for the national forests. On the other is the lack of an agency staffed by professional forest officers at all levels able to efficiently and effectively manage those lands.

As a consequence, one of our nation’s great treasures, the 193-million-acre National Forest System established by President Theodore Roosevelt and Forester Gifford Pinchot early in the 20th century and managed for its citizen-owners by the Forest Service for the past 105 years, is at risk. At risk with them are the commodity resources—clean water, timber, livestock forage, wildlife habitat—and amenity resources—scenery, outdoor and wilderness recreation, and more—that benefit all. In the West, close to 70 percent of domestic water originates in the forests. Also at risk is the economic survival of hundreds of rural communities that depend on the forests for jobs created by renewable resources and by recreation.

The role of the National Forest System, of course, is a matter of law. Indeed, of laws—too many and often conflicting laws. Evolution of a clear-cut role for the national forests is as critical as it would be complicated. It would depend on a successful legislative review and revision of these myriad laws to produce a more workable definition and implementation of that role. This is a challenge to the political will of our nation.

Successful meeting of this challenge would produce a revised and realistic legal framework for the National Forest System and for the smaller and more efficient and effective Forest Service necessitated by the get-real-about-deficit-reduction future faced by the U.S. Government and the American people as the United States careens toward national bankruptcy. This would support a revised forest planning rule that would prioritize and implement the community relations and resource management field work that needs to be done and would not be driven by selfish interests and peripheral considerations.

Whatever the role of the National Forest System, a truly viable U.S. Forest Service would have a well-defined national forest management mission implemented by leaders who lead effectively and followers learning to lead effectively—a professional corps of line and staff officers with field savvy and agency panache who understand and practice the art and science of, as the Forest Service’s own motto puts it, “caring for the land and serving people.”

This would be a corps of capable and competent “forest rangers” present and visible in the forests rather than hidden away in offices; supported by rather than subservient to technologies; doing jobs rather than outsourcing them. This would be a corps that capitalizes on rather than squanders its proud heritage, and attracts rather than alienates those who would serve in it rather than just work for it. This would be a corps worthy of the admiration and respect and support of the National Forest System citizen-owners who should be served and would be served by it.

The functional Forest Service of yore grew its own corps of forest officers—dedicated professionals and technicians—on mostly rural or remote ranger districts on which the district ranger depended on each and every member of his small crew to ride for the brand and pull his or her own weight to “get it done” together. But most such ranger districts have been lost to consolidation and urbanization and cultural change. And the generalists they grew have been replaced by more narrowly-focused specialists.

Developing such a corps is the essential challenge for the Forest Service leadership and its U.S. Department of Agriculture masters.

Without such ranger districts offering the formative experiences and training they once did, the Forest Service should train qualified men and women selected to serve as forest officers at a national, residential U.S. Forest Service Academy situated on a national forest that could accommodate and provide and materially benefit from—much as teaching hospitals do with medical students—a wide range of rigorous academic and field experiences. This academy would comprise an entry-level officer candidate school and a mid-career advanced course. And, during its earlier years, it would conduct a short update course for current district rangers.

At the officer candidate school, those recruited to be the line and staff professionals and leaders of the Forest Service would learn to be forest officers first and specialists in one or more relevant disciplines—in which they already would have academic degrees or significant experience—second.

The challenging course would inspire the will, inform the intellect, and develop the physical and practical and philosophical wherewithal of a corps of professional and technical members—not employees, but members—who would be the able and willing and dedicated forest officers required by the Forest Service. After significant career assignments and experiences, these forest officers could return to the academy for mid-career training to further their preparation for district ranger and senior line as well as staff assignments. The academy would be an intellectual and cultural wellspring of the Forest Service, an institutional home of the resolve and resourcefulness the Forest Service needs to succeed at any well-defined mission revised laws would prescribe.

Now is the time to act. It’s too late for a business-as-usual, study-it-again-sometime, put-it-off-until-somebody-else-is-President-or-Secretary-or-Chief approach. The national treasure that is the National Forest System is at risk now, the Forest Service is in extremis now, and the time for action—real action leading to early results to save both the System and the Service for the citizen-owners of the former and the good people of the latter—is now!

