There has been much discussion about the Forest Service and its problems and how to improve recently on TSW.
Today, I’d like to look at some other agencies that I think have done much worse, to help put the FS in perspective. As in “the Forest Service does much better than other feds on this.” Many agencies make mistakes. Some make mistakes with very serious impacts. As I’ve said before, when things went wrong on Hermit Creek/Calf’s Canyon, the Forest Service had a 90 day stand-down, brought in experts from outside, and made recommendations for fixing. Right away. In fact, there are a plethora of reviews and recommendations on wildfires and safety incidents. Other agencies (involved in protecting officials from assassination attempts, pandemic-handling, FISA warranting) don’t review their mistakes themselves, downplay or ignore them, and, in some cases attempt to stonewall and obfuscate when Congress raises questions. Whistle-blowers and outside groups have to push for agencies to fix themselves. Then Congress comes out with a report, and it may be tarred with “other party bias” by some media outlets. In my view, agency accountability is a thing, and best taken seriously by the agency itself. Doing your internal work suggests transparency and accountability, and leads to building trust. You go, Forest Service!
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The Secret Service:
Colorado Politics had this piece on a bipartisan Congressional review of the Trump assassination attempt (Jason Crow is a Colorado D Congressperson):
Crow said at the hearing that he was stunned that the Secret Service used text messages and email to communicate at the rally in Butler, where agents also encountered multiple obstacles, including an inoperable surveillance drone and a tree that prevented the counter-sniper team from surveying the area.
“I’m struck by the lack of that culture,” Crow said. “Why aren’t people saying something? It happened on numerous occasions.”
Rowe responded that the agency had to reestablish a culture where agents feel they can say something when they sense something is amiss.
Crow, an Army Ranger veteran, told Colorado Politics that the investigation confirmed widespread suspicions about the extent of the Secret Service’s mistakes.
“That was a key failing of the Secret Service on July 13, the lack of adequate command and control and supervision,” Crow said. “Not just the Secret Service, but all the local law enforcement agencies that were providing support, and the lack of unified communications led to numerous cascading failures that day. As I learned in the Army, if you don’t have communications and you don’t have unified command and control, really, nothing else will work. And our thorough investigation confirmed that to be true.”
(my bold) I’m sure both of these critiques don’t sound surprising too anyone working in wildfire. In fact, the Incident Command System (as far as I know) was generated (at least in part) to help with coordination and communication across agencies. And the idea of “saying something when you see something unsafe” was drilled into us via many trainings. Whether it worked or not to change folks’ behavior is probably uneven.
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The FBI
In this interview with journalist Matt Taibbi, (tagline, “depoliticization, decentralization and transparency are all achievable goals”) former FBI official Colleen Rowley (who seems to have quite a jaundiced view of folks at HQ, and argues for more decision authority in the field) was quoted as saying:
These supervisors at headquarters learn bad habits. You try to “punch your ticket.” That’s the terminology. You try to go there for your year and a half. You hate it, but you do it. You have to bend over and please the bosses to get through that year and a half in order to “punch your ticket” and climb the ladder. The risk aversion is incredible.
So this is my own personal experience of WO drone-hood for about 12 years. As you can imagine, I saw many people come in from the field and go back out. There were two kinds of folks on the staffs where I worked, those who planned to stay in DC due to families and other reasons, and those who wanted to go back out as soon as they had absorbed the experience. Maybe I’m Pollyannaish, but I don’t remember any obsequiousness nor risk aversion, just committed and caring people with the usual set of different ideas. And I thought the mix of cycling people through was excellent, the folks with recent direct field experience mixing with people who had been doing the drone-work for a long time. I have also experienced that people stuck with each other for a long time, be it on a District, SO or RO, can develop suboptimal ways of relating to each other, drama, drawing in outside groups, etc. . ‘Nuff said on that.
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NIH
As a former supervisor of FOIA folks, this one particularly sticks in my craw. Of course, I think they should do an EIS on gain-of-function research, but…here is a link to the testimony of Gary Ruskin, the Executive Director of U.S. Right to Know, before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on March 20, 2024. This testimony as a whole is very depressing.
In the course of our investigation of high-risk virological research and the origins of COVID-19, we have had to file 25 FOIA lawsuits covering 38 separate FOIA requests.10
We have had to litigate FOIA requests to 14 federal agencies and sub-agencies, including:
● Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
● Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)
● Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)
● Department of Defense (DOD)
● Department of Education (ED)
● Department of Energy (DOE)
● Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
● Department of State (DOS)
● Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
● Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
● National Institutes of Health (NIH)
● National Library of Medicine (NLM)
● Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)
● U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
Why did we litigate so many times? Because these agencies did not comply with the deadlines in the public records laws, and/or were obstructing those laws. For this to happen so many times is a sign that our records processes are failing the public.
