Woody Hesselbarth

Christine Hoekenga writes that Neal Hitchcock says that the Forest Service has to “borrow money from other programs to cover emergency costs” (HCN, 11/12/07). That’s not actually true. The 45 percent of budgeted fire suppression and any “budget overruns” are, if you will, stolen from other programs. They do not get repaid, thus starving the […]

Michelle Burkhart points out that staff shortages in the national forests mean that citizens often step in to pick up the slack (HCN, 12/26/05: Where have all the rangers gone?). This is certainly true on Colorado’s Roosevelt National Forest (“co-managed” as one unit with the Arapaho National Forest and the Pawnee National Grassland, thus spreading […]

Michelle Nijhuis’s article “The Ghosts of Yosemite” seems to be little more than a rant against the National Park Service (HCN, 10/17/05: The Ghosts of Yosemite). Rather than dwelling on the threat that global warming poses to native wildlife, Nijhuis instead changes the focus to an unfair criticism of an agency that is hardly responsible […]

As a former wilderness manager for the feds, I’d like to speak to the issue of bikes in wilderness areas (HCN, 3/3/03: Get off and walk — wilderness is for wildlife). Bicycles were never permitted in the National Wilderness Preservation System by the 1964 Wilderness Act or any subsequent designation legislation. It’s understandable, however, why […]