Whistleblowers on the Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming, above, lost their jobs when Abigail Kimbell took charge. Photo © George Wuerthner.
Dear Abigail Kimbell, regional forester, Northern Region, U.S. Forest Service:
Why am I not surprised that you have been selected to succeed Dale Bosworth as the next chief of the Forest Service?
It’s clear to most thinking Americans that Bush has no regard for the environment. The president’s staff and their corporate allies spend an incredible amount of time and money seeking people who will carry on his anti–environment legacy long after Bush is gone from the White House in January of 2009.
I knew you, Abigail, on a day–to–day basis at Oregon State University from 1978 to 1980. We were both pursuing our master’s degrees in logging engineering. I could not understand at the time why you were never able to envision a tree as anything other than several logs. To you, a tree was a “piece” that weighed so many “kips” to be hauled to a “landing.”
It never occurred to you that these trees you wanted so desperately to log were part of a forest…or a favorite picnic site for a family…or critical wildlife habitat…or that these trees might even shade a blue–ribbon trout stream.
I never said anything to you at the time. I felt you might grow out of it. I thought once you left academia and actually started walking alone in the forest, you would see the majesty of the natural world without human tinkering. I was wrong.
Based on your history, it’s obvious that your skewed sense of values stayed with you and became even more bizarre after you left the university.
You were selected as the forest supervisor for the Bighorn National Forest in 1997. Prior to your arrival on the forest, you knew that in 1994 eight Bighorn employees wrote a letter to their regional forester, disclosing that the Bighorn forest supervisor had created a hostile work environment for his employees and was mismanaging the forest in several ways. Rather than thanking these employees for their work, you reacted differently.
Within a year after arriving, you decided to terminate fourteen positions through a forest reorganization. Of those that you proposed to be abolished, five were the positions of six people who signed the 1994 letter and were still working on the Bighorn. You told the press that the reorganization was vital to stay within your budget.
Over the next two years, you used the Workforce Reduction and Placement System process to reassign four of the 1994 letter–signers to other duty stations. One of these four people was reassigned to a technical position in Arkansas that he had never performed before. One letter–signer had his job abolished and was able to be re–employed on the Bighorn only after various members of Congress spoke on his behalf. By the year 2000, only two people remained on the Bighorn who had signed the 1994 letter to the regional forester pointing out massive mismanagement of public land.
The Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit law firm, defended the employees that were threatened by you. The attorneys alleged that the reorganization was your attempt to discipline whistleblowers.
On April 22, 2003, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel announced the favorable settlement of eight whistleblower retaliation complaints filed by the Government Accountability Project on behalf of eight current and former employees of the Bighorn. Under the settlement, the Forest Service was ordered to pay a lump sum of $200,000 to be divided among these eight people.
The agency was also ordered to provide corrective personnel actions for two of the eight complainants, mitigating a fourteen–day suspension to a reprimand, and providing an interim bridge appointment to a former employee who experienced a break in federal service after he was removed for refusing to accept a geographic reassignment.
Unfortunately, one employee who signed the 1994 letter lost her job after her ecology position on the Bighorn was abolished before the settlement proceedings had begun.
Special Counsel Kaplan stated, “This was an unusually complex retaliation situation given that it occurred over a lengthy period of time and through a dubious reorganization that took advantage of [Workforce Reduction and Placement System] procedures.”
You were named to become the associate deputy chief of the Forest Service in 2002 to lead the nation’s timber program on national forest land, a Bush administration decision. You were named the regional forester for the Forest Service’s Northern Region in December 2003—again, a Bush administration decision.
Few American citizens know that much of your time at your last job as associate deputy chief in Washington, D.C., was spent authoring the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003. Bush signed the Act into law the same month you became regional forester.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect the dots of your past.
You and your new boss, Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey, will get along great. You have so much in common. You know this, since you’ve worked with him before.
Abigail Kimbell, you shouldn’t be chief, you should be ashamed. I can only pray that your stay in the chief’s office will end with Bush’s departure.
Every person in America that cares about their public land will be watching your every move like a hawk…including members of the new Congress.
Sincerely,
Richard Artley
Richard Artley is a retired U.S. Forest Service land management planner.