Forests & People - Forests and The Great Depression

Forests and the Great Depression

The Great Depression, from 1929 to 1941, when the US entered World War II, was a time when the Federal Government set up work programs to provide people with meaningful work and add infrastructure the nation’s forests.  The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC’s) put young men to work in forests across the nation, they were supervised by the Army.  The CCC’s built roads, trails, campgrounds, water systems, ranger stations, lookouts, buildings and more.  Those young men planted trees, they fought fires, they were bored, they were homesick, they were excited, they were cold in winter and they sweltered in summer, and through it all  they built their own character which would make them what we (Tom Brokow) label “The Greatest Generation.”  Was it the land that build this generation?  The generation  that the world needed for what was to come?  It certainly helped, maybe we should find ways to replicate it, we could use another great generation, but I digress. 

Finding uniqueness in America’s forest architecture came out of this era, Timberline Lodge on the Mount Hood National Forest in Oregon, the Yellowstone Lodge, Glacier Lodge and many other forest buildings built by the Depression era Work Project Administration were artful architecture  that made statements about the forest’s beauty and what it offers us.  

The thousands of young men who built these forest structures gained an intimacy with the forest, its beauty and its harshness,  they took pride in what they had done and wanted it respected.  That issue would come back, after the War.

Forests & People - On My Soapbox

National Public Lands

During the 2015 Montana legislative session and among some citizens, particularly in Ravalli County there was a movement to convert management of our National Forests to state or private control.  The bill in the legislature failed and the Ravalli County rhetoric didn’t get legs — this time.  However, these kinds of proposals come up in the American west from time to time and they are a threat to all of us, - except those clandestine entities who finance them.  The rest of us need to have information about this big chess game for control of our public lands, our waters, our way-of-life, and our economic wellbeing.  Here’s why.

The American west is a semi-arid land, that means there is not enough rainfall in our valleys to grow crops and support cities without irrigation.  We rely on mountain winter snows and an infrastructure of canals, reservoirs, pipelines, ditches and sprinklers to support our crops and cities.  We all know that, but there is more background to this story that we may not have thought about. 

Irrigation in semi-arid places started in the Middle-east 7000 years ago at the beginning of civilization.  Fueled by irrigation, civilizations grew into empires, the Persian Empire with its capitol, Babylon, and its famous Hanging Gardens was one example. Today that area is a desert.  What happened?  The people who controlled the land had two big flaws; their perspective was too small and they did not do long-range planning.  They cut the forests that stored the moisture and protected the soil, then they grazed the slopes with sheep and cows until there was not enough plant cover to hold the soil from eroding.  The irrigation canals and reservoirs filled with silt.  Crops and cities could not survive without water.  The land went from the wonderful cedar forests of Lebanon (I Kings, Chapter 5) and “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8) to poor land, poor cities, poor people.  

Late spring snow on the peaks.

It’s an old story that has been repeating itself for 7000 years and it was beginning to happen in the American west in the late 1800’s. At that time there was short-sighted local control over the land with the primary purpose to produce short-term profits from logging and grazing.   But then a big thing happened, a few visionaries from the East recognized the potential problem for the arid west and developed a protection strategy for the western watersheds, the Forest Reserves were established. In the early 1900’s, when Congress got around to saying how these Federal forests should be managed the basic policy was to take care of the watersheds.  The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have been carrying out these orders ever since, along with the other Congressional directions given though laws and budgets. 

What those visionaries did to protect the mountains from being denuded of forests and grass is why we have shining cities today (Denver, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boise and on and on) and the agriculture to support them in a semi-arid land.  America recognized the need for limiting short-term economic exploitation of western forests and to manage them for long-term benefits for the land and people. That was an unprecedented action in history. The land management decisions would have been very different if they had been made by local people trying to make a living from the semi-arid lands that have such limited economic viability. 

A western city watered by mountain forest

But, protecting our mountain forests and watersheds is never a done-job.  This great experiment of sustaining thriving cities and agriculture in a semi-arid land is only 150 years old.  That isn’t much when stacked up against 7000 years of destruction of forests, grasses, soil, crops and cities that has occurred in other semi-arid areas of the world, resulting in failed civilizations.  We could still lose what those before us saved because sustaining what we have environmentally and economically is a political process as well as a scientific process.  Too often, today’s political jabs and decisions follow big money.  It is not hard to imagine that big money would like to get control of the west’s land and water.  So we have these jabs to privatize (steal) what all Americans own by using legislative means and a few individuals making noise supporting such action.

Montana’s top four elected officials, Governor, two Senators and Representative, in the past, have supported continued federal control of the federal lands in Montana.  These officials understand the obvious, the state simply could not afford to suppress the wildfires, keep forest roads usable, keep trails and campgrounds open and provide suitable habitat for the State’s fish and wildlife.  Managing fire and these resources are a money drain and there is not enough economic income possible from timber and grazing to balance the costs, even if every commercial size tree was cut and cattle were allowed to over-graze every stream bank in Montana.  Multiple use management requires tax payers from Iowa, Ohio, Florida, Massachusetts and every other state in the US, paying their taxes and Congress budgeting those taxes for all the things government does, including managing the National Forests. 

