Forest Service: Culture, History, Morale, Organization, Future

I mostly agree with what Andy has to say in this piece, except for what I think is a broad extrapolation at the end.

However, as a member of NAFSR (Forest Service retirees), I think it’s interesting that Angus (the reporter) chose to interview the  head of the “former agency group” for the Park Service but not the Forest Service nor BLM.  Or maybe he did but didn’t use their quotes.  The piece isn’t paywalled, so you can read all of it, but I’ve excerpted what Andy said.  I agree with many of the things he says.

There’s “uncertainty throughout the Forest Service,” said Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. “The fear is palpable.”

An implication in the “Fork in the Road” memo is that “the next [offer] may be less generous,” Stahl said. “It may be ‘give us your keys, you’re out of here.’

“Everybody in the Forest Service,” he said, “is just hunkered down waiting for the next axe to fall.”

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As the Republican agenda advances, it’s clear whose necks are first on the chopping block, Forest Service supporter Stahl said.

“If you’ve got [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] in your title the Trump administration has made it very clear you should either get a different job or leave the government entirely,” he said.

But “I doubt the Trump administration is going to can the firefighters,” who make up about half the USFS workforce, Stahl said.

“At the end of the day, somebody’s going to have to replace the toilet paper in the campground restrooms, process the permit for the Boy Scout 20-person campout, go out and mark the small trees that will be thinned in a fuels reduction project,” he said.

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But of course those are things temps do, that wouldn’t have been funded anyway. I hope the new Admin fixes the temp situation post-haste.

Here are the things I don’t agree with..

As Stahl sees it, Trump’s goal is to get the U.S. Supreme Court to declare the Civil Service Reform Act unconstitutional, a violation of the separation of powers. The act created the modern-day civil service, the phalanx of 2.2 million government workers who carry out congressional laws, executive directions and court rulings.

Adopting that perspective, Stahl pointed out that the president doesn’t tell Barrasso who he can or can’t hire for his staff. Trump can’t tell Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who can be his clerks.

“Why can Congress tell me who I can hire?” Trump might ask, according to Stahl. For Trump, “that doesn’t seem fair,” Stahl said.

The notion of a civil service beholden only to the president has support from conservative scholars in The Federalist Society, a legal organization that is “ramrodding this return to constitutional literalism and the original intent of the founders,” Stahl said.

“They read dusty old manuscripts [and would] return to our nation to 250 years ago when the president only employed five people,” Stahl said. “That’s the end game.”

I think that’s a bit of an overreach or extrapolation.  A more simple explanation is that they want to cut employees and this is a way to do it, not unlike what happens in the private sector.

I also think it’s worth considering how quickly stories can go from content of the story, to intent of those doing the work in the story (usually only under certain kinds of Admins).

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But Wyofile regularly assures me, especially when they’re looking for donations, that they are unbiased. So there’s that.

 

 

I’m pausing our wildfire topic because I think it’s important to have this discussion now.  One of our usual Anonymi posted this as a comment and I’m reposting it here.

I didn’t sleep well last night. I know there are many other federal employees that have been struggling with anxiety as well. There is an overall sense of despair across the federal government. We are being talked about as though we are not human. That we are conspirators. That we are lazy. That our agency missions and the laws we implement are not needed and harm the public. That our life’s work is not wanted. That we should lose our jobs. That we will lose our jobs. That our coworkers and friends will lose their jobs. That the intent is to make our work lives miserable so that we will quit. It’s working.

I am one of the hardest working people out there. I get more work done than 99% of the staff out there. I believe in maximizing efficiency and getting rid of dead weight. This is not how to do that. This must have been how all of those Twitter employees felt. Look how that turned out.

I completely understand and empathize with you.  As a person with specialized skills (forest genetics), I know that it would have been hard for me to find a position outside government.  In fact, that’s how I ended up in NEPA, because I thought planning would always be a source of employment.  I think it’s probably the same for many natural resource professionals.  It’s not like we can get a job at the local high school or hospital or RV manufacturing facility.

