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

When Policy Trends Toward Bullshit

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Much government policy and some law resides in a realm philosopher Henry Frankfurt labels “bullshit”—in earlier times called humbug or balderdash. Much US Forest Service policy falls here too: regulation, manual and handbook directives. At least that’s the way I’ve seen it for a very long time.

Early in my Forest Service career, a colleague and I were conscripted into a week-long Forest Service Manual/Handbook writing exercise, specifically focused on the Forest Planning sections. A quick survey of the materials led us to conclude that our week had to be spent making sure that there was nothing in the FS planning manual that could possibly harm anyone. We knew that we could not ‘fix’ the manual, so we spent our week in a second-best endeavor.

A few years later a FS Planning Director asked a group of us for policy ideas at an economists conference. I suggested a bold move: Throw the Forest Service Manual and Handbook in the Potomac. I made the recommendation in the main because both the FS Planning and Economics Manual/Handbook materials were pretty much bullshit. Note that I immediately added that people should be able to swim out and retrieve portions of the policy manuals they deemed useful, and then upgrade them as necessary to help advise program development, project design and work generally. The point was to decommission the whole mess, and free the agency of both the manuals/handbooks and the mini-bureaucracy that oversaw them. Of course I didn’t believe that the FS would act on my suggestion, at least not then. But one can always hope. [Note: I wish there were electronic copies of earlier FS Manual/Handbook materials to point to for historical (hysterical?) purposes. ]

I suggested “tossing” the FS manual and handbook to both Chief Dombeck (via Chris Wood) and Chief Bosworth. Both were somewhat warm to the idea, but nothing happened. I’ve once again raised that issue with FS top brass, suggesting that collaborative adaptive governance can’t work if everybody shows up with several yards worth of “holy writ” that must be followed.

Later I called bullshit on the Forest Service’s initiative to tie planning (and pretty much all else) to environmental management systems—chronicled in my Forest Environmental Management Systems blog (Oct. 2005 – April 2007). That particular mess went away, with EMS rightfully retreating to a minor place (facilities and fleet management) in Forest Service administration. I’m sure my blogging did not influence the outcome. But at least I left a record, so that we might learn from the mistake.

Common wisdom says, “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Let’s pause a moment and explore special characteristics of what we are digging through.

What is ‘bullshit’?
Before anyone gets too upset with my BS terminology, maybe we ought to delve into Frankfurt’s little book On Bullshit—an essay really, which you can read online. Frankfurt’s little book adorned a special shelf in my FS office bookshelves, accompanied by Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and Something Happened, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and some other classics. Frankfurt begins On Bullshit with,

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. … In consequence we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves.

Frankfurt attempts to tease out a ‘theory of bullshit’ for us. I’ll not bore you with all Frankfurt’s building blocks, but I at least we need to know that he distinguishes bullshit from lying, in part as follows:

The essence of bullshit is not that it is false, but that it is phony. … The bullshitter is faking things. But this does not mean that he necessarily gets them wrong. [But it does mean that they don’t quite ring true.]

How much FS policy falls in this realm? Politicians tend to create bullshit to pander—to curry favor. Bureaucrats create bullshit for very different reasons. Frankfurt says,

Bullshit is unavoidable when circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. … [This is] common in public life, where people are frequently impelled—whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others—to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.

Think about how Forest Service teams are put together, often without asking for volunteers and without too much regard for seeking out the most knowledgeable team members. It always seemed to my jaundiced eye that team members were selected to construct manual and handbook materials in the main because they were ‘good soldiers’, and particularly not ‘radicals’ who might rock the boat too much.

Why I’ve tried to stop the BS

I know that it is pretty much a fool’s quest, but I’ve always tried to get the Forest Service bureaucracy to ‘swing for the fences’ and pull itself up from the morass of its own policy, manuals and handbooks. But, like many American institutions the Forest Service will not take a hard look at itself. Maybe it’s due of fear. Maybe it is due to ennui—stuckness, lack of hope. Maybe it is something else. Maybe it is just because they don’t realize that bullshit might be outright harmful, even toxic to the organization.

This proves especially true when bullshit policy is brought into court, “for the record,” when people challenge federal actions, which must be based on federal policy. At the point federal policy bullshit makes an appearance in court, federal judges are not pleased to have to wade through it—so we too often get strongly-worded federal decisions against the Forest Service.

In any case, meaningful links between process and outcome in the Forest Service often simply don’t exist in any practical sense. They are too encumbered by bullshit. For example, we often hear that if the Forest Service can’t fix the Forest Planning process (for example) in ‘rulemaking’ then we’ll fix it in forest plan implementation—as if that can happen. Isn’t such talk just administrative governance denial?

I keep the pressure on, hoping against fate that a miracle will occur, as it did with General Electric not too long ago, just before GE was to fall in to a bureaucratic quagmire from which it would not, could not escape. Make no mistake, the GE rebirth was brutal. But the company is arguably much better today than before—now that fierce conversations are standard practice innovation is center stage, and people are required to challenge each other to do better, and to be better. Maybe someday the same will happen in a government agency, even perchance to the Forest Service. But I’m not holding my breath.

