A little humor in this story which some of you retired FS and BLM folks might understand. If you want to read a good book with all kinds of stories of being a young forester, staff assistant and District Ranger I recommend Forest Trails and Tales by Joel Frandsen, who worked in four different states on six National Forests.
Preface
MY CAREER WITH
THE FOREST SERVICE
A Ground View of the Forest Service from
Days Gone By
This is a
collection of memoirs from my career with the Forest Service starting in 1969
until 1995, after working on six National Forests, including the Modoc,
Stanislaus, Six Rivers, Plumas, Siskiyou and Umpqua. It started out with a few short stories
about different events then grew into expanded stories of each Ranger District
that I worked on with some separate events thrown in. It probably could be revised again, including
more details on outstanding issues, co-workers, forest contractors and more,
but probably would never get completed.
This is a story of
a Forest Service that in many ways no longer exists. Just like the early days when a forest
ranger traveled on horseback covering hundreds of square miles doing trail
work, looking for fires, or packing supplies to some remote camp, the era of
the Forest Service I was part of is becoming part of history also. The days when we drove green trucks on dusty
forest roads to survey a new logging road, cruise or inspect a timber sale have
almost disappeared. Today some of these
roads can longer be found, most Forest Service trucks are white, there are
fewer of them, and if you come across a dusty logging road you might be on
private timber lands. Timber
management, or as we called it, “get the cut out” was the primary focus in the
last half of the last century on many National Forests of the west, especially
the Pacific Northwest. Ecosystem
management is the name of the game today and most foresters and engineers have
been replaced with biologists specializing in specific fields of science. There are still Forest Service fire crews
and field technicians doing an assortment of jobs, including recreation,
wildlife habitat or restoration projects, but very little of that work deals
with timber removal, except for some thinning or salvage sales. If you see a logging truck today on a
National Forest road it might be a shock, but compared to the log traffic of
the last half of the last century it is hardly a fraction of what it used to
be. The spotted owl has received much
blame for the decline of timber cutting on National Forests of the west. In fact it was getting harder and harder to
find the timber to cut or come up with a five to ten year timber sale plan on
many Ranger Districts to keep up or maintain what was called the “Allowable
Annual Cut” or the Allowable Sale Quantity (ASQ). For funding purposes timber harvest plans
were needed to appease Congress in hopes of getting the funds to keep people
employed and the wheels moving to produce timber sales.
In addition, public
sentiment was against the status quo, especially the practice of clearcutting
on National Forests. With the declining
timber harvest under the Northwest Forest Plan it was hard to justify and get
Congress to finance the many foresters, road engineers and technicians
associated with the timber management program of yesterday. By the mid 1990’s the Forest Service was
offering buy-outs and early retirements in order to downsize this personnel. I was one that took a buy-out in March of
1995, mostly to save my sanity and do something else.
The focus of my
writings is centered on the different communities, local issues, housing
situations and job activities that I was involved with during my years working
as a forestry technician. At times it
might get too technical with terminology and forestry practices that some might
not understand. Except for using a few
first names of key individuals I was involved with, the names of most
co-workers and supervisors are not mentioned, and of course no last names. We had a job to perform, sometimes under
difficult circumstances, adverse weather conditions and at times there was
internal conflict about the best ways to achieve management goals, which led to
heated discussions. In my later years
there was always a meeting to try to resolve the issue of the day, which
usually led to another meeting. In the
early years I don’t remember any meetings, except an occasional safety or
project assignment meeting before leaving the station in the morning.
On a positive side
there was a sense of family with co-workers.
It was hard not to be emotionally connected and share personal problems
since much time was spent together traveling in a crew truck, doing field work,
at social gatherings, or many days on a fire line and confined to a fire camp
with each other. For better or worse
there were relationships with timber purchasers, road builders, loggers and
other contractors while dealing with the timber sale contract. Most of these people wanted to do a good
job, but there was always some that wanted to cut corners. In short it was the highest bidder that got
the timber and the lowest bidder that got the job of removing that timber. As one logging supervisor told me once, “If
you were not here we would tear this place down”. That justified my existence.