Audacious? Yes! Expensive? Yes! But certainly not too expensive for a U.S. Government that allocates hundreds of billions of dollars to rescue Wall Street and spends over two billion dollars (in 1997 dollars) per copy for B-2 Spirit stealth bombers. Indeed, the entire proposed U.S. Forest Service overhaul process could be funded and the entire proposed U.S. Forest Service Academy could be established and operated for a decade or two for half the cost of just one of those bombers.

Expensive? Yes, except when one considers that the value of the national forests to their citizen-owners is in the trillions of dollars, and that these lands are the source of life-supporting water for millions of people and myriad other values for millions more.

Expensive? Yes, except when compared with the millions of dollars spent on wildfires and the billions of dollars in damages to the land and citizens resulting from these holocausts.

Expensive? Yes, except when compared with the opportunity costs of the bureaucratic equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns.

Isn’t a truly effective investment in the future administration of the National Forest System and all the benefits derived by its citizen-owners in terms of commodity and amenity resources as well as jobs and more stable communities worth at least that much?

Impossible? Only if we tell ourselves it is, roll over, and give up.

Les Joslin is a retired U.S. Navy commander and former U.S. Forest Service firefighter, wilderness ranger, and staff officer. He teaches wilderness management for Oregon State University, writes Forest Service history, and edits the Pacific Northwest Forest Service Association’s quarterly OldSmokeys Newsletter. He lives in Bend, Oregon.

9 thoughts on “The Future of America’s National Forests Depends on Revised Laws and a Restored U.S. Forest Service”

  1. Les said: “Whatever the role of the National Forest System, a truly viable U.S. Forest Service would have a well-defined national forest management mission. . .”

    The mission is in fact pretty clear: “The mission of the USDA Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.”

    Les is right about the “lack of a clear-cut role for the national forests.” in carrying out this mission.

    Bu what’s really lacking is a clear vision of what national forest should look like and be managed for in the future– a vision developed collaboratively with and shared by employees and stakeholders. I’ll talk more in a future post about why the Forest Service vision statements here http://www.fs.fed.us/aboutus/mission.shtmln don’t do the job.

    Agreeing upon such a vision will not require a rewrite of any laws or the creation of a” U.S. Forest Service Academy” and will probably mean that more jobs are “outsourced” to “friends of the forest” groups (see my post http://ncfp.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/youve-got-to-have-friends/) and through stewardship contracting rather than accomplished directly by Forest Service employees.

    Some national forests and ranger districts have already figured this out. They’re not waiting for the leadership in Washington to actually lead the way. They have figured out that “urbanization and cultural change” are the new reality for national forests and are bringing together the “generalists” and the “narrowly-focused specialists” to “get it done”.

    Maybe what’s really needed is a way for the rest of the agency to learn from these examples.

    Reply
  2. The Forest Service will be dead and gone before it can regain the trust it needs to operate as envisioned. The “Serial Litigators” will continue to push for eliminating the timber sale program and multiple use. Academia will continue to follow the eco-groups money trail.

    Also figuring into the situation is a decided lack of new foresters coming into the pipeline. There simply isn’t any money in being a forester. It is more profitable to be an “ecologist” working for eco-groups that file lawsuits. As more experienced forestry folks reach their 50’s, they are leaving the stress, the hassle and the unnecessary layers of complexities to public lands management. Many of those are quite willing to let everything come crashing down, washing their hands of this huge, ongoing, mega-disaster.

    We are also losing the logging expertise and “woods sense” of people who have worked in the woods for decades. Both logging personnel and the Feds who oversee those activities are wandering off into the sunset of blazing dead forests. I like Les’ vision of a Forest Service Academy but, it’s just not looking like we’ll need such a thing for the short term, since the new Planning Rule is not looking like it will address forester’s issues. In fact, it looks more and more like eco’s want to eliminate forestry itself as a driver of policy. They paint forestry as a means to “get the cut out” and as the path to tree farming. In their “New World Order”, foresters shut up and do what they are told. Why not teach the “Ologists” how to mark timber and thin forests? Talk about “empowerment”!!

