100 Years Young, Forest Service Meets to Map the Future

WASHINGTON, DC, January 5, 2005 (ENS) - The U.S. Forest Service is marking its 100th anniversary this week with Centennial Congress which aims to initiate a national dialogue on the challenges facing America’s forests. The gathering commemorates the 1905 American Forest Congress, which led to the creation of the U.S. Forest Service, now an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

U.S. Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth is a second generation forester. His father, Irwin Bosworth, served as supervisor of the Lassen National Forest in California. (Photo courtesy USFS)

Calling professional forestry in the United States "one of the 20th century’s greatest conservation success stories," Bosworth said, “My hope is that the Centennial Congress can help provide a foundation for similar contributions by the agency and foster a collective commitment to conservation in our next 100 years.”

USDA Secretary Ann Veneman told the more than 500 delegates on Tuesday that under the Bush administration's Healthy Forests Restoration Act, in 2004 the USDA and the Department of Interior together "treated a record 4.2 million acres of land, an increase of 1.6 million acres over the previous year's total."

Treating these acres means clearing them of trees so that wildfires cannot spread, even in areas where wildfires are not frequent. Veneman views such treatment in a positive light.

"I will never forget visiting the sites of wildfires or areas that had been burned and seeing firsthand the ecological and social devastation that catastrophic wildfires can cause," Veneman said. "I have seen stands of dead and diseased trees some of which, not long after, burned to the ground. And I am proud that, we are changing the equation."

But environmentalists do not agree. To mark the 100th anniversary, Greenpeace and the Big Sky Conservation Institute have identified the nation’s last remaining intact forests - called keystone forests - and faulted the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for failing to protect them.

Bear's Den, Sturgeon River Gorge Wilderness in the Ottawa National Forest in Michigan (Photo courtesy U.S. Forest Service)

Keystone forests are - the Maine Woods, the Blue Ridge-Appalachia, the Florida Panhandle, the Upper Great Lakes, the Mogollon, the Sierra, the Klamath-Siskyiou, the Pacific Northwest Volcanic, the North Cascades, the Northwest Rockies, and the Alaska Coastal Temperate Rainforest.

Unique maps show the condition and ownership of the land within each forest.

"These maps draw together for the first time the latest scientific studies of forest fragmentation, road density, biological diversity and health of plant and animal communities," said Bill Haskins, GIS manager of the Big Sky Conservation Institute and creator of the forest maps. "They provide a penetrating look at the damage already done, and a prescription for saving and restoring what's left of our most diverse native forests."

In the short term, Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on large-scale industrial logging and road-building in all forests administered by the Forest Service and the BLM. In the long term, the organization says, America’s best forest lands, starting with the keystone forests, must be given greater protection, and "the missions of the Forest Service and BLM must be refocused on restoration and conservation, not commercial exploitation."

But Veneman told the Congress that the U.S. Forest Service is already moving in the right direction. "We have streamlined restoration projects by helping federal, state and local officials work together," she said. "We have intensified the fight against invasive pests, treating 1.1 million acres to protect against devastating infestations."

"We looked to the long-term, developing a 10 year strategy to protect Western lands from wildfires, a strategy that 17 Western governors endorsed," Veneman said. "Under the Healthy Forests Initiative, we have implemented policies that result in improved wildlife habitat, better air and water quality, and less erosion."

On a panel today at the Centennial Congress is Gifford Pinchot III, great grandson of America's first professionally trained forester, twice governor of Pennsylvania, after whom a national forest is named. (Photo courtesy NFF)

"We are working with state foresters, private landowners, and tribal and local governments to develop guidelines that promote the use of forestry practices to sustain healthy watersheds. We are also consulting with landowners and private organizations to help develop a Healthy Forests Reserve Program that will help restore and maintain biodiversity and the habitat of threatened and endangered species," she said.

Greenpeace has a different view of what is taking place in the national forests. "The Forest Service and BLM have allowed, and even encouraged, rampant industrial exploitation of the nation’s forests at taxpayer expense," the environmental group said Monday. "Under the Bush administration, this mismanagement is escalating at an unprecedented rate. Most recently, the administration announced on December 22 that it was opening up all national forests to greater logging and mining."