After the snow is gone

But, lets follow the scenario of state or private management of the National Forests and see where it would likely take us.  Because the State could not afford to manage these lands, there would be talk of selling some or all of the lands and eventually that would happen. If the land went private, so would the water rights - somehow, sometime, because water and water rights are going to be worth so much more in the near future.  The fish would not have enough money to buy enough water to live in, that water would be worth much more for irrigation downstream and that’s where it would go because the dollar value per acre-foot would be the only thing that mattered if the land and the water were privately owned.  Cattle permitted to graze the National Forests now pay a fee less than $1.75 per animal-unit-month (kept artificially low by Congress) the going rate for grazing on private land in Montana ranges from $12 to $18 per animal-unit-month.  If grazing was privately controlled, ranchers would have to pay the real commercial grazing rate rather than a subsidized grazing fee on National Forest and BLM lands. Many could not pay that amount and survive economically. 

Our public lands and their management are important issues to every one of us living in the American west - and the American east.  When an elected official or a citizen group push for state control or privatization of Federal lands we need to know who is financing this drive and what they will be gaining from it.  It is a pretty safe bet, whoever is putting out the money to push state control or privatization is not interested in benefiting the land, the wildlife or the way-of-life for those of us living here, they simply want to make more money - in the short term.  

We need to be watchful and “pay forward” (safer and in better condition) what we have been given. 

Jerry Covault

About Forests & People - BLM lands and National Wildlife Refuges

The Bureau of Land Management 

After everyone who wanted to buy, homestead, or otherwise acquire land from the Public Domain had what they wanted, and the National Parks and National Forests had been withdrawn from the Public Domain there was still a lot of land yet owned by the government.  Nobody wanted it.  Private ownership didn’t work because it wouldn’t produce enough income to pay the taxes.  These aren’t headwater lands or watersheds that fit with National Forest Purposes and they don’t have the attractions to be a National Park.   These are mainly dry lands suited for grazing cattle, sheep, goats and horses, so the Grazing Service, within the Department of Interior, was set up to administer them.  That lasted a while, then in 1946,  Interior’s General Land Office was consolidated with the Grazing Service to form the Bureau of Land Management, the lands were labeled “National Resource Lands,” but everyone calls them BLM lands.  (Paul W. Gates, History of Public Land Law Development, pg 128).  

The products of BLM lands include: recreation, wood products, grazing, wildlife, water and Wilderness.   Grazing is an important use because of the nature of the land, most of it is arid, lower country, yet higher in the foothills than what is irrigated private ranch land.  Ranchers have the privilege of grazing BLM lands during the summer while their ranch land is producing hay for the cattle during the winter.  The grazing privileges are administered according to the terms of a permit and there are grazing fees based on the number of animal-unit-months (one cow and one calf for 30 days) allowed by the permit.  

National Wildlife Refuges

The first National Wildlife Refuge, Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge off the western coast of Florida, was designated by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1903.  It came about because a small group of citizens were concerned because hunters had shot the pelican population down to just a few birds.  Paul Kroegel decided to do what he could for the pelicans and ended up doing a lot more for all wildlife across North America.  His efforts for pelicans expanded into what became a system of National Wildlife Refuges.

In 1966 Congress passed the “National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act” that constitutes the “organic act” for the National Refuge System - it took a while (53 years) for Congress to recognize the need. The law set up the Fish and Wildlife Service within the Department of Interior as manager of the Refuges.  Their focused purpose is to do what their name implies, provide wildlife refuge areas.  They don’t cater to people, wild animals come first on these lands.  The Fish and Wildlife Service does provide parking areas, trails, viewing areas and buildings for educating people about the wild animals at the refuge, but these are secondary to providing habitat for the intended wildlife.  

There are about 551 National Wildlife Refuges across the nation and thousands of small wetlands and special areas.   Total Refuge acreage is nearly 150 million acres (that’s a lot), huge amounts of this are in Alaska.  Not much Refuge land is forested, critters and fish need wetlands and open spaces where shrubs and grass prosper.  Certainly forests are important for hiding cover and thermal cover and some species rely totally on forest, squirrels and martins for example, but, mostly, the Refuges are serving the open space needs of wild birds, mammals and fish.   Even so, it’s appropriate to think about Wildlife Refuges in this discussion because these are lands where natural processes dominate the land over economic opportunities. 

About Forests & People -- State Forests

Most states own and manage some forest land, state parks are the most

familiar, but many states have forest land that are manage for wildlife habitat, wood products and livestock grazing.  You may have wondered how states came to own forest land.  Well —-.

