Doug MacCleery - Part 1 - What To Do With The USFS...

In this article you will find Doug's essay on Reinventing the Forest Service. It is an extensive article so we have attached it as a PDF.

Editor's Note:

Doug MacCleery and I have been friends and writing colleagues for more than 30 years.

We last published one of Doug’s essays on our website in January 2021. Western Wildfires: How did we get into this mess and how do we get out of it?

This essay first appeared on the Dovetail Partners website in January 2020. Doug was on Dovetail’s advisory board from 2006 to 2018.

Dovetail, based in Minneapolis,  is essentially a think tank. It was co-founded by Jim Bowyer, a retired PhD University of Minnesota professor, we met at a Forest Products Research Society conference in Vancouver, B.C. in 1991. Jim subsequently added Evergreen Magazine to the reading list for his freshmen forestry students.

Bowyer's book, The Irresponsible Pursuit of Paradise, published in 2016, is a must-read for anyone who eschews using our domestic natural resources in favor of importing them from poor third-world countries that need money but have no environmental standards.

I no longer remember who introduced Doug and I, but we spent hours on the phone reviewing charts we used in The Truth About America’s Forests, a booklet we first published in 1987. We updated it seven time and ultimately gave away more than one million copies.

Doug and I haven’t seen one another in several years, but in an email exchange earlier this week, he reminded me that we both worked the Healthy Forests Restoration Act in 2002 and 2003. He is much further up the food chain than me.

MacCleery's essay, Reinventing the Forest Service updates a version he originally wrote in 2008. Much has happened since then, and he brings us up to date in a well-illustrated, thoroughly footnoted piece that you'll want to download and keep for future reference.

About Doug MacCleery:

MacCleery worked early in his career for the U.S. Forest Service in California as a forester and wildland firefighter. From 1981-87, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Natural Resources and the Environment at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He returned to the Forest Service, working in Washington, DC, on forest and natural resources policy and legislation in the Forest Management division of the agency until retiring in 2010. Mr. MacCleery served on the Advisory Board for Dovetail Partners from 2006 to 2018. He is also on the Board of Directors of the Forest History Museum. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.