This guest post from Frank Carroll was originally a comment.
The Chief received a watershed letter that will ring down the Ages in wildland fire policy. Mark this day. A shot has been fired and the windows are shaking.
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:67d7585d-31e2-4587-a999-c60aabe128e2
Sharon: I posted the letter in a previous post for non-Adobe folks.
Montana Governor Gianforte wrote to the Chief to tell him that Montana would no longer participate in science fiction and that “full suppression” could be anything other than “anchor, flank, and hold.” Those of us working on this issue for the past decade are euphoric. Montana has removed any doubt that FS firefighters intentionally use wildfires to manage natural resources.
This development is critical for many reasons. First, Montana will no longer share the outrageous and growing costs of giant, summertime prescribed wildfires under the Master Agreement. The governor told the chief, “Either put the fire out immediately, or you’re on your own paying for your alternative strategies.” This is an astonishing and overdue development. Gianforte’s letter shatters the deception that the FS is working with cooperators, and everyone is on board with the wildfire use policy. They are not.
See my presentation here: https://1drv.ms/p/s!AuKr93RuXe49gbIHkbk4dY3DoqJvbA
Sharon: I converted the ppt to pdf for easier viewing Smokey Wire Version 1.0 10.12.2024
With the FS budget in complete disarray and a billion dollars in the hole, the FS needs the states to participate to defray the high costs of current policies. The states are not sympathetic. Many key state leaders first heard the FS was expanding wildfires on purpose as a result of my work with Sarah Hyden, Joe Reddan, Van Elsbernd, Nadine Bailey, Quentin Rhoades, Roger Jaegle, and many others meeting for the past several years with states Attorneys General in Montana, Idaho, and others, and in multiple presentations to any significant group who would listen and buy us lunch. We lobbied Congress at home and in DC. We challenged the FS’s assertions of legal management strategies in meetings and in fire briefings.
The Governor’s letter clarifies that the vagaries of wildfire use and applied wildfire in PODs and firesheds is not a conspiracy theory or a figment of the imaginations of disgruntled former employees. Gianforte says it’s all too real, and he’s not playing.
I regret feeling so much affirmation after such a long fight, but I do, and it’s an important fight.
The days of the Chevron Deference ended in June this year. The time of National, Regional, and Unit EIS’s addressing wildfire use, disclosing impacts, inventorying the casualties to date, cooperating to forge robust public scoping and planning, and differences of opinion no longer ignored has come and I welcome it. The Chief will have to retire and make way for an effective and creative manager who can dig out of the mess.
The Forest Service is lost and struggling. The NLT, RFs, and Rangers have developed an unhealthy contempt for the mission. I think it blossomed in the pandemic. It manifests as arrogance and a complete lack of focus on the public. I went to the Boise Supervisor’s Office a few weeks ago. The Visitor Information Center was open, but no one staffed it except a lone federal security guard. He told me two women were supposed to be there but were “unreliable” and often not at their posts. He said I could try later, but there were no guarantees. Most of the staff was not there. The historic archive was thrown away by new kids who didn’t understand the need to preserve federal records. There were no principal staff officers ready to assist anyone.
The Chief and RFs allowed fear to rule from 2010 to today. The agency has been overcome by false constructs of employee health and wellness, now interpreted as meaning everyone can do whatever they want about coming to work (or not), showing up to work together to teach each other (or not), and interacting with the public (or not).
Employees are allowed to stay home. GS Fantastics in the 13-15 range live in their awesome refuges at home or wherever they want, traveling at will to spendy locations and racking up huge expenses. No one is going to work. There’s no opportunity for new kids to learn from old hands. They are lost and afraid. It’s a perfect storm of a once-powerful and now inert agency no longer able to muster a relevant presence on the ground.