With all the
planning efforts, including watershed analysis, environmental assessments, and
logging feasibility reports, there was always something that fell through the
cracks, mistakes were made and finger pointing was common. A combination of unrealistic deadlines,
workloads and politics was the culprit of many management problems in my opinion. In many ways there were too many cooks in
the kitchen at times without adequate supervision and we were always at the mercy
of the political climate, which was usually under the influence of the timber
industry that always wanted more timber.
Today many problems
still exist with management of our National Forests. Rural communities have suffered economic
hardships from the decline of timber harvesting, many forest roads are not
adequately maintained, and the threat of wildfires has increased due to dense
timber stands in need of thinning and climate change. There is insufficient personnel to perform
the many jobs that need to be done these days.
In order to save money some Forests have combined under one Supervisor's
office and some District Rangers oversee two or even three Districts. Today there is too few employees to maintain
all the National Forest infrastructure, including roads, trails, campgrounds
and other improvements. The greatest
challenge of today is finding the right balance between resource management
activities and maintaining an ecosystem that will provide forest products,
clean air, clean water, wildlife habitat and recreation opportunities for a
growing population.
PAPER WORK
Working for
the Forest Service had its fair share of paper work to keep up with. In the early days working in the field doing
silviculture and timber sale preparation work we had plantation survey reports,
timber stand analysis reports, timber cruise data cards and harvest unit traverse
maps to turn in. We did not have
individual decks, but there was a long wall mounted table where the field crew
had their own inboxes. Here we received
memos and directives from the upper echelon to read, initial and pass on. The most important piece of paper was our
bi-weekly time sheet to turn in every other week in order to get paid.
When I went
to work in timber sale administration I had my first deck and the paper work
increased. There were the daily timber sale inspection
reports, fire inspection reports, monthly financial reports, audit follow-up reports
and all the management directives to keep up with. Whenever it was necessary to write letters
to a timber purchaser I was the one to draft it up for the District Ranger to
sign as he was the Forest Service representative for the contract. In later years this authority was delegated
to the District Timber Management staff assistant or lead administrator better
known as the Forest Service Representative or FSR.
The timber
sale inspection report was utilized on a daily basis for each timber sale
visited. There were four copies to this
report. The front page went to the
office file folder for that contract, one went to the timber sale purchaser,
one went to the logging supervisor on the job and one went to the Forest
Supervisor’s office. The timber sale inspection report documented
any mutual agreements, acceptance of work, minor contract change agreements and
notices of non-compliance with the contract.
The copy of this report that was sent to the Forest Supervisor’s office
went to the timber staff assistant in charge of contract administration. In most cases we never heard back on our reports
and while working in Gold Beach I thought I would see if anybody was reading
them. I filled out a fictitious report
describing a breach of contract of the worst kind, tractor logging in a
stream. A few days later the timber
staff assistant called me and asked what the hell is going on. I replied that I was just checking to see if
he was reading my reports.
Sometime in
the 1980’s the Forest Service went to computers and we were assigned an
electronic inbox to receive emails of all kinds dealing with management
letters, documents and directives from the Chief of the Forest Service, the Regional
Forester down to the Forest Supervisor.
Over time more and more stuff
accumulated in this electronic inbox and it could take an hour a day to go
through it all. Sometimes a report
requiring some kind of reply was overlooked and there would be a phone call
from somebody in management wanting to know if I had read whatever or how I was
going to resolve some contractual issue. The delete button got a lot of use.
While
working on the Cottage Grove Ranger District I went out to the fire warehouse
one day to replenish my supply of timber sale inspection report forms from the
storage room where all kinds of forms were stored. After looking at all the different forms I
came across one called the Negative Report.
This report actually had instructions that said, “Use this Report if you
have nothing to Report.” It was an obsolete form, but I sure had a good
time with it.
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