The article is pretty bad.
Where were you guys in the 1990's when the Forest Service was gutted by almost a 40% reduction in staffing and professional resource managers fired and replaced by political appointees??
It was even worse in BLM were the professionals were replaced by than simply worked on political campaigns for the winning candidate. At BLM, that resulted in State Directors that had NO RESOURCE background period.
All that said.
The movement to Salt Lake City is fine. No Federal employee can move to DC and not have a substantial reduction in living standards. One of the problems for the Forest Service has been the hiring of DC employees without any background in the Forest Service or resource management. It showed.
The State Directors proposal will set up the Forest Service for consolidation with BLM in short order. Is this a good thing?? I don't know, the Forest Service is pretty dysfunctional these days and BLM is much better managed.
Remember Carter proposed consolidating the two agencies. This will make it much easier in the future.
Forest Service research was the leading research agency in the world on forestry issues. That is long gone. Once we decided that we will NOT be managing our National Forests, research into how to manage those public lands ceased to be a priority for every administration since the early 1990's.
That is a shame. The Forest Service and I were NOT a good match, but it was great working for a agency that I could find an expert to help with ANY issue dealing for resource management. That is not true today, and has not been for several decades.
I am not sure that transfer of public lands to the private ownership will ever happen. The Federal public lands are too valuable economically and ecologically to have the transfer occur.
There are too many corporations that depend on Federal lands.
I remember in the late 1990's where I was told to show up in Portland, by the Regional Forester, along with others that had responsibility for ski area management. There we sat through a two day session, where the ski industry representatives gave a presentation on Forest Service employees would implement the new fee and management requirements for ski area management on public lands!!!
Under the State Director setup you will see Governors in both blue and red states set policy and management standards based on political needs rather than professional resource management.
Oh well, at some point somebody with a "public interest" will notice and we, as a society, can move on from this mis-management of our public lands.
Really folks, the big issue is the burning down of our public lands over the last 30 years.
We have lost 20% of our Sequoia trees in just the last seven years. The northern spotted owl, along with the California and Mexican spotted owls are headed for extinction and a life in zoos. Then there are lots of species like Brewer's Spruce that will disappear in the next few decades.
People talk about sustainable forests, but the Rocky Mountain Region is burning down more trees than were are growing. My professional opinion is that the next Resource Planning Report by the Forest Service will show that the Pacific coast National Forests of Washington, Oregon, and California will also become unsustainble.
And the reburns in the next three decades, will insure that millions of acres of former forests will be converted to brush fields for thousands of years.
Future generations will judge us harshly for the destruction of our public lands through wildfires in just 30 plus years that will have ecological impacts for close to a thousand years.
