Lately on TSW there have been a great many critiques of the current Forest Service situation. We’ll go into specific critiques in another post. But some of the critiques are fairly broad-brush, like this one Frank Carroll quoted from Zeke Lunder (I don’t have independent confirmation that Zeke said it):
“We should…not pretend … the Forest Service is a functional agency because it’s not They can’t meet our expectations of them getting anything done because they can’t . They lost so much they’re really not a functional agency. They can’t do anything at scale, and they haven’t been able to since they stopped cutting big trees …. They were really good at cutting big trees …, but since then they no longer have a function. They’ve lost their esprit de corps and sense of purpose, and their reason for being has gone away …. So, they still have to manage the land with active management …what does that leave us? Well, using fire is active forest management. So, they’re using fire.”
Well, you see, I don’t believe that that’s true. And I’ll talk about that in the next post. But here I want to talk about the fact that the Forest Service as an agency is responding to the currents of the time. And I think that this is a very important conversation to have, and hopefully we can continue sharing our stories and understanding different points of view.
Lao Tzu: “A strong wind may topple the sturdy oak, but the willow bends and lets the wind pass through.”
Let’s talk about this point in time. It has many folks of the Baby Boomer generation retiring, and new people being hired. It includes post-Covid work at home (although pressure to allow that started a decade ago), so that people may not have the informal connections and training via storytelling around the field lunch of the past. ROs and SOs in some areas are (expensive) ghost towns. In some ways, work at home broke both the traditional social organization and relationship building, and the visitor response, as in some of the examples we have seen in the comments. My friends in other fields have observed different work ethics and cultures in some of the younger generations. Their salaries don’t go as far as they did, especially in terms of housing.
So there are many challenges, which the BLM has also faced (it would be interesting to do surveys and compare, social scientists out there?). Then there was a vast infusion of funding, the likes of which had never been seen, as well as changes in the budget structure. Many of us outsiders still don’t understand how that works, or how that change may have affected appropriate ranger district autonomy.
Then there has been a tremendous increase in employees being hired from outside the agency, including from the military, USFWS, Congressional staffs, and so on. That idea is a very old one in management, even from my day. The idea is that you don’t really have to understand the work or the land or the people, you are interchangeable from McDonalds to Tesla to the CIA to the Forest Service, if you are a good leader. This used to be true of Senior Executives and political appointees, but has now reached the District Ranger level.
So… the Forest Service today confronts many challenges that are different from what we retirees remember, which have nothing at all to do with “big trees.” And I am going to ask for some grace for them, in addition to specific critiques and ideas for improvement.
I’m going to tell a story about another institution, the Yale School of Forestry (when I attended), later Forestry and Environmental Studies, and today the Yale School of the Environment. Two years ago, I attended an alumni gathering. Dean Indy Burke spoke, and I happened to be sitting next to a group of what I’ll call “uppity” alums. They were mostly from New England. They were younger than I (well, most people still out and about are, so there’s that).
It turns out that these alumni weren’t happy about the name change. I had been on some Zooms about it, and it appeared to me that if YFES didn’t change their name, circling shark administrators from other units would see YFES as a minnow and yes, start a completely new school. It seems to be feature of the Zeitgeist that more different administrative units are needed to coordinate the workers, in this case, professors.
Back to the Forest Service. I was told by a reliable source that 43% of the Forest Service works in direct provision of services on the Ranger District. It would be interesting to know what it was in the past. So.. there are forces in both academia and government (and probably other institutions) that have led to of more what we might call overhead. I myself worked in overhead pretty much my whole career (various kinds of support to the field), so I am not dissing the idea. It’s just that it seems to have an almost cancer-like tendency to grow and spread if not consciously contained.
So Dean Burke was being a willow, standing her ground and bending, which was necessary to maintain the institution and keep it from the circling sharks. Now, we are not privy to the conversations between Randy Moore and the Secretary. let alone the Secretary or Randy’s conversations with CEQ or other White House-favored entities. So I think it is difficult or impossible to judge FS leadership on its willowhood.