I didn’t believe it when I first heard it, but the folks at the top came up with solutions to the current budget shortfall last month that beggars the imagination. The first idea was not to hire the seasonal workforce; now, it’s a solid plan bemoaned by High Country News. The Second was to consolidate Ranger Districts. Hopefully, this nutty idea was stillborn. There was no one with enough courage to enter into a Reduction in Force focused not on seasonals but on the herds of GS-13-15 planning staffers, teams scions, and others at the WO, Region, and Forest level who now constitute the bulk of the nondiscretionary workforce. Lol!! What?? Now is the time for buy-outs and mass reassignments.
The Chief disingenuously claims the current permanent staff will take up the seasonal slack, opening trails, cleaning campgrounds, and handling the work the public expects and deserves to have as support for their use of their lands. What the hell happened to leaders who knew how to lead? What happened to the Forest Service?
In any event, the States are no longer interested in enabling the once iconic agency to fail to grasp its own mission. They are saying, not theoretically, that they are not paying for the pretend party in the halls of the now-empty Forest Service offices (where we are still paying rent and utilities for no-show staff). I’ll stop here lest my fury overcome my message. Suffice it to say that the era of irresponsible, anti-public service, union-driven craziness, and a goofy, indefensible assertion of “safetiness,” is coming to a crashing end: Just in time.
Please read the attached letter several times and rejoice. It took a Governor to drag us back to reality. The entire workforce and lots of accountability will drag the FS back from the brink.
I remain optimistic. My Dad and I served from 1943 to 2011. We know how to do stuff and we can do it with unafraid leaders. We may have the chance to go back to the future with Elon Musk in charge of government reform.
I’ll bet that the new Congress will look to punish the Forest Service, once they take office in January. Yeah, that’ll ‘fix their wagon’. *smirk*
Sure, let’s see if the USFS can make it through a fiscal year without hiring non-fire Temps. Without extending tours of duty for non-fire Permanent Seasonals. I guess some units ‘could’ re-offer positions with longer tours, but Congress wouldn’t like that, either. Same for Albuquerque.
Idaho Governor Brad Little jumped on board with Montana. The dominoes fall…
“You need to be nice to the Forest Service, I don’t.”
“I made it clear this morning at Land Board that the feds need to put out their fires and manage their lands so we can reduce smoke, improve air quality, and protect lives and property.”
Governor Little’s comments come exactly 10 days after my presentation to JJ Winters, the IDL Board chief counsel, and a roomful of lawyers, foresters, and DNR officials from 5 states. Yeehaw!
I just want a transparent agency that is not on a burning spree. Yes, fire has an important place on landscapes, but we need some well-considered parameters for allowing this to occur — developed through a genuine NEPA process. I mean a real process, not the kind in which the agency just collects public comments and then ignores them.
Personally, my observation from living by a dry forest is — the less disturbance the better. The Santa Fe National Forest does not seem to be recovering well from substantive disturbance, including cutting and burning. We now need to determine what our dry forests can tolerate and be benefited by, and also consider alternative strategies that support water retention in forests. It’s a whole new world.
Good Lord it’s about time someone yanked the Agency back to reality! As Frank mentioned about his family, I too have a long family history with the outfit, starting with my Grandpa becoming a fire Warden in 1929! We had an almost continuous legacy until I retired in 2017. Both my Grandpa and my dad are probably turning over in their graves over what this grand old Agency has become; I just battle chronic neck pain from shaking my head…..
This “1039” disaster is almost as bad as FS fire policy. It looks like these types of actions by States will drag the Agency, kicking and screaming, back to reality. As for Congress shaking up the organization, I certainly hope so, and I hope heads will roll!
Frank Carroll is insane, please don’t share anymore of his fear mongering rhetoric.
A, we can disagree here without calling each other names. You’re welcome to write a counter-comment or post!
I think that Anonymous posters who publicly call real people derogatory names are immature cowards and trolls and should be called out and otherwise ignored. They add nothing to a discussion and are too stupid to be taken seriously.