Bitterroot

As the American frontier moved west and an area within a large territory had enough residents, the people would figure out a reasonable (or unreasonable) boundary and petition for statehood in the USA.  That was about the only option because the land between settlers and towns was USA Public Domain.  When Congress said, “OK, you’re a state,” they gave the new state a whole lot of Public Domain land.  The idea was the state would use this land gift as collateral to build a good education system.  

The way Congress gave this land is unique, it goes like this.  The Northwest Ordinance of 1785 set up a system of land surveying based on one mile square areas called sections, each containing 640 acres.   A Township is six miles by six miles with 36 of these one mile square sections.  There is a standard way of numbering the sections and labeling the Townships.  This makes it possible to exactly identify a piece of land on a map and on the ground.  (Paul W. Gates, History of Public Land Law Development, pg 65) This surveying system for America was the brainchild of Thomas Jefferson, but he borrowed it from the ancient Egyptians.  The Northwest Ordinance of 1785 was amended a few times down through the years, but the land surveying system it set up is still in effect.  

When a new state was carved out of a territory one section in every Township  was to be used for schools.  (Paul W. Gates, History of Public Land Law Development, pg 68)  Later laws changed this to two sections per Township for schools.  To keep it simple, sections 16 and 36 in every Township were for schools.  It didn’t take long for states to start trading their sections 16 and 36 for federal land and private land to bunch together the state owned land rather than have sections scattered throughout the state.  By these land trades, states created the large areas of state forests and state parks that we know today.  Through the years lands have been donated to states and states have bought land for wildlife habitat, for parks and for state forests.  Trading, donations and purchasing state forest land is still continuing.

In many states, the income from state forests that were originally sections 16 and 36 still goes to schools. 

About Forests & People -- America's National Parks

National Parks

Yellowstone National Park is the worlds first National Park, Congress passed the bill creating it and President Grant signed the bill in 1872.   Yellowstone became a National Park because of the beauty of its mountains and forest, the guyers, the geologic features and the wildlife.    Natural beauty was, maybe for the first time, recognized as a resource worth holding on to.  By the year 1900, six National Parks had been created, Yellowstone, Hot Springs, Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Sequoia, and Mount Rainier.  The country was rethinking the policy of  converting Public Domain to private ownership. There was a growing acceptance that certain lands are so valuable they should remain in public ownership.  But, among those who favored reserving lands for public use, there were two camps of thought, those who wanted the lands managed for commercial purposes and those who wanted the lands preserved with only natural forces making changes.  Both were struggling for the public mind and support. 

Glacier National Park

Naturalist John Muir loved the mountains and wanted them left alone,  He began writing about the mountains’ beauty and solitude in the mid 1870’s making the case for preserving areas of natural beauty, preservation was the key word for Muir and his fellow lovers-of-all-things-wild.  Gifford Pinchot, a  fellow lover of mountains and forests, strove side-by-side with Muir for years to raise public awareness of human responsibility to care for the land, the ideas George Perkins Marsh had put forth in his 1864 book. Pinchot believed in wise use, management, conservation of natural resources. Muir believed in preservation, no trees harvested, no sheep or cattle grazing, preserve the land and let nature take its course.  These differing philosophies were too great for friendship to gulf, the two men became adversaries .  Their opposing views came to focus in the Hetch Hetchy Valley where, after the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, the city wanted to build a dam and reservoir for its water supply.  The problem with San Francisco’s plan was, the Hetch Hetchy Valley was within Yosemite National Park.  The details of how National Parks should be managed hadn’t been worked out at that time, but John Muir and those who believed as he did, wanted National Parks to be preserved in their natural state, they were dead-set against the dam.  Pinchot, the other giant in the natural resource conservation debate, favored the dam.  The debate went national, viral we would say today, it was nasty, but it did get the question in front of the nation, “What are National Parks for?”  In the end, 1913, Congress passed a law allowing the Hetch Hetchy Valley to be flooded for the reservoir.  The debate had made the country aware of two great philosophies for managing the nation’s wild public lands, conservation and preservation, both are alternatives to exploitation for short term profits.  

After loosing Hetch Hetchy, the preservationists went to work to establish a system in law that would never allow a land-altering development within a National Park again.  A government agency to manage the National Parks was the first step needed to protect and manage the National Parks. 

The first National Parks were watched over by the US Army, that made some sense because the Army had a history of making the Public Domain secure (from the native people) for immigrant Americans coming into the area.  Although, this time, the Army was supposed to protect the LAND from immigrant Americans who wanted to poach wildlife, cut timber, graze sheep and cattle  and everything else they had been doing on the Public Domain lands.  The problem was, the Army did not have authority to arrest and punish the wrong-doers, soldiers are not policemen.  So all the soldiers could do was hand-out warnings to offenders and that didn’t wasn’t much of a deterrent.  For example, by 1894 the only remaining bison in America were in Yellowstone National Park and there weren’t many of them.  “That year, a poacher named Edgar Howell bragged to reporters that there wasn't much anyone could do about his buffalo hunting, since the most serious penalty he faced would be to get kicked out of Yellowstone and lose $26 worth of equipment. The editor of Field and Stream ran that story, and there was a huge uproar. President Grover Cleveland signed the "Act to Protect the Birds and Animals in Yellowstone National Park.”  (Writers Almanac Aug 25, 2014).  But that was just one park.