Here’s what I would say based on the people I have communication with:

Most of us appreciate federal employees and think most of you are serious and committed to their work, so don’t listen to those other voices. Like generic Republicans or generic Democrats, there is no generic federal employee.  An IRS person is not a military person is not an NRCS or Farm Services person.  But even within agencies, like the reported observation that a flush of money from IRA and BIL led to hiring more deputies in the  ROs and so on- that were apparently not needed before-, people disagree about what jobs are most  important to fill or leave vacant.  And I have worked with less than satisfactory employees, both within the FS and at other agencies.

Other people are concerned that there is too much work from home, and that offices are not staffed to serve the public, and there is a lack of accountability for work performance.  Even employees have told me the same.   There is a lack of accountability and transparency that we have observed even here at TSW, and spending time on ideas and projects of dubious merit (either because “the idea must have sounded good to someone” or “political overlords made them do it.”

Like you said, I agree that this is not the way to improve things; but I’m not so sure Twitter is a good example.  It seems to me that no one cared much about all this (improvement, I think the last was Reinventing Government during the Clinton years) in the previous administrations.  Remember how I wanted to elect a Good Government Party that would just focus on improving government?  I don’t think it helped that some feds were actively subverting the previous Trump Admin (which I’m sure led to mistrust).  And the Admin has only four years, much of which will be consumed by lawsuits.  I guess to the extent that we here can influence anyone at our agencies, or the DOGE folks, whom I think will be imbedded in each agency, what would you do?

One more thought, at the FS there was an effort to focus on streamlining work; I remember the engineering shop took it seriously and the rest of us stiff-armed it and were successful at not making change.  As part of it, the WO Minerals shop moved to Denver, which pleased them and us.  So as a veteran of  time-sucking but mostly unsuccessful internally led efforts, I’m somewhat leery. And that was just the last similar effort, there were plenty of others now lost to time).  Or perhaps someone somewhere wrote a history of FS improvement efforts? I remember the Pilot in the early 80’s and at least the part I worked on was successful (giving folks check-writing authority).

But maybe that’s all beside the main point.  I  can speak for many of us, and certainly many or all retirees, when we say that your work is deeply appreciated.  I can’t say that nothing bad will happen with this Admin’s efforts to improve things, but I can say that you all have much support from people of all political persuasions.  And I do hope that somewhere they find the funding to hire back the temporaries for next year.

I hope in the comment section others will add.

 

I am going to get to ideas for improving the overall wildfire situation but am waiting to hear back from a Congressional media office, so stay tuned.  Meanwhile, on the Outcome-based Performance Measures webinar last week (shout out to the WO for getting back to me quickly with excellent answers to my questions!!), I found out that a Station Director had come to the FS  from NASA.  This intrigued me because of the “background” questions that we are probably going to see a great deal of with a new Admin coming in..  “fresh set of eyes” vs. “background in an area” vs. “a good leader can lead anything”  vs. “giving your own folks a chance to lead.”  Plus it used to be that a Ph.D. was a requirement,  and so that has changed.  Also, R&D had a long history of lagging behind NFS in both hiring women, and putting women into research leadership positions, even when they had the qualifications as required at the time, and I was interested in how they’d fixed that since I left for NFS and later, retirement.  So I asked Alex Friend, recently retired Deputy Chief for Research and Development, for his thoughts.  He is a guest here and has generously given us his time, so thanks to him, and please put on your “guest” behavior.

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Reflections on diverse and inclusive leadership

For leaders, the Forest Service is a tough crowd to please.  And within the Forest Service, Research and Development (R&D) is particularly challenging… as they should be.  Researchers are trained to be independent-minded, critical thinkers, and rigorous adherents to quality standards.  A leader in R&D is expected to be highly credentialed and well-published in their field, attuned to the needs of researchers under their supervision, and a highly skilled listener and conflict manager who can calm troubled social waters in their units.  However, for R&D employees, as with all people, unconscious bias creeps into evaluation of whether a leader is good or bad. Whether we realize it or not, most of us tend to value the familiar over the unfamiliar.  Even though most value diversity, they may erect barriers and criticize good leaders who are just unfamiliar.

