Thoughts Upon Leaving the
Agency I love
Rob Mrowka, January 2003
This paper is a passage for me - a short memoir of my personal journey as a foot soldier for management improvement, ecosystem management policy, and the struggle for change in the Forest Service. It also provides an explanation for why one who has always worn "green underwear" would leave the Agency he loves early with penalty and still wanting to serve.
As such, you should expect this essay to be very biased it is after all my personal perspective and recollection. My hypothesis and conclusion is that the current Administration and Chief represent a break in the forward thinking evolution of ecosystem management policy that began in 1985 in a Republican Administration under Chief Robertson, and which continued through two Democratic terms under Chiefs Thomas and Dombeck. As stated in a December 4, 2002 editorial in the Seattle Times, "The Bush Administration's curious retreat on environmental protections in the nation's 155 national forests and grasslands is oddly out of step with changing public attitudes .The proposals are at odds with an evolution within the U.S. Forest Service, which saw its old constituencies move in new directions".
While some will attempt to dismiss this essay as politically-motivated, I want to make it clear that like former Deputy Chief Jim Furnish before me, I do not intend my remarks in a partisan way. There have been environmentally sound policies and initiatives promulgated under both parties. Rather, I view my differences with the current Administration and Chief as being based on differing land ethics.
Ethics are not right or wrong they are based on one's personal value system. But one ethic can be better or worse for accomplishing a goal such as moving and positioning the Agency to meet our stewardship responsibilities. During the past two years a deep divide has arisen between my land ethics and where the Administration is taking the Forest Service. I feel strongly that as an Agency we are drifting further out of touch with the vast majority of the American public and from the policies needed for long-term sustainability of our ecosystems and society.
My land ethic is a big part of my core values and is critically important to me, and it is because I no longer feel I can live my ethics that I am now leaving the Forest Service.
Like many my age, I came to the Forest Service an eager utilitarian in the mold of the God-father - Gifford Pinchot. I left a promising career as an Air Force officer, taking a 50% pay cut, to resume the dream I had had since I was six to be a forest ranger. I joined the FS in 1976 the year of the National Forest Management Act (NFMA), a coincidence that ultimately would lead both to some of the highlights of my career as well as my need to leave early and before I would have liked.
I served as a district and forest silviculturist most of my field career, being certified for over 12 years. During most of this time I fully bought into the regulated forest model and saw the forest largely as the trees and the commodity and non-commodity benefits they provided. After all, that is what we were taught in school in the good European tradition.
Notions of the intrinsic values of forests, species, old growth, unroaded areas and ecosystems never entered my mind.
Silvicultural Certification did significantly broaden my perspectives and instilled in me an inherent appreciation for establishing a good ecological basis for management actions. But sciences such as conservation biology, landscape ecology, and the human dimensions of forest management were not even taught or discussed in the early 1980s.
In my view, it was through the leadership of Jerry Franklin, Chris Maser and Hal Salwassser and the New Forestry/New Perspectives philosophy that the FS awakened to the new emerging sciences and the fact that forests are more than just an aggregation of trees.
During my later career I served on the Washington Office (WO) Ecosystem Management Interdisciplinary Team, the Management Improvement Advisory Group, both western Forest Health Initiative teams, the writing teams for the 1995 and 2000 NFMA planning regulations, and as a Deputy Forest Supervisor and as a Forest Supervisor, to name a few of the assignments I've held.
I was fortunate to be able to personally interact with some great Chiefs and assist them in moving the FS in a new and steady evolution of policy until the current Administration.
Management Improvement and Ecosystem Management F. Dale Robertson
F. Dale Robertson was the first of my hero Chiefs. Dale came from a background much like my own, and he saw the need to change the Agency for it to remain relevant. His Management Pilot Initiative attempted to shake up the organization by turning loose the creative potential of all employees regardless of grade or position. We were encouraged to be "barrier busters", innovators, risk takers, and champions, and to reduce red tape, emphasize customers, and to work more as teams. In December of 1989, Dale expanded the Pilot to the entire Agency through the Chartering of a Management Philosophy for the Forest Service. The Chief himself went on record as saying that, "Nonconformists, risk takers, and innovators are encouraged and are key to meeting the challenges of a changing future". As I and perhaps many of you have experienced, such diversity in thinking is not rewarded or appreciated today.