The department of War, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Interior all three claimed to be taking care of the National Parks so, you guessed it, nobody was taking care of the National Parks.  Congress was not taking any action to straighten out the bickering and neither was the President, so it went on for years!   At this time John Muir was gathering support to preserve the National Parks as nature had made them - even though he had lost the Hetch Hetchy debate when Congress finally decided to dam(n) it.   

North Fork of Flathead River  -  Mountains of Glacier NP

The National Parks needed a hero, and out of the west, came Stephen Mather, educated at the University of California.  Stephen Mather was brilliant in advertising and promoting, working out of Chicago he became a self-made millionaire by his 40’s.  He made his millions in Borax, “20 Mule Team Borax” was Stephen’s brain child.   He retired from his company in 1914 to do things he believed in and a big part of that was the conservation movement.  Mather had known John Muir, the Sierra Club made him an honorary vice-president and he was a member of the Boone and Crocket Club founded by Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell.  You could say he was well connected in conservation movement circles. 

Being retired with a lot of money, Mather traveled, In Europe he saw what Parks could and should be like, accessible with convenient places to stay.   America’s National Parks had never been “convenient” and were, in fact, shabby.  Mather wrote a letter to Washington, complaining.  That letter - and his promotional skills - and probably his money didn’t hurt - landed him a job in the Department of Interior as Assistant Secretary of Interior in 1914.  In this job, Mather ran a publicity campaign aimed at the Executive and Legislative branches to create a bureau to operate the National Parks.  

Mather knew how to get things done, “he hired Horace Albright, as legal assistant, and Robert Sterling Yard, the editor of the New York Herald and personally paid part of their salary.  He sponsored the "Mather Mountain Party," a two-week trip for 15 extremely influential business leaders and politicians in the Sierra Nevadas — he paid for it himself, and the men enjoyed a luxurious vacation, hiking and fishing and enjoying fine dining (complete with linens) in the midst of the parks. By the end of the two weeks, they all supported Mather's request for a national agency to oversee the National Parks. He partnered with the railroads in their huge "See America First" publicity campaign. He got national newspapers to run headlines about the cause, started a campaign for school kids to enter essay contests, and after convincing National Geographic to devote an entire issue to the national parks, Mather gave every member of Congress a copy.” (Writer’s Almanac, Aug 25, 2014)  Stephen Mather had the country ready for a National Park Service.

All this time Horace Albright had been drafting a bill to create the National Park Service, within the Department of the Interior.  The Bill was ready, the country was ready and on August 25, 1916 President Wilson signed the Bill into law and National Park Service was created.

Stephen T. Mather became the Park Service’s first director, he was committed to establishing a successful agency.  His boss, Secretary of Interior wrote a letter outlining how the National Parks were to be managed: “First, the national parks should be maintained in absolutely unimpaired form for the use of future generations as well as those of our own time; second that they are set apart for the use, observation, health and pleasure of the people; and third, that the natural interest must dictate all decisions affecting public or private enterprise in the parks.   Every activity of the Service is subordinate to the duties imposed upon it to faithfully preserve the parks for posterity in essentially their natural state”. (Dana and Fairfax, Forest and Range Policy, pg 109).  We can thank John Muir for that, he won after all.  That direction for National Parks clearly indicated there should be no more dams within National Parks and the Park Service would enforce the policy.  Of course that was direction from the head of the Department of Interior in the Executive Branch, Congress could pass a law to do anything it wanted in a National Park and if the President signed the law, the Department of Interior’s direction would be overridden.

Stephen Mather had his marching orders and he was the guy to carry them out, also, he wanted to see the National Park system expanded.  To expand the number and size of National Parks would take money allocated by Congress, that would take the public demanding their representatives allocate the money.  Mather understood that the public would support what they could see and understand, he would get lots of people to visit the National Parks, give them a good experience and the Parks would sell themselves.  The Park Service would emphasize hotels, roads, concessions and a publicity campaign to get people to visit.   The biggest thing Mather had going for his plan was the automobile.  It was becoming more reliable, engineers were figuring out what kinds of roads cars needed and maybe most important, Americans were loving driving.  

There was certainly opposition to expanding the National Park System, Parks couldn’t just be carved out of the Public Domain by Presidential proclamation as the Forest Reserves had, the best Public Domain land had already been designated for other uses, “the frontier was closed” (according to the 1890 census).  New parks would have to be designated by Congress from National Forests, other federal lands or purchased private land, often all three.  There was local opposition, people resisted “too much government,” the National Forests were already there and many locals thought that was more than enough.  The economic benefits of tourism were not yet evident.  The Forest Service certainly was not a supporter of National Parks that would be carved from National Forest. 

