Senator Church and Senator McGee
In the late 1960’s, Senator Gail McGee, from Wyoming, was hearing complaints concerning 1000 acre clearcuts, and too many roads in the northern Wyoming National Forests. A Wyoming Forest Study Team was set up to investigate, if they found real problems they would recommend practices to correct the problems. They found real problems! Their report came out in 1971, “Forest Management in Wyoming.” The report recommends that timber harvests should pay more attention to wildlife, recreation, scenery and water quality and quantity. Clearcuts are considered an important silvicultural tool, but should be limited in size, 35 or 40 acres, not hundreds of acres. The roads need a whole lot more thought and engineering because they are the greatest source of erosion and cause the greatest impact on water quality. (Wyoming Forest Study Team, Forest Management in Wyoming, 1971) Forest Service officials reviewed the report and in a letter (2470) dated August 27, 1971 accepted most of the recommendations and directed foresters to follow the direction of the report.
At about there same time, Senator Frank Church of Idaho was investigating complaints of forest abuse on the National Forests. His investigation also found wrong forest practices by the Forest Service. Senator Church came out with guidelines that recommended limiting clearcuts to 40 acres, and no clearcuts in scenic land or fragile soils.
The Bollie Report out of the University of Montana criticized large clearcuts on the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana. Clearcutting was the issue in a 1972 lawsuit brought by the Izaak Walton League against the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia. The suit wanted clearcutting stopped.
Obviously the Forest Service’s forest management practices need correction. The people were speaking, “do what is right by our National Forests, not just the cheapest way to get wood out.”
Against this rising public concern about clearcutting and the desire to give increased attention to scenery, wildlife, and water quality; the timber industry got a bill introduced into Congress called the National Timber Supply Act, it would increase the amount of timber harvested from the National Forests by 50%. The bill was defeated. But, in 1970, President Nixon set up a task force to develop the “Forest and Related Resources” (FARR) plan. Coincidentally(? !) FARR called for a 50% increase of timber harvest from the National Forests. President Nixon told the Forest Service to do it. That level of timber harvest could not be sustained by the land base suitable for growing trees, so it would be against the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960. Now, there’s a problem! That was a time before computers when the way a ranger managed his (all rangers were “he” then) district was more autonomous. There were about 825 rangers in the National Forest System at that time, most of them heard that order and each individually said, “nope.” It takes years of work to prepare a large timber sale, designing the necessary roads, determining the silviculture prescriptions, designing the logging systems, considering impacts on all the resources affected by tree cutting, cruising the timber (determining the amount of wood to be cut), and appraising a base price per-thousand-board-feet that provides for replanting trees and mitigating impacts on water, wildlife, recreation — and has a profit margin for bidders. There was no money to do all the work and to respond quickly would have been irresponsible. As far as I know there was no significant increase in tree harvesting because of this ridiculous maneuver by the administration. In todays computer controlled world, accountability is much tighter and the ability of the on-the-ground manager to make decisions is considerably reduced.
That’s an example of politicians playing ping pong with the Forest Service as the ball, but more important, it’s our National Forest land they’re playing with and that just is not right!
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| Ponderosa on Pole Mountain, Wyoming |
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