Forest Service Buyouts?

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I stumbled across this website for Federal employees, and it seems like buyouts are still in flux, for now. There seems to be plenty of interest in taking the buyouts but, delays are apparently reducing the possibility of it happening this fiscal year. I’d expect a headlong rush of Region 5 timber people to want out, now, after the Pacific Rivers decision.

http://federalsoup.federaldaily.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=41295&FID=41&title=forest-service-buyouts

On a side note, it appears there is a freeze on Sale Administration jobs, right now, here in California. With current projects needing MAJOR revisions, and the timber industry not wanting tiny trees, we’ve reached a true gridlock on forest restoration.

Being Wrong: Adventure Pass Edition

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Could it be that with the Adventure Pass program, the Forest Service was once-again trying to emulate business interests it once sought to regulate. Not that this is wrong, or evil—at least not unless you firmly believe that “Money is the root of all evil.” But it is clearly not what I want from the Forest Service. I made this case last year in Forest Service Mindshift: From Regulators to Partners.

I believe that the move to “marketize”, say, an ‘Adventure Pass’ program comes naturally to those in the Forest Service who have been hobnobbing with ski resort owners, Disney people, outfitters, etc. and want to be part of that world. It is just a piece of a broader “Print Your Own Money” mentality that has become firmly entrenched I the minds of some Forest Service managers? Of course they want to be apart from that world too, they want to be recognized as government agents, civil servants, etc. Can they have it both ways? I don’t think so.

My ‘beef’ with the Forest Service in this is, and has been for a very long time, simply expressed via Joni Mitchell’s lyrics from A BIG YELLOW TAXI. (copied from a dialogue thread I put into Eco-Watch bulletin board back in 1999):

Big Yellow Taxi
by Joni Mitchell
~~~~~~
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique and a swingin’ hot spot

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

They took all the trees, put ’em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half just to see ’em

Hey farmer farmer, put away that D.D.T. now
Give me spots on my apples but leave me the birds and the bees
please

Late last night I heard the screen door slam
And a big yellow taxi took away my old man

They paved paradise, put up a parking lot (choo bop bop bop bop)
They paved paradise, put up a parking lot
~~~~~~

I don’t want national forest trees put into a “tree museum,” where you “pay a dollar and a half just to see them.” I don’t want “swingin’ hot spots” and other overly luxurious recreation facilities on the public lands. Not that such is imminent, but it might be only a bit further down the road to ‘market land’. In short I want my experiences on public lands to be as far from Madison Avenue spin as possible.

So I was delighted that the Ninth Circuit slapped the Forest Service hard (pdf) on this one—particularly since the Congress put the Recreation Enhancement Act in place to give firm guidance as to how the Forest Service ought to administer fee collection programs. Questions remain. How/Why did the Forest Service come to believe that it was acting within the scope of the Recreation Enhancement Act (available here) when it continued to use the Adventure Pass program for general access fees in some areas after the REA was passed in 2004?

Extended Footnote on Framing/Blaming
In an earlier post, I argued that the there were various ways to frame arguments, building from one of Sharon’s posts. The frame I imposed was a bit extreme, and unfairly characterized the Forest Service as a villain. I did it in part to suggest that Sharon’s earlier post had unfairly characterized the Forest Service as a victim. I realize now that I was unfair in my framing and in my characterization of Sharon’s earlier framing. In short, the victim/villain framing was too harsh and a bit silly—but it did get some folks to think a bit. A better approach would have been to admit that villains are best left for fiction, and that better framing for real world situations ought to follow this advice:

“In the real world there are no villains. No one actually sets out to do evil. … There are no villains … rubbing their hands in glee as they contemplate their evil deeds. There are only people with problems, struggling to solve them.” Ben Bova

In a recent book, Being Wrong, Kathryn Schulz says, among other things, that people often put people they disagree with in one of three boxes: either they are “unformed”, else they are “idiots”, else they are “evil.” Schulz argues that there remains another possibility. People we disagree with may be quite well informed (have plenty of facts at hand), and they may not be idiots, neither evil. They might just view the world differently.

Incidentally, here is a link to a great little video presentation from Schultz at the 2011 TED Conference. Or, if you prefer, just browse the “first few pages” via Amazon of Schulz’s Being Wrong.

I challenge all to steer clear of the victim/villain framing that I used in my earlier post, as much fun as it is to frame things that way. But to so steer is to move away from much of the rhetoric used in the “industry/environmental wars” and other political arenas.

Finally, keep in mind that it proves very hard for any of us, particularly those in power, to admit error. Here is what Diane Ravitch said, when being interviewed on being wrong about her earlier championing of the “No Child Left Behind” program:

Schulz: If you could hear someone else interviewed about wrongness, who would it be?