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My own experience with FOIAing was when I was asking for communication between USDA and CEQ, USDA sent them to me and CEQ told me that they were “withholding messages until they had been reviewed by the White House” and somehow that never happened. Our FOIAs on Keystones have had a lengthy timeframe, but we have received responses so far from R’s 10 and 1.
As to getting around FOIA by using personal emails, I haven’t seen anyone in the FS do it, but maybe it does happen. It does take a certain amount of hubris to blow off legal requirements, though, and maybe FS culture does not promote arrogance.
It has been 17 years since I retired and I do travel on FS, BLM , USFWS, COE and NPS managed lands throughout the year. Forest Service management needs to be compared its peer agencies, not the Secret Service.
Without exception, the Forest Service lands are the worst managed when it comes to recreational facilities and management. The BLM has far surpassed the Forest Service in recreation. Last spring, I camped at a BLM campground after Idaho Fish and Game abandoned the site on the Clearwater River. I was impressed with the design of the campgrounds, I even took pictures I was so impressed. That is public service to take over a state property and manage it correctly.
A Forest Service landscape architect said in 1978 “the public judges the quality of the Forest Service timber program, by the quality of the Forest Service recreation program. They assume if the Forest Service is doing a good job with recreation, they are probably doing the same with the timber program”.
A concept the Forest Service never really understood.
Worse yet,
I worked as a PIO on fires throughout the west after I retired. On several occasions I was specifically asked NOT to wear my Forest Service uniform. It seems the Forest Service did not have good reputation with those communities and agencies where the fire was burning.
That was shocking.
In my Lane County, Oregon, backyard, BLM & COE recreation facilities knock the socks off the Forest Service’s.
Vladimir, in your opinion, what makes the BLM sites better?
I would start with WHY the Forest Service recreation program is such a mess. This discussion started with my first professional recreation job with the Forest Service on the Idaho Panhandle NFs in 1978!!
First, there are few people in the Forest Service with professional backgrounds in recreation. The best folks are the landscape architects since their background in the human use of outdoor spaces gives them a leg up on the “other” recreation professionals.
In my last job with the Forest Service, I was the Recreation Program Manager for the Wenatchee-Okanagan NF. It is a huge forest with the largest rec program in Region Six. The forest recreation budget topped out just under 10 milion dollars a year with only a 1/3 of that coming from appropriated dollars. On that forest there were ONLY three of us with professional backgrounds in recreation!!
The problem is that everybody THINKS they know everything about how to run a recreation program. You end with lots of discussion and wasted time trying to convince folks about the “right” thing to do.
I even had folks with timber backgrounds tell the landscape architect how to design a large campground!!! And then, of course, there are all the “failed” recreation projects due to bad design that need to be rebuilt.
I had few “discussions” about recreation design when I worked for NPS and BLM. It was a “feature” working for the Forest Service. There were some outstanding recreation folks in the Forest Service, unfortunately, they spent much of their time in “discussions” about recreation facilities.
The other problem is that the Forest Service has too many facilities and trails.
On the OWF we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 570 developed facilities, 652 summer homes (a real time suck, particularly during appraisal periods), and over 6,000 miles of bare ground, single track motorcycle, designated jeep, snowmobile, mountain bike, x-country ski, interpretive and disabled trails. In a speech I wrote for the Forest Supervisor I mentioned that those 6000 miles of trails were enough to go across the US and BACK. And for maintenance and reconstruction concerns none of the OWF trails crossed the Great Plains.
For comparison purpose Yosemite National Park has 800 miles of trails, and 14 campgrounds with 1400 campsites. No snowmobile, motorcycle or ORV trails, or designated jeep and mountain bike trails.
As I became eligible for retirement, the FS came out with the Recreation Facilities Review to “right” size the recreation program. My “back of the envelope” calculations were that 1/3 to 1/2 of the developed facilities needed to be closed down. The hiking and horse bare ground, trail system, needed to be pruned back by about half.
My informal polling of District Rangers and other staff indicated little support for such a drastic reduction in recreation facilities. Then to put the icing on the cake the WO decided to implement travel management planning for ALL national forests. At that point, I decided that I wanted no part of those two programs.
And I decided to implement my retirement plan.
The Recreation Facilities review resulted in FOUR sites being closed!! The travel management plan took 15 years to complete on the forest!!
So why are BLM sites and other agencies recreation facilities better than Forest Service. The Forest Service had a “head” start in recreation, but in the 1970’s the other land management agencies started hiring outdoor recreation professionals and after 50 years it shows on the ground as the BLM recreation funding increased.
Likewise, the other agencies do NOT have a “surplus” of antiquated, out-dated, and poorly designed recreation facilities. If you look at the other agencies recreation programs they have substantially fewer facilities and the recreation dollars are put to effective use, rather than scattered across the landscape.
