Resiliency is Replacing Productivity as the Watchword of the U.S. Forest Service

By Rock Barker rbarker@idahostatesman.com

March 07, 2011

The agency was founded in 1905 on the idea that using the science and technology of forestry could dramatically increase forest productivity and prevent a threatened “timber famine.” Historian Samuel Hays described it as “the gospel of efficiency.”

At the heart of that policy was eliminating forest fires, a goal and task the agency carried into the 1970s. A debate, which began in the agency as early as the 1920s and continued into the 21st century, pitted the agency status quo against people who saw the natural role of fire in forests as a process to be used, not stopped.

In the meantime, the concerns over other values like water quality, fish and wildlife habitat and wilderness constrained the traditional goal to make the forests produce more wood fiber. And the signal fires of 1988 in and around Yellowstone, and the series of huge western fires culminating with those in 2000, gave those who wanted to manage fire instead of stop it the upper hand.

In the process, the Forest Service struggled to find its new philosophical base. When your philosophy takes more than one sentence to explain, it loses people along the way.

That’s why productivity and efficiency were so powerful in describing the goals of the agency a hundred years ago. These ideas, and the national horror of the 1910 fires in Idaho and Montana, led to the passage of the Weeks Act on March 1, 1911.

The law, sponsored by U.S. Rep. John W. Weeks, provided funding and authority for the Forest Service to cooperate with states on fire control.

The Forest Service’s current chief, Tom Tidwell, who grew up in Boise, has effectively used the word “resiliency” to form a new consensus for managing the 193 million acres of national forests.

The new goal is to maintain the resilience of forest ecosystems and to restore that resilience where it has declined. But what does that mean?

At a time when the climate is changing more rapidly than anyone has ever seen, Forest Service managers are seeking to preserve the ecological processes critical to humans, other animals and plants. This year it meant doing controlled burns, logging, piling brush and thinning dense stands of trees on nearly 3 million acres.

Most of the work — 60 percent — was done near communities. The other 40 percent was done in the forests to protect these ecological processes, including watersheds that provide drinking water for millions of people.

That was one of the goals of the original Weeks Act, which added 6 million acres of national forests in the East.

“While wildfire plays a critical role in maintaining healthy ecosystems, we can and should try to reduce the risks it poses to communities and natural resources, including critical watersheds,” said Tidwell.

While debate continues, the political consensus holds. However, a stronger political consensus — the need to cut the federal deficit — threatened to reduce the amount of acres the agency can treat.

That likely will mean more acres will simply burn up. Often this will provide the same ecological benefits and “resiliency” that controlled burns and mechanical treatment provide.

But it is not pretty. When it burns around communities, all concerns about costs go away. Its smoke causes health problems and chases away summer visitors to the rural West.

Scientists now show that these huge fires, combined with beetles, are causing the dramatic ecological changes associated with climate change. These changes present still unknown impacts on our lives and favorite wild places and creatures.

Managing for resiliency is no magic elixir that will solve all the challenges public land managers face. But it appears to be a good starting place.

Copyright: © 2011 Idaho Statesman