Ravitch: That’s a hard one. Donald Rumsfeld said he was wrong, but I don’t even want to hear from him. [Former Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs Co-Chair, and former Citigroup Chair] Bob Rubin would be interesting, but he’ll never admit he was wrong. Right now what’s coming to mind are people who have never admitted that they’re wrong about anything.

Schulz: Like who?

Ratcliff: Like basically everybody I’ve been associated with for the last 20 years.

Related Reading
Kathryn Schulz. 2010. Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error
Robert Jervis. 1997. Systems Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life
Albert O. Hirschman. 1991. The Rhetoric of Reaction. Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy
Deitrich Dörner. 1989. The Logic of Failure: Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations
Larry Tye. 1988. The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays & The Birth of Public Relations
Richard Hofstadter. 1952. The Paranoid Style in American Politics

[Note: Here’s a post I developed on The Logic of Failure]

Illegal ‘Adventure Pass’: What were they thinking?

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The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently overturned a lower court’s ruling, declaring that the Forest Service’s Adventure Pass violated the Recreation Enhancement Act (pdf). What I wonder is how the Forest Service thought that the Adventure Pass could pass a ‘red face test’ both in public and in the courts? Moreover, how did their USDA Office of General Counsel legal advisers feel that they could pass that red face test?

Is this yet another example of the Forest Service pushing forward with an initiative without much regard for the law, with both ‘professional arrogance’ and ‘budget protection/maximization’ motivations as backdrop? Finally, where does the Forest Service go from here?

In my book, given the austerity that the American people now face, and will face more squarely in the future, I think it time to talk seriously about what ought the Forest Service to manage for and at what cost, both in terms of direct cost to the US taxpayer and in terms of environmental costs. For me there are plenty of programs to prune, both within what the agency calls recreation and elsewhere. I believe it past time to take a careful look at Forest Service cash flows, sources and uses. Let’s then try to figure out what more and what less to do, and what to do differently.

A Flashback
Fee Demo and Adventure pass discussions are not new to the Forest Service. The Forest Service had a chance to respond to critics of both way back in 1999-2000 on Eco-Watch [Note this link provides a flat file readout of a forum that was largely devoted to fee demo discussion/criticism]. The Forest Service chose to be silent, just as they did with the recent forest planning rulemaking process. See, e.g my Earth to Forest Planning: Get a Blog. In 1999 I could understand their silence, their reluctance to engage in social media discussion. Social Media was brand new and the Forest Service was toying with it.I no longer have patience with their reluctance to engage.

Evidently the Congress did listen, passing the Recreation Enhancement Act in 2004,to replace the Recreation Fee Demo Program of 1994. But the Forest Service somehow thought that it could evade the clear language of the latter Act.

My question is broader than to allege that the Forest Service routinely ignores the Congress and the Courts. My question is, When will the Forest Service engage in public discourse, in public deliberation? And I’m not taking about the many, mostly facilitated, highly spun so-called dialogue efforts that the Forest Service too often employs. [Note: I am a champion of dialogue, when used for deep inquiry. But I’m afraid that the Forest Service is now in the process of turning “dialogue” into another “inform and involve” spin mechanism.]

Footnote on Framing, Blaming
I threw this post together in response to Sharon’s earlier post on this subject. Both posts are examples of what I call The Frame Game and The Blame Game. Sharon’s post frames this as “a problem if the FS can’t charge fees and doesn’t get funding from Congress.” The Forest Service is framed as the victim and the Congress or those who block general fees/contributions are framed as villains. This remains true (or not) whether or not the frame was imposed innocently. My post frames the issue as one where the taxpayer and/or the public interest are victims and the Forest Service is villain. Neither frame does justice to the problem at hand. But, hey, this is a blog and things are “thrown together” quickly.

In both cases—in every case—we ought not to forget that these twin forces, framing and blaming, are almost always at work. And we must never forget that there are plenty of victims (real and imagined) and plenty of us who can rightfully be viewed as villains from time to time. What remains a challenge and an opportunity is to be able to work together toward betterment of the public interest as best we can when we mostly see only our own shadows playing in reflection off the walls of caves that keep our thoughts narrowly confined.

[Note: 2/24/8:23 AM — I updated this post slightly, in response to a comment]

More Bucks From Congress if it’s a Park; What’s Up with That?

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All US tax dollars come from the same source, the US taxpayer. In a couple of recent instances, people are sure that putting an area under the Park Service would get them more funds to do a better job of management.

Here are two examples, in Southern California here
“Diverse support shown for National Park Service proposal for San Gabriel Mountains, River” and here for the Valles Caldera.

The economic benefits of consolidated management of both the Valles Caldera National Preserve and Bandelier National Monument is one of several reasons the preserve should be taken over by the National Park Service, according to a recent study.

Caldera Action, which advocates for increased public access to the preserve, is touting an analysis from The Harbinger Consulting Group that, according to Caldera Trust Executive Director Tom Ribe, “produced more dramatic findings than we expected in terms of impact to the local economy.”

Harbinger says a Park Service takeover would net the Valles Caldera millions more in revenue.