It was a tough go, but Mather was up to it.  The Park Service had a few big supporters:  Women’s Garden Clubs, especially in California; the railroads, they wanted to bring tourists to the Parks; the American Automobile Association (AAA) was interested in promoting driving; and concessionaires supported the Parks because they could run hotels, tourist services and trinket shops within these beautiful parks.  Stephen Mather made all these moving parts work together and today the parks are successful because they are accessible by automobile and they serve and educate visitors with comfort and convenience.  The beauty and grander of the parks remain the reason people from all over the world visit.

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Not all recreation is high adventure.

Outdoor recreation on National Parks and National Forests are worth discussing.  A National Park may be thought of as fine museum.  Museums display beauty, educate visitors, and keep control of the displays and do not let visitors impact the displays.  National Parks are like that, people go there, they see the natural beauty, they are educated and are inspired by the grander.  Visitors are controlled to minimize impact on the forest, mountains, lakes, wildlife and other natural features in the Park.  That is what the Park Service is supposed to do and they do a good job of it.  

Outdoor recreation on the National Forest is very different, it is much less controlled, people are not as concentrated and there are not as many facilities, like paved roads, hotels, and shops as in National Parks.  That is appropriate because, if a National Park is like a big museum, a National Forest is like a big farm where the crops are, wood, water, wildlife, recreation and grazing.  Logging trucks may go past campgrounds in a National Forests, not in a Park; you can hunt in a National Forest, not in a National Park; cows may be grazing near the stream you are fishing in a National Forest, no cows in a Park. 

The Park Service began competing with the Forest Service for the most scenic land in America soon after its creation.  Many National Parks and National Monuments have been carved from National Forests.   Competition between the two agencies has peaked and lulled from time to time, but it was bitter in the 1930’s when the Secretary of Interior Ickes was pushing hard to have the National Forests brought into Interior.  He didn’t succeed, but the issue has never totally been put to rest. 

On the plus side, the competition between the Park Service and Forest Serviced has resulted in both agencies doing their best, with the resources and direction they have, to serve public recreation desires. 

Our National Parks are a great heritage, it has taken farsighted, talented, and committed people to create and keep them.  Every day it takes committed and dedicated people to care for them and propel them into our future.  Thankfully, they’re on the job. 

About Forests & People -- Private Forests and Forestry Education

Privately Owned Forests 

As Americans left eastern worn-out farms and cutover timber lands, they headed west looking for new land.  The government was busy trying to keep these westward movers in America, so America expand west by acquiring more land, Public Domain.  It was the Army’s job to hold on to that land.   Congress continued passing laws governing ways to transfer Public Domain land to citizens and businesses to expand the nation further west.  Land was given to Revolutionary War veterans as payment for their service; large tracts were sold to developers and timber companies; the homestead acts transferred land to farmers and ranchers if they would put up buildings, fences and grow crops; the railroads were given huge amounts of land as an incentive to lay tracks headed west.  

East of the Mississippi where most of the land was forested, cutting the trees was the first thing most new landowner did, they absolutely needed crop land to survive and build communities; farmers, loggers, developers, they all needed the trees cut.  Not always a good idea, but it was done, after all, the thinking was, “There is always more land,”  the “more land” was the expanding Public Domain further west.  

  

During the push west, timber companies were busy acquiring forest land from the Public Domain, the railroad companies and any other way they could.  They had cut-out the forests of the lake states and the eastern states and there hadn’t been time for these forests to regrow, partly because they had not been replanted.  Duh!  But that was the way people thought about forests and land, “Use it up and move on.” 

Individual timber companies are as different from one another as are individual people.  Some do a good job of caring for forest land they own.  They use timber harvesting methods that keep the top soil in tact and water runoff clean.  They replant or leave quality seed trees or other techniques that reestablish a new forest where mature trees have been cut.  They take the long view of owning forest land for profit.  

Other companies, not so much.  They take the short term view to profitability, log the cheapest way possible, usually destructive to trees, soil and workers, and do little to invest in the next crop of trees.  

It’s probably reasonable to think most private forest lands were, and are, managed between these extremes.  

Forestry Education

Professional people hired to manage the public and private forests in America receive their formal training at colleges and universities across the country.  These professions include: forestry, silviculture, hydrology, soil science, range science, wildlife biology, fisheries biology, entomology, landscape architecture, engineering, fire science, economics, business management, archeology and others.  Educating this corps of scientists is a big deal, our universities do a good job of it offering BS, MS and PhD programs in these sciences.