    All the “pie-in-the-sky” proposals within the new Planning Rule ignore the lack of a competent workforce to carry out the labor-intensive work in the woods. Who is going to train the armies of Forestry Technicians and Aids? Will this be “Federal McForestry”, using the fast food mentality of grabbing “warm bodies” off the street and giving them a paintgun? Who will monitor and control private contractors? Does the Forest Service think they can hire a bunch of temporary employees to do their field work? The current workforce cannot sustain what the Planning Rule appears to be leading to. Too many Chiefs and not enough Indians.

    Reply
    • You may not “like” what I have to say but, this is what my decades of field work, experience and insights to the Forest Service timber management program show me about the future. That is where I came from. There is too much inertia against what the new Planning Rule currently seeks to do. It will be gutted of many chances to economically treat forests in need of attention. It will be flawed and ineffective, as litigants will cling to a favorable outcome for their goals.

      I think it is going to take more than just hope to save our forests. We need to include workforce reality into these plans. Just how many people can do forest inventory, lay out treatment units, identify riparian zones, pass Cruiser certification, utilize GPS units, mark timber to the most complex silvicultural prescriptions ever, identify and layout landings and skid trails, inspect slash treatments, inspect erosion control, etc, etc, etc? The learning curve for that stuff is pretty dang steep.

      People like Chad Hanson want to do away with timber harvesting altogether, in favor of the ultimate in black-backed woodpecker habitat. The push for “natural and beneficial” wildfires is having “unintended consequences”. The lack of NEPA for Let-Burn is glaring. It’s a bummer that they don’t take NEPA more seriously.

      Reply
    • I’m not sure if I understand what you mean by “a decided lack of new foresters coming into the pipeline”. If you think there is a shortage of freshly trained foresters I have to disagree with you. If, on the other hand, you mean to say that few freshly trained foresters enter permanent forestry jobs with the USFS I might agree with you.

      I agree that forestry is in a dark place right now, but I don’t blame “ologists” and environmentalists for that. Globalization is one major cause. Some of it we brought upon ourselves.

      The Forest Service does think that they can hire a bunch of temporary employees to do their field work, because they have been doing exactly that for some time already. This does introduce some problems with competence, and it’s part of the morale problem.

      Reply
      • Field work has changed, as have personnel regulations. The complexities of timber projects has become much more exacting. Canopy cover, “clumpiness”, species diversity and crown seperations have found their ways into marking prescriptions. Try getting a teenager to juggle all those issues when he is really more concerned with who left a message on his cellphone. With groundtruthing becoming more useful as a tool for stopping projects, it is much more important than ever to make sure stream buffers, and other protections meet specifications.

        I wasn’t blaming the “Ologists”. I’ve worked side by side with them over the years and, they react very favorably when you respect what they do. I just think they should get the chance to enjoy the challenge, power and responsibility that comes with wielding a paintgun.

        Reply
  3. I support Les Joslin in his plea for:

    … a corps of capable and competent “forest rangers” present and visible in the forests rather than hidden away in offices; supported by rather than subservient to technologies; doing jobs rather than outsourcing them. This would be a corps that capitalizes on rather than squanders its proud heritage, and attracts rather than alienates those who would serve in it rather than just work for it. This would be a corps worthy of the admiration and respect and support of the National Forest System citizen-owners who should be served and would be served by it. …

    [T]he Forest Service should train qualified men and women selected to serve as forest officers at a national, residential U.S. Forest Service Academy situated on a national forest that could accommodate and provide and materially benefit from—much as teaching hospitals do with medical students—a wide range of rigorous academic and field experiences. This academy would comprise an entry-level officer candidate school and a mid-career advanced course. And, during its earlier years, it would conduct a short update course for current district rangers.