The preserve was created by Congress in 2000 as a kind of private-public management experiment. It is now run by the Valles Caldera Trust, with a board appointed by the president and which has been charged with making the preserve a financially self-sustaining operation.

That, however, isn’t likely to happen. Other studies have shown the preserve won’t make nearly enough money to meet the federal requirement that it break even by 2015. The preserve’s annual operating budget is about $3.5 million; the trust typically raises, through grazing contracts and recreation fees, about $800,000 per year.

“Through fees and commercial resource management, the Trust has made gains in recovering some of the costs of managing the Preserve, but by all accounts, that experiment has not succeeded and is unlikely to do so,” the Harbinger report says.

U.S. Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall have been making this argument since at least last year, when they introduced legislation to fold the Valles Caldera into the National Park Service.

The report backs them up, saying National Park Service management would provide “more stable long-term benefits, more reliable resource protection, and superior visitor experiences.” Key findings in the study include:

Under NPS management, the preserve would support over $1 million more in sales to local businesses and nearly 50 more local jobs than it would if managed by the Forest Service with a similar operating budget and staff.
NPS management would generate in excess of $110 million in local economic benefits over the first 15 years.
In 2016, NPS operation of the preserve would be expected to support 202 local jobs, nearly $8 million in wages and $11 million in economic activity. And between 2012 and 2016, construction projects on the preserve could support an average of 50 local jobs per year.
Consolidated NPS management of the preserve and neighboring Bandelier National Monument would attract more visitors to the preserve and improve the visitors’ experience at both sites. Consolidation would also boost efficiency and create consistent policies and programs.
The National Park Service is more likely than the U.S. Forest Service to maintain a high and consistent level of funding, staffing, visitor services and resource protection.

Part of the reason NPS stands to make more money with the preserve than the Forest Service is that the Park Service would probably invest more money in the preserve upfront. “With a small number of notable exceptions,” the study notes, “the Forest Service does not tend to put in place the same level of infrastructure and visitor services typically associated with NPS units.”

Based on plans already presented by the Valles Caldera Trust, the analysis says a likely scenario for the preserve would include the addition of a main visitors center overlooking the Valle Grande, a loop drive with interpretive signs, a full slate of interpretive and educational programming, more trails and trailhead facilities, and one or two small campgrounds on the preserve.

The Park Service is more likely to raise the funds for these projects because of its budget process, the report says. NPS requests annual appropriations by line item for each of its parks — a certain amount for a particular park’s visitors center, for example. The Forest Service, on the other hand, receives appropriations for broad functional categories like fire-fighting, and has to spread those funds out among its areas.

Plus, the Park Service is a draw in itself, much more so than the Forest Service, according to the analysis. Informal surveys of visitors to attractions managed by the National Park Service have shown that “many travelers (especially international visitors) use the NPS website to help plan their visits,” the report says. “Over time, the Preserve would become widely known as part of the NPS system, and word of mouth from other parks in the region could encourage even more visitors to Bandelier and Valles Caldera.”

The bill to put the Valles Caldera under management of NPS has gotten a hearing in Congress’ Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which Bingaman chairs, but has not advanced.

In a statement, Bingaman said, “The National Park Service is best suited for the long-term management of the Valles Caldera as it has a long history of protecting unique cultural and natural resources, while also increasing tourism to our nation’s crown jewels.”

For those curious about the study and the assumptions therein, here is a link to the study.

Maybe it’s time to consider changing the budget structure of the Forest Service to be unit by unit- or somehow otherwise equilibrating the budgets among agencies for equivalent kinds of activities. Perhaps there is something about lobbying for a park or for parks; that lobbying for a “fuels treatment” line item across the country doesn’t have the same resonance.

Perhaps, if a place is special, then it belongs best at the Park Service.. otherwise if it’s forested, the Forest Service and if not, the BLM. Maybe it’s time to put all federal lands together under one budget process and approach (if not department). Otherwise, there is likely to be increasing amounts of transferring as local areas try to increase their funding- with the transfers themselves incurring additional costs.

Talledega Forest Anniversary

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Some of us are not as aware as we might be of the southern national forests and their history; here’s a story from Jason Bacaj of the Anniston Star.

Seventy-five years ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared a swath of government landholdings spread over the Talladega Mountain chain a national forest.

It grew from an act of Congress in 1935 allowing the federal government to approach private landowners within a defined “purchase unit” area to see if they’d be interested in selling land, said Bob Pasquill, historian and archaeologist with the U.S. Forest Service.

Living in the Great Depression, many small farmers and property owners were relocating already or able to be persuaded to sell their property to the government, Pasquill said, dismissing the idea that the government took land from people with delinquent taxes.

That’s a common misconception, he said, as is the thought that the land was clear-cut when it was declared a national forest. It was rough land and the more remote areas were nearly inaccessible, let alone suitable for large-scale logging, Pasquill said. There was a small degree of logging, though, and even turpentining, but that meant developing wagon roads to collect the pine pitch and logs — not an easy task, as anyone who has ridden a bicycle along the Skyway Motorway can appreciate.

