Forests & People - Intermission, Bugling Elk

*Intermission*

My Top Ten Wildlife Experiences, #3

Bugling Elk

Fryingpan and Snowy Range

1972 to 1976

When I was Ranger on the Fryingpan District, Whiteriver National Forest, for the fun of it, I worked on the skill of bugling to elk by whistling through my fingers.  I developed a pretty good imitation of a bull elk and over the years, since 1971, have called to elk hundreds of times -- a few times I’ve even had an elk bugle back!  Twice it was memorable.

In the fall of 1972, Vinance Faver and I were riding the Basalt Mountain Cattle and Horse Allotment.  It was a beautiful fall day, we were looking at the grass utilization and seeing if the cows were in the area they were supposed to be.  Being with Vinance all day on a horse looking at cows  and grass was always a good day - and a learning day for me. 

Because the elk had started bugling, Vinance had brought along a small brass bugle he’d just bought - he didn’t hunt, it was just for fun.  As we rode he would get the thing out and blow it from time to time, but it was a pain to deal with and we were riding the oak brush country so that made it worse.  I started imitating the bugling by whistling through my fingers.  Vinance was impresses, so that was good, and from time to time I’d give it a try.  We were getting higher in the country working our way up through the oak brush and starting to get into scattered lodgepole pine when I got an answer to one of my whistles.  

There was an elk down there!  And he answered me!  I waited a few seconds, Vinance said “Answer him.”  I did.  He called back!  

We were riding up through the brush toward a small open knob, but it was a ways off yet.  As we worked our way up, the elk and I were increasing our conversation -- of course I had no idea what I was saying to him.  But, we could tell he was getting closer.  We thought that was a good thing - at least it was exciting.

Finally we reached the knob, it was open, no oak brush or pines, rocky and only about as big as a couple houses.  We looked around for a minute, I bugled again.  

The elk bugled back and all of a sudden there he was! - Crashing though the brush and onto the knob with us.  Madder than hell and five or six points on each antler - I wasn’t into making exact counts, but those points looked big!  He was dancing around, snorting, head and antlers held high, he looked like an elk ready to fight.  Our horses didn’t like the odds and started prancing around wild eyed looking for somewhere to run.  Vinance and I were about the same as our horses.  

That bull elk wasn’t leaving, but he wasn’t sure we were worth his effort to fight.   I definitely had quit bugling and Vinance was trying to shoo him away.  This was not a good place to try and dodge a charging bull elk and there wasn’t any place to get away.  

After a minute or so of hooting and hollering and hat waving the bull decided these weird critters weren’t  worth any more effort and he crashed down through the brush, returning to his harem.  He evidently figured we were no threat to his beautiful cows ~ and he was right!

------------

My other big bugling experience was September 13, 1976, by then I was ranger on the Laramie District of the Medicine Bow National Forest in Wyoming.  Linn was the range technician and on this day we were riding the Snowy Range Sheep and Goat Allotment.  As I recall there were two or three bands (1000 head each - counting only ewes) on the allotment.  In mid September the grazing season was about over.  Snow that stays would certainly set in within a month.  So, we were checking forage utilization and problem areas.  

We unloaded the horses at the top of the pass on the highway that goes from Laramie to Encampment.  We headed east, just skirting the ecotome between the sub alpine and alpine.  It was early and the day was still cold, but the sky was clear so the sun would warm things up in due time.  We’d been riding a while so I let out an elk bugle whistle, it was the season.   Almost immediately I got a reply.  We were in alpine fir moving from one clump of trees to another.  I bugled back -  he replied.  He was coming closer. We kept moving, I called again.  He answered.  We kept riding, staying in the trees.  This went on for half an hour or more - an extremely long time for one of my wildlife experiences.  Finally the bull was in the same clump of alpine fir that we were.  These trees have branches that go all the way to the ground so sight distance is short. 

The bull was crashing around, snorting and bugling, trying to decide what to do about us.  We were moving around trying to peer through the limbs to get a better look at him.  He could have been, probably was, a six point or bigger (it’s my story and I’m saying six point.).  He was making a heck of a lot of noise and no more than thirty feet from us.  