A few other observations from Indy’s presentation. She pointed out that Yale profs had an important role in recent legislation, I think it was the IRA. I think we were supposed to think that this was a good thing, but I did not. They also were proud of funding NPR to reach recreational fisherfolk to talk about the dangers of climate change with examples of how fishing will be impacted. My uppity neighbors noted “the people they are trying to reach don’t listen to NPR.”
Dean Burke also replied to a question about the name change something along the lines of ” forestry sounded too “extractive.” This exchange occurred in Kroon Hall which proudly touts wood from the Yale Forest. The hall is in the photo above.
Our uppity alum suggested “maybe this is an opportunity to educate them that extraction is not a bad thing”. But no, of course, not, because that is not really the issue. It’s about that there the need for institutions to align with the ideas of the time and avoid sharks.
Is it a little bit silly to decry extraction in a wooden building? Of course. We might call it hypocritical (in general, I think we should rename ourselves Homo hypocritus). We might say that the non-extractive emperor has no clothes (of course, since clothing is manufactured using natural resources). But it doesn’t matter. If you work in an institution, especially if you are a leader, you have to be a willow not an oak for the institution to survive. And institutions still do good things.. teach students, or maintain campgrounds, or do prescribed fires.
And we don’t have much insight into the strength and direction of the winds that blow the Forest Service, nor is there much of a chance we will find out.
Which is not to say that we cannot attempt to understand, or critique what we see. I just wanted to set this context.
Sharon said: “I myself worked in overhead pretty much my whole career (various kinds of support to the field), so I am not dissing the idea.”
So did I, but my approach (and Sharon’s, I would guess) was to help, as much as possible, the troops on the front line. They knew more than I did, and I had more time than they did. The marriage of time and knowledge does not always end well, but usually ends better than any likely alternative.
I have a humorous Yale Forestry story that I will only share after a quantity of beer. TSWers in the 303 should feel free to reach out.
I’m 719, but would drive up to hear your story! Please email.
I have a hearing loss due to ranching and gunfire. However, crickets are loud and clear! 🤣
Lao Tzu: “A strong wind may topple the sturdy oak, but the willow bends and lets the wind pass through.”
What a dumb analogy. Willow is brittle and breaks and shatters easily.
Some willow. Several American Indian tribes used willow as frameworks for baskets, backpacks, baby carriers, and other purposes. I think it’s probably older trees and ornamentals that shatter, and maybe Lao Tzu was talking about younger willows that sway like grass in the wind.
1789. Congress created the War Dept. From 1789, the War Department was the leadership civilian agency that ran our wars fought by our military, and funded by Congress. Name a war we lost from it inception in 1789 until President Truman abolished the War Dept, replaced with the Dept of Defense, in 1947.
WWII was fought with 14 million in uniform and the civilian economy ruled by the War Dept and civilian oversight of the total war effort economy. In May, 1944, the Congress and War Dept advising, passed the legislation and plan to turn the country and its economy, industry, back to a civilian economy and under a federal board to the end. Also in that bill was all the US Govt support for returning veterans, in what is called the “GI Bill of Rights.” Support for a college education. Housing loan program. Forever medical care from Veterans Administration. And the national benefit of the largest “MBA” program ever, which was the logistical support system that integrated the world of commerce with the military departments. We won WWII with one general officer per 6000 men and women in uniform.
Today, there is one general officer for every 1000 and declining men and women in uniform. It is a voluntary military that cannot recruit replacement personnel at numbers needed. Now tell me how that is any different than the USFS.
“Woke” cannot defend us. Diversity can’t recruit replacements. Forever protests have yet to advance anything but government salaries for the management class. The USFS is now not logging, not thinning, not protecting. Congress wrote contradictory layers on layer of laws that are plaintiff’s bar fodder and little else. USFS has to “do” something. Have a mission. The transition to “wise use” to “Wilderness and preservation” has revealed that the most dangerous creation to private property and human life is a wilderness. From Wilderness comes conflagration. From incessant conflagration, the experience of Chief Moore for his 14 years as R-5 Forester, is to now use conflagration, or create conflagration, as the tool to protect resources. LMAO. Joke. Pipe dream. The issue is confused by historian and ethnic studies of indigenous burning that created the post burn vegetative reality that was savannas and open space, created by burning often at optimal times. And none to record mistakes. 15,000 years of set fire. No lawyers. No metes and bounds litigation. Burn free or die.