The first college to educate foresters in America was New York State College of Forestry at Cornell University, it started in 1898.  Two years later Yale University established a School of Forestry where men (yes, just men in those days) with a bachelors degree were admitted in a two-year program that led to a master of forestry degree.   By 1910, seventeen colleges and universities, mostly in the East and Mid-west, were offering forestry education curricula.   These universities and colleges carried on research in natural resources and developed graduate programs that trained students to become researchers for the Forest Service and forest industries. (Dana and Fairfax, Forest and Range Policy, pg 84 - 85)

The careers of professionally trained natural resource people may take them to the higher level decision-making or research positions in corporations, government agencies or universities.  

Not all forest workers are university graduates.  People who learn forestry skills on the job and technical training as timber cruisers, fire fighters, surveyors, range technicians, recreation technicians, wildlife and fisheries technicians and others are the backbone of forestry companies and government agencies.  It is a blurred line between the kinds of work college educated people do early in their career and technicians work.  Technicians normally spend their career doing projects on-the-ground involving forests, fire, wildlife, streams and other natural resources.

All education is not in a university classroom
Learning to pack mules is still relevant.

About Forests & People -- Intermission -- The Peregrine Falcon

My Top Ten Wildlife Experiences, #17

The Peregrine Falcon  

August 20, 1986

Scapegoat Wilderness

Montana

Jim and I had been riding for a couple days through the Scapegoat Wilderness, each of us pulling a pack mule.  We started from the North Fork of the Blackfoot trail-head, past the North Fork Falls and camped the night at Carmichael Cabin.  The next day we went up Dobroda Creek with Mount Evans on our left and Scapegoat Mountain on our right, through the pass and down into the head of Cabin Creek.  

A couple times that day we had seen a peregrine falcon overhead, checking us out, she came pretty close.  No doubt, it was a peregrine, or maybe a prairie falcon, but it’s my story and I was there, so - peregrine!  

Our purpose was to check out a new area an outfitter wanted to put a camp.  We wanted to check access (there was no trail to the area), grazing possibilities for the stock, water, and most important would a camp there disturb grizzly bear activities.

Our plan was to put up a pretty good camp in Cabin Creek, leave the pack animals and get an early start up through the trail-less head of the basin.  Then ride the ridge to the proposed outfitter camp site.  By the time we would get back to Cabin Creek it would be a long day.  

We were saddled-up and leaving camp when there was just enough morning light to see.  Our camp was in the trees, but it didn’t take long until we passed the thick timber to where trees thinned out and there was more grass than forest - gaining elevation.  As we worked our way up the head of the basin toward the ridge top, alpine fir were about the only trees hardy enough to grow and they were scattered - but big.

By this time the sky was wakening - cloudless, through the color transitions, red to purple on the way to lazuli, but not there yet.  Horizontal beams directly from the sun were streaming through the pass above us - the one we were heading for - and smashing into the mountain peak off to our left a couple miles. 

By now we’d gained enough elevation so that we were looking down on those scattered, sharp pointed alpine fir.  Small birds were doing their cheep-cheep thing and flitting from one tree to another.  The horses had their “blow”, we moved on.  Two more rest stops and we’d be at the little pass.  For some reason, I looked up rather than ahead to where the horse was going to make his next foot-plant on this steep side hill.  

There was the peregrine, high above and down sunlight, not too far away, treading air.   She was hunting!  Then, while I was watching, she cupped her wings and went into that fabled 200 mile-per-hour dive.  Below, a tweety bird was flitting from one fir to another.  He never made it.  At the last instant the little bird dodged right - so did the falcon and took tweety at full speed.  A poof of feathers and the falcon was quickly on the ground with her first course for the day.  

And I’d seen it -- in this perfect, natural setting.  What an experience!!

I have no clue how that peregrine accelerated so fast with so little evident movement or effort.  Amazing!

This entire event only took a very few seconds, but those seconds were certainly a high point in my outdoor experiences.  It was made more meaningful because it took days, effort and know-how to be at that perfect place at that time.

Immediately my attention had to go back to where my horse was going to step next.  But I stored the peregrine event away ~~ memory is a wonderful gift.

     Jerry Covault,  

About Forests & People -- National Forests Today

National Forests

For All of Us

America now has 155 National Forests and National Grasslands occupying  around 193 million acres.   The National Forest system extends from coast to coast across the nation.  Each of us has benefited from these forests, and that’s not just a cliche, let’s look at how.   In the last half of the 1800’s the American west was set to have the same fate the Middle East, North Africa and much of Europe had experienced over the previous few thousand years, degrading from forest and crop lands to deserts.  Like those lands, America’s west is semiarid, and the western forests were next on the continent to be cut with no thought of reforestation, and sheep and cattle could graze where trees had been with no limits. The Tragedy of the Commons was set to happen again.  