After a bit of that we decided we’d better get out of his territory before things got out of hand.  We worked our way out of the stand of fir into the alpine.  Clearly acknowledging -- He’d won.  But, we had a neat experience.                             

Jerry

Forests & People - Next

Next!

The history of people and forests has mostly been; people take from the forest and don’t pay much attention after we’ve taken.  We have thought of trees as God’s way of giving us the wood - at no cost - trees have always just been there.  The only cost was to turn the tree into 2x4 s or plywood by logging, manufacturing, and marketing.  The results have often been very bad for the land, for the forest, for the critters and for the people that follow.   Those days need to be behind us.  We’d do better to put science and forest sustainability and all the benefits of a healthy forest ahead of short-term dollar profits.  Like the famous, “No free lunch,” there are “No free trees,” yet we’ve been treating our forests that way.  Of course that means money, and it will have to come from paying more for the wood products we all use and from taxes for government to do the complete job of managing America’s forests.

We need to start considering forests a living partner with us in caring for this earth - because they are!  Partners get paid for what they do, they have benefits and an expectation of a healthy future.  People need to find ways to value natural beauty like we may value a beautiful painting, or a board.  Natural beauty has value for most of us, but we don’t have a way to put a price on it like we do a painting, or a 2x4, there are no “man-hours” into natural beauty, we don’t put a price on it, so it is “worthless” and too often gets destroyed.  Even when outstanding natural beauty is protected, we don’t know how to put a price on it and often, through tourism, we may even destroy the beauty we recognized, yet, what is beauty for if not to be seen?  We could use some art and science collaboration to figure-out what to do.

A dollar value on Carbon credits is a way to value the job forests do pulling carbon out of the air where we don’t want it, and making wood out of those pesky global-warming molecules.  We need to determine what clean water is worth, adding-up what it costs to  make dirty water clean isn’t the whole story.  We need a way to value soil in place on a mountain side rather than eroded downstream to the bottom of a reservoir or in an irrigation canal.   We need to place a dollar value on lumber that reflects the cost of planting the tree, protecting and culturing the tree for 30 to 125 years before cutting it for lumber.  These and other efforts will start to give us a realistic idea of the value of a forest.  Then we can think about how to pay for caring for forests. 

There is another factor, it may sound a little weird, it’s one of those, “I don’t believe in ghosts -- but they’re there,” things.  Forests have consciousness.  They do!  We need to try to understand that consciousness and work with it.  Now there’s a challenge!  It could be done.  If we can come to understand that consciousness, “knowing” will help us live better on this great “Blue Marble.”  That kind of “knowing” is beyond science and it is short of the pure faith that religions requires.  It is an area of knowledge we haven’t developed the tools to investigate, we need to get to work on it, because this Earth is talking to us.

Forests & People - Transparent Forest Planning

Forest Management Becomes Transparent

The 1976 National Forest Management Act made a big difference concerning management of the National Forests.  It requires every National Forest have a plan that shows clearly the kinds of management activities that will be done and where.  For example some areas are suitable and available for timber harvesting, some are suitable, but not available because of conflict with other uses or needs.  It’s not an easy thing to wrap your head around, but think of it as zoning, some areas are good for several kinds of uses, growing commercial timber crops, wildlife habitat and watershed.  Another area may be so valuable for watershed that timber management activities are greatly modified to put first priority on improving soil health and water quality.  The law requires that Forest Plans be done with public input.  The Forest Service forest planning effort took that seriously, nation-wide there has been more public input to forest planning than any other public activity, other than Presidential elections.