These heady and liberating times led to a policy to reduce clearcutting on the national forests, and the birth of ecosystem management the Forest Service being the first federal agency to endorse such a policy and a key player at the Rio Earth Summit. And even though we were inventing as we went, we were the leaders, and we brought key national partners along with us in our quest. An Ecosystem Management Interdisciplinary Team was commissioned by Deputy Chiefs Sesco and Overbay to provide advice and counsel to the Chief and Staff on policy development and implementation. Optimism reigned.
Dale also commissioned the development of the Mission, Vision and Guiding Principles for the Forest Service. In a related but little publicized or known effort he attempted to reform a highly dysfunctional Chief and Staff by developing, with help from the Management Improvement Advisory Group, a "Principle-centered Leadership Guide" and Matrix to assist the group to "lead by our guiding principles". Principles and integrity were poised to become paramount.
Course to the Future Jack Ward Thomas
Jack Ward Thomas was the next Chief. Jack came under unfortunate circumstances that were forever to change the nature, culture and character of the agency. Although a career employee, he became the first true political Chief and the heir to micromanagement by the supervisory political appointees above him. Rather than being the "U.S. Forest Service", we became the "USDA-Forest Service" and our ability to practice land management with a long term perspective was placed in jeopardy. We lost much of our ability to be objective, trained and science-based natural resource professionals and were to become just another "loyal supporter" of the Administration in power just like the hundreds of other federal agencies. Employees now find our leadership being strong proponents of the Administration's initiatives such as reducing the role of the federal work force through competitive out sourcing, which ultimately will only serve to further weaken the role of science and resource professionals in managing the public's lands. Instead of the "Chief's Agenda" on the Agency web site we find "The President's Agenda".
For more thoughts on this, see Jack Ward Thomas' paper in Evergreen Magazine at, www.evergreenmagazine.com/news/indeptharticles/whatnow.html .
Thomas' contribution to the evolution of ecosystem management was the "The Forest Service Ethics and Course to the Future", distributed in October 1994. It further built on New Perspectives, Ecosystem Management, the Management Philosophy Charter, and the Mission, Vision and Guiding Principles. It boldly stated, "Our land ethic is to: Promote the sustainability of ecosystems by ensuring their health, diversity, and productivity." It specifically acknowledged that, "Through ecosystem sustainability, present and future generations will reap the benefits that healthy, diverse, and productive ecosystems provide". Jack liked to talk about "not killing the goose that laid the golden egg". It further stated that, "Our concept of ecosystem health builds on (Aldo) Leopold's definition of land health as a vigorous state of self-renewal".
Jack defined our service ethic as, "Tell the truth, obey the law, work collaboratively, and use appropriate scientific information in caring for the land and serving people". How far have we lapsed from this ideal today?
The Course to the Future had four components:
In April, 1994, the WO Ecosystem Management Staff and the Ecosystem Management Interdisciplinary Team produced Program Aid 1502 A National Framework Ecosystem Management. There were four key components:
Jack re-energized the effort begun in 1991 to re-write the NFMA Planning Regulations and incorporate the sciences of conservation biology and landscape ecology and to put the regulations into an ecosystem management context. Draft regulations were issued, but debate with the Undersecretary and others in USDA precluded final issuance.
Jack tried to re-group the Agency's leadership and get them on the same page through the Houston Forest Service Leadership Conference in Houston in June1994. I worked directly with Jack to put together the Ecosystem Management segment.
Reflective of the deep philosophical divide that exists in the Agency, the old guard sat back and silently resisted the changes envisioned by the on-going Reinvention effort. The "back to basics" proponents couldn't conceive of how giving up control and assuming the convener-facilitator role envisioned by ecosystem management could overcome the "wicked problems" (Allen and Gould, Jr, 1986; Roberts, 2001; and Conklin, in press) the Agency faced, more-less satisfy their ego and power needs.
The Natural Resource Agenda Mike Dombeck
So it was then up to Mike Dombeck to tackle the schizophrenic organization and get it to embrace the policies and philosophies that had been emerging since the mid-1980s and on the same path and agenda as the American society as a whole.