The results of widespread logging are already being seen in eastern national forests, the environmental groups' report warns. "The famed Appalachian Trail begins in the Maine Woods," the report says, "but it is only a thin 'beauty strip' increasingly hemmed-in by clearcuts, roads and motorized recreation."

One hundred prominent Americans make up a new national advisory committee, Americans for a Maine Woods National Park. (Photo courtesy Restore the North Woods)

Conservationists are still hopeful that some of these forest lands can be safeguarded.

"There is an existing proposal submitted to the National Park Service for the creation of a 3.2 million acre Maine Woods National Park and Preserve in the heart of the Maine Woods. This new park would bring the land back into public ownership, restore past damage from logging and other industrial uses, guarantee public recreational access and serve as the foundation for a sustainable regional economy," writes Michael Kellett of the group Restore the North Woods.

On behalf of nine conservation groups, Steve Holmer said in a statement Monday that America's national forest is quickly disappearing, converted to logging roads, clearcuts and drilling operations. He says that "95 percent of the old growth forests have been destroyed."

"Sadly," says Holmer, "under the leadership of former timber industry lobbyist Mark Rey, the Bush administration plans to continue these trends."

Holmer points out that "based on the millions of public comments submitted during the roadless area ruling making process," we know that the public strongly supports protecting "old growth, roadless areas, municipal watersheds and endangered species habitat."

"It is very heartening," said Holmer, "to hear Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth recently announce at a regional Centennial event that his agency will shift its focus away from logging towards recreation, fuel reduction and ecological restoration all of which he views as the future of the National Forests and Forest Service management. However, it is apparent that the Bush administration, which has received millions of dollars in timber industry campaign contributions, does not share the Chief’s view."

Instead, the Bush administration has threatened to undo two of the Forest Service’s most important conservation achievements, the Roadless Area Conservation Rule protecting 58.5 million acres of undeveloped forests and a Reagan administration requirement to maintain wildlife populations.

"Under the new forest planning regulations that grant the agency nearly unlimited discretion unfettered by public concerns or science," said Holmer, "much of the progress toward sustainability provided by the National Forest Management Act of 1976 will also be undone."

But in his speech to the Centennial Congress on Monday, Chief Bosworth blamed deforestation of America's national forests on logging "in the first three centuries of our history as a nation," in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

"Thanks to conservation, that wasteful attitude has totally changed," Bosworth said. "We no longer think of a tree as an obstacle to progress or even as just standing timber. In my lifetime alone, we’ve seen a huge shift in values and attitudes. Today, thanks in part to new scientific insights, our focus has broadened. We now focus on the long-term health of entire forested landscapes."

"As a result," Bosworth said, "the way we go about managing forests and harvesting trees today is light years ahead of where it was a century or two ago. And it’s truly paid off: In the last century, America’s forest estate has stayed roughly the same, with little or no net loss nationwide."

Bosworth said that dealing with a growing population that will climb to 571 million by the year 2100 is one of the greatest challenges for forest managers. "Think about what that means for our water resources alone," he said.

And Bosworth acknowledged that global warming is a real and growing problem. "Climate change at various scales is undeniable," he said. "For example, we’re in a much drier period out West than we were 30 years ago. This has huge social, economic, and ecological implications."

For the chief, a drier West means more work and more worry. "We have a huge backlog of watershed restoration projects on national forest land alone," he said. "We’ve got thousands of deteriorating culverts to replace. We’ve got roads to restore, abandoned mines to reclaim, watersheds to repair, vegetation to treat, and all kinds of deferred maintenance and ecological restoration to catch up on."

The Forest Service’s Centennial Congress continues through Thursday. For more information, visit: www.natlforests.org/centennial.

Read the full Keystone Forests report by clicking here.

Find a National Forest or Grassland at: http://www.fs.fed.us/recreation/map/finder.shtml

The Bush administration move to open more of the national forest to development and logging is detailed in a December 23, 2004 ENS report here.