(USDA Forest Service photo by Preston Keres)
Nick Smith interviewed Chief Schultz on December 17th on the AFRC Podcast. It’s worth listening to in its entirety, although a bit timber-numbers-heavy toward the end as you might expect, given the audience. I’ll highlight some non-timber interesting things.
I had Otter AI do a transcript. I only chose Otter because it was free and I’ve edited it where I think it was wrong.. but I certainly didn’t catch them all.. I think the transcript at Apple Podcasts was better but could only copy a section at a time.
On his way of approaching his job:
And, you know, I’ve always tried to take the approach seek, first to understand, then to be understood. I think that’s from Covey’s 5th Habit (of Highly Effective People- SF) So I don’t have all the answers by any means. I’ve got some experiences. I’ve learned from a lot of people at different levels. And you know, I try to learn from everybody. And then, you know, one of the people that really shaped me was Governor Butch Otter in Idaho. And no matter who he talked to, he gave them his full attention. And then we’ve all been in those situations where somebody is, you know, looking above us, looking over our shoulders as they’re talking to us, not giving us their attention, but he’s someone that really taught me, no matter who it is, I don’t care what your lot in life is, what your job is, we all have something to offer. And if you’re going to take the time to talk to somebody, give them your full attention. And that’s what I try to do.
On FS employees:
I’ve worked in the military, I’ve worked in state government, I’ve worked in the private sector, and the passion and commitment that I see in people for what they do is above what I’ve seen elsewhere. What I hear people regularly say, it’s not just what they say, it’s what they do, but their passion for their jobs. Many people say this is the best job in my life. This is, you know, when so many people want to like, you know, I hear a lot of kids say this that, you know, I’m going to have a job that I love for the rest of my life. And many people, I think, struggle to find that a lot of people do work as a way to support themselves. It’s not necessarily what they want to do in life, but so many people do it.
He thinks that the FS doesn’t need new authorities, but needs to review the degree of prescriptiveness of the directives to ensure the folks on the ground have appropriate levels of discretion.
Yeah, so when I think about this type of question about what we can and can’t do, the Forest Service has so many authorities as you well know we’ve gotten more and more authorities, whether it was the Farm Bill in 2018 the Farm Bill 2014 before that, we have so many authorities, so in many cases, I don’t think we need a lot of authorities, new authorities, to get work done. What we’re doing, though, is we’re looking at all of the authorities we have. We’re looking at all of the regulations, the directives. I’ll put this in perspective for you, Nick, we have something called the Forest Service Handbook and the Forest Service Manual. And in that there are directives. There are roughly 1000 directives that have been issued by the Washington Office, and another 2000 supplemental directives that have been issued by various regions across the country. I did not have knowledge of that before coming to the Forest Service. And these directives are very prescriptive, and they do not afford much discretion, so we’re going to go through additional rulemaking processes to make it sure that these directives are either removed in many cases, or that the language has changed as guidelines into afford discretion and decision making to the men and the women on the ground and other professionals. There’s a great book I love. It’s called “the Speed of Trust”. Stephen Covey’s son wrote the book, and it’s a real simple book. But if you want to find a low trust environment and organization to work with, typically, the more rules and regulations organizations you have that implies the low trust organization. Low trust organizations have very high costs. They tend to be very inefficient in getting things done. High cost or high trust organizations tend to have very little written. Those environments tend to be high trust, they tend to be low cost, and they tend to move much quicker. And so when you see the Forest Service, you think about the statutes, the regulations, the directions, you layer all that on top of it, the perceived discretion of many field operating people in the Forest Service is that they don’t have much discretion.”
FWIW, The Speed of Trust is one of my faves as well.
Defined “Active Management” as he means it(10:23)
And to me, active management, just so we’re clear, is a multitude of things. Active management, it’s grazing. It’s ensuring we have reduction of fine fuels. It’s about reforestation. On the Forest Service, this last year, we planted 285,000 acres. It’s the most acres we’ve planted in the last 25 years. It’s about thinning forests. It’s about fuels reduction. It’s about timber sales, all of that. When I talk about active management, it’s after a fire, it’s going in and salvaging the dead material, and then it’s going post- fire recovery, all of that’s active management. It’s not just one thing. Active management is not just commercial timber sales. It’s a key part of it, but it’s a total supply chain. If you think about it, we’ve got to be growing seedlings. We’ve got to be planting. We’ve got to be preparing the soil. We got to be thinning those forests- pre-commercial thinning. We’ve got to get fire on the landscape. We’ve got to have commercial timber sales. We’ve got to. after we have fires, we have to salvage the dead and dying material. All of those things are part of the active management strategy. More than that, we do we are going to improve the health of the forest long term, so that when we walk out there, we don’t just see 1000s, if not millions, of acres that are dying in the forest.
