The Great Depression resulted in a significant extension of the agency’s mission—using the National Forests to support rural community stability and economic welfare. Ferdinand Silcox served as Chief during the Depression, and greatly expanded the agency’s social agenda. Pinchot fully endorsed Silcox’s programs, and played a key role in the founding of the Civilian Conservation Corps. The Forest Service is not just concerned about trees and land, it is about communities, social equity, and justice (aka Napoleon’s Code). The CCC to put young men to work and took a potential source of revolution and anarchy off the streets.
Major expansion following WW II
The Depression ended with World War II. At the end of the war, returning GI’s took advantage of the GI Bill, and some went to the newly expanding schools of forestry, especially at the land grant colleges. The returning GIs were greatly influenced by their experience in the military. The “command and control” leadership model included a healthy dose of fear and coercion to shape behavior. A Forest Supervisor who experienced the 1950-60 referred to the approach each day was, “let’s go out and kill something.” This is an oversimplification, but the focus was on providing timber for the postwar housing boom occurring in the US. The Forest Service’s new marching orders were to hold lumber prices down. Timber was king, and if a Forest Supervisor did not meet his annual timber sale target (i.e.,“make the cut”) it was not looked upon favorably in terms of future career opportunities in the agency. Each National Forest had an estimate of maximum sustained yield. On the Flathead, it assumed every acre of commercial timber was included, less 5% for multiple-use purposes. They then went about harvesting timber as if this was achievable. As a result, much of the “easy ground” was cut, leaving high elevation sites and steep slopes as problems for their successors to solve. The agency orchestrated the passage of the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act in 1960 in hopes it would put some brakes on the timber domination. It didn’t. The Administration got hold of the numbers, as did Congress, and funded the Forest Service’s timber program at—or beyond—the max.
The expansive increase in timber cutting and almost exclusive reliance on clearcutting created a backlash. During the late 1960’s the list of environmental protection legislation was unprecedented: Endangered Species Act, Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, Wilderness Act, Clean Air and Water Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act (which created the Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Council on Environmental Quality). There were several major legal challenges stemming directly or indirectly from the Bolle Committee review of clearcutting and other management practices on the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana—most of which resulted in adverse court decisions against the Forest Service. The Fourth Circuit Court’s decision on a case involving clearcutting on the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia, stunned the Forest Service and threatened to shut down timber cutting on National Forests across the country. Proposed Congressional legislation aimed at severely limiting the agency’s authority for forest management decisions forced the Forest Service to accept the terms of the 1976 National Forest Management Act (NFMA), which curtailed clearcutting on the National Forests and sharply limited the agency’s professional discretion in other areas of natural resource management. Congress adopted the “Church Guidelines” on limits to even age management.
From the beginning of the modern scientific forestry movement in Europe there had been a belief in a rational “scientific” approach to forest management. This was reinforced by the Resources Planning Act, and the agency’s approach to implementing the National Forest Management Act. In the development of a management plan for each National Forest, a range of alternative approaches was developed, with each alternative having a different emphasis on timber production, from low to high. Each alternative could be quantified in terms of inputs and outputs, which were then incorporated into a computer-based mathematical model that assigned dollar values to timber and livestock grazing, but also to natural resources such as wildlife, water, and recreation. Analysis of the alternatives could then be automated, to select the alternative that would “maximize net public benefits.” In this rational scientific method, simply taking the decision determined by the computer model was portrayed as more objective and defensible than leaving it to the human resource managers in the Forest Service. This “preferred alternative” could then be selected as the new forest plan, used to guide all management actions on the National Forest for 10-15 years, and then updated as needed.
This has never happened, at least in my opinion. To many in the public, these computer models were a “black box” whose workings they could neither see nor understand, and thus they were not trusted. Many Forest Supervisors felt much the same way, and had little faith that a computer output could substitute for years of experience and professional judgment. In my experience, it has helped guide management, but was never much more than a guide.
The goal of maximizing net public benefit is like managing for the greatest good. It is an ideal but it is not actually measurable, nor definable. Despite the huge investment of effort and resources to develop these plans, they have never been decided based on a rational scientific or economic model. At best, decisions on National Forest plans have been a negotiated social contract between the Forest Service, represented by the Forest Supervisor, and an incredibly diverse and conflicted public. In those cases where there has been public acceptance of a forest plan decision, it is more based on the credibility of the local Forest Supervisor, Rangers and often the Planning Staff Officer and the Public Information Officer.
There is so much else that can be covered – the spotted owl litigation, New Perspectives, Planning in the Community of Interest, Limits of Acceptable Change for Wilderness management (pioneered on the Flathead, Lolo, Lewis and Clark, and Helena National Forests in cooperation with the University of Montana), grizzly bears, grey wolves, and a score of legal challenges and decisions, but I would run out of energy. There is a great deal written about the Forest Service, and some of it is good. Some of it is more about the writer than the agency.
Forest conservation is not a science, nor a set of agricultural practices. It is a belief system. It is grounded in morality and assumptions about public values and is carried out through forestry practices – for the most part. The idea of conservation, which began with Marsh’s Man and Nature, continues unabated. The Forest Service is not just concerned about trees and land, it is about communities, social equity, and I believe, justice harkening back to the Napoleonic Code.
It is the people, the Forest Service employees themselves, who continue to build on this legacy of integrity, competence, commitment, and I would add, its moral code. It is a part of the culture of the organization (and sometimes it does get us into trouble). The agency continues with a sense of optimism, of hope that we can make a difference and that solving the problems are worth the sacrifices, and I strongly believe, a strong social justice commitment. Napoleon lives on. It is the greatest good for the greatest number.