Vladimir
Many popular National Forests also have the problems of “Dispersed Recreation”, where camping areas are less constrained or managed. Some sites have even been turned into ‘group camps’, with lots of parking for all of man’s luxuries and ‘toys’.
But Larry, is that all bad? Are still promoting “it’s all yours, come play”? But not over here, not there, nor over yonder? Mixed messages; the danged Travel Management turned into something I think no one believed it would. It should probably be abolished and go back to Forest level Planning for open routes, and maybe, this time, put the routes that are open and closed on the map! What a concept….
And I for one, whether a ground pounder, Ranger or Forest Sup, I always thought we needed to provide those opportunities (public need) for the public. Yeah, I get it, overuse happens – yada, yada, yada. However, some of it is the FS own fault; squeeze that balloon and it will pooch out somewhere else!
Also, remember the “Regionality” of those on here expressing opinions. Some have not had the benefit of working all across this great Country, seeing the diversity the FS offers. Regions 8 and 9 are really into the developed rec arena, with a very large developed facilities base, and not so much Wilderness.
Remember the “shovel ready” Stimulus” projects of 2010? In Region 8, we spent days writing useless proposals for recreation and roads improvements – didn’t get a dime! I moved to Region 3 late in 2010 and they received 22 million dollars, mostly for rec on the A-S! Hot showers and flush toilets 20 miles from town, talk about a win…..🤣
Jim, do you know what group selected the proposals on the Stimulus projects? What kind of criteria did they use? My Stimulus story is the Bighorn wanted to reroute a road in a campground to be out of a creek. So they got the bucks. Then the Admin/WO decided to review all Roadless projects and didn’t want them to go through, even though I think the Rule was enjoined (is it legal to follow a rule that’s enjoined? ) It turned out the the edge of the campground (yes a vehicle-oriented campground) was in Roadless. After many letters (and I’m sure behind the scenes work) the project was allowed to move forward.
Yes, the final approvals anyway; had nothing to do with the merits of a proposal, necessarily, the Administration looked at poverty levels of all the counties in the US, and ranked the proposals based on “how poor” a particular county is/was. Competition came into being when a particular poor county had multiple projects. Often, the $ were recalibrated to fund all proposals in a poor county.
A-S and several NF’s in Region 3 are located in very large counties, and they include Reservations. Apache and Navajo Counties are over 200 miles long, and contain more area than some States! Navajo County (ShoLow, Snowflake, Winslow areas) are very diverse and affluent, but several Reservations contribute to an overall high poverty area.
Those were the criteria to get the goods…..
I suppose that it’s an improvement to use census tracts instead of counties a la the EJ maps.. https://screeningtool.geoplatform.gov/en/#6.29/47.236/-93.202
too bad they use a made-up index, a non-ground-truthed NGO-produced model, and other questionable data .
For example there’s a census district west of Snowflake that is disadvantaged because it’s low income AND the agricultural economic loss rate resulting from hazards each year is in the 90th percentile. Anyway, too many rabbit holes too little time.
It is to be expected that in every organization, like broken clocks, being correct can happen twice-a-day. And the TSW being a blog about the Forest Service would naturally print a “shout out!” Of course, the example cited in the “shout out” is the prescribed fire stand down ordered by the Chief ostensibly for accountability purposes. But was it the Forest Service? Or was it the apparatchiks who divined a “stand down” for political and PR purposes? Aside from the district ranger’s panicked apology on April 11th there was no contrition form the Chief or regional forester after the stand down, even though Congress absolved the agency from liability with the passage of the $4billion Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Disaster Assistance Act in Division G of the Ukraine Supplemental in September of 2022. Instead, the vaunted review findings, like the “Cohesive Strategy” foisted more fire on the Nation’s people and their property.
However, to compare the Forest Service to the alphabet soup of to the leviathan’s departments, agencies and commissions is misleading, like saying we’re bad, but look at these others, they are so much worse. Why we were only the second federal agency to burn down New Mexico, but for our actions we took a 90-day pause from the havoc we reaped upon San Miguel, Mora and Taos Counties.
