The Death of the Forest Service

Utah Senator Mike Lee Wants to Kill the U.S. Forest Service

We understand Senator Mike Lee’s anger over federal monument designations in Utah.
But this isn’t the way to settle the score with political opponents.

Here’s the backstory as we know it

A draft copy (RYA25627 4 KV) of Senator Lee’s proposed legislation arrived in our inbox on January 3.
The original reportedly circulated on October 9, but it wasn’t shared with us at that time.

We don’t know who is sharing it now, but it appears to have come from someone within the Senate Legislative Counsel.

The five-page draft—which appears to be a work in progress—is titled:

Reorganization of the Forest Service Under the Department of the Interior

That title is misleading.

This is not a reorganization

There is nothing in the draft that suggests a reorganization.

The proposed legislation would simply transfer the U.S. Forest Service—and the nation’s 193 million-acre federal forest estate—from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of the Interior.

That’s not reform.

It’s a jurisdictional shift with serious consequences.

Why this keeps coming up

Senator Lee is among several U.S. Senators on both sides of the aisle who—for very different political reasons—want to eliminate the Forest Service.

• “Progressive” Democrats favor letting “nature” take its course in federally owned forests, no matter the consequences.
• Republican budget hawks see consolidation as a way to cut federal spending.

Both arguments miss the reality on the ground.

The scale of federal land ownership

Federal agencies—the Forest Service, BLM, National Park Service, and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service—collectively manage roughly 676 million acres, with varying levels of success.

Senator Lee’s frustration is no doubt tied to land ownership patterns:

• 57% of Utah is federally owned
• 50% of Idaho, where we live, is federally owned
• 85% of Nevada is federally owned

The idea that these lands can be managed for less money through administrative consolidation is fantasy.

It doesn’t matter who does it—the Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior, or Howdy Doody.

Effective land management will still cost billions of taxpayer dollars.

The real cost question

The only way to reduce the taxpayer share of land-management costs is to sell land—an idea Senator Lee also favors.

We don’t.

These are publicly owned lands that belong to all Americans, not just elites living in gated communities and high-rise condominiums on the coasts.

What Congress could actually do

We don’t all share the same views on land management, but Congress could take meaningful steps to make federal agencies more effective.

Start by giving Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz the time he needs to implement the administration’s agenda.

Serial litigation remains a major stumbling block. Regulatory tinkering won’t help until Congress puts side rails on the much-abused Equal Access to Justice Act.

Congress also needs to update the Endangered Species Act.
Best science—not politics—should prevail.

A Threatened or Endangered listing should not equal no management.
Population recovery depends on improved habitat.

Why collaboration matters

Evergreen’s grizzly habitat recovery project on Hecla Mining Company timberland in northwest Montana depends on research and monitoring funded by the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula.

Ironically, federal agencies are not permitted to improve habitat on federal land, though they can act as advisors on state and private land.

This is why the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is one of about 20 collaborators in Evergreen's Adaptive Forest Management for Grizzly Habitat project - in the Bull River Valley south of Troy, Montana—along with:

• The U.S. Forest Service
• Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks
• The Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation

You can read the essays we’ve written about this project.
Go to our main page and type “Grizzly” in the search bar.

How the system is being exploited

Serial litigators know ESA and NEPA better than the members of Congress who wrote them. This is why those laws continue to be used to block nearly every attempt to improve habitat on federal lands.

Congress did take one positive step by approving Master Stewardship Agreements, which allow counties to partner with the Forest Service on thinning projects within designated Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) areas.

Lincoln County, Montana recently signed such an agreement with the Kootenai National Forest, allowing it to select treatment areas inside WUI zones at high risk of wildfire.

NEPA and unintended consequences

NEPA is another well-intentioned environmental law that has been corrupted by anti-forestry groups.

Congress needs to repair this regulatory morass. It has become a lucrative feeding ground for lawyers who oppose any and all forms of forest management.

We’ve said this before, but it bears repeating:

Anti-forestry groups don’t care if every acre of federally owned forest burns—as long as they retain political power.

The fatal flaw in the proposal

The draft states:

“Not later than 18 months after the date of enactment of this Act, the Forest Service shall be transferred to the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Interior.”

What happens if—or when—anti-forestry ideologies once again control the federal government?

With all federal land-management agencies consolidated in one department, there would be no checks and balances.

We’ve been here before

We are still recovering from the last round.

Spotted owl populations continue to decline, yet the role of wildfire in that decline remains largely unacknowledged. Protecting old growth on paper has not protected it on the ground. Stand-replacing wildfires have eliminated vast areas of old-growth and late-successional forest that once supported owl populations.

Other contributing factors are often emphasized, while habitat loss to wildfire is treated as secondary, despite the scale and permanence of the damage. Millions of acres have been lost—much of it in fires that could have been contained when they were still small—while federal agencies remain largely prohibited from restoring habitat on federal lands.

Why the West is uniquely vulnerable

When you look at the map at the top of the article - you can see that Western states and Alaska are far more vulnerable to election-year manipulation than the Midwest and East - because federally owned forests and rangelands are heavily concentrated in the West.

A conversation for another time

Someday—assuming faster wildfire response and real progress in science-based forest restoration—it may be worth debating the merits of establishing a cabinet-level Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.

But not yet.

And not while anti-forestry groups maintain an election-year chokehold on vulnerable House and Senate members.

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