Of course, back in Big Timber days we also had forest health/wildfire problems, including MPB in Central Oregon and Western Spruce Budworm outbreaks. We also knew then that in some cases, appropriate management at the appropriate scale could reduce impacts. I don’t think that the Chief intended a “silver bullet” kind of meaning to active management.
Discussion of Shared Stewardship With States and Tribes and Cooperative Federalism.(23:57) . The transcript would be too long and I don’t think I could summarize and do it justice (and AI can’t either).
*************
Your thoughts?
Well done, Nick!
I listened to the full interview the other day and did find it interesting. I have to say that I did come away from it thinking a little better about him. He has clearly had a steep learning curve, and it shows that he has put some real effort into trying to learn the game. I have also heard from people that have had firsthand interaction with him and heard good things.
That being said, I thought his take on employees was a little head in the sand. I agree with what he said but he left out that morale is in the toilet. DOGE had a significant impact. He quickly breezes past that some people on probation left. He put on a real happy face. It hurts his credibility.
He talked about a recent RPA Assessment that I have not been able to find. He talks about the dire situation with mortality and low growth rates. He says he is a data guy. I hate to mention the Black Hills NF, but I wonder if he has studied our data. And yet, he is pushing for an unsustainable timber volume sold target here. So, he’s a data guy but is willing to forgo the data for political expediency?
My understanding of the shared management with Counties and States is that he wants to let them plan it and implement it. The FS will apparently do the NEPA. With some of the Counties and States that I am familiar with, I think this could be a horrible idea. Is he going to turn over the reins on federal land to these other entities? Where is the authority for that? Maybe I missed something.
He went through his laundry list of Agency achievements. He’s a data guy, so are some of us. Show us the data where it’s easy to find. We don’t need smoke and mirrors.
He is doing better than I thought he would do with absolutely no Agency experience. He is learning a lot, but he needs to be more up front. I like the emphasis on reforestation. Wood innovation is also good. The simplistic “active management will solve our problems” message needs some work. I wish him well.
The RPA Assessment occurs every 10 years so the most recent is 2020 https://research.fs.usda.gov/inventory/rpaa/2020
Not sure where the forest health write-up can be found.
I agree that perhaps for us nuts and bolts people the role of the states and Tribes could be clearer. He said there’s the forest plan and then there’s individual projects. Maybe we need a flowchart.
Ok, I listened to him again and he made it sound like the RPA Assessment came out recently. He was referring to the 2020 Assessment. I did some scanning through it and saw where he was getting some of his information. There is a lot of info in there! It would take some time to work your way through it. My hat’s off to him if he has reviewed all that!
Indeed, the assessment does show that there has been a good bit of mortality in portions of the west. I don’t know if comparing the recent past to some period 30-60 years ago is entirely fair and then blame our current situation on a reduction in active management. It’s certainly part of the equation but there are many other factors. Some of those would be more fuel accumulation from aggressive fire suppression, climate change (yes, I know you non-believers are out there), wide-scale harvest of old growth which were more resistant to fire impacts compared to second-growth, the expansion of WUI and more people interacting with the forests thereby causing increased human starts. And yes, the increased use of managed fire and just more indirect fire tactics for safety considerations have led to greater acres burned, causing more mortality. It’s not just a reduction of active management that has got us where we are today. That’s too simplistic.
Dave, I don’t know how much “wide-scale harvest of old growth” there has been since the big Timber days of the 80’s. And in some places old growth may not be more resistant to fire. I can think of some spruce-fir patches. And I wonder if we used the term “climate variability” we might be able to lose the “climate change” baggage which has all kinds of things associated with it.
I would bet there’s a summary of the RPA forest health somewhere.. it may not be as summarized/accessible as it could be. I wonder whether anyone out there has a link?
