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Tongass National Forest, the largest reserve of coastal temperate rainforest in the world, which is threatened by logging under current U.S. Forest Service policy.
Photo by Betsy Goll

by Joan Hamilton
Natural Heritage Session
Jim Furnish, Gloria Flora

Two veterans of the U.S. Forest Service explained what’s gone wrong with the agency managing our national forests and how we can help fix it. "Why does the Forest Service persist in managing the forests unsustainably?" asked former Lewis and Clark National Forest Supervisor Gloria Flora. "Can the Forest Service get it right?" said former Deputy Forest Chief Jim Furnish. "It once was a very effective agency, but I don’t feel it is today."

Flora said the agency began its current struggles with the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969, when new laws, diversity in the workforce, and public oversight all posed major challenges to the agency’s traditional way of doing business. The agency was flummoxed for a while. In the 1970s "I didn’t find that many people in the agency who were thankful for your input," Flora said. But by the 1990s, the Forest Service was learning to live with new laws, building credibility with the public, and had made "ecosystem management" (rather than cutting timber) the agency’s highest goal. Then in 1995, it was hit by the "salvage rider," a congressional mandate aimed at increasing timber production regardless of environmental impact. "Boom, there went the public trust again," Flora said. That setback was followed by the Bush administration's gutting of regulations that protect the national forests.

"Now they are systematically removing the handholds, the ways the public has of getting a grip on the agency," Flora said. "That was done very purposefully. The Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act are next."

In 2000, Flora resigned from the agency to highlight her dissatisfaction with changes at the top. She has since started her own nonprofit, Sustainable Obtainable Solutions. "That was supposed to be the mission of the Forest Service," she said. "When I saw they weren’t going to do it, I decided to start my own organization."

Flora advised activists to continue to write to the Forest Service, always copying their congressional representatives (which she says helps ensure a timely response). She said not to worry about technical language. "The agency may say they want to know about board feet and cubic feet per second" she said. "They say they want input that is substantive. But what is substantive to me is my family, peace, beauty, and solitude. The things that are most important to people tend to not be important to the agency because they don’t know how to measure them."

Furnish, who served as deputy forest chief under Clinton appointee Mike Dombeck, discussed what it might take to turn the agency around. When Furnish first joined the agency in 1960, it was devoted to three things: cutting timber, building roads, and putting out fires. "The agency needs to jettison those old values firmly and publicly," he said, "and embrace the public’s values: naturalness, clean water, abundant wildlife, personal renewal, and future generations. If the Forest Service can step across to these values, there is a much better future."

Furnish advised activists to take the time to "invest something of yourself in a friendship with a forest supervisor." He said environmentalists in the national forest he supervised in Oregon, the Siuslaw, "had a tremendous impact on my views. I can’t tell you the fortitude they gave me." He also said it was important to join activist groups. "Many of the positive changes we have seen have come about because of the persistent pressure of organizations like the Sierra Club," he said. "Working with people like you has made my career gratifying."

-- 09/09/2005 Fri
5pm