For decades the U.S. Forest Service sold off so much of its timber that the forest became known as “the woodbox of the Mountain West.” Now, those logging practices are under attack by environmentalists. As a result, the Forest Service, long allied to the timber industry, is rethinking its traditional mission from Washington on down. “This is a struggle for the heart and soul of the agency,” says Michael Francis of the Wilderness Society.
The man in the middle of this bureaucratic revolution is Michael Dombeck, 41, who took over as director of the Forest Service in 1997. A laid-back Wisconsin native who has spent most of his career working for the federal government, Dombeck has a doctorate in biology and a passion for fly-fishing. As director, he oversees 30,000 employees who manage 192 million acres of government-owned forest–about a tenth of the total land area of the United States. For most of this century the agency has tended its forests as a cash crop–a harvestable asset to be cut down, sliced into lumber and sold. Dombeck is holding the annual timber harvest to about a third of the gargantuan totals typical in the 1980s. But his real impact is to push the Forest Service toward a more ecosensitive view of its vast landholdings and more businesslike approach toward resource management. “We need to be as light on the land as possible,” he says. “What people tell me is that they want forests to look like forests.”
Dombeck is the first director to admit what critics have contended for years–that the taxpayers are taking huge losses on the Forest Service contracts with the timber industry. Using the agency’s own data, the Wilderness Society estimates that the Forest Service could save $500 million over the next five years simply by eliminating “below-cost” timber sales. These costs include the roads that the Forest Service builds to enable logging companies to haul the timber out, and the surveying and legal expenses of the timber contract. As a result, the Wilderness Society says, a 65-foot, 100-year-old pine tree that will produce thousands of dollars worth of lumber products can cost the lumber company as little as $2.
Internally, Dombeck is trying to infuse the agency with a broader sense of environmental stewardship–to balance the short-term value of the timber harvest with the long-term sustainability of the forest ecosystem. The concern that drives him, he says, is how we can “maintain the large unfragmented tracts of land” within the national forests. He played a major role in reducing the timber harvest in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, and he banned mining from the Rocky Mountain Front, a scenic tract in western Montana. He imposed a moratorium on road building by the Forest Service–a tough measure, since the agency’s vast network of wilderness roads is critical for the timber industry. And he is trying to change a budget system that seems to give the agency’s district managers an incentive to cut more trees. That’s because the districts get a percentage of the timber contracts. Dombeck wants to reward district chiefs for restoring forests, not just cutting them down.
The reaction from the timber industry, unsurprisingly, is dismay. Michael Klein, a spokesman for the American Forest & Paper Association, says Dombeck’s policies threaten to end the tradition of lumbering in the national forests. “They’re trying to end forestry on public lands,” Klein said. “Is that going to put our companies out of business? Probably not. But it’s going to cost American jobs” as timber companies shift their operations overseas.
The Forest Service is trapped between the timber industry and the environmentalists, and the director is always the most visible target. Jack Ward Thomas, Dombeck’s immediate predecessor in the top job, knows all about those pressures; after a tough tour as director, he is now retired. Thomas says Congress may override Dombeck’s tilt toward the environmental movement, but he thinks somebody had to make a decision. “The Forest Service lacks a clear mission,” Thomas says. “It’s strung about between the [greens] and those who want full exploitation” of timber resources. “Mike has now said what he thinks that mission should be.”