“(The) big section of mountain called ‘Horseblock,’ one has to wonder how it got that name,” Pasquill said. “There was secondary growth across the area. It wasn’t a total wasted clear-cut.”

From the time the government began purchasing land in 1935 to create the Talladega National Forest, two crews from the Civilian Conservation Corps did the legwork involved in turning it into a national park. The men built the Skyway Motorway along the spine of the mountain chain, built dams, lodges, picnic grounds, bridges and fire towers connected by phone lines, Pasquill said.

The forest came into its own in the 1940s and 1950s, as tourist traffic increased and areas of second growth filled out. Forest Service employees carried out the department’s policy of suppressing fire throughout those years, unknowingly damaging the natural habitat and reducing the range of Alabama’s state tree, the once-ubiquitous mountain longleaf pine, Pasquill said.

In the 1970s and ‘80s the Forest Service began performing prescribed burns on a small scale, said Jonathan Stober, USFS wildlife biologist. It wasn’t until 2001 that the prescribed burn program was developed fully as an initiative to restore the historic range of mountain longleaf pines, which was a global critically imperiled habitat at that point. Covering a mere 3 percent of its historic range, mountain longleaf pine habitats remain a critically imperiled, but the Forest Service is making noticeable improvements to longleaf stands.

“We have a certain set of tools: one being an axe and one being a match. With those two tools we’re trying to restore this landscape,” Stober said. “It’ll take another 75 years to do that.”

Restoring mountain longleaf pines is a difficult task and an impossible one without understanding the role of fire in its development, said Dan Spaulding, chief curator for the Anniston Museum of Natural History. A baby longleaf pine looks like a clump of grass. Then it grows into what looks like a palm tree — no branches, just pine needles atop the stump protecting the bud of the tree which eventually shoots up through the palm, Spaulding said. It grows slowly and needs fire to survive because otherwise, that slow growth allows fast-growing, weedier plant and tree species to overtake it.

A period of about 75 years is needed for a mountain longleaf pine to reach maturity, said Rob Carter, biology professor at Jacksonville State University who did his Ph.D. dissertation on longleaf pines. The trees reach a height between 80 and 100 feet at that point, depending on the soil, he said. They can continue to live for another 125 years or more.

Restoring the mountain longleaf pine’s habitat is essential to the forest’s health, Stober said. The tree provides a livable environment to a number of endangered species, such as the red-cockaded woodpecker, an “umbrella species” for the Talladega National Forest. Umbrella species, such as the woodpeckers and bobwhite quails, require a certain type of habitat that’s also conducive to the survival and viability of many other native species, Stober said. The forest is home to about 25 species that are endangered or candidates for becoming endangered, he said.

The small woodpeckers nest in the heartwood of mature mountain longleaf pines afflicted with redheart disease, a fungus that rots out the center of the tree. Open canopy without much scrub or midlevel brush is needed for the birds to scout around for food, Stober said.

The Shoal Creek Ranger District, based just outside Heflin, has gone from 1998 when there were one or two clusters — a set of four separate woodpecker nests for one pair of breeding birds — to having 16 breeding groups producing 26 fledglings this year.

“That ecosystem … is a rare, endemic community to this part of the world and is also a crossroads between Appalachia and the coastal (area),” Stober said.

Although the founding date for Talladega National Forest is given as July 17, 1936, no celebrations or events are planned today to mark the tract’s diamond anniversary — so anyone who’s ever felt inclined to hug a tree might find this the ideal day to do it.

I am a fan of longleaf pine.. for those of you who have never made the acquaintance of one, here is a photo of the grass stage.
and a link to the Longleaf Alliance website for those who want to know more about this tree and efforts to restore it.

More on Psychological Warfare, Litigation, and Morale

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Check out this op-ed by Ray Ring in last month’s High Country News. It sounds like something I would have written, were I a better writer. I italicized the quote below- that quote pretty much creeps me out. If it is accurate, I need some kind of ritual to dissipate the negative energies (perhaps a burning of the quote in a bonfire at Solstice?).

Op-Ed – From the May 30, 2011 issue by Ray Ring

I have a friend named Gina who is a great marriage counselor. Gina is roly-poly and effervescent — her mere presence disarms uptight people. With a Ph.D., an M.D. and decades of experience, she’s an empathetic listener, expressing just enough of her own opinions to create a genuine conversation and strive for breakthroughs. She’s very effective in advising people on how to get along.

Contrast Gina’s interpersonal strategy with that of Kierán Suckling, the director of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, which endlessly cranks out lawsuits to enforce the Endangered Species Act:

“(Lawsuits) are one tool in a larger campaign, but we use lawsuits to help shift the balance of power from industry and government agencies, toward protecting endangered species,” Suckling told HCN in 2009. “By obtaining an injunction to shut down logging or prevent the filling of a dam … we are in the position of being able to powerfully negotiate the terms. …”

Suckling’s group often wins in court. But instead of helping various parties come to an agreement, as Gina does, Suckling wants to steamroll opponents: “New species listings and new bad press take a terrible toll on agency morale. When we stop the same timber sale three or four times running, the timber planners … feel like their careers are being mocked and destroyed — and they are. So they become much more willing to play by our rules. … Psychological warfare is a very underappreciated aspect of environmental campaigning.”

