November/December 1999. A double standard in California. A new course for the Sierra Nevada. Why activists, members of Congress and federal officials should leave the beltway.

Double Standard in the High Sierra

For two years, Gary Guenther tried and failed to secure a permit to go backpacking with his family over Mono Pass in California’s John Muir Wilderness. The Inyo National Forest, which manages the popular area, sets a quota, limiting how many people can enter. In both of those years, Guenther was informed that the quota had been met. The next year, however, Guenther contacted a commercial outfitter who promptly issued him a permit and, for a fee, packed his gear over Mono Pass.

Why the difference? When it comes to granting access to its wilderness areas, the Inyo National Forest operates under a double standard.

The quotas, which are intended to prevent overuse at popular wilderness trails and destinations, are widely accepted as a necessary management tool in high-demand areas of the Sierra backcountry. Inyo officials have used quotas since the 1970s. They apply to thirty-seven of the forty-five Inyo trailheads that provide entry to the Ansel Adams, John Muir and Golden Trout wilderness areas.

The system seems simple enough. If you want to start your trip from one of those trailheads, you have to request a wilderness permit. If the quota has not been filled, you get the permit. If it has, you have to choose a different hike or try to go another time.

Commercial outfitters, however, are treated differently. They are authorized to issue their own permits to customers, using what is termed a “service day” allocation. That allocation sets a total number of days of commercial service each outfitter is allowed to provide annually. The allocations are set so high that outfitters rarely exceed them. If they do, they can ask for a higher allocation, a request that Inyo officials usually grant. The net result is that there is no effective limit on the number of days that commercial outfitters can operate on the Inyo, but strict limits apply to the public at large.

Guenther, who formerly worked as a wilderness ranger on the Inyo, doesn’t think that’s fair. And he believes the policy is at odds with existing laws and regulations. He points to the Inyo’s own forest plan, which directs managers to “apply trailhead quotas to both commercial and noncommercial users.”

Guenther has approached FSEEE with his concerns. Last spring, we spoke with Jeff Bailey, supervisor of the Inyo National Forest, and requested that he change the current practice and comply with his forest plan. When Bailey declined, we asked Regional Forester Brad Powell and Deputy Regional Forester Roberta Moltzen to address the problem. So far, the Forest Service has not made any promises, saying only that it will address the issue in its ongoing wilderness planning process. A decision could be years away.

FSEEE is not willing to let the U.S. Forest Service sweep the problem under the rug. We are working with two other organizations, the High Sierra Hikers Association and Wilderness Watch, to educate the public and to explore options to make Inyo officials allocate wilderness use in an equitable manner. Stay tuned for further developments. —Bob Dale

A Big Step Backward

“He who pays the piper calls the tune” applies aptly if you want sprinkles on your special double latte. If you’re paying the money, you should get to decide how your caffeine fix is prepared.

But is that how we want decisions to be made on our public forests? Should the highest bidder or the special interest with the thickest wallet get to decide which trees to log, or where? Of course not. That’s why we have the U.S. Forest Service, with professionally trained resource managers paid with public tax dollars so that they answer to the broad public interest.

A new bill introduced in Congress in September, the “Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 1999,” would undo this 100-year tradition. Under a 1908 law, the federal government has paid states 25 percent of the receipts earned from logging. The payments are meant as a kind of rent, recognizing that federal lands are not subject to local taxing authorities. On its surface, this new bill would ensure that states and counties containing federal lands receive their historically high levels of federal revenue from logging, even as logging declines on public lands to protect the environment.

If that was all the bill did, it would merit consideration. But it isn’t. The bill includes a devastating Trojan horse that favors monied interests. For each national forest, the bill creates a fifteen-person committee made up of “local resource users,” “forest workers,” “county elected officials,” and other special interests with a direct financial stake in how our national forests are managed. The bill gives each local committee millions of dollars, earned from federal logging, to pay the Forest Service to do whatever the committee wants to see done on our public forests.

Here’s how the bill would work. When the Forest Service cuts a tree, 25 percent of the money paid for the tree would go to the county government in which the tree is cut. But the county would not get to keep all of this money to spend on schools and roads, as it does under current law. Instead, a quarter of the counties’ 25 percent share would go back to the Forest Service, as specifically directed by the fifteen-person committee, “to promote investments in resource management,” such as logging.

When the committee “invests” any amount of money in a Forest Service timber sale, the county would get 50 percent of the revenue from the sale—twice as much as it does under current law. For as little as a dollar invested in a timber sale, the county would get 50 percent of the sale’s proceeds, and the Forest Service would get to keep the other 50 percent to add to its own budget.

Individual committee members could profit, too. For example, a committee member who owns a sawmill could direct committee money to promote timber sales close to his mill, to the detriment of a competitor who doesn’t have a prized seat on the committee. In fact, the bill exempts the committees from the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which is intended to prevent this sort of double-dealing.