This is not to disparage people who have legitimate reasons for remaining anonymous, yet make positive contributions to a discussion, or ask reasonable questions. It’s the nitwits who hide in the shadows and hurl insults at others who are mostly revealed as disgusting creeps when their cover is removed. Just like this jerk would be, if he/she/it had enough huevos to use their real name. In my opinion, based on documentation.
HEAR! HEAR! Chief Moore: 14 years as R5 Forester nothing but records for most lives lost, largest fire ever, to succumb to a bigger fire the next year. Transitioning to Chief and Dixie fire is burning towns in rural CA. BS is BS. I lost my career to save spotted owls and low elevation old growth. Detroit Ranger could not muster one freaking chopper to dump water on a one tree fire in Opal Creek Wilderness that was so important to the world’s oxygen supply. Thirty days later it was a blow torch killing 8 people including frenemy George Atiyeh.
The gut punch was zero USFS responsibility: total supremacy clause protection. Sue the power company because they had energized lines. Much of their ignition was secondary from a conflagration fire front blowing trees and debris into hot lines in the smoke filled fog of destruction from “fire being used to return resiliency to the landscape.” Biologically, likely true. So is a shooting massacre, or so the university free speech supporters tell us in their protests and support for killing Israelis. Zealots can defend or oppose anything but it does not make them right or moral.
The political aberrations that drive federal land management are not professional. Nor amoral. They are emotional and political. 10,475 Victims of prescribed fire in New Mexico have received $1.4 Billion dollars. Time to apply ends in early November. Congress passed a rider on a 2022 appropriations bill to aid Ukraine and Democrats stuffed $3.85 Billion in it for Hermit’s Peak-Calf Canyon escaped prescribed fire payments to claimants to be paid by FEMA, all in an aid bill to people fighting for their nation and lives. A rider to assist NM residents who would get nothing in any other State for the same fire results. Supremacy Clause. No liability for federal plan gone astray. NASA rocket blows up? DEA agent runs over a boy on his bicycle? US Dept of Education SWAT team trying to serve delinquent college loan warrant at a wrong address kills a sleeping resident who gets a gun because he thinks his life is being threatened? Prescribed fire escapes and burns private land? No liability. That is US Court interpretation of law upheld by SCOTUS. Feds cannot be sued while following a plan that goes astray.
But there are favors. Political favors in even numbered years: election vote buying. The above fire. And before it, Cerro Grande fire in 2000. Los Alamos. Congress paid victims of U.S. Park Service prescribed fire. Only in New Mexico. Not in Wyoming. Not in California. Certainly not in Oregon.
The USFS and Interior killed their fire morale and operations when they each added 3500 full time/part time fire fighters able to get full time health benefits, retirement, but only a guarantee of six months work. Find another job in winter. Draw “rocking chair.” BUT.BUT(nothing counts before “but”). Only for fire fighters under age 35 years old. Fire jobs have mandatory federal retirement at age 55. Also minimum of 20 years paying into retirement. Metaphorically killed the “non coms”, sergeants, chief petty officers, experience and leadership proven employees. It takes a generation to gain a generation of experience .
Every year fires are larger. Every year “hinky” describes outcomes. Add all the DEI crap and abetting hand holders and personal abnormalities and feelings and softness in “leadership” and you wonder about why all you see at a ranger station is grey haired old ladies with butts on backward telling you that all the campgrounds are closed and locked and it is one day after Labor Day, the most glorious time to be in forests?? For what “people” is government serving? Themselves? That dog won’t hunt. Snow has roads closed in late spring. Fire season has roads closed in summer. And all the amenities are now on the chopping block?
You cannot “save” forests and range any more so than you can save cottage cheese or ripe plums. Quit selling lies and crap. Read a Use Book. A history of CCC. Read Dr Zybach’s papers and books. Note the word “Use”. Noun. Not an verb. And then look at why you don’t see clear cuts but huge fire scars instead. All the clear cuts are thirty to 100 year old stands of timber. And every tree 22″ dbh and larger is old growth.