Although overt racism, sexism, or elitism are far less common now than they were 40 years ago, unconscious biases still seem to limit the rate of change to a diverse and robust workforce.  In my experience as a station director and then as deputy chief, I frequently found myself facing down skeptics about hiring decisions due to the unfamiliar.  Yes, candidate A has less experience in science than candidate B, but they bring something new and valuable to the table.  Having something new can be a little uncomfortable.  “They are from another agency.”  “They never
published.”  “They don’t have a PhD in forestry.”  The list goes on and on.  But the reality is that building a diverse and robust organization requires some risk and willingness to accept and welcome the unfamiliar.

Building diversity into leadership does not end with the hire.  Changing culture, even to what is supported by the organization in policy, requires advocacy and facilitation.  When someone unconventional holds a leadership position, they are often held to a higher standard than the conventional pick.  Senior leaders are responsible for coaching and mentoring the leader and working with employees to facilitate success.  Peers are responsible for making an extra effort to reach out, include, and be an ally for the leader where possible.  It is easy to find agreement on this path, but harder to act on it when we are stretched thin, and this extra effort comes at the expense of project work.

One of the greatest challenges for R&D is the science credential.  Must all R&D leaders have a PhD?  It sure helps, but the critical need is experience with science and understanding what it means to be a researcher in the federal system.  Must all R&D leaders have a forestry degree?  While it is useful, the absence should not impede the hire of a leader who understands the interconnected communities involved in conducting, publishing, and communicating science.  Using carefully crafted mandatory technical qualifications can ensure short-listed applicants have experience conducting and managing science. In my career, I have seen many people without a PhD behind their name who were excellent researchers and leaders.

Finally, and most importantly, building diversity into leadership requires changes in the way we interact with communities of science.  It is natural to stay in touch with those with whom we trained in graduate school and with those who share the same research specialization. But expanding the circles in which we interact (e.g., from physical science to social science or from wildland resources to urban resources) enhances our discovery of talent.  Similar opportunities exist in cultivating partnerships with tribal and HBCU colleges and universities.  One example for me was engagement with urban natural resources research and stewardship.  I was impressed by the diverse and inclusive leadership, and the ability to connect a representative cross section of our country to the land.  Urban forest research was not in my training, but it became and remains a passion.  Unfamiliar communities are a good leader’s resource for new
talent and growing an inclusive mindset.

In summary, my experience taught me to (a) be aware of and vigilant for unconscious bias, (b) be an active and intentional participant in the recruitment, hiring, and onboarding process, and (c) be open to stepping outside of my own comfort zone to allow unexpected connections to form.  As thought leaders, R&D plays a critical role in exemplifying the agency’s intention of “awakening and strengthening all peoples’ connection to the land!”

Here’s what soon-to-be Prez Trump said in a tweet..

I am pleased to announce that Michael Boren will serve as the United States Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment at the Department of Agriculture.

Michael is a successful businessman, who has founded six companies, including Clearwater Analytics. He has also served as a volunteer fireman for Sawtooth Valley Rural Fire Department, and as a board member of the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation.

Michael will work to reinvigorate Forest Management at a time when it is desperately needed.

I checked here, some of us remember NRE having NRCS and the FS, it looks like right now it’s just the FS.

Boren seems to be an unusual choice from a historic perspective.

Just from my memory, there was Jim Lyons, Clinton Admin, from the Hill.
There was Mark Rey, Bush Admin, from the Hill (and prior from NFPA, the precursor to AF&PA, if I remember correctly).
One of my personal faves was Harris Sherman during the Obama Administration.
Here’s his background from an old EPA site.

Harris Sherman is the Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment at USDA. As Under Secretary, he oversees the United States Forest Service and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Before joining USDA, Sherman served from 2007 until 2009, as the Executive Director of Colorados Department of Natural Resources, under Governor Bill Ritter where he oversaw Colorados water, energy, wildlife, parks, forestry, and state lands programs. Previously, at an earlier point in his career, he was Colorados DNR Director under Governor Richard Lamm. Sherman has also served as Chairman of the Colorado Oil & Gas Commission, Commissioner of Mines, Chair of the Colorado Water Quality Control Commission, and Chair of the Denver Regional Air Quality Council.

Between his two stints as Department of Natural Resources Director, Sherman was the Managing Partner of the Denver Office of Arnold & Porter, an international law firm, where he specialized in natural resources, water, energy, public lands, and American Indian law. He has served on a wide variety of public and non-profit boards including the Denver Water Board, the National Advisory Board for Trust for Public Land, the Nature Conservancy, and Colorado College.

