Teakettle Burn Project- Did a Lack of Oversight Contribute? What Will Be the Oversight Structure of a Reorganized Forest Service?

Now that the end of the shutdown appears to be within our sight, I thought I’d post about a question that recent news stories have brought up which seems like a critical question as the Forest Service reorganization is concerned. To that end, I’ll posit that “not every forest supervisor does everything to please everyone all the time.” And ask the question “in the new organization, where should complaints go above the Forest level?”

Once a group is concerned, after sharing their concerns with the Forest Supervisor, if they continue to have issues, to whom, or through what process do they go? Let’s review how things have been working with the current Regional structure.  In my relatively brief time (seven years) in an RO:

•  I saw the RF and staff working with forests so that their issues did not “escape containment”: from my seat that looked like folks with concerns who had some kind of leverage, mostly access to politicians, I would guess, who brought them to the attention of the RF or DRFs.
• I saw the RF overrule a Forest Supe on a decision (to expand a ski area)
• Indeed, I was told that a good Director has “ears on the ground” to forests so that action could be taken before things got out of hand.  It seemed to me like a “spy network” at the time, but I now see that it’s extremely useful as an early warning system.
• I saw an RF remove a Forest Supe who had more or less of a mutiny (or key staff who didn’t want her) on her hands.. deserved or undeserved, I never figured out.
• I saw a settlement agreement with one Forest that set a case law-ish standard for more analysis for the rest of the FS.. tried to get some pushback from the WO (recreation in this case) but they didn’t want to get involved.
• WO Triangulation? When I worked in NEPA in the WO, one forest seemed to be engaging in what I would call “CE abuse” which again could have led to a court case and had negative repercussions for everyone else.  The Regional NEPA staff brought this to the RF’s attention, but the RF chose not to tell the Supe not to do it (I guess based on different Regional cultures, there are so many chits an RF has per Supe?) so we (WO) had to step in.  This worked for the RF perhaps because he could get the desirable result without using his own points (“the WO is telling us what to do.”).

I hope that both internal and external folks share their stories of what has worked and has not worked in terms of “taking it to the next level” above the Forest Supe.

Some recent stories like this one on the Garnet Fire and the damage to the  Teakettle Experimental Forest reminded me of this:

The project appeared to be on the agency’s fast track. With full funding from Newsom, the Forest Service promised to get the burn done by September of 2024, reducing the risk of the trees burning in a mega fire by an estimated 80%. To complete the burn as easily as possible, they exempted themselves from all the pesky red tape — no environmental review was needed to get the so-called “good fire” on the ground.

But fall 2024 came and went, and the burn didn’t get done. When the Garnet Fire started in August, the scientists’ worst fears about Teakettle proved correct.

Two months later, the scientists who were part of the stalled project say that the worst of the devastation caused by the Garnet Fire could have been prevented had the Forest Service not found ways to drag its feet every step of the way with the Teakettle burn project. Many pin the blame on the Forest Service supervisor Dean Gould for “slow-rolling” the project despite hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent to hold his staff’s hand on nearly every planning detail of the project.

“We got slow-rolled on everything,” said Matt Hurteau, director of the Center for Fire Resilient Ecosystems and Society at the University of New Mexico and project leader for the Teakettle Project.

“The National Forest Service leaders put in charge of these local ranger districts have no urgency to their actions. They’re not moving at a pace that’s going to result in forests that are resilient to these big wildfire events.”

Scott Stephens, a UC Berkeley professor of Fire Science, said the Teakettle project points to deep dysfunction within the Forest Service, which has failed to implement the forest treatments since the 2020 Creek Fire that are necessary to stave off the collapse of the Sierra Nevada ecosystem in the coming years.

“It really was a lack of engagement from the local unit,” said Stephens on why the Teakettle project didn’t get done. “I don’t know what else to say about it.”

Friedman’s Law is that there are at least two sides to each story.  We would need to interview the FS folks to get their side.  But we can’t get their side because.. there doesn’t seem to be a structure to do that.  Or perhaps we will hear once public affairs folks come back from furlough.  How do some forests get things done (like the Stanislaus, the next Forest north?) and others not?

I understand that the scientists are frustrated.  And I would bet that many folks have different angles on the story.  My point is that there needs to be consideration of an above Forest process to resolve disputes before they “escape containment.”

But given that we did have RFs (an acting one) in this case, I wonder whether the scientists and others took their concerns up the line and what the result was.  It’s always interesting to me that when things go wrong on fires, there is a lessons learned but in other parts of the FS not so much.  Or it’s not public?  When should an organization just march on, and when should they stop and take stock?  And why not make those lessons learned publicly available?

Any new structures or organizations, it seems to me, need some kind of process for this kind of oversight and accountability.