All the problems come from Washington DC. We have a leadership problem. When that is the case, don’t expect any benefits from those who work under craven and venal leadership. Leadership sets budgets. Ideology creates process and procedures. Right now you “can’t get there from here.” And there’s no plan to that end except burn it all and say “Fire is natural” and aboriginals are capable of engineering an environment to support 8 billion of their kind living in harmony and peace.
Very interesting and poignant commentary; and, it IS a leadership problem!
I do not share Frank Carroll’s pleasure in Governor Gianforte’s letter. Yes, the Forest Service has often applied a big box strategy to managing wildfire, rather than keeping all fires as small as possible, once they escape initial attack. While it can be argued that the agency has not been transparent, burning out large acres under conditions likely to produce a net positive result is exactly what is needed. Biomass accrues at all times, and we can reduce it now or reduce it later when there is yet more fuel to burn. Prescribed fire often in conjunction with timber harvest should be the answer to our fire problems, but for a variety of reasons we are not doing remotely enough of it. Now it seems as though the back door is being shut. Nothing to celebrate.
John, I think there are some separate issues here:
1. What should the strategy on each fire be? What combo of “good work” and “stop it”?
2. Should wildfires ever be used for “burning out large acres”? What, if any, number of extra acres might be excessive?
3. If large burns are used for good work, should nearby communities at risk and their elected officials be involved in decisions?
a) should that vary by whether the communities are traditionally underserved? Is their an environmental justice component to this (more smoke longer, more risk)
4. If large burns are used for good work, how should that be reported?
5. If many fires are being monitored during peak fire season, does that raise a specific need to rethink resource availability? a) monitoring ties up resources that would otherwise move on and b) if something is monitored and blows up, there needs to be someone available to call in. So not being a fire person, it seems like you would need to up the total number of human and aviation resources.
Sharon- What you have advocated for here is more gridlock and analysis paralysis. The parties involved will never agree. Biomass accrues and fire is inevitable. The longer we put it off, generally the worse it is. We are where we are because of fire suppression in the past, and the inability to move forward with forest management including prescribed fire at the needed scale in the present.
I don’t remember advocating anything in this post. It’s a guest post from Frank Carroll.
Sharon, I am replying to your comments on October 13. Sorry for the confusion.
OK would you restate your comment in the other place? I don’t think I can move it.
I think there’s a middle ground. Like someone said in another comment..
“Yes fire is being mismanaged on a large scale, mostly I place the blame on IMTs for that. In the name of safety they default to big box wildfire and time and again order way too many resources because they have a blank checkbook. Leadership doesn’t seem to care to improve things there.” so I don’t know what the answer is but I think the current situation isn’t working as well as it could.
Sharon- What you have advocated for here is more gridlock and analysis paralysis. The parties involved will never agree. Biomass accrues and fire is inevitable. The longer we put it off, generally the worse it is. We are where we are because of fire suppression in the past, and the inability to move forward with forest management including prescribed fire at the needed scale in the present.
Hi John: I think the problem is that far too much biomass has accumulated over time — and we can consider the cause(s) — and so forest wildfires today are far, far more destructive than occurred with regular prescribed burns or during logging history. Too much fuel to “let them burn,” and way too much destruction, mortality, and pollution as a result. Opinion based on historical documentation and personal experience.
Great article/guest post by Frank Carroll. He is spot on. The Forest Service is broken. A once great agency (no doubt the best in the federal government 40- 50 years ago) is no longer capable of managing our national forest lands. It’s time to quit pretending. It’s not just the states Frank lists that are “no longer interested in enabling the once iconic agency to fail to grasp its own mission”, but it is a growing number of the rest of us also. What the FS has been doing with allowing wildfires to run is insane. Bob’s right, there is too much fuel to let wildfires burn unchecked. The current Forest Service seems to be incapable of dealing with that fact. It’s time to bring true forestry back out of the woodshed it was banished to some 40 years ago and start cutting trees and quantifying growth and removals again. Make-believe doesn’t work in the woods. Let’s quit pretending it does. Trees grow. Catastrophic fire is not a sane solution to dealing with that growth. Active forest management is. Thanks Frank for a voice of sanity.