Robert Bonnie was also Undersec during the Obama Admin. Here’s his Wikipedia page.

Then under Trump 1.0, another Coloradan, Jim Hubbard, who also had a terrific wildfire background.

James (“Jim”) Hubbard worked for the Colorado Forest Service for 35 years, serving as State Forester for the final 20 of those years (1984-2004). During his two decades as State Forester, Jim served on every NASF Committee, most notably as Chair of the Legislative Committee for 10 years.

In 2004, Hubbard accepted a position as Director of the Office of Wildland Fire Coordination for the United States Department of the Interior. In January 2006, Mr. Hubbard was appointed Deputy Chief for State and Private Forestry at the USDA Forest Service (USFS). During his time with the agency, Hubbard guided the agency through years of catastrophic wildfire incidents and worked closely with State Foresters to promote a comprehensive, landscape-scale approach to forest management. In 2011, he was the recipient of the NASF Lifetime Achievement Award.

We wrote about him here on TSW at the time, and the above quote is from NASF (National Association of State Foresters)

In the Biden Admin, Homer Wilke was a career person from NRCS (even though NRCS is in a different mission area. Sec. Vilsack said in his appointment that he hoped Wilkes’ selection would lead to greater integration between NRCS and the FS, which makes sense.

So yes, Boren is very different in his prior experience in federal lands and forest issues, and government.

So far, this is what we’ve gotten on him. Here’s the Idaho Capital Sun view of the lawsuits he’s involved in.

Boren has been involved in several lawsuits related to a private airstrip he owns near Stanley, in south central Idaho. In 2023, he appealed a local judge’s dismissal of his defamation lawsuit against four critics of his airstrip, the Idaho Mountain Express reported.

Clearwater Analytics, based in Boise, has about 1,900 employees with offices in eight countries, according to the company’s website.

Here’s what Clearwater Analytics does. It’s investment accounting and reporting software.

Here’s his bio at Clearwater Advisors:

Michael Boren
Mike’s career in fixed income investment management, consulting, and analysis began in 1984 when he was appointed director of research at The Geldermann Group, a division of ConAgra. In 1986 Mike started an independent brokerage firm specializing in institutional brokerage of arbitrage and relative value transactions involving futures, spot and forward markets. In 1995, Mike and David Boren founded Sawtooth Investment Management, an investment advisor specializing in limited risk and relative value fixed income investment strategies. In 2001, he partnered to form Clearwater Analytics, an investment and accounting reporting software as a service company. Throughout his career, Mike has focused on providing superior investment advice and innovative financial services to sophisticated institutional clients.

Well, he seems like a money person, and the FS needs money, and apparently needs to manage what it has better to avoid large deficits, so there’s that.

So it appears until we find out more, that he will bring less experience in our field. But sometimes people think that that’s a good thing, as in a “fresh set of eyes.” Then there’s those folks who believe a “good leader” can lead any kind of organization.

In my experience, there can also be deputy undersecretaries that do much of the policy heavy lifting; there can also be “special advisors” to the Secretary who may have greater influence than the Undersecretary. As we saw in the Biden Admin, folks in the White House or CEQ could even be calling the shots. We’ll have to wait and see how the Department complex of decision-makers and influencers develops.

I think it’s safe to say that his learning curve is likely to be steep.

If I missed something, please put it in the comments. Also I know many FS employees worked as liaisons with NRE. It would be terrific if someone would write about their experiences, what went on at NRE when you were there. What was your day like? What surprised you? And so on.

Finally, this is not the place for generic “every R is bad, and therefore everything that anyone in Trump 2.0 does will be bad”; there are enough other places on the internet for that.

I have seldom read a book review whose narrative runs so contrary to my lived experience. My opinion is that we can’t solve real world problems if we frame them at some abstract ideological level, and ignore the nuts and bolts of the way people behave in the real world. Or we extrapolate from one part of the FS (region, staff area) to the entire agency.

All I can share is my personal experience.  I was involved in women’s issues on the Eldorado National Forest in Region 5 for part of that time.