Forest plans combined forest science with public values and they describe the issues, the goals and the objectives.  The plans put costs to alternative management strategies and selects the management strategy that will be followed.  That is good, planning is good, transparent planning is good, but there has been a down side.  The planning effort that the National Forest Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act require has led to never-ending litigation.  When the Forest Service or other government agency decides on an action or a project whether it is, a road, a timber harvest, a recreation development, wildlife improvement project -- whatever it is, someone or some group will oppose the project and take the agency to court to stop it.  Lawsuits often claim the Environmental Impact Statement is insufficient, even though it may include scores or hundreds of pages of scientific data, conclusions and recommendations concerning the project. This process puts forest management decisions into the legal arena where a judge will make decisions biased on legal words, not need, not cost, not good science.  How in the world did we come to that as a way to make good decisions?  Natural resources sciences are taking a back seat in federal forests and natural resource decision-making.  No matter who wins these cases, years of court delay are normal, so when projects involving time-sensitive issues, like salvaging fire killed timber before it rots, wildlife improvements, controlling insect outbreaks, the reason for doing the project may be lost by the legal delays.    

Legal challenges have reduced the flow of forest products and services from the National Forests and other federal lands so effectively it has become a well worn strategy.  However, the nation’s demand for wood has not decreased, so we take more wood from private land and, more import, from other countries.  Trees  grown on private forest land and certainly wood imported from other countries is not normally managed for multiple use benefits.  So, by using a greater proportion of wood from private land and other countries, it may be reckoned, results in greater environmental damage to the Earth than the perceived damage that initiates a lawsuit against a project on US public lands.  (Read that sentence again and think about it.)   Look to the tropical forests and the destruction to wildlife habitat that is occurring in many countries, consider the carbon sequestering that is being lost with the reduction of the tropical forests, the associated burning that adds carbon to the atmosphere.  We need to think beyond boundaries when considering what is best for our forests, the critters, natural beauty, the soil, the water and the products that come from and depend on healthy forests.  

Forests & People - Change Happens

Yellowstone and People

Yellowstone continues to educate Americans about the natural world.  The news headlines of the 1988 fire summer typically used the words, “destroyed”, and “consumed”.  Well, fire will destroy a human made structure, it will consume a book or table and leave only a pile of ashes, but fire does NOT consume or destroy a forest.  It burns over or through a forest, it kills trees, but they grow back from seed.  The grass and shrubs grow back from their roots, the streams will run clean again.  Fire is nature’s way of turning a page, the trees that come back may be different species, they certainly start out smaller than the trees that were killed, but they are green, their roots hold the soil, their crowns intercept the snow and they’re beautiful.  Wild animals return, the new trees provide hiding cover and thermal cover, the new shrubs, forbs, and grasses are nutritious food for the plant eaters that are food for the meat eaters.   Most fires leave unburned patches between burned areas.  The forest lives, it evolves and continues being a forest, if we let it.  Yellowstone has shown America that a forest is not “destroyed” by fire, it is changed, made young again.  It is a matter of how time is viewed, a forest takes the long view, maybe there’s a lesson there.

Bitterrot

People - Forests - Change

Ever since that unknown visionary inserted the “Presidential Forest Reserve Authority“ into an unrelated law in 1891, America has been evolving how it treats forests and wild animals.  The last 50 years changes have been coming faster, and change is difficult.  Some people think change will hurt them financially and maybe emotionally so they resist.  Others look further into the future and believe change is essential to have a better future, or any future.  

Many who resist change have their working life or their financial investments committed to things staying the way they are, that’s huge to a working person and their family.  These people will struggle with every thing they have to prevent, or at least delay, change that will take away what they have worked so hard for.  You can imagine how a buggy-whip maker felt when he saw one of those “tin lizzys” going down the road instead of a horse-drawn surrey.  The buggy-whip craft is a metaphor for a lot of jobs these days.  Change is tough. 

Those who look years - or decades - ahead and believe passionately that change must happen usually don’t have their immediate livelihood at stake, but they have commitment to an idea, and that is powerful.  There is more than idealism involved here, there are jobs, and money.  Professional organizers, lobbyists, lawyers, writers, fund raisers and many others involved in the “change public perception business” make their living working for “causes’ - whatever the cause may be.  Their job relies on keeping a “cause” going and that makes a person committed.  