I agree that major harvest of old growth was reduced, maybe significantly going into the 90’s. I worked in Region 6 before the Spotted Owl kicked in and it was certainly going on before that. All of the mills were set up for large diameter. Chief Schultz was bringing up the days of 10-12 billion board feet, and you have to go a long way back for that, to the 80’s as I recall, and he inferred that was why mortality was much lower from insects and fire. I am just suggesting that the significant harvesting of old-growth has at least played a role in increased fire mortality. Annual fire acreage really started to increase in 2000. If you follow Schultz’s logic, the reduction of timber volume sold in the 10 years or so from the early 90’s to the early 2000’s led to dramatic fire acreage increases. I think there is more to the story.
I like your suggestion of using climate variability. The cause is not even that big of a thing to me, I just think that we should admit that changes are occurring and if we really want to adapt, we have to admit it. Adapting will involve active management with different approaches.
An RPA forest health summary would be really good. There is a lot of good information in there but you have to be dedicated to find it.
I think saying “climate variability” to avoid the “baggage” is misleading. We’re not talking about the view over millions of years. For human planning purposes, the weather is “variable,” and for climate the trend is what matters. I would agree that the cause of that trend is only relevant to the Forest Service to the extent that Forest Service management contributes to an undesirable climate trend; however, all causes are certainly relevant to overall attempts to moderate that trend. (I think “global warming” comes a lot closer to truth, but if your goal is to make people feel better about it, “climate change” works.)
I hear your point. The causes are important, but it seems that there is not the collective will to do anything serious about them. To many of us, what is happening with climate is obvious, and then there are others who continue to dismiss it. That is puzzling to many of us, but I am not sure what it would take to change that. To me, that leaves adaptation. Accept what is happening and figure out how to adapt to it. Probably not the best thing to do for future generations, but here we are.
I like the climate variability moniker, too much passion on both sides in calling it climate change, or worse, global warming! We have too many unknowns of how Younger Dryas shaped our recent past, and how much warming is natural, to begin with. You ask that question and you get twelve answers!
One thing for sure, a well managed forest is certainly more resilient to changing climates and fire. I use “climates” because here in Arkansas, the temperature has increased 0.5° F (NOT C) in the past 120 years!
My thoughts on your summary, Sharon:
1) what you summarized leaves me thinking that Chief Schultz is thin on “multiple use”, yet strong on timber and fire (“active management”). Not surprising, but a more balanced perspective offered by the Chief would have impressed me more.
2) Chief Schultz’s perspective on FS directives and regulations being too prescriptive is not going to get much argument from many current and past FS employees. Those of us who have experienced the Department meat grinder to get directives and regulations approved know that the process tends to produce “risk averse” language. Plus, having more discretion on the ground should be coupled with a stronger accountability system to ensure that the “right” decisions are being made for the “right” reasons (ie, advancing the FS mission).
I agree, but of course, he was talking to Nick Smith.. perhaps if he had been interviewed by Recreationists’R’Us we would have heard more about recreation.
I wish I knew what the “right decisions” were, it seems to me that many decisions require trade-offs of various kinds and reasonable people could disagree (as my old boss Tom Mills would say) about how the trade-offs are best weighed. After all, the FS is a multiple-use agency by statute.
Totally agree, Sharon, with your last sentence. Hence, I would have been more impressed with the Chief’s comments if he led with the multiple-use mandate and then described how active management is woven into that mandate. But, I understand also who the Chief’s audience is these days.
Since courts don’t seem willing to enforce agency internal directives (not formally adopted as regulations), it leaves it up to the agency to enforce – or not – “prescriptive” directives.
“Because we hold that neither the Manual nor the Handbook has the force and effect of law, we review the Service’s issuance of a permit only under its binding regulations.” https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=17406772663333883830&q=forest+service+handbook+not+enforceable&hl=en&as_sdt=3,27 (from 1996 – I haven’t looked for something more recent).
I agree that Schultz’s comments seemed to be about growing a crop of trees.
Given that court’s assessment of agency directives, it makes me wonder WHY the agency invests so much in developing a FS manual and handbook. If they are not relevant in a court of law, it seems directives are self-hobbling instruments.
As for the 2005, 2008, and 2012 Planning Rules, I remember a couple regional planners proclaiming, “Just give me the regs, I’ll figure it out.” Maybe we should have…
I suspect that the Manual and Handbook were from an earlier time when there was a felt need to standardize processes and definitions and have them available on paper where people could see them and look things up.
I also suspect that no one has probably ever asked the question “should all this be reorganized somehow with today’s technologies?
My own experience was with 2470 and it’s still useful info for example,
2472.4 Stocking surveys
I would bet you could ask AI to review each manual or handbook and extract a list of requirements which might be more focused, for example.