I think that a couple of the issues highlighted are real, a couple are red herrings.
I actually don’t disagree wholeheartedly one the issues of WF use here. Absent the other (FS) side of the telling, the Gianforte letter appears cogent. R1 leadership may have really over-reached. Unsure. I won’t take an elected official at their word, naturally enough, even if I agree with them, but that’s just basic mental hygiene.
Loss of mission is, maybe, a real problem here, but too vague to be actionable. Developing the thought some, I would posit at least three interrelated issues. Loss of mission emphasis, loss of mission clarity, and loss of a functional field-nonfield relation. Loss of mission emphasis and overemphasis on a totally feel-good culture is a real problem.
Attendance is another one, though the news-comment-section style poisons the point here to some degree. Didn’t Frank Carroll retire as public affairs at the Black Hills? Teams scion indeed. A better point would be to, perhaps with the maturity expected of someone retired after many years of ‘service’, point out that many companies are calling staff back to office, and to draw lessons from that. Absent massive changes in the legal requirements that the FS operates under, it will not be a solely ‘field’ agency, in terms of staffing. What functions are best housed where? An honest attempt to answer that would indeed result in changes, but not mass RIFs, probably.
Coda: I’m more doubtful than some appear to be about the nature and implications of the end of Chevron deference. Other deference remaining on the books notwithstanding (Auer, for example), law reviews are chock full of articles forecasting different outcomes of Loper Bright. And consider that the court did not overturn prior rulings with reasoning based on Chevron. So invoking the end of Chevron seems here to be just that – a phrase serving a nearly liturgical function for a certain sort who sees in this blank mirror things going ‘my way(!)’ after all these long years of decline from the good old days. What function does the invocation of Chevron serve here? Being who I am, going to quote Wittgenstein: “a wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it is not part of the mechanism.”
Hey Frank, I agree with some of your points but others are gross generalizations and mischaracterizations. You’re really throwing district employees under the bus here. No doubt leadership is failing us all -employees, forest resources, and the public. Yes fire is being mismanaged on a large scale, mostly I place the blame on IMTs for that. In the name of safety they default to big box wildfire and time and again order way too many resources because they have a blank checkbook. Leadership doesn’t seem to care to improve things there.
Where I disagree is your assertion that nobody in the agency these days wants/needs to work or knows how to manage a forest. We’re still here, working hard and serving like you and your dad did. Many of us are challenged by factors like mill closures, poor timber market, high fuel costs, constant enviro lawsuits, NEPA delays (in my case always waiting for archeologists), terrible centralized HR and hiring, and the ever consuming shift of money and personnel to fire management. Yet we keep working because we care about the resource. The vast majority of my district level peers are not sitting around teleworking, burned out, or clueless. I for one never took a break from the field during covid, have had extensive face to face training from gray haired mentors, and am more than competent at my job. Don’t go shaking your fists at all of us!
AF, Thanks for standing up and expressing yourself so well! I remember doing a NEPA review on various forests in Region 2 probably 15 years ago, and lack of archaeologists was a barrier then. I suppose you’ve tried ACES.
Hear, hear. It does annoy me to hear conservatives talk about “logging has been shut down for the last 30 years!” I’m retired from timber now, but I still did a lot of timber stuff until 2012. Success should not be measured in board feet. Yes, it is an important side effect of good forest management, but it shouldn’t be the goal. There has been a lot of stumps out there with my ‘buttmark’ on them, but there’s a lot more trees out there, still standing, which I ‘saved’ by not putting blue paint on them. Yes, I was able to incorporate aesthetics into a marking prescription I was supposed to follow. I call such thinning projects, “forest sculpting”.