During the 90-day pause, the Forest Supervisor of the Santa Fe National Forest was airlifted from New Mexico to the 4th Floor of the Yates Building as the deputy chief of staff. With a view of the Washington Monument, the South Lawn, (where Marine 1 can be observed landing and taking off), the Lincoln Memorial, the Potomac River, Roslyn, Reagan Airport and the Wilson Bridge, the former Santa Fe forest supervisor toiled away the days and last two years in penance for the sin of not managing the Calf Canyon and Cerro Pelado piles to extinguishment and igniting the Las Dispensas Rx on April 6, 2022 in between periods of extended red flag warnings for high winds and low humidities. But at least there was a 90-day pause and a team of “inside baseball” staff and financially dependent allies (e.g. state foresters and former state foresters) assembled to justify current destructive programs made a report and you tube infomercial. No reflection was paid to the Organic Administration Act which requires that the Secretary “…shall make provisions for the protection against destruction by fire and depredations upon the public forests and forest reservations…”
In the “infomercial” the Chief expressed pride for accountability by saying “…we strive to hold ourselves accountable, learn from our success (rather than mistakes) and find better ways to serve the American people and steward the lands entrusted to our care…” So much so that the Chief on October 7, 2024, announced the promotion of the deputy chief of staff after 915 days in purgatory as the deputy regional for the Alaska Region.
Since the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire and the overhyped 90-day review, the Chief displays little if any humility for the agency’s prescribed fire program. At the California Forestry Association’s 2024 Forest Strategies and Innovation Conference, the Chief devoid of humility and displaying full hubris opened his remarks by saying “the New Mexico fires (Calf Canyon and Cerro Pelado) were snowed on twice and rained on once but because of global warming burned underground…” This is neither stewardship nor accountability.
No amount of NEPA for “gain-of-function research” or controlled burning will ever anticipate what the unintended effects and consequences are to humans and their environment. USDA and its Department of Army partner (US Bioweapons Command at Ft. Detrick, MD) has a bioweapons development lab at Plum Island, NY (41° 10′ 35.40″ N; -72° 11′ 15.00″ W) where mad scientists inculcated ticks with spirochetes (Borelia Burgdorfi) and viruses (Powassan virus, a flavivirus) among other pathogens to wreak death and illness upon “enemy” populations. (United Nations Human Rights Council 49th Session 28 February – 1 April 2022 “The United States of America and the Release of “Bug Borne” Bioweapons During the Cold War” A/HRC/49/NGO/206). The widely dreaded Lyme Disease now infects ½ million people annually. The Powassan virus is particularly deadly with a 15% mortality rate for the lucky. It is this virus that caused the death of former North Carolina Senator Kay Hagan at age 66 in 2019. Government must be forbidden to incur these types of programs that are lethal to human populations.
I am a 38-year veteran of the Forest Service and by extension USDA. It pains me to write cynically about my employer. But through my time in government service, I have witnessed and experienced many perverse incentives, but one that stands out for me is my signing of the Decision Notice and Finding of No Significant Impact based on the Environmental Assessment for the Gallinas Municipal Watershed Wildland – Urban Interface Project on the 19th of June 2006. I authorized both broadcast burning and pile burning among other practices for reducing forest density within the municipal watershed. I knew better than to mix fire with a nearly sole source culinary water supply. But I did because the pressure was immense to paradoxically use the physical force of nature that precipitated the National Fire Plan. In developing the environmental assessment, I proposed only mechanical and hand treatments without any combustive practices. The Viveash Fire of 2000 had banged the Gallinas Watershed hard and the resulting ash flows were a problem for domestic water consumption. However, my district fire staff disagreed and lobbied the forest supervisor for the use of combustive practices which resulted in ~1,739 acres of broadcast burning and copious amounts of pile burning. The forest supervisor excelled in brow beating as a leadership style and I succumbed. It was these two risky and consequential practices, (pile burning and broadcast burning) for which humans are particularly powerless to control that have placed the Forest Service in the hall of infamy ahead of the National Park Service which had ignited the Cerro Grande Fire which burned down the Los Alamos Nuclear Lab.
Campgrounds are a weak and de minimis barometer for agency service and relevance to the American people. The Forest Service mission statement is “to sustain the health diversity and productivity of the Nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs for present and future generations,” yet it appears that the agency is sustaining the careers of ne’re-do-well employees, while applying scorched earth policies to the Nation’s forest and grasslands. This downward trajectory is a better measure of agency service and relevancy. The agency dose not hold personnel accountable. The November election under scored the need for accountability.
Since 2008, the Santa Fe has been burning winter, spring and fall in the Gallinas and the illusion of success was a “pipe dream.” But in reality, the Forest Service became addicted to fire, so the stand down was like spending 90-days at the “Betty Ford” Clinic, where behaviors cease because narcotics are denied, but little is accomplished in the deep psychology of behavioral change.
Joe Reddan served as district ranger for the Pecos/Las Vegas Ranger District from 2002 – 2008
The sad thing is, that in addition to burning the forest and devastating communities, such USFS practices as the fuels treatments that precipitated the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire harm the USFS’s own people. USFS personnel are caught up in the “squeeze,” between meeting USFS objectives and quotas, and doing what they believe is reasonably safe and prudent. And then they have to live with their participation in the ensuing disaster.