Vegetation is fuel. Vegetation grows in dry years and in wet years and ever year in every area, even deserts. Fires consuming human habitats began to increase as soon as towns were established. Farm land less so because of tillage and tillage is fuel free as bare dirt, green crops, and post harvest set fires to rid farm fields of crop debris and pests, like rodents and weeds, insects and instars of insect life. Unregulated logging created massive amounts of ground level fuels and laws were passed to make slash burns required to reduce that threat. Like everything attempted, humans got good at it. And as humans, the forces in the city outnumber the forces in the woods and farms. Burning was banned by law. Now straw is baled and shipped to Asia for roughage for ruminant livestock. Slash is machine piled and burned in winter with set fires to burn safely in the rain and snow. But that is on private land. The tyrannical urban majority also banned logging on federal land with congressional laws and court decisions and interpretations of those congressional acts.
Now the tyrannical urban majority has to come to the fork in the road to determine how to manage a growing federal land ownership and presence that is a clear and present danger to dwelling, businesses, and human life. And the USFS or the Dept of Interior are of no help. They are first political and controlled and staffed by the tyrannical urban majority. Rural kids can’t afford college. Have little work to sustain them rurally. And smart ass college educated USFS personnel hate working from home in Scab Rock and Road’s End. Their aim is to get a position at the Regional office. Urban. Cosmopolitan. Going to a branding every Saturday is not on their cultural agenda. And they discover that in the West, the places with young people and excitement is also the retreats of ultra rich of which they are seldom a part of. Big town West is art galleries, and visiting personal jets. The service industry’s biggest problem is housing for the help. Just like the USFS has the same problems. And isn’t solving them in its state of continual devolving to an AI sourced computer controlled work place. “Boots on the ground” is a satellite boss hovering over the planet.
All of this is the bailiwick of Congress, and Congress is a self serving urban creation today. I was musing the other day. When Nvidia is valued at $3 Trillion, and the anti trust wolves are circling, how can you buy enough existing competition to have an equal $3 Trillion company?? Easy. Buy 3000 tech companies worth $1 Billion each. That should put a twist in regulator panties. Well, that same math is applicable to the penny company that manages the USFS and the two cent company that does the same for the Dept of Interior lands. Do you REALLY believe you can “Make ‘them’ pay their far share?” Make whom? By what measure? Confiscation? That is how USFS “public” land works. Prescribed burning and POD planning is to end up burning the private inholdings inside the POD planning and give the private side not a sous of recompense. Comrades. We have seen this before. Russia burns the Ukraine to keep the crops and assets from Nazi hands.
The Nazi timber industry that bid for pubic timber with money at risk no longer exists. So the Soviet USFS under congressionally enacted law is being financed by MY Oregon senior senator Ron Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, whose wife and family live in NYC, is proudly budgeting more money to burn more fuels with “prescribed fire”, now including “unplanned ignitions” as opportunity to “monitor” conflagrations even if arson set fire. Private land and lives are at stake, in reality, because there is not experience enough for a USFS GS 13 “leader” in the job because the R-5 consent decree demands that for every male GS 13, there has to be a female. And if the local Regional demographic is 20% Hispanic, you got a “two fer” by hiring a Latina lawyer to fill the open job. More land today and less than half the butts in chairs. And how many “working from home?” Or four ten hour days a week? Any 13 hour day workers, with 4 day weekends but not enough pay to fly from Dismal, Wyoming to Missoula or Denver more than once a month? What happens when those folks have to respond to a runaway prescribed fire? Get paid not to work half the winter? That is the reality of your USFS and BLM fire fighters. Full time temporary work: 6 months guaranteed. and 6 month unemployment. For a full time pension and health care at retirement at age 55. No real opportunity except to age out with a memory of thrills and escapes from certain death. Beautiful scenery soon turned to bleak burns capes. White you watched. How satisfying can that be? You know you can do better than that. You cannot even try to do better than that. “Stultifying?” Lingering guilt of a job not done well by orders?
