I first met the U.S. Forest
Service in 1967, when I helped build a log cabin at 9,600 feet on
the Gunnison National Forest in western Colorado. The idea that I
was part owner of 300,000 square miles of beautiful land
intoxicated me. We became so drunk on the land that in 1974, we
moved from New York to a town 30 miles from the cabin. We would
have lived in the forest, except that the West had winters then,
and the cabin was unreachable for much of the year.
To
build the cabin, I first had to deal with District Ranger L.C.
Case. I sent in plans; the agency engineer modified them so the
snow-load wouldn’t crush it; and we had our permit. It was
that fast.
Case ran his district the old way: from
horseback, with the help of a slim, leather-bound book of rules in
his shirt pocket. By the time we moved West in 1974, things had
changed. From its 1905 founding into the 1950s, the agency had been
protective of land that had been cut over and overgrazed in the
19th century.
But in the nation’s post-World War II
exuberance, Congress prodded the Forest Service to ramp up the cut,
from a few billion board-feet per year to 10 to 12 billion
board-feet. Like a vampire in the full moon, the Forest Service
turned into a timber beast and ravaged the land. It stopped only
when lawsuits in the Pacific Northwest drove a wooden stake through
the beast’s heart.
As a regional journalist, I
wrote a lot about the agency during the 1980s and 1990s. At one
point I called on the nation to “clear-cut the Forest Service.”
That was then. Now, I am one of five delegates chosen by the
agency’s Region II to represent it at the 100th anniversary
celebration of the Forest Service in Washington, D.C., this
January.
The agency has diminished since the days when
L.C. Case and hundreds like him ruled their domains through their
personal authority. Rangers still rode horses in the 1970s, but the
riders were getting fat. Staff had been pushed indoors to manage
paperwork caused by the new environmental laws.
They also
found themselves mandated to work with the public. That was a joke.
Even the best of them couldn’t forget that until
recently they had been lords and masters of the forest. At one
meeting in our small town, the staffer kept referring to the
audience as “people of the public persuasion.” He thought we were a
cult.
At another public meeting, also in 1982, the forest
supervisor, sitting in the audience, decided the talk had gone on
long enough. He made a throat-slitting gesture and his subordinate
ended the meeting in mid-sentence.
The transition from
protector of the forests to destroyer of the forests that took
place after World War II had at least left the agency in charge.
But for much of the 1990s, the forests were managed by the courts
or by the White House. And public disdain translated into a
shrinking budget and vanishing prestige.
Now, I think,
the agency’s situation is changing again. This November, I
attended a regional rehearsal for the coming centennial
get-together. People interested in the national forests and
grasslands of Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska gathered in Fort
Collins, Colo., to review the agency’s first 100 years and to
look ahead.
I expected a grim gathering. The agency is at
a low point in budget, personnel and authority. Staff is
overworked. Roads are deteriorating. Hikers and our dogs, off-road
vehicles and weeds run roughshod over the land. Nevertheless, the
meeting was upbeat. Why are you feeling good? I asked several
people.
“Things are looking up,” was the best they could
do. But I think I know one reason.
After the obligatory
references to the agency’s godlike founder, Gifford Pinchot,
discussion among the 200 or so attendees moved to a future that
involved cooperating with citizens, groups and other agencies both
within the national forests and across boundaries. This kind of
talk has been a staple for years at Forest Service meetings. But at
this meeting, it seemed real.
The agency’s leaders
and staff have come to realize they can’t manage the land
without help. Most important, they’ve gone from resenting
that truth to welcoming it.
It’s happened because
the agency has been clear-cut. Retirements, budget cuts, pressure
from lawsuits and more bad press than Saddam Hussein got has
resulted in a new Forest Service. Now it is up to us —
“people of the public persuasion” — to work with and on
behalf of the agency to restore, protect and even do some careful
exploitation of the national forests.
Ed
Marston is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of
High Country News (hcn.org). He lives in Paonia,
Colorado.
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