It all started with the idea that women should not be discriminated against in hiring in the government, including the Forest Service.  However, we were.  I was there then, as my forestry degree was in 1975 from Berkeley. I was told the FS wasn’t hiring women, so I went back to school.  One of the reasons I was working on a  Ph.D. is that I couldn’t get hired in any other work than being a research assistant.

So Region 6 simply got on with hiring women.  I was hired off a cert to work in Lakeview, Oregon.  As a new employee, I was taken under the wing of our Forest Silviculturist, John Nesbitt, and inculcated with FS culture via lots of field lunches and one-on-one time, or as one-on-one as it could be given we were all in the upstairs of the Fremont SO with about 20 people in the same space.  This was all pre-cubicle, pre-flex hours, pre-smoking in the office bans.

I applied for laterals because my husband was working on the West side and guys were always selected over me.  Because Region 6 had second-order discrimination problem in some sectors.. a hiring official wouldn’t actually discriminate, but would listen to gossip by people who didn’t like women professionals.  My Forest Supe once called the Supe on the Umpqua to held me get a lateral. That Supe said it was up to the Ranger, who had heard bad things about me.  My Supe had a list of people who supported me, but those didn’t count.  It could be that they were only biased against uppity women, but a person has to wonder whether uppity =self-confident, which was a leadership skill in men and a problem with women.

In hopes of my husband and I finding work together, I moved to Region 5 to head up a new genetics lab working on national forest problems.  I did have some culture shock when I moved to Region 5.  There were many organizational and management issues  with the way the Consent Decree was carried out.

For example, I tried to hire a well-qualified woman, but she was part of a dual career couple and I was told we couldn’t hire him (from outside).  My boss Rex somehow finessed that, for which we were all immensely grateful. It involved getting the North Central Station to hire him back.  My point is that there was an idea of what we should be doing, but at the same time, well-intentioned, but impractical, barriers to actually doing it, that is, hiring women.

We had to do “consent decree action plans” and I wrote an idea about having a natural resources training so that we could hire experienced administrative women into line officer jobs. The RO told me to stop talking about it, as it might raise peoples’ hopes.

In my experience, fire, of all the areas, was worst.  Women would call me from Region 6 and say “hey what’s up in 5, they keep bugging me to accept a job there at a lower grade level than I currently have, maybe they inhaled too much smoke from those illegal marijuana grows?”

My boss, the Timber Staff on the Eldorado, Rex Baumback, managed to hire a female check scaler, two geneticists and a nursery manager.  He was (and is) as far as I know a “get it done” kind of person. Unfortunately, it seemed as though the whole process was run by a group of people hired to do paperwork, and telling us what not to do.  When the Consent Decree kept running into trouble, I suggested that they put more of a can-do, knowledgeable person in charge who understood the agency.

There was a lot of resentment at the time, for sure.  Our Forest Supe had a meeting in which someone stood up and said “there are no opportunities for white males in silviculture” and I stood up and said “look around you and at who is in the RO”.  I was told to .. be quiet.

This quote in my view is breathtakingly untrue:

In their place the agency introduced a lethal plutonium rule. Incoming employees would not be required to adapt to their senior employee’s expectations or traditions – so essential to meeting mission objectives. Rather, the new employees would see to it that the seniors adapted to their expectations and innovations.”

I’m thinking of where I worked at the Placerville Nursery.  Pat, the Nursery Manager, Safiya, the Resistance Geneticist, me and Betsy and Suellen who worked in the lab with me.. were hardly vectors of revolution.  And it’s just silly to think we were.  We were just trying to do our jobs, and we adapted to the culture.  As Larry H. has pointed out, one of the values was getting the Wage Grade lift and pack crews paid, with the idea that they needed the money most.  I wonder if getting rid of the many women in HR via centralization cut out the heart and soul of the outfit (but that would be another post).

One more thing that I think is important.  At the same time that women came into the workforce, many specialists were hired, like me.  Transportation engineers, wildlife biologists, soil scientists, botanists, archaeologists.  There’s another whole history that says that’s where “the problem” started.  So I’m not sure that there IS  a “problem.” Just change, that can be managed better or worse, more or less gracefully.