Those who resist change and those who work for change, these are the actors in the drama about how we treat our forests, wild animals, streams, rivers, oceans, and plains - our Earth.  

We the people are the audience, but we are an active audience.  We will decide if this play will change our actions, our life, or will we choose to just rock-along and figure what-will-be-will-be, let others do the heavy lifting.  Both sides in this drama, the economic side and the preserve-nature side, need some lifting, better understanding, compromise, and creative thinking.  If only one side “wins,” both sides will lose.  People need what nature offers, clean air, clean water, healthy soil, beauty, variety of plant and animal life, minerals, we need these elements to create a secure, comfortable (warm, well fed, healthy) life.  Nature can continue to provide these resources, but not at the rate people have been taking them.  People need to find ways to give back and use natural resources at a slower rate.  If people don’t moderate the nature-taking, she will shut us down.  On the other hand, if all we do is “preserve” nature, that doesn’t make for a very good quality of life for anyone. 

There is a poem, “Two Kinds of People,”  by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, it is about lifters and leaners.  The forests-and-people-issue 

needs more lifters.

Newly planted Douglas fir

An old Ponderosa at a tough place to make a living.

Forests & People - Fire Camp Sports

*Intermission*

Top Ten Athletic Events I’ve Seen, #3

Fire Camp Sports Event

Meadow Lake Fire

September, 1975

The Meadow Lake Fire raged for the first two weeks in September 1975 in Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains.   It was a tough fire, the weather and terrain were against us.   Every day fire would rush through the tree tops and overtake our fire lines, sending crews scurrying for safety zones (sometimes skimpy) as fire spread another several hundred acres.  There were about 200 of us fighting this thing, finally after two weeks of being chased all over the mountain, we got fire lines around the main fire and the spot fires and were able to hold it.   At that point we started to allow the Hot Shot Crews to prepare to leave the fire.  

A Hot Shot Crew is made up of 20 firefighters, every one of them has several years of fire fighting experience, they are young, they are strong and athletic.  These crews are assigned to the hottest and most difficult parts of a fire and are expected to put out maximum effort for up to 18 hours of initial attack.   After initial attack their shifts normally settles down to 12 hours of the toughest work in fire fighting.   They are impressive people.  There were six Hot Shot Crews on this fire.   

We held all six crews in during the day before they would leave so they could clean up, get their gear in order, and rest.   The next morning we would have airplanes waiting for them in Sheridan, Wyoming to take them to their home base, or another fire. 

Once Hot Shot Crew members have a little time to rest they start looking for something to do.   That restlessness started to come up after supper.   One crew challenged another to a contest - good -  they started to figure out what kind of contest -- there wasn’t a football or any other kind of ball within fifty miles. 

They roped off an area about half the size of a football field, by then it was getting dark so they lined up a bunch of pickups outside the roped  area and turned on the headlights to light the “field”.   The “rules” they came up with were:  Each crew, 20 people, would have five water-pump backpacks (That’s a rubber bladder that holds about eight gallons of water, it has shoulder straps so it is carried like a backpack. There is a small hose between the bladder to a hand pump that squirts a stream of water.  It is a tool used for putting out small hot spots after a fire is controlled, there are hundreds of these used on fires, we call them piss pumps.)  OK-- a field with a roped off boundary, lit by pickup headlights; two, twenty-man teams; each team with five piss pumps,  THEN  each crew leader put a lit cigar in his mouth.   The objective was to put the other crew’s cigar out!!   NO RULES, no time, no referee.   After a “game”  two other crews would take to the field, then the winners would challenge each other.   

That “game” made rugby look like a fifth-grade playground activity!! Guys were being tackled and rolled, lifted on shoulders of others all of it on a dead run with both offense (the piss pumps) and defense going on at the same time often in one big wet scrum of 40 guys with arms and boots flying in all directions.   No one was hurt, and finally they all wore themselves out. 

There is no beer allowed in a fire camp and generally no one carries any money on a fire -- so no betting.   This athletic event was strictly “for the fun of it."   