Suckling’s warlike strategy doesn’t characterize the environmental movement as a whole, but it’s shared by enough groups to shape the general public misperception that all environmentalists are determined to get their way regardless of the costs to other people’s livelihoods and lifestyles.

Our cover story by seasoned wildlife writer Hal Herring explores the drawbacks of the lawsuit strategy, through the example of wolves in the Northern Rockies. Many groups pushed lawsuits for two decades to help wolves get re-established in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, but they caused a new surge in anti-wolf — and anti-environmentalist — anger. So politicians of both parties united to strip Endangered Species Act protections from most Northern Rockies wolves, effective May 5.

Meanwhile, one Western group that has filed lawsuits on behalf of hundreds of species — WildEarth Guardians — reached an agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on May 10: That group offered to limit further ESA legal actions for six years, to allow the agency time to decide the fate of 251 wait-listed species. Predictably, Suckling’s group has challenged the compromise.

Does the future of wolves seem iffier than ever? Hunters in Montana and Idaho will probably reduce the wolf population initially. I’m betting that, as the locals feel they have more control, the anger will recede and more people will accept wolves as natural wonders, creating a community spirit that can preserve them. Gina would approve.

UPDATE: further research shows that the quote was from an interview with HCN here. Don’t know how I missed this originally, must have been observing Winter Festival. More on other aspects of the interview later.

Also I ran across this interesting piece by Ted Williams.

And here’s a letter in response to the HCN interview.

Letter – From the January 11, 2010 issue by Mike Ford

After reading the recent interview with Kieran Suckling, it occurs to me the one reason we’re having so much trouble advancing meaningful conservation opportunities is we’re spending too much time, energy and money fighting each other (HCN, 12/21/09 & 1/4/10).

The litigation and lawsuits advanced by the Center for Biological Diversity are having the exact opposite effect from that suggested by Mr. Suckling. They have cost taxpayers countless millions and not a single dime of that money is making its way to the ground where it is needed most to protect forests, wetlands and other wildlife habitat. The CBD may think it is forcing agencies to be responsive while achieving results not possible in the absence of litigation, but the vast majority of concerned conservationists may disagree. Many of us feel the money would be better spent on the ground rather than responding to multiple lawsuits and countless petitions.

Agency personnel are paralyzed by the lawsuit frenzy and they are no longer willing or able to exercise any level of risk or innovation, even when it will serve important environmental and conservation objectives. Agency personnel have traditionally seen themselves as entrepreneurial but the vast majority have grown so wary of potential litigation they are unable to take risks. Sadly, balancing reasonable economic and environmental objectives has become virtually impossible without threat of litigation.

Not that long ago we tried to work out our differences face-to-face instead of through lawyers. Our continued desire to protect land, plants and animals should be driven by the desire to cooperate — not because we might get sued.

Mike Ford
Las Vegas, Nevada

Tempest in a Violin Case- How Would You Reduce Duplication?

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Don’t know if it’s a slow news period, the beginning of silly season (pre-election behavior) or both. Note: this post is not intended to open the floodgates of politician-bashing. It is intended to direct our attentions (and possibly, indirectly to the Administration and the Congress) to the question of “given our current economic climate, how can we best reduce costs and avoid duplication in federal land management and associated work?”

The President himself says that the government should not pay ($125 per year) for the Fiddlin’ Foresters website. All the details are found in this post at at Wildfire Today, including a link to the handy Waybackmachine site which apparently shows web content from the past.

Now the mission of the Fiddlin’ Foresters seem fairly important:

Through lively and entertaining musical performance, we provide conservation education, enhance employee morale and communicate the value of public service and federal land management in a new century of service.

The FFs attempt to improve morale (I can vouch personally for that) and call us to the importance of public lands through the arts. I personally think the FS would be a better place with more attention to morale and internal cohesion. I think the employee survey says something along the same lines.

But if you were to find the biggest budget buster and remove it, what would it be?

I have three candidates:

1. Recombine the federal land management agencies to reduce duplication. Or at least
2. Require BLM, NPS, FS and FWS to plan together where their jurisdictions are adjacent.
3. Stop handing out research funds to do the same thing to six or seven different agencies. For example, NSF, NOAA, the Forest Service, and USGS all appear to fund studies around what land managers need to know. Some funding goes to grants that scientists must apply for, and spend time developing. You have FS scientists writing grant proposals to get USGS funding and vice versa. There is no mechanism to avoid duplication, and the mechanisms to ensure that the products are useful are not all that clear. I wrote about them in the “Conveyor Belt” post here.

What are your thoughts?