At some point when I was in DC,  the Pinchot Institute held a session where Chief Thomas spoke.  It was at one of those swanky, think-tanky places whose name I can’t remember now. He mentioned that there were many women wildlife biologists and they weren’t listened to because they were wildlife biologists.  I asked the question “but I’m in silviculture and people don’t listen to me either, maybe it’s the fact that they’re women, and not just anti-wildlife bias?”  Later, when I read the Chief’s journals, I noticed that the only woman who seemed to show up in them was Katie McGinty.  I’m only pointing this out to say “if you don’t like the changes in the FS at that time, it’s hard to separate the “woman” part from the “new kinds of specialists” part.”

I’m sure that there are plenty of female TSW readers out there who can share their own experiences.

Since no one commented on the previous post, I’m substituting this one as a dialogue with Michael Rains. He knows as much about the Forest Service and S&PF as anyone. Here goes. My original writing is the same, his responses are in red. In the Holiday spirit, my  responses to his red is in green.  The discussion started as “could the FS reprogram” and ended with ideas to reorganize the agency. Thanks to Michael for giving us the benefit of his wisdom and experience!

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Look, no one wants the FS to have a budget crisis.  I don’t like thinking about, writing about, nor talking about budgets. But here we are. This discussion of State and Private is relevant because folks are circulating a grant from S&PF and wondering why they are sending bucks out if the FS is in the hole. Tomorrow we’ll talk about the grant itself, but the juxtaposition of this grant and laying off temporaries for next year has caused some concern. So, we need to understand whether those funds could be reprogrammed to help out the National Forest System (NFS); and if they could, should they?
Unfortunately, some NFS people think that if the FS gave up on its State, Tribal and Private responsibilities, that NFS would get more bucks.  I thought S&PF  had changed its name to include Tribal, but I just looked on the website and it’s not clear, so I’ll refer to it by the old name for now.

Here’s what’s in the S&PF “deputy area” (I will call it that until I hear differently) according to the web link:

Not too long ago, I was asked in my role as Station Director about a more optimal organizational structure for the Forest Service in the Northeast and Midwest. I immediately recited my concern about the Mission Area designations and the lack of conservation decision-making flexibility the Forest Service currently has. The organization might look like the following, using the twenty-state area of the northeast and Midwest as the example:

The key: stop this incredibly stale and in-effective notion of “mission areas.” If I am the Deputy Director of Land Stewardship, then my role is the maintenance, protection and best use of all lands. Yes, I have a direct and indirect role.

During my career, I worked in/on federal lands, non-federal lands, business operations and research. I can absolutely tell you that the way the Forest Service is organized is wasteful and terribly in-effective.

You have folks that spend their entire career in NFS. Want to toss non-federal lands stewardship aside because “they don’t know what they don’t know. So, first we need to address the root problem: that is an archaic organization that does not work.

The benefits of a new, much more contemporary organization seem apparent to me; exciting and full of promise.  The dominant feature is a corporate Forest Service that will emerge bolstered by a consistent, powerful voice of one overall leader v. separate administrative units.  Program direction immediately becomes more cohesive, consistent and comprehensive (C³); let me call this the C³ Model.  You do not need to close down units with the C³ Model.  However, combining some functions does become easier and the promise of immediate and future savings while sustaining and improving services becomes very real. The Forest Service will become competitive again.

 Look at your mini-mission areas in the current SPF structure. This almost could not be arranged any poorer. Fire was moved to S&PF during the Reagan Administration, because all the “grant funding” was eliminated and the Chief wanted to have a more balanced mission area.

U&CF is part of S&PF. It doesn’t need to be. If you want the Forest Service to be known as a premier land steward along a complex rural to urban land gradient, then you do not stuff education, Grey Towers and U&CF in a mission area that is thought of as a dumping ground. When I was ma Forest Hydrologist in R-2, I decided I wanted to try the Y-LT (the Yahoo-Little Tallahatchie Flood Prevention Project, SPF, MS). I was told that will be the end of my career. The Y-LT could still be with us as a restoration area along the entire Mississippi Delta, if we had not thought of it as some crummy SPF fixture – which it was not. A beautiful federal role with the NRCS, FS and States and Department of Defense.

Fire and Aviation Management works in partnership with federal, tribal, state and local partners to manage wildland fire across the national forests and grasslands. They provide premier leadership in wildland fire management, operations, research, and advanced aviation technologies.