Despotic rule always ends with sadness in those ruled. And that is why I have more respect for longshoremen and teamsters: they can and will walk off the job and not return until there is a higher level of humanity in their work. And even that can go too far. Middle ground might be the most dangerous place between jetties. But a lot of risk if too close to either jetty. Engine failure happens. Steering goes out. At night. In black fog. Totally trusting electronics and experience. “Hummingbird heart.” The USFS looks like that container ship sliding along in Baltimore, lights going dark, big puff of black smoke out the stack. Stern sinks a bit at full astern and bow rises a bit, and then it hits the bridge cement pylon and the frail erector set Gilbert bridge structure collapses. That is where the USFS fire and fuels issues are. Stern down as bureaucrats order full power astern. And the ebb does not ever obey, and tides never have. Inertia and an ebbing tide are unstoppable The burning of our “protected” and “preserved” forests and range are burning. Not the climate. Not the weather. The detritus and deadwood of life is taking out the majority vigorous younger wood. The masses are getting just what they ordered for leadership: “ANYBODY BUT…..” The “reasoning masses.” We have a democracy and it is butt ugly right now. It has and will threaten the moral foundation of people of goodwill and honest intent to do and be better. We are living it. Actions have consequences. In physics, actions have equal and opposite reactions. Hang on. Hope the USS America can weather the storms ahead. Hermit’s Peak-Calf Canyon reveal the depth of “democratic” corruption. Favored people and places. We are not all equal. New Mexico evidently is MORE equal than 49 other states. FEMA has become a boil on Democrat butts. Still paying out for Katrina?? 2005 New Orleans hurricane damage? 10,500 victims of USFS prescribed fire getting funded in a military appropriations budget at 38 times the aid in that bill for Ukraine, getting pounded by Russian bombs, missiles, artillery? All a real threat to NATO and free counties everywhere!! The arrogance is palpable. And sad. Especially seeing victims of the “monitored” 2020 Labor Day USFS fires each time I drive to Central Oregon, still living in 20 foot FEMA trailers.
There is a cornucopia of blame to go around. You cannot expect the Forest Service to do more with the budget funds they historically received. Congress simply did not fund more “active management”. Current laws mandate delays and procedures in order to get plans approved and implemented. Personnel limitations (like the 1039 disaster) had a huge effect on how much work got completed every year.
In today’s world, misinformation is everywhere in the Forest Service environment. Both extremes keep putting out their ‘tall tales’. Even Congressmen have their own spins on the issues, while completely ignoring other problems. The Forest Service grossly-underestimated the scope of the problems that they needed Congress to fix, in the BIL. Conservatives keep saying that “the enviros have shut down all the active management through litigation”. Liberals like to say that “logging needs to stop”.
I’ve been studying on this for a spell, trying to ponder a response to the big “why” the FS is failing their mission. And yes, I believe they’ve been failing for quite some time. And, if you really want to get a warm, fuzzy, look on Facebook under the group “1039’s” for their perspective.
I’ve already said I think it is a leadership problem; not necessarily current leadership but a cumulative effect of poor leaders, over time. Senior leaders that have evolved and grown into new positions, based on poor performance, poor mentoring by poor leaders, or both! How many folks do you know of who should have been fired for violations of law, conduct or (the one I really like) lack of candor? And what happens? If you are senior enough within the organization you get moved; sometimes moved to more responsibility!
The genesis for such downward spiral is of course Congress, consistently meddling in business they know little to nothing about. However, I’ve worked with some great folks in Congress! Individually, they are all trying to improve whatever they are tinkering with, but when they get together things go haywire.
I’m a firm believer in the conduct and operations at the lower levels of the organization. Maybe a tinge of the good old days, of just being a boot, or a grunt. Working hard, long hours, before computers (another major impediment to productivity) to get work done on the ground. It probably speaks more to my persona than being a Forest Sup or Director, but I guess somebody had to do it.
As for solutions, it’s going to be hard to turn that big old ship around but they should at least begin to start – beginning with the Chief! Honor real performance, celebrate the fact we are all different but keep focus on actually making lives and ecosystems better. As one Ranger used to muse: maybe we should wedge a bit of actual work into the day……. Sweat, get our hands dirty, smell like smoke, shake hands and meet the public, open our offices to receive the folks that pay our salaries and finally, turn the danged computer off!