    At the officer candidate school, those recruited to be the line and staff professionals and leaders of the Forest Service would learn to be forest officers first and specialists in one or more relevant disciplines—in which they already would have academic degrees or significant experience—second.

    The challenging course would inspire the will, inform the intellect, and develop the physical and practical and philosophical wherewithal of a corps of professional and technical members—not employees, but members—who would be the able and willing and dedicated forest officers required by the Forest Service. After significant career assignments and experiences, these forest officers could return to the academy for mid-career training to further their preparation for district ranger and senior line as well as staff assignments. The academy would be an intellectual and cultural wellspring of the Forest Service, an institutional home of the resolve and resourcefulness the Forest Service needs to succeed at any well-defined mission revised laws would prescribe.

    I am reminded of this from a colleague:

    There is nothing in particular that qualifies natural resource and other technical professionals to perform in the Regional Forester, Forest Supervisor, and District Ranger line positions. These jobs primarily require management, diplomacy, and public administration skills that have no correlation to the education and aptitudes of the traditional natural resources professional, but in many ways are antithetical to those technical skills. These line offers function more like governors and mayors over large land areas than natural resource managers. Qualifications for these jobs need to be completely rethought.

    My “colleague” has much more to say about what needs to change as well, and put it into a little thing titled: Forest Service Decentralization Myths, and a Few ‘Transformation’ Suggestions, May 2007. My colleague continuously argues for training for FS professionals similar to those that the military uses to train its officer corps. These two arguments need to be read/discussed together.

    Reply
  4. Dave- I remember from the management literature at one time that a good manager could manage anything, a fried chicken enterprise, a multinational law firm, a construction firm specializing in power plants. I never believed it.

    You can be a talented manager or leader, in my view, but you gotta love the stuff. You gotta love farming, feeding people, engineering, the law, etc. To me it’s not the knowledge necessarily, but the underlying passion that put you on the path to gain that knowledge (e.g, a natural resource degree). Frederick Buechner, the theologian, said about vocation here:

    The vocation for you is the one in which your deep gladness and the world’s deep need meet — something that not only makes you happy but that the world needs to have done.

    Yes, we could hire a Chief from Apple or Goldman Sachs, or they could potentially run NASA or NOAA, but what’s the chance that his or her “deep gladness” would arise from our business?

    My favorite parts of the decentralization myths were:

    BUT, the central direction nonetheless grows exponentially, along with internal conflicts and inconsistencies, such that keeping up with and deciphering the central direction becomes nearly impossible and it is increasingly ignored or disregarded;

    BUT, once created, central direction almost never goes away. Much of it is antiquated, out of date, self contradictory, redundant or simply wrong. Nonetheless, when central direction is updated, it almost always increases in volume, complexity, and indecipherability;

    BUT, as volume increases and direction is restated, the potential for internal inconsistency and inconsistencies between laws, regulations, manuals, handbooks, desk guides, instruction letters, and supervisory instructions increases, and the ability to find useful information declines further;

    BUT, the intent of this internal direction is to make employees more effective at their jobs;

    So true, IMHO!
    Also I noted this

    Existing regulations are not clear, concise, or succinct.

    I wonder what people think about whether the proposed rule, as one example, is “clear, concise and succinct?”

    Reply
    • Sharon says,

      You can be a talented manager or leader, in my view, but you gotta love the stuff. You gotta love farming, feeding people, engineering, the law, etc. To me it’s not the knowledge necessarily, but the underlying passion that put you on the path to gain that knowledge (e.g, a natural resource degree). …

      Yes, we could hire a Chief from Apple or Goldman Sachs, or they could potentially run NASA or NOAA, but what’s the chance that his or her “deep gladness” would arise from our business?

      Yes, passion/love is necessary. That is precisely why I said that Joslin’s piece ought to be read/discussed in tandem with the one my “colleague” put on the table. The whole idea is to train leaders/managers on the job — and in the forest, as Joslin recommends. Both advocate “officer training” similar to what is done in the military. I agree.

      Reply

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