But, Americans intervened in that subtle downward slide and set aside Forest Reserves to protect the headwaters of the great rivers of the West: the Columbia, Colorado, Missouri, the many other rivers and their tributaries.  These rivers are the watersheds that feed the reservoirs supplying water for Los Angeles, Denver, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Phoenix and other great cities and town.  If those watersheds had been degraded by logging and destroyed by overgrazing, the silt would have filled the irrigation canals and reservoirs.  No water storage, the cities and agricultural fields would have dried up - as happened in the Middle East.  There are no more places in the American West to build great reservoirs, smaller ones, maybe, but the best rout to have prosperous cities and farms is to keep the high mountain and mid-slope watersheds healthy and producing clean water.  The National Forests are the very foundation for healthy watersheds and they are managed to perpetuate clean water as well as recreation, wildlife, timber and grazing.

We owe those forward thinking people at the turn of the 20th century a great debt.  The best way we can “pay it forward” is to keep thinking big and wide and have the courage to choose the long-term good rather than short-term profit - “The greatest good to the greatest number in the long run.” is still the best (only) way to a healthy future. 

About Forests & People -- National Forests Grow

Congressional Directions

Growing on a rock foundation

Congress is not an institution that takes kindly to an agency in the Executive Branch gaining clout.  Soon the legislators noticed the Forest Service was selling stuff, timber, animal-unit-months of grazing privileges, permits for special uses within the National Forests.  Furthermore, the agency was using that money to do development work on the Forests, like build roads and trails, fire lookouts, ranger stations, planting trees, all those sorts of things.  Worst of all, they were doing it without Congressional permission, they didn’t need it, the agency had its own money.  Well, Congress needed to fix that, and they did.  A new law was passed in March, 1907 saying any money the Forest Service took in would go directly to the United States Treasury, Congress would allocate the budget for Forest Service operations, not the money the agency got from selling timber and grass.

That is an important and good thing for all of us, however frustrating it may be to the Forest Service.  It is good because it set the stage so the Forest Service proposed projects (timber harvesting, roads, campgrounds, essentially everything it does) in an annual budget and Congress would approve or change the agencies budget and that is what gets done.  If the agency had been allowed to use the money it generated to do projects there would be the temptation to put too much emphasis on bringing in money from things like timber sales and grazing fees and ignore the other forest uses, like wildlife habitat, fisheries, scenic beauty, water quality and recreation.  Congress did good.  But, more important, because Congress represents all of us and the annual budget, for the National Forests, and everything else, is a statement of what is important to America, it gives we people a say in how these National Forests are managed and what they should produce.

All things need maintenance and adjustment, the same goes for laws, in 1908 Congress passed the Twenty-Five Percent Fund Act.  This directs that 25% of the money coming from sale of National Forest  timber, grazing privileges, special use permits, etc. will go to the counties where a National Forest is located.  The money is for schools and roads and helps make up for the fact that Federal lands do not pay county property taxes.  These funds have been important to a lot of counties.  However, times have changed, the 25% doesn’t go as far these days, Congress needs to change the formula and it’s difficult for them to do.

A really good thing Congress passed was the Knutson-Vandenberg Act (K-V Act) in 1930.  This law authorized the Forest Service to establish forest tree nurseries and plant trees.  To pay for this, the agency could collect money from the sale of timber to replant harvested areas and keep the nurseries going.  That is looking-ahead and doing a good thing for all of us now and for future generations.  Otherwise, it is hard to plunk down the dollars to plant trees that will take a hundred years or more to be ready for harvest.

National Forests in the East

Roaring runoff  - May 4, 2015

Almost every year Congress passes laws giving management direction for the National Forests.  The Weeks Act of 1911 was one of them.  It authorized the government to purchase private land to become National Forest.  The idea was to pay market price for logged-over land, mined land and eroding farm land, designate it as National Forest and manage it to protect the headwaters of navigable streams.  This law was used mainly in Eastern states to create National Forests where there was no Public Domain, all the land had become private ownership long before.  Most of the National Forests in the East were established from purchases under the Weeks Act during the 1920’s and 1930’s, but some purchasing has continued.  At the beginning of the 21st century, 23 eastern states had 50 National Forests with a total of 24 million acres.   Over the years The Weeks Act has been a very successful program with public support.  These Eastern National Forest lands became places where natural beauty is; and productive forests, providing the public with outdoor recreation, clean water, wildlife habitat and a continuing flow of forest products.  

About Forests & People -- Forest Reserves become National Forests

Then Came TR and Pinchot

Teddy Roosevelt, Vice-president, Governor of New York, the Rough Rider, the lover of the West, conservationist before we knew what conservation meant, was suddenly, President Roosevelt.

Gifford Pinchot, the son of a wealthy and politically connected family in Pennsylvania was America’s first formally trained forester.  He studied forestry in Europe, he read Men and Nature by Marsh, and his first forestry job was managing the privately owned, seven thousand acre Biltmore Estate Forest in North Carolina.  Pinchot’s forest management plan was to earn the owner a profit while improving the forest. It was the first forest management plan implemented in America.  During that time Pinchot was appointed to a Presidential Commission to create a plan for federal forest management.   Pinchot’s activities on the commission got him noticed by Secretary of Agriculture, James Wilson who asked Pinchot to take the job as Chief of the Bureau (formally Division) of Forestry.  The Bureau of Forestry, in the Department of Agriculture, did two things, forest research and provide information and help to states and private companies concerning forestry.  The Bureau of Forestry had no forests to manage, that job was being done within the Department of Interior, sort of, Congress never budgeted the Department of Interior money or staff to do forest management things.  Secretary Wilson promised Pinchot a free hand to do what he wanted with the Bureau of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture.  It was 1898, Pinchot would either bring the Forest Reserves to him or he would find a way to go where they were, he took the job.   