 The Office of Tribal Relations is charged with fully implementing Forest Service tribal relations policies and continuing to build long-term, collaborative working partnerships with Indian tribes. Note: If I am Chief, this program is going to be tied to me.

Forest Health Protection provides technical assistance on forest health-related matters, particularly those related to native and non-native insects, pathogens, and invasive plants.

Note:  See what happens when you have mission area designations? NFS become the focus, as opposed to “protection.” Forest Health Protection needs to be “protection” focus and not a mission area focus. There are so many ways to arrange work.  One that is really goofy, however, is NFS, SPF, R&D. Minimally, Lands, Science, Business Ops.  But, even more appropriately would be LANDS and BUSINESS OPERATIONS. You do not need, for example, a Deputy Chief for Research. One has to think first about a CORPORATE Forest Service. Currently, we have a series of tents that are selfish. Thus, NFS says get rid of SPF so we can have their money. IT does not work that way.

Now if it seems to you that there could be some overlap between the technical support that NRCS, Extension, and the FS provide. that might be an interesting area to explore. Also, there seems to be overlap between FS wildfire grants to communities and to BLM.

Anyway, many have observed grant funds being rapidly shoveled out of the FS (and BLM but maybe that’s a potential reprograming too far?) since the election; my question is, given the FS shortfall, is it possible to reprogram from FS S&PF? Note: when you put lipstick on a pig, you still have a pig. Yes, reprogramming can work in a pinch. First, check on Fire, science and overhead funds. I guess I should ask, what is the current shortfall.

Sharon: I think it’s $750 mill or 1 bill.

Let’s face it. The current Forest Service is a mess. We need to put away the lipstick, and address the real problem. That is, the lack of a corporately deployed vision and mission IS THE KEY PROBLEM.

The national office should worry about policy, policy deployment and linking-pin functions. Currently, you have mini-Forest Service organizations at almost every level. You do not need a Region 5 and 6.  A Region 1 could equal 3, 4, 2, and 1.  Create a design and then work to that design. Allow yourself a decade, as part of the “campaign of your campaign.”

Cooperative Forestry helps people care for the land and their communities. Cooperative Forestry provide financial and technical assistance to landowners, communities, and businesses to actively manage and sustain long-term investment in non-federal forest land.

 Conservation Education delivers science-based education about forests, grasslands, and related natural resources to pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students, educators, and families. Note: education buried in a mission area? Are you kidding.

 Grey Towers was the home of Gifford Pinchot, first Chief of the US Forest Service. Today, the Forest Service works with partners to deliver public programs, interpretive tours and conservation education programs. And, it is so far under the radar screen that if it vanished by 11:59 PM tonight, no one would care.

I also thought Urban and Community Forestry was part of S&PF, but it’s not listed among the programs on that webpage but can be found here. I think it is a part, but maybe not listed on the webpage? Anyway, the reason S&PF has a budget, is because it is supported by externals, who do quite a bit of lobbying. Imagine you’re a State or Tribe or an urban area.. what’s not to like about federal funding?

Note:  Yes, much of the funding had strong supporters. But, when I was Deputy Chief, S&PF, I had a pretty decent command of the Forest Service budget. Being a National Budget Coordinator helped. So, when I was talking with key Members, I did not limit my input to S&PF. Now, can you name one person in the Forest Service that can go to the Senate Appropriations Ranking Member and discuss in a balanced way, the agency budget? Max Peterson could. F. Dale Robertson could.

 Sharon: We don’t know that the current people can’t discuss the budget in a balanced way, do we?

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Note (original from Sharon): I suppose there is a general question about how much the feds should be involved in giving the states bucks and telling them what to do. There are maybe generally not-agreed-upon principles and the government that we have. So, I don’t think ST&PF is necessarily the right place to be having the broader discussion of “what help, to whom, and what is the federal interest?”
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Note: We provide the states with funding to help advance a federal role of sound forest stewardship. We could do a much better job of focusing this federal assistance.

