On a recent visit to this year’s U.S. Forest
Service display at the Smithsonian’s annual Folklife Festival
on the Mall in Washington, D.C., I saw some disturbing gaps in its
representation of the Forest Service “culture” — the timber
program was nowhere to be found. I asked a few uniformed Forest
Service folks at tables where the timber program was. I was met
with replies of “Really? It’s not here? That’s
interesting … How ’bout over there?”
Granted, I
went in with a chip on my shoulder. I worked for the Forest Service
in Northern California as a seasonal archaeologist on the Trinity
National Forest, as the spotted owl controversy heated up. I saw
firsthand the accelerated and unsustainable logging of ancient
forest in the late 1980s. And I went to the display knowing that
most people in this country have no idea that commercial logging
(don’t call it “harvest”) takes place on national forests
— at taxpayer expense, no less.
Seems like the
Smithsonian served up a summer picnic tableau of Forest Service
“Lite.” I scoured the displays looking for any reference to the
timber program. One small photo of a clear-cut landscape from the
’60s on a panel of the USFS’s history says clear-cuts
fell out of favor because of some objections to the aesthetics.
Similarly, a passing reference at a wildlife table to the
endangered spotted owl says nothing of the controversy, the “jobs
vs. the environment” polarizing fostered by the USFS and past and
current administrations.
The greenwashing job done by the
USFS to celebrate its centennial was reprehensible, because it
didn’t tell half the story.
Jay
Lee
Takoma Park, Maryland
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Smithsonian serves up Forest Service Lite.
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