After this playful interlude, they dried out the wet cigars, grabbed some “ZZZZs” and the next day they flew out, ready for the serious business of initial attack on a raging fire in rugged mountain terrain.     

I’ve seen professional football games, they don’t make my top ten list of athletic events, the Hot Shot Crews do. 

Jerry

Forests & People - About Fire

Fires and People

The ninteen-eighty-eight fire season was a game changer in the Western forests, especially the forests in the Northern Rockies. 

It was dry, very dry.  One of the measurements forest fire scientists use is the moisture content of dead wood on the forest floor.  There are the twigs and small branches called flash fuels and there are the medium size down trees that would normally take 100 hours to burn (+ or -), finally there are the large tree trunks on the ground that would normally take 1000 hours to burn (+ or -).  The thinking is, the bigger the piece of wood the more moisture content there is in its middle causing it to burn more slowly.  In the summer 1988 the thousand-hour-fuels were about as dry as kiln dried lumber in the lumber yard — that’s dry.  That means it wouldn’t take much heat to get them burning and they would burn with high intensity and, of course, the flash fuels would burn hotter and faster than “normal” because they held almost no moisture.  

At that time, fire behavior science held that fire didn’t spread in even aged lodgepole pine stands.  There isn’t enough fuel on the ground to carry the heat.  During the summer of ’88 the green tree tops were so dry that heat from fuels on the forest floor was not needed to carry a fire through the tree crowns, flames exploded from tree top to tree top causing whole forested ridges to ignite with frightening speed.

That summer The Canyon Fire in the Bob Marshall Wilderness had been allowed to burn from the time it started in July, it was burning within the prescription for fire in the Wilderness.  But the forest was drying through the summer and on September 6,  jet stream winds touched the ground causing the fire to blow up, burning outside the prescription.  Fire fighters tried to hold it, but it couldn’t be stopped.  September 6 and 7 the Canyon fire burned 180 acres every sixty-seconds for 18 hours, much of the burned forest was mature lodgepole pine.  When it stopped, the fire had burned 240,600 acres.  That was dramatic, but the news media didn’t pay much attention to the Canyon Creek fire, and there was a good reason.

The nation’s attention that summer was focused on the fires in Yellowstone National Park, Yellowstone Lodge was threatened, Cook City, north of the Park, was threatened.  Politicians were helicoptering around the fire, some spouting threats and ultimatums.  That didn’t help anything.  There were 9000 firefighters fighting the Yellowstone fires, in the end 800,000 acres were burned - that’s a lot.

Smoke jumper comin' in.

On the northern border of Montana, near Canada, the Red Bench fire broke out on September 6 and roared from the Flathead National Forest across the North Fork of the Flathead River into Glacier National Park.  It was finally controlled on December 1, the last fire controlled that year.  There were 71 large fires in the Northern Rockies that terrible summer, September 10 was the worst day, twenty major fires were burning, with 16,000 people engaged in fighting them. 

John Mumma, the Regional Forester for the Northern Region of the Forest Service summed it up, “In 1988, the Region experienced more days of extreme burning conditions than any other year in recorded history.  New maximum levels of energy release, burning indices, and rates of spread were established.  Fire behavior observed that summer baffled the experts with its unprecedented and never-before-observed intensity.  We obtained new knowledge and new experience in the summer of ‘88.  If need be, we can do it again and do it better because of what we’ve learned.”  (John W. Mumma. “Northern Region, Summer of ‘88” letter and booklet to firefighters, March 1989)

Fire Management -  Fire Science

  

The actions taken on wild fires in National Parks, National Forests, BLM lands and Wilderness are governed by fire management plans.  Most of these plans were developed in the 1980’s and were in effect in 1988.  An important objective in these plans is to allow fire to play a more natural role in the western forests.  The natural role of fire, before white settlement, was for fires to pass through a forest from time to time, in many areas the fire cycle was about every ten years. The dryness and fire behavior in 1988 showed it doesn’t always work well to impose a natural fire occurrence onto a forest that has been made unnatural by eighty years of eliminating fire from the forest.  When the dry years come there is a lot of fuel accumulation ready to burn - hot!