It should also be noted that Forest Health and Fire are very helpful to NFS folks- NFS doesn’t in fact have separate forest health professionals. In fact, there is also a reforestation, nurseries and genetics program funded by S&PF, as well as forest and regional reforestation and genetics funding and expertise. Their website is funded jointly by the Forest Service and Southern Regional Extension Forestry (which is part of Extension via NIFA, a USDA agency I used to work for in its previous incarnation as CSREES). Yes, there could be much better coordination. But, this is not the driving issue. The lack of a corporately deployed vision and mission IS THE KEY PROBLEM

Note:  See what happens when you have mission area designations? NFS become the focus, as opposed to “protection.” Forest Health Protection needs to be “protection” focus and not a mission area focus. There are so many ways to arrange work.  One that is really goofy, however, is NFS, SPF, R&D. Minimally, Lands, Science, Business Ops.  But, even more appropriately would be LANDS and BUSINESS OPERATIONS. You do not need, for example, a Deputy Chief for Research. One has to think first about a CORPORATE Forest Service. Currently, we have a series of tents that are selfish. Thus, NFS says get rid of SPF so we can have their money. It does not work that way.

Now if it seems to you that there could be some overlap between the technical support that NRCS, Extension, and the FS provide. that might be an interesting area to explore. Also, there seems to be overlap between FS wildfire grants to communities and to BLM.

Anyway, many have observed grant funds being rapidly shoveled out of the FS (and BLM but maybe that’s a potential reprograming too far?) since the election; my question is, given the FS shortfall, is it possible to reprogram from FS S&PF? Note: when you put lipstick on a pig, you still have a pig. Yes, reprogramming can work in a pinch. First, check on Fire, science and overhead funds. I guess I should ask, what is the current shortfall.  Sharon: I think it’s $750 mill or $1 bill, does anyone know for sure?

Let’s face it. The current Forest Service is a mess. We need to put away the lipstick, and address the real problem. That is, the lack of a corporately deployed vision and mission IS THE KEY PROBLEM.

Of course, it’s possible that if the FS were allowed to reprogram, traditional ST&PF adherents would lose confidence in the FS. However, the most recent grant has not gone to one of them. So, there’s that. More on that grant tomorrow.

We have to define much better what the indirect role is for non-federal lands stewardship. It should not be that every state gets a piece. Like was done in the Northeastern Area so many years ago, “focus federal assistance.” 

If I were the Chief of the Forest Service, I would go to about 5 select members of Congress. Tell them what I think the issue is. Ask for their support. Then, develop a team to create an organizational blue print. And, along the way, brief your gang of 5. And, let’s say you get a SES vacancy. STOP. Maybe not filling that position will fit right into the blueprint. Make the blueprint super responsive to corporate vision and mission.

You have 2 choices. Do nothing and watch the Forest Service continue to decline. Or change. I have not mentioned this yet, but the notion of having a Department of Forestland Stewardship (combining NPS, BLM and FS) makes so much sense. Keeping the Forest Service in with corn, wheat and soybeans simply suppresses the importance of forest maintenance, protection and use along a complex rural to urban land gradient.

Again, let’s get the Forest Service to deploy a corporate vision and mission that really does care for the land and service people. With an organization that makes sense you could “reprogram” – not waste – the following minimal amounts to land stewardship just through efficiencies:

Year 1: $98 million.

Year 2: $127 million.

Year 3. $170 million.

Year 4. $315 million.

Year 5. $485 million.

Year 6. $615 million

Year 7. $690 million.

Year 8. $755 million.

Year 9. $817 million.

Year 10. $1.03 billion

FINALLY:

You are on to something really important here. It is not whether or not we should reprogram UCF grants because that seems to be a funding source. It is about rebuilding the Forest Service into a first rate conservation agency that has a clear vision and mission that is corporately deployed for the American people. Currently, the agency is a mess. STALE. Taking a few dollars from UCF because people do not know what they do not know, will solve nothing in both the SHORT and LONG-TERM.

Comments by Michael T. Rains, December 16, 2024.

I think it’s interesting that I think it’s important to make sure that federal efforts across agencies, including R&D, tech support and grant programs are coordinated, and easy and straightforward to access.  It’s like Michael wants to design a puzzle, and I want to put the pieces on the table first and see how they fit.  I’m just glad we have a place to access a variety of ideas, and that people appear to be interested in making government run better at this point in time.