FSEEE turns 20. In alignment with our conservation ethic, we celebrate in a low-key manner. Photo © George Filgate
Twenty years ago, at the height of the cozy relationship between the U.S. Forest Service and the timber industry, Jeff DeBonis and his band of agency rebels called for radical change in the philosophy governing our national forests. DeBonis, a timber sale planner on the Willamette National Forest in western Oregon, founded a green group with a long name, the Association of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. The mission of AFSEEE was to represent members of the Forest Service who felt the agency should return to its mission of /caring for the land and serving the people,0 rather than serving the timber industry. Though the agency publicly backed DeBonis’;s right to disagree with its practices, the timber industry wanted his head, calling his alignment with environmentalists a conflict of interest and demanding that he be fired. AFSEEE also engendered criticism from members of Congress. One came from a Democratic congressman who announced that he was not going to listen to a band of malcontents. The eagerness to discredit, or at least marginalize, the fledgling organization assured DeBonis and his supporters that they were on to something. They persevered.
AFSEEE, now shortened to FSEEE, has been watchdogging the Forest Service ever since. In this issue, we celebrate (with a cupcake, in alignment with our conservation ethic) FSEEE’s two decades of efforts and our vision for the future. Current executive director and publisher Andy Stahl takes a look at new challenges in “A New Mission for Changing Times”. DeBonis recounts his motivation and the origins of AFSEEE in “Taking on the Establishment”. Forest historian Char Miller examines how the agency has responded to shifting management concerns in “The New Face of the Agency”. We take a look at how activists have fared under both Democratic and Republican administrations in “Shifting Political Winds”. Dave Iverson, who has been part of FSEEE since its inception, imagines how activism in the next twenty years will continue—different, but still just as vital, in “Into the Future”. Inner Voice highlights some of FSEEE’s successes in “Strategic Maneuvers”.
At the end of the 1980s, the era of big timber was drawing to a close, but the agency mentality to “get out the cut” regardless of the environmental cost would take longer to die out. The fight to save old-growth forests and preserve wilderness has taken on a new urgency as climate change emerges as a global crisis. Wildfires, energy and mineral extraction, invasive species and increased recreational use have all challenged the agency. For two decades, FSEEE has monitored the shifting demands on our national forests and the response of the agency to those demands. We have changed our focus to conform to those challenges, and we will continue to do so to ensure that our public lands remain healthy and accessible for generations to come.