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During the Dust Bowl era, the USFS even played a key role in mitigating
soil erosion and promoting land conservation, while during the Great
Depression, the agency administered the Civilian Conservation Corps
and the Works Progress Administration.
Work crews, acting under the supervision of forest rangers, planted
trees and revegetated grasslands. They built roads and trails, established
and maintained campgrounds and generally helped create the spectacular
public lands system we enjoy today. The Forest Service earned its
"white hat" reputation by being honest and hardworking
and by taking courageous stands to protect the public's interest
over that of the timber industry.
Post World War II and Logging
After World War II, everything changed. The postwar housing boom
increased demand for wood products beyond what private industry
could provide. Rather than seeing the national forest system as
a system of reserves (as they had before WWII), industry now started
lobbying heavily for increased access to the public's forests. In
addition, a new model of forestry was taking hold, industrial forestry,
which advocated that the "best" forests were intensively
managed tree plantations. Both industry and federal foresters bought
into this utilitarian approach, so that the vast majority of forest
professionals were of one mind, regardless of whether they worked
for a timber company or the USFS.
Industry wanted timber and the USFS thought it was good to convert
old growth forests into tree plantations. Congress was only too
happy to provide jobs to their constituents and subsidies to the
politically powerful timber industry. This led to a drastic increase
in industrial style logging (i.e. clearcutting and road building)
in the national forests. It also led to a dramatic increase in ecological
problems, like habitat destruction, soil erosion and watershed degradation.
As a result, public concern began to grow.
Congress, Forest Service and the Public
Congress reacted to citizen concern by attempting to reform the
Forest Service with the Multiple Use & Sustained Yield Act (MUSY)
of 1960. While this law gave the agency great discretion in interpreting
the law, it did codify that all other resources in the forest (wildlife,
recreation, water, soils, etc.) were as important as timber. Unfortunately,
this did little to rein in the pro-timber agenda of the USFS. The
agency continued to clearcut and build roads at a rapid rate. Two
key events finally galvanized citizen opposition to the agency's
pro-timber bias. These following events altered the public's perception
to the point that the USFS lost its "white hat" reputation
as protector of the forests and the public interest.
The first event occurred on the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana.
In a mistaken effort to improve reforestation of tree plantations,
the agency allowed the timber industry not only to clearcut huge
swaths of forest, but also to bulldoze terraces into the steep hillsides.
This resulted in a scathing report by Arnold Bolle, dean of the
University of Montana School of Forestry, on the Forest Service's
reliance on clearcutting, which sent shock waves through Congress.
The second event occurred on the Monongahela National Forest in
West Virginia. A clearcut precipitated a flood that wiped out an
influential U.S. Senator's hometown. This led to a successful citizen
lawsuit that temporarily outlawed clearcutting on national forests
and eventually led to a second Congressional effort to rein in the
agency-the 1976 National Forest Management Act. Again, this Act
gave wide discretion to the agency to interpret the law, but it
added more protections than ever before. Although it legalized clearcutting,
restrictions were applied. Nevertheless, the USFS continued to disregard
this law, as well as MUSY and other environmental laws passed in
the late 1960's and 1970's, like the Endangered Species Act, the
Clean Water Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.
During this same time, the agency began implementing the Nixon Administration's
pro-timber plan to 1) increase timber production by 50% over the
next ten years, 2) double the 198,000 miles of permanent roads on
the national forests and 3) permit the logging of the last substantial
areas of old growth forests in the U.S. The USFS under President
Reagan was even more zealous in selling timber off the national
forests, reaching a high cut of 12.6 billion board feet in 1989
(or approximately 2,520,000 filled logging trucks). This clear disregard
of congressional intent and citizen concern gave birth to the American
ecology movement and helped trigger the explosion of environmental
activism we see today.
Taxpayer Losses
Another key factor prompting public outcry over the agency's management
of our national forests has been the rising costs of the timber
sale program, which has resulted in staggering financial losses
to taxpayers. Each year, taxpayers are forced to pay over $1.3 billion
to subsidize commercial logging in national forests. Equally important
has been new economic information highlighting the value of healthy,
standing forests. Throughout the nation, an explosion of recreation
and tourism on national forests has generated substantial income.
This socioeconomic phenomena is bringing to light major policy and
management contradictions within the agency: While the USFS's philosophy,
mission and goals are becoming more "green," their core
management activities remain as destructive as ever.
In the past ten years, the public terms of the national forest debate
have revolved less around how much and where we should cut, to:
1. "Should we be cutting on the national forest system at all?"
2. "Is the agency maximizing net public benefits for a majority
of Americans from its timber sale program?"
3. "Why does the U.S. government continue to subsidize large
forest products and other resource-extractive industries to log,
mine, graze and drill on public lands?"
4. "What changes to the political system need to occur to ensure
that our national forests are truly managed in the public trust?"These
questions are just as relevant to American citizens today as they
were 100 years ago, when the USFS and the national forest system
were first conceived.
* Chronology of National Forest Legislation
Hope for the Future
There is hope, however. Today, the U.S. economy looks far different
than it did even 25 years ago. The timber industry, while still
a significant political and economic force, is no longer one of
the elite industrial giants. A robust economy, rising disposable
income and an ever-sprawling population over the past 50 years have
created new attitudes towards the purpose of our national forests.
Recreational visits to national forests are now at an all-time high.
In the past decade alone, a remarkable socioeconomic transformation
has occurred in the West and other rural regions. Today, recreation,
hunting and fishing now generate 31 times more revenue and 38 times
more jobs than the timber sale program.
Considering that less than 3% of our wood and paper products come
from national forests, new market forces are beginning to change
consumer preferences and industry practices. From a technological
standpoint, more and more non-wood alternatives for pulp and paper
production and building materials are being developed. USFS research
labs have also made great strides in maximizing wood utilization,
increasing the use of recycled fiber, and improving productivity
of forests on private and state lands. The agency is even starting
to promote the need for wood conservation in this country. Yet much
work remains to be done in all of these areas along with reducing
our society's unsustainable level of consumption.
All of the aforementioned trends have altered the public perception
of our national forests to the point that a clear majority of Americans
no longer view national forests as a factory amongst the trees.
Unfortunately for the public, the USFS still can't see the forests
for the trees. Many of the agency's central assumptions and core
resource programs do not reflect the will of the public who owns
these forests. The USFS continues to promote forest product harvest
and resource extraction as the "best use" of these dwindling
public treasures.
It is time for the nation to adopt a noncommercial federal forest
logging policy in the 21st Century that reflects the true value
and "best use" of our public lands. As a nation our focus
should be preserving and restoring these last refuges of biological
diversity as havens for disappearing wildlife, as sources of clean
water and air, and as the last, best places for recreation and renewal
of our spirits in the primeval forests of our ancestors.
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