We have been deluged by responses to Barry Wynsma’s thoughtful essay on Forest Service leadership – or the lack thereof.

Jon Lazaretti, Senior Marketing Representative with Columbia Helicopters, wrote from New Mexico to say “Excellent piece. I’ve passed it on here in NM to some of the folks I know.”

John Vezmar wrote from Lake Oswego, Oregon to say “A conservative Congress and president in 2012 may kick start some of the reforms Barry Wynsma recommended but it will be difficult. Too many radical environmentalists and their liberal lawyers will oppose every suggestion while greedily stuffing their pockets with taxpayer dollars.”

New Jersey forester, Bob Williams wrote to say he had told his state’s new state forester to read the essay as soon as possible.

Bill Wickman wrote from Northern California to say “thanks for the article,” and that he had worked with Wynsma in a Forest Service mechanical fuel treatment program. Wickman is working with the Sustainable Forest Action Coalition, the latest in a long line of northern California grass roots groups that hopes to encourage more active management of at-risk federal forests in the Golden State.

Pat Cooley wrote from Missoula, Montana to say that he agreed “completely” with Wynsma’s thoughts on Forest Service leadership. “I used to work with Barry and he is one of those guys who are always thinking outside the box. He was very successful in treating stands that most of us would have walked right past.”

Keith Olson wrote from Kalispell. Montana is say that Wynsma “nailed it.” Olson is executive director of the Montana Logging Association.

Larry Mason wrote from Seattle, Washington to say, “In stark contrast, consider the latest Forest Service happy face propaganda [conjured up in partnership with the forest knowledgeable folks at Dreamworks http://www.discovertheforest.org/ Barry, bless his nostalgic heart, wrongly implies that leadership could help a failed institutional experiment.”

Marlin Johnson wrote from Albuquerque, New Mexico to say he had passed Wynsma’s “excellent essay” along to “common sense” colleagues in his FS address book. Johnson worked for the Forest Service for nearly 40 years and was a leader in the effort to jumpstart a much needed thinning program in dead and dying national forests in the Southwest. In retirement, he is working as a consultant to a firm that hopes to site a facility in the Southwest that would manufacture laminated panels, cupboard doors, panels and furniture from small diameter trees removed from dying federal forests.

Alan Houston wrote from Grand Junction, Tennessee to say that Wynsma’s essay was “excellent and correct. They [the Forest Service] need a craggy old guy [as chief] probably from outside the ‘structure’ and near the end of his career, with not much to lose, who can get the agency turned around and ready for the next chief. Houston, who has a PhD in wildlife biology, manages timber and farm lands on the Ames Plantation near Grand Junction. He toured us there in the mid-1990s. Among his wisdoms, “When we leave forests to nature, as so many today seem to want to do, we get whatever nature serves up, which can be pretty devastating at times. But with forestry we have options, and a degree of predictability not found in nature.”

“I worry about the Forest Service,” Houston wrote this week. “I was at Land Between the Lakes recently and saw a large scale project that was systematically undoing long and careful work to build the forest up. Any of Kipling’s honest serving men, any question along the lines of why, brought me square on with the blank face reserved for dug up and badly stinking dinosaurs.”

“We’re getting old Jim,” he continued. “We’re getting to the point of having perspective. It is a lonely bridge and one that my Dad warned me about. I just never knew how much my youth would scare me now.”

Jim Doran wrote from Arizona to say, “This is a good article by Barry. I knew him when I was working on the Idaho Panhandle Coeur d’Alene Forest Coalition. He is a good man and he got a lot done where others weren’t able to do so.”

Doran, a lawyer and environmentalist, is a strong supporter of large scale thinning in at-risk federal forests. Unlike many of his environmentalist colleagues, he spent a great deal of time learning about available sawmilling infrastructure in eastern Washington and northern Idaho. Then, out of his newfound knowledge, he helped develop several large-scale thinning projects.

Karl Brauneis, a forester in New Wyoming, writes in, " Barry Wynsma wrote an excellent piece in Evergreen Magazine on the Forest Service. One of Barry's key points is to cut out the Forest Supervisors and fund the districts first from the bottom up. The districts could rely on the Regional Forester for assistance as needed. This is the system and organization used in the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to manage their wildlife refuges. Those who have transferred from the Forest Service to USFWS have said it is a breath of fresh air and that they accomplish much more work as the project leader is 'king.'"

And he continues, "The early retirement's of 1997 following the Clinton administrations purge of the professional leadership corps was the death blow to the agency. The old forest staff officers that were so supportive of the district's work were now gone. Sure a few hung on but by and large, the "new kids" thought their job was to supervise the districts, critique their work and take personnel actions against anyone that was trying to get the job done. It became a top down agency of 20 bureaucrats looking over the shoulder of every field hand trying to do the job of 25. Anyone who thinks the Forest Service is decentralized needs to get off of whatever they are smoking."

Two of the more lengthy responses we received came from Forest Service retirees, Dick Pfilf and Ned Pence. These are well worth reading.

Wynsma will be retiring from the Forest Service in September after 33 years. We wish him well.

—Jim Petersen, Co-founder and Executive Director, The non-profit Evergreen Foundation