Sally Fairfax Saw It Coming

"Constant procedural tinkering does not, I fear, lead to efficiency or simplicity."

Long before the recently announced Forest Service realignment, Sally Fairfax warned what happens when process overtakes stewardship...

I’ve never met Sally Fairfax, but I have admired her intellect and scholarly writing for more than 40 years - so much so that I recently tried to persuade her to answer some questions for me about the current state of forest policy in our nation’s capital.

She worked in the Forest Service’s Washington Office for many years and was widely respected for her policy assessments.

She politely declined.

“I’m retired now,” she said. “It’s been years since I paid much attention to what goes on in Washington, D.C. I don’t think I could be much help to you.”

Actually, she’s been a huge help to me over the years.

Here’s a sample of her rock-solid intellect: an essay she wrote about public involvement and the Forest Service that was published in the October 1975 Journal of Forestry.

A Voice Worth Revisiting

In addition to her widely admired Forest Service career, Sally taught natural resources policy, administration, and law for 35 years at the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and the College of Natural Resources at the University of California, Berkeley.

Not long after moving to California in 1978, she took up glassmaking, another expression of the curiosity that has long marked her life. s

See her work at:

My fallback position here is a lovely 1980 quote from Sally that perfectly described why the agency was then failing its mission - not because of anything it was doing wrong, but because of “constant procedural tinkering” by House and Senate natural resource committees and subcommittees.

Sally’s Warning

Here’s what Sally wrote:

Far from achieving a rational decision-making process, RPA [Resource Planning Act] and NFMA [National Forest Management Act] may well result in stalemate and indecision as the Forest Service turns from managing land to simply overseeing a convoluted, ever more complex set of congressionally mandated procedures.

The tradition of land stewardship, if indeed it survived the 1950s and 1960s, may have died in the 1970s. RPA and NFMA take the initiative from experienced land managers - those revered people on the ground, the folks who have lived with the land and their mistakes long enough to have developed wisdom and a capacity for judgment - and give it to lawyers, computers, economists, and politically active special interest groups seeking to protect and enhance their own diverse positions.

This shift in initiative will result from the layers of legally binding procedure that RPA and NFMA foist on top of an already complex and overly rigid planning process. Constant procedural tinkering does not, I fear, lead to efficiency or simplicity. Rather, it promises a proliferation of steps, sub-steps, appendices, and diverticula that makes the Forest Service susceptible to the ultimate lawyer’s malaise: the reification of process over substance.

Process Over Substance

That is a nearly perfect description of what has gone on in the halls of Congress for decades.

Former Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas called the resulting regulatory nightmare “the Gordian Knot.” It is this knot that this administration appears to be trying to loosen, with the able assistance of current Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz.

We’ll have more to say about this next week. Chief Schultz is keynoting a forest collaborative conference here in Coeur d’Alene, and it seems likely that he will discuss the realignment of the Forest Service that was announced last week.

Moving the Work Closer to the Forest

As you no doubt already know, the agency is moving west to its new headquarters in Salt Lake City. It makes great sense, given the fact that our nation’s publicly owned forests and grasslands are concentrated in the 11 western states.

Just as important, this proposed move is very much in alignment with the original vision of Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt. It places the Forest Service in the West, where a majority of the nation’s public lands are, and better aligns the agency with the landscapes and communities it serves. It is a practical reminder that agencies work better when they are closer to the ground they are supposed to know.

That matters because healthy public lands and healthy communities have always been linked. Forest-to-community health may be a modern phrase, but the underlying idea is not new. It has always been one of the central intentions of responsible forest management.

Significantly, decision-making that has long been centered in the Washington Office and regional offices is being pushed down to Supervisor and District Ranger offices. Here’s a PDF summary that explains the realignment. Note the dots on the map that show what, where, and how the pieces of this new puzzle fit together.

Most Washington Office personnel will be moved to Salt Lake City or elsewhere in the West, and the regional offices will be closed. Deputy Chief Chris French, and a small cadre of administrative personnel, will remain in D.C.

As you might imagine, this realignment of purpose and place is causing some handwringing among those who have enjoyed all that D.C. has to offer. That is understandable, but agencies have to adapt when the work demands it.

Others we know fear that the Forest Service isn’t doing enough to reduce wildfire risks, but Chief Schultz has addressed the necessity of extinguishing wildfires as quickly as possible at every one of the whistle stops he has made in the West this year. Undoing decades of what Sally called “constant procedural tinkering” will take time.

A First Step in the Right Direction

I want to think that this realignment would please Sally, because it is a first step toward increasing efficiency - more work done by people with boots on the ground - who actually know what sort of management is needed in the national forest or ranger district for which they are responsible.

No more one-size-fits-all projects designed by people who don’t even own a pair of boots.

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