Forestry’s Next One Hundred Years: Leopold

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Gifford Pinchot’s utilitarian philosophy and management methods dominated US Forest Service thought, policy, and action throughout the 20th century. A quick read of Harold Steen’s The US Forest Service: A History, David Clary’s Timber and the Forest Service, and Paul Hirt’s A Conspiracy of Optimism: Management of the National Forests Since World War Two is testament enough of Pinchot’s domination. Add in the Forest Service sponsored movie The Greatest Good for icing on the cake.

But the next century belongs to Leopold at least in the eyes of film producer Steve Dunsky, who produced The Greatest Good. Dunsky’s new film, The Green Fire is about Leopold and his influence. Leopold’s revolutionary ideas emerged with the publication of A Sand County Almanac (1966), but the transition to mainstream thinking would not happen in the 20th Century. Dunsky says the 21st Century belongs to Leopold:

I think that was what was so exciting about doing this film is we didn’t just want to do a film about Aldo Leopold’s life, we wanted to talk about why he’s important today and the reason that this is in a way a sequel to The Greatest Good is that we see Leopold as being kind of the guiding vision of the Forest Service in the 21st Century. Gifford Pinchot and his colleagues in the early part of the 20th Century had a different idea about conservation: that nature was there to be used by people and it is. But Leopold’s vision is much more about people being part of a natural community, and that shift has been occurring in the Forest Service over the last twenty years. And I think that now is the time that we are really seeing the manifestation of that in the agency’s policy and our actions and so the timing is really perfect for Green Fire to be coming out.

Moving Beyond Agrarian Forestry
Like Dunsky, I believe the time is at hand for a change in philosophy from Pinchot to Leopold, or from “Group A” to “Group B” as Leopold described it:

[O]ne group (A) regards the land as soil, and its function as commodity-production; another group (B) regards the land as a biota, and its function as something broader. How much broader is admittedly in a state of doubt and confusion.

In my own field, forestry, group A is quite content to grow trees like cabbages, with cellulose as the basic forest commodity. It feels no inhibition against violence; its ideology is agronomic. Group B, on the other hand, sees forestry as fundamentally different from agronomy because it employs natural species, and manages a natural environment rather than creating an artificial one. Group B prefers natural reproduction on principle. It worries on biotic as well as economic grounds about the loss of species like chestnut, and the threatened loss of the white pines. It worries about whole series of secondary forest functions: wildlife, recreation, watersheds, wilderness areas. To my mind, Group B feels the stirrings of an ecological conscience.

Leopold’s Philosophy in Brief
Leopold began his Forest Service career in 1909. He was promoted rapidly and was proud to part of the “outfit.” He was true-blue green Forest Service. Leopold became a forest supervisor of New Mexico’s Carson National Forest at age 24. But his enduring philosophy developed later. [We wouldn’t expect many 24-year-olds to have much of the world figured out]. As he grew older and wiser, Leopold developed the philosophy that would guide him, along with many in the wildlands preservation movement, the environmental ethics movement, and more. Here is an essence: “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

With age and wisdom, Leopold began to be more contemplative about his own and others attempts to “manage the land,” to “manage wildlife”, and so on. That led him to his commitment to help humanity discover a rightful place as “plain members” of a broader ecological community: “The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals; or collectively: the land. … In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it.”

Ten Key Insights from Leopold’s Land Ethic (The Encyclopedia of Earth)

First, Leopold’s Land Ethic helped create the field now known as “environmental ethics” or, more generally, environmental philosophy. … [Leopold] makes human considerations regarding the land and land use central to environmental decision-making and practice, but does not go as far as to make the land itself deserving of human moral consideration.

Second, Leopold’s land ethic challenges us to rethink our notion of what it means to say something deserves our human moral consideration (is “morally considerable”). … Western philosophical tradition restricts moral considerability to (some) humans on the grounds that only humans are capable of reason and rationality, use language, are rights-holders, duty-bearers, interest carriers or are endowed with a soul. By making the land itself morally considerable, Leopold challenges traditional Western conceptions of moral considerability …. [F]or Leopold, “the land” was included in the realm of things deserving moral consideration.

Third, Leopold’s land ethic challenges us to rethink what it is to be human. … Western philosophical tradition is that humans are different from and superior to nonhuman animals and “nature” … Leopold’s land ethic challenges and repudiates this division.

Fourth, in place of the favored Western view of humans as unlike other animals and nature, Leopold posits the notion of human beings as [plain] members of both human and ecological communities. This notion of humans as embedded in social and ecological communities forever challenges the time-honored distinction between humans and “the rest of nature.” No longer is it “obvious” that there is an essential difference between superior humans and inferior nonhuman animals and nature….

