September/October 2001. Chris Wood says, “Here we go again.” Support whistleblower protection.

Here We Go Again

The Bush administration recently reopened, and may weaken, one of the most notable and popular public lands conservation policies of the past century—the protection of 58.5 million acres of pristine roadless areas on our national forests. Having helped to develop this policy, I am not an unbiased or impartial observer. Still, I cannot help but think, “Oh, no, here we go again.”

Whether one supports or opposes the protection of roadless areas is not my point. Contrary to those who subscribe to the pendulum theory of public lands—it swings to the left and inevitably heads back to the right—the roadless rule was part of a conscious effort to demonstrate that the U.S. Forest Service would not shy away from leadership in national controversies that have dogged and come to define the agency for many.

Decades of dustups over clear-cutting, old growth and endangered species have bred a culture of cynicism and mistrust over national forest management that pervades Congress, public land managers, local communities, the media and interest groups. An underlying rationale for protecting roadless areas—and other policies concerning roads, old growth and forest planning that are now “under review”by the Bush administration—was ending the cycle of contention, distrust and litigation that has plagued multiple-use management of public lands for two decades or more.

A willingness to resolve long-festering national controversies and rebuild public trust is essential to creating a constituency for a new kind of public land management.

But wait, the roadless area rule was among the most contentious issues the Forest Service ever dealt with. How is consensus created through controversy? Look no further than the aftermath of last summer’s intense fire season when Congress passed a whopping $1.6 billion increase to protect threatened communities and restore fire-dependent landscapes through light-on-the-land thinning and judicious use of prescribed fire. Importantly, new funding was not directed toward traditional commercial timber sales.

Were the roadless issue not temporarily off the table last summer, it remains an open question whether Congress would have found such consensus. Many lawmakers felt burnt by the reaction to, and the effects of, the 1995 salvage rider, passed in the wake of a fire season similar in intensity to 2000.

One need not be a policy wonk to determine which approach better suits the Forest Service, the lands it manages or the communities of place and interest that care about public lands. The ghost of the salvage rider and the attendant controversy over “logging without laws”are fretted over or invoked with every national forest timber sale appeal. On the other hand, the fire plan’s approach to protecting communities and restoring landscapes presently enjoys broad local and national support.

The job of the Forest Service has always been to balance local needs against national interests. And perhaps the most painful lesson of the past twenty years is that thorny issues such as old growth, clear-cutting and roadless areas do not get any easier through delay or by forcing local managers to attempt to resolve national controversies on a forest-by-forest basis.

I do not believe the environmental community is licking its chops in anticipation of the organizing, fundraising and public bloodletting in the media that will surely follow any weakening of the roadless rule. Nor do I think the timber industry and its allies lie in wait for another severe fire season—looking to secure the blame for the tragedy of burned homes and ruined lives on those pesky environmentalists’ obstructionist ways.

But, if as Plato warned, the past is prologue, that is precisely what will happen by reopening the roadless area conservation rule—with all too predictable effects. Fuel reduction projects around communities within national forests that result in the occasional horizontal-lying tree will stall. Blame for severe fires will be assigned to declines in timber cutting. Those who seek the elusive middle ground will find a hostile climate of distrust, amplifying the always difficult business of consensus building.

Germany, Australia, New Zealand and other countries at various times employed, and later abandoned, the concept of multiple-use forest management. Over time, such lands were partitioned to parks or regulated as timberland. One wonders how long governors, federal lawmakers and, most important, the citizens that industry and environmentalists alike try to sway and win over will tolerate the status quo. The great experiment in multiple-use public lands may be nearing its end.

That would be unfortunate, and we who make our living working on public land—federal managers, industry users and environmentalists—will have ourselves to blame. Introspection does not come easily to large organizations, be they bureaucracies, advocacy groups or industries. No matter how necessary, cogent or overdue, real change is generally viewed with suspicion.

Former Forest Service employee Aldo Leopold once said, “The only progress that matters is that on the actual landscape of the back forty.”Less often quoted, but perhaps more pertinent today, is how he finished that phrase, “and here we are still slipping two strides backward for each forward stride.”—Chris Wood

Support Whistleblower Act

The Whistleblower Protection Act, intended to protect federal employees and contractors from retaliation for disclosing waste, fraud, abuse or gross illegality, has never lived up to its promise. As lawyer Tom Devine of the Government Accountability Project (a leading whistleblower advocacy outfit) explains, “Whistleblower protection is a policy that all government leaders support in public but few in power will tolerate in private. Laws protecting freedom of dissent have been long on rhetoric and short on genuine substance.”

Three senators have introduced S995, a bill designed to cure some of the act’s weakest links. The bill, sponsored by Democrats Daniel Akaka of Hawaii and Carl Levin of Michigan and Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, would ensure that whistleblowers are protected from retaliation when they disclose wrongdoing in the ordinary course of their regular duties. Courts have interpreted the existing law to stop short of protecting employees who are simply doing their job when they disclose wrongdoing.

To be protected from retaliation under current law, an employee must disclose wrongdoing to someone outside the agency, such as a news reporter, a member of Congress or a watchdog organization. As a result, for example, the U.S. Forest Service has been free to retaliate against Umpqua National Forest biologist Cindy Barkhurst because she disclosed illegal timber sales in the normal course of her duties to her superiors, not to any outside party. It was only after she suffered retaliation that she went public with her concerns.

The bill has been referred to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, where it is awaiting a hearing. If you live in a state represented by any of the above senators, please call that office and ask your senator to support S995, the Whistleblower Protection Act Amendment of 2001.

Forest Magazine | FSEEE