As bad as the 1988 fires were, 1910 was worse.  There had been no significant rain since March in the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana, Idaho and Washington.   The first fire that year was on April 29, by August there were hundreds of small and medium size fires burning. Then, on August 20 and 21, hurricane force winds rolled over the small fires whipping them together into a blazing inferno that swept over three million acres of mountain forests, destroying several small towns and one-third of Wallace, Idaho.  At least 85 people were killed.  Smoke from the fires reached New England.  By the time the fires were over, Forest Service rangers had employed over 10,000 people to fight the fires, including Company I of the 125 Army Infantry.

The 1910 fires initiated a national debate about fire management.  The majority, and the powerful, were on the side insisting all fires be put out as quickly as possible.  A minority, mostly scientists, argued “fire has an important role in the forest and where possible should be allowed to burn.”  The scientists lost.  The new policy was simple, understandable and powerful, “put out every fire start by 10:00 am the next day.”  If a Forest Service ranger missed that target, it wouldn’t be long before there was a different ranger on the district.  Of course every fire wasn’t put out by 10:00 am the next day, but fire as a part of the forest ecosystem was greatly reduced.  The “10;00 am Policy” was supported by: increased fire science research, fire organizations on Forest Service ranger districts, fire lookouts, mule pack strings to haul fire fighting supplies to remote fires, smokejumpers, forest roads, truck mounted pumpers, aerial fire attack, helicopter fire attack, fire shelters, even improved shovels for fire fighting.  An intense fire prevention campaign was launched to remove fire from the forest and make fire a villain.  Smokey the Bear was, and is, the star, even the Disney movie “Bambi” played into it nicely .  This policy against wild fire has continued for more than 90 years, it change forest ecology throughout North America and became a model for the rest of the world.  It took until 1988 to see the policy’s results, and they weren’t all good. 

In the 1930’s some forest scientists began to sound the alarm that the effective fire control was allowing too much dead wood to build up on the forest floor.  It took until the 1970’s for this reality to become widely accepted.  Of course, the problem was, when there is a fire start, these heavy fuels will build so much heat the crowns of the trees will dry, catch fire and spread rapidly, burning completely our of control and often unstoppable by human effort. 

The agencies began developing fire management plans that would allow fires to burn in certain areas - far from people’s structures and human activity - under carefully prescribed conditions.  If a fire burned out of the prescribed boundaries or if weather conditions were developing that could put fire outside the prescription, the fire would be put out, or fought to reduce its spread.   In addition to fire prescriptions stating the conditions a fire may be allowed to burn there are fire prescriptions to accomplish certain desirable things in the forest.  Fire scientists light prescribed fires with the objectives to burn fuels on the ground, to prepare the land for seeding or planting trees, to stimulate wildlife browse and improve the beauty of the forest - yes, prescribed fire can do all that.   The news media’s term for these fire prescriptions is “let burn policy.”   That term is such an over simplification it has zero accuracy and is terribly misleading, yet it is perpetuated because it is so simple.

A new word came into the fire vocabulary after 1988, Mega-fires.  Mega-fires defy the assumption that increased wildfire threats can be matched with greater fire suppression force and planning.  American Mega fires in 2000, 2004, 2013 and in fires in Australia burned right through the old myth that enough effort can stop a fire.  Mega-fires burn until a change in weather stops their rampage.  Fire fighters can try to protect high value areas and properties that are in the fire’s anticipated path, but those efforts are certainly not always (or often) successful.

The formal reviews after the fires of ‘88 decided that the fire plans were basically sound scientifically and economically and are socially responsible.  But, there were needs for much better coordination and information flow between federal land management agencies, states, local fire officials, the news media, the local public and politicians.  There needed to be better science about forest fires and weather.  That has been the effort since the fire season of 1988.

Forests & People - "Change your ways."

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! 

Ponderosa on Pole Mountain, Wyoming