Evergreen Welcomes NAFSR to its website

We have been admirers of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees since the organization's founding in September of 2000. Its 400-plus members comprise the largest known reservoir of institutional knowledge concerning America's national forests.

Over the next year, NAFSR members will share their insights with Evergreen website visitors in eight essays designed to stimulate interest in a wide variety of economic and environmental challenges that face the Congress and, more directly, the U.S. Forest Service, which is responsible for caring for the America's national forests.

Since 1986, the non-profit Evergreen Foundation has been at the forefront in the often nasty debate over the fate of our national forests. Our view - which is shared by most if not all NAFSR members - is that management decisions should be based on science, not politics. But many environmentalists believe that our national forests should be left to the vagaries of nature, meaning that insects, diseases and wildfires should be allowed to run their course without human interference. Those who believe the public's forests should be left to nature have been very successful in controlling the political process.

In NAFSR's first Evergreen essay, Forest Service retiree John Marker tackles some of the misperceptions surrounding the "let nature take its course" viewpoint.

To read NAFSR's Essay No. 1, click here

To read Jim Petersen speech, "Is it time to give our Federal Forests back to the Indians," click here. Understandably, most NAFSR members do not share Petersen's viewpoint, but a few members do.