When Teddy Roosevelt became President, Pinchot got close to him.  They shared a love of the outdoors and the West, they boxed each other, - literally - yes, boxed = bloody noses - a President - they played tennis.  Pinchot was informing TR’s interest in the outdoors and the West with forest science and awareness of forests, watersheds and the economics of forestry.  

Pinchot had a couple big goals in mind.  First was to greatly increase the Forest Reserves.  He knew that healthy forests were necessary for healthy watersheds that could provide clean water for agriculture and cities in the semiarid west.  Government control and management of high elevation forests was the only way to keep healthy watersheds in tact.  Logging, driven by the goal of making money for investors had a very long history, through many civilizations, of damaging forests, soils and water.  Pinchot convinced the President that the American west needed many more Forest Reserves. 

Forest Reserves Become National Forests

The second big thing Pinchot wanted was transfer of the Forest Reserves from the Department of Interior to the Department of Agriculture, where he was. The Reserves were created by withdrawing lands form the Public Domain and placing them within the Department of Interior’s General Land Office (GLO) for management.   But the GLO’s historic job was to transfer land from the Government to private ownership: homesteads, timber tracts, railroads, and other entrepreneurs that would put land to use, growing the national economy, and paying taxes.  The GLO was not set-up to manage land, forests or otherwise. 

The Department of Agriculture housed the Bureau of Forestry, but there were no actual forests within the agency it did research on trees and forests and provided education to states and private industry concerning forest issues.

As chief of the Bureau of Forestry, Gifford Pinchot began planning the  transfer of Forest Reserves to his agency.  He was a good planner.  Pinchot’s formal forestry training taught him to think of trees as a renewable crop that keeps producing through decades and centuries.  Some of that production is on trees the size of a fishing pole, some on trees large enough to be sawn into boards.   Either size, growth is annual production of a needed product, wood, and that’s a crop.  The Department of Interior didn’t deal with any kind of crops, Interior dealt with minerals, transferring federal lands to the private ownership and Indian Affairs.  For Pinchot, it was a no brainer, he wanted the Forest Reserves transferred to his agency in the Department of Agriculture.  He made all that boxing, playing tennis and camping with the President pay off.  In 1905 Congress passed a bill transferring the Forest Reserves to the Department of Agriculture, renaming them National Forests and creating the Forest Service to manage them.  TR signed the bill and appointed Gifford Pinchot as the first Chief of the Forest Service.  A hundred and ten years later The Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service is still managing the National Forests and it’s been a good deal for America.

The new Forest Service needed a guiding principal for managing the National Forests.  This is where words come in, words are important and Pinchot supplied those words in a letter to himself that was signed by his boss, Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson.   The “Wilson letter” begins, “In the administration of the forest reserves it must be clearly borne in mind that all land is to be devoted to its most productive use for the permanent good of the whole people, and not for the temporary benefit of individuals or companies”.  (Dana and Fairfax, Forest and Range Policy, pg 82)  Within the new agency, Pinchot shortened that to, “The National Forests will be managed for the greatest good to the greatest number in the long run.”   Those words became the motto and the guide for the Forest Service. There’s a good chance Gifford had read English philosopher Jermy Bentham’s writings from 1776,  where he said something very similar, not about forests, but things in general.  However, in this country, people involved with forests give Pinchot the credit.  It is a good philosophy for forest management, “Manage forests for the greatest good to the greatest number in the long run.”

Gifford was good at the political game, later in life he became governor of Pennsylvania.  

President Teddy Roosevelt continued designating more Forest Reserves, creating more opposition from Westerners.  A new Reserve here, a new Reserve there, (they were re-designated National Forests after the 1905 Transfer Act) began to come together until there was overwhelming demand to stop the President from creating new National Forests.  Western Senators introduced a bill in 1907 to take away the President’s authority to set aside Forest Reserves from the Public Domain.  Only Congress would be allowed to do that.  

The President knew, politically, he had to sign the bill that was on his desk.  He gathered Pinchot and a raft of people who knew about various parts of the West.  They spread maps all over the White House floor, marking them with lines designating new Forest Reserves.  That night TR designated 16 million acres of new Forest Reserves.  The next day, March 4, 1907 he signed the bill that prevented any President from ever again creating Forest Reserves.  There was considerable private land within the outside boundaries of most Reserves that became National Forests, but that was ok, those problems would be taken care of later.