Fifth, Leopold’s land ethic challenges us to rethink what counts as a morally relevant value in ethics, ethical decision-making, environmental policy and philosophy. No one before Leopold had ever defended the view that ecosystem integrity, diversity and beauty were morally relevant—perhaps deciding—values in human interactions with other humans, nonhuman animals or the natural environment. In doing so Leopold went far beyond traditional theories of ethics, ethical selves and ethical values: He made the “integrity, diversity, and beauty” of ecological communities, along with the requisite nutrient flows and energy cycles that are necessary for “land health” (or, the ability of the land to self renew), as themselves morally relevant values—ones which sometimes could and should trump traditional values of human self-interest, individual rights, human freedoms (or liberties) and economic efficiency. …

Sixth, Leopold’s land ethic challenges humans to rethink the role of emotion, care, love and empathy not only in ethics, ethical decision-making, and ethical policy, but also in what it means for humans to owe things to each other and the land. For Leopold, the development of an “ecological conscience”—necessary to the adoption of the land ethic—requires the development of emotional, experiential (e.g., hands-on) ecological literacy. Rational intelligence that is not exercised in concert with affectional or emotional intelligence is simply inadequate in ethics, environmental ethics and environmental decision-making.

Seventh, Leopold’s Land Ethics has yet to be understood and appreciated. It challenges us to understand the relationships between ecological diversity and cultural diversity in the creation, maintenance and perpetuation of human and land health. Leopold explicitly links cultural diversity with biodiversity when he writes, “Wilderness was never a homogenous raw material. It was very diverse, and the resulting artifacts are very diverse. These differences in the end-product are known as cultures. The rich diversity of the world’s cultures reflects a corresponding diversity in the wilds that gave them birth.” … Leopold laments the “exhaustion of wilderness” and “world-wide hybridization of cultures” as the destruction of both ecological and cultural diversity. For Leopold, the “wild roots” of cultures and the importance of our ecological heritage are part of our humanness and our human cultural heritage that should be recognized and preserved. …

Eighth, Leopold’s land ethic makes forest and wilderness preservation necessary for any adequate ethic, environmental ethic or environmental policy. …

Ninth, Leopold’s land ethic is that he saw the valuable roles to be played by both the ecological scientist and the ordinary individual in the preservation of [wildness]. …

Tenth, Leopold’s land ethic challenges us to rethink the relationships among ecology, ethics and economics. Leopold rejected the conception and practice of both traditional laissez-faire economics and ethics because neither made ecological awareness and sensitivity to ecological contexts central to their enterprises. He writes: “That man is, in fact, only a member of a biotic team is shown by an ecological interpretation of history. Many historical events, hitherto explained solely in terms of human enterprise, were actually biotic interactions between people and land. The characteristics of the land determined the facts quite as potently as the characteristics of the men who lived on it.” …
[footnote and hyperlink references omitted . See here]

One Final Leopoldian Notion
I’ll finish with one of my favorite Leopold quotes: “Obligations have no meaning without reference to conscience, and the problem we face is the extension of social conscience from people to land.”

Is Leopold’s time at hand?

Time for a Bold Statement?

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It’s starting to look like “A New Century of Forest Planning” may ultimately come to refer to the hundred years or so it takes to get a new planning rule implemented. Will the “Hundred Years War” come to signify the length of the timber wars?

Way back in the 1900’s, Chief Dale Robertson was convinced that a bold policy statement was necessary to address the big concern of the day– clearcutting of national forests.  In a policy letter (not the best way to make policy, but a lot quicker than rule-making), Dale established that clearcuttting would no longer be the primary means of regeneration on national forest lands. There were howls of protest from silviculturists and tree-improvement specialists. There were exceptions for species like Jack Pine and Sand Pine.   There certainly was no end to the timber wars, but it was a start down a path towards armistice.

Getting a new planning rule implemented will take more than just agreement about the wording of the rule.  It’s going to require an environment that will insure the intent of that wording can be carried out. Perhaps now is an appropriate time for the current Chief to make some bold statements.

My suggestions are:

1.       Declare that restoration of ecosystem resiliency is not just an important part of the mission; it’s the most important part.

Management actions would be all about producing desired ecological conditions in order to restore and maintain resilient ecosystems and help protect human communities from undesirable things like intense wildfires in the wrong places or downstream impacts from deteriorating road systems.  There would be no need to calculate ASQ or argue about “lands unsuitable for timber production”. (There may still be a need to “zone” for other uses.) “Below-cost” timber sales would no longer be a meaningful calculation.  And, if the South is any indication, a lot more timber would become available for local mills.

2.       Declare that planning at all levels will be a truly open and collaborative process.

All phases of planning would be “open source” with draft documents and supporting information easily accessible on-line.  Raw data from inventories and monitoring as well as interpreted data, maps, and models would be open to all. I can’t think of any other policy change that would do more to improve the level of trust among stakeholders.  A side benefit would be a tremendous savings in responding to FOIA requests.

3.       Declare that the Forest Service will commit to a process of establishing a shared vision for the entire agency.

With the National Forest System, Research, and State and Private Forestry all working towards shared goals, using an “all lands” approach, imagine what might be accomplished at landscape scales?  This is the sort of partnership between managers and scientists that will be needed to truly ensure that “best science” is incorporated into decisions at all levels.

Are these declarations really all that bold?  Not really, The Forest Service has been moving in these directions since before Dale Robertson penned his letter.  A clear commitment to these principles might be what’s needed to finally move the National Forest System into the New Century.