In total, this bill would give local special-interest committees about $100 million a year to subsidize Forest Service logging and other revenue-generating activities to the financial benefit of the special interests that sit on the committees. And if you don’t have a seat at the table, you won’t get to call the tune. —Andy Stahl

Putting Science to Work in the Sierra

In October, FSEEE published its land management plan for the eleven national forests of the Sierra Nevada and the Modoc Plateau. Called Restoring Our Forest Legacy: Blueprint for Sierra Nevada National Forests, the plan emphasizes long-term sustainability.

The FSEEE plan provides for the health of the Sierra landscape and its plants and animals by ensuring that natural processes are allowed to function. Logging, livestock grazing, urban development and recreation activities would continue, but only at levels that keep those processes intact.

The plan shifts the U.S. Forest Service from management designed to meet the ecological requirements of a single species (such as the California spotted owl) to the management and conservation of entire forest ecosystems. At least 50 percent or more of the forested landscape would be managed to maintain large, old trees, large snags and large downed wood—key elements of old-growth forests.

In addition, the FSEEE plan moves away from management designed to meet timber targets, instead emphasizing goals for improving ecological health. The use of prescribed fire would be greatly increased, especially in areas at high risk for damaging wildfires.

The FSEEE plan also creates a new system of land designations known as management emphasis areas, including old-growth forests, roadless areas, ecologically significant areas and places harboring rare or declining plant communities.

Our plan, developed at the same time that the Forest Service is considering new management direction for the Sierra, will be included as Alternative 3 in the agency’s environmental documents. The FSEEE plan incorporates the expertise of numerous Forest Service employees, as well as professionals from other agencies.

W. Dean Carrier, FSEEE’s California field representative and a Forest Service wildlife biologist for twenty-three years, helped spearhead the effort. “This plan uses the best available scientific information to construct a practical, logical strategy for protecting the ecosystems and species most at risk in the Sierra Nevada,” Carrier said.

The plan may be downloaded from the FSEEE Web site: www.fseee.org. Hard copies (free to FSEEE members, $5 to nonmembers) can be obtained by contacting FSEEE at (541) 484-2692 or by e-mail at info@fseee.org. To request copies of the Forest Service’s environmental impact statement, write to: U.S. Forest Service, Sierra Nevada Framework EIS, 801I Street, Sacramento, CA 95814.

Get out of Town

There are some people who blame air conditioning for the downfall of an efficient federal government. Air conditioning, the argument goes, allows Congress to work through the sweltering heat of a Washington, D.C., summer rather than leaving town during the hot months. What was once a four-month break that gave lawmakers a chance to reconnect with their districts, and to figure out what their constituents really want, has melted to just one month—August.

Politicians aren’t the only ones who risk losing touch with the on-the-ground impacts of national policies and legislation. It can happen to forest activists, too. Most D.C. public land advocates got their start by defending a particular piece of land that they loved. That love of the land brought them and kept them (at least for a time) in Washington. Stay too long, and that marvelous land—a real and tangible place—changes into something more abstract: federally designated wilderness area, inventoried roadless area, a national forest.

This August, I joined the D.C. exodus and rushed out of Washington like a school kid at the last bell before summer vacation. I packed long pants and polar fleece despite the ninety-degree heat and 90 percent humidity that smothered the nation’s capital. I headed West with a tangible mission: to galvanize grassroots support for stabilizing Forest Service payments to counties and schools. I had arranged meetings with county commissioners, educators, local conservationists. I logged 2,500 road miles, trying to convince people that it makes no sense to tie local school and road budgets to the amount of timber logged from national forests. That’s the way the system is set up now.

I think I made progress. But the most important personal benefit was reacquainting myself with the once beautiful, now fractured landscapes of the West. The trip reminded me of why I got into this business in the first place and of how critically important it is to leave the steamy city from time to time to reconnect with what is happening to the land.

The harsh but true reality of my experience in D.C. has been that places that once seemed very special grow more ephemeral. Thinking about on-the-ground impacts of a law or a policy decision is difficult if you are separated from the lay of the land, the way the air smells, the appearance of the landscape. All too often, people who live and work in D.C. lose this physical and spiritual connection. They become impatient with “local” issues. Passionate defense gives way to entrenched thinking, faulty assumptions, easy answers. There is nothing like a trip through a forest in Montana or Idaho to bring a calloused urbanite back to reality.

I’m no stranger to the forests of Idaho and Montana. But every time I return, I’m shocked by the degree to which these lands have been abused. Seeing a place makes the abstractions of Washington concrete. A “harvest unit” becomes a ruinous clear-cut. A two-mile “temporary road access” materializes into loads of dirt bleeding into a stream where salmon swim. A faceless “inventoried roadless area” suddenly blossoms into a palpable patch of vibrant native forest. And the weariness of dealing with endless details and political tempests gathers again into understanding and outrage.

The air conditioning theory can be applied to activists as well as politicians. I suspect we could all use less time here and a few more months a year to contemplate what brought us here in the first place. —Amelia Jenkins

Forest Magazine | FSEEE