Mike is my greatest hero. In my view he is unmatched as a modern-era visionary Chief and in getting the Agency actually turned in a new course however transient due to politics. Unfortunately, what he had in vision, he lack in charisma and could never establish a solid bond with the average Forest Service employee.
I believe that Mike clearly saw the problems Dale and Jack faced in modernizing the Forest Service and saw the need for an entirely different tact forceful and top-down. Such is the topic of an article by Todd Wilkinson in the High Country News in April 1998. In this same issue, editor Ed Marston speaks of Dombeck's effort to administer CPR to a "death-wish ridden Agency. I believe Dombeck realized he couldn't get to where we needed to go by relying on the voluntary participation by the "back to basics" old establishment. Unfortunately, for whatever reasons (most likely political) he couldn't be as forceful in removing his saboteurs as Wilkinson and Marston suggested he needed to be.
Mike built firmly on the evolutionary path of ecosystem management, including the strong collaborative focus. When one views the Natural Resource Agenda, a clear connection can be established with the policy and philosophical changes instituted by the previous two Chiefs. At the core there was a clear stewardship and environmental ethics focus, more in the manner of Aldo Leopold than Gifford Pinchot.
In releasing the Natural Resource Agenda in March 1998, Mike stated, "Every United States citizen is a stockholder of our National Forests. This agenda will help us more effectively engage in one of the noblest, most important callings of our generation bringing people together in helping them find ways to live within the limits of the land".
The Agenda had four primary emphasis areas:
Within this vision and framework Mike would institute two other grand policies the Roadless Area Conservation Policy and the 2000 NFMA Planning Regulations.
Roadless Area Conservation
Recognizing that much of the conflict over the management of the national forests centered around the issues of old growth/ancient forests and the intrinsic value of unroaded lands, Mike formulated a proposal to set aside many of the "wicked problems" facing the Forest Service and focus management in the areas already roaded (more on wicked problems later in this paper).
By setting aside, for now, the roading and logging of roadless areas, tremendous opportunities were presented to the Agency. In doing so the Agency could search for easier to find common ground and set about to re-establish Agency credibility and trust with our stakeholders and the American public by assuming a facilitator role and practicing bold and true conservation leadership. Management could be focused in already developed areas, including the wildland urban/rural interface and plantations and second and third growth timbered stands. Disturbances such as prescribed fire and wild land fire for resource benefit, tree cutting and non-extractive silvicultural practices could be used to manage roadless ecosystems.
Recognition would be given to the intrinsic value of the unroaded areas, not to mention their value for watershed protection, wildlife habitat and connectivity and recreation. Over 400 public meetings were conducted and over a million comments were received, the vast majority (96%) in favor of the policy. Even some rural county commissioners could see the possibility that this policy could be the path around the entrenched debate over federal land management and a way through the gridlock.
With the change in Administrations, the Roadless Policy was left undefended in the Courts, until a recent decision brought potential new life to the Policy. In that decision the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed a District Court decision (Kootenai Tribe of Idaho v. Veneman). The majority acknowledged the intrinsic, watershed and wildlife values provided by unroaded areas, and stated, " we find the Forest Service's discussion of the mitigating measures, with an extensive discussion of forest health and fire ecology, in the [Roadless] EIS to be adequate". And later, "There can be no serious argument that restrictions on human intervention in these wilderness areas would not result in immeasurable benefits from a conservationist standpoint".
How could an Agency that once prided itself in being the "conservation leader" now turn its back on such a conservation strategy?
2000 NFMA Regulations
One of the short-comings of the 1995 Thomas planning regulations was that unlike the 1979 and 1982 NFMA regulations, there was no external basis of recommendations from a committee of scientists.
Through a public notification process begun in August of 1997, a new interdisciplinary Committee of Scientists (COS) was formed with the task of providing scientific and technical advice to the Secretary of Agriculture and the Chief of the Forest Service on improvements that should be considered for the National Forest System Land and Resource Management Planning Process. This team of 13 produced the groundbreaking report, "Sustaining the People's Lands Recommendations for Stewardship of the National Forests and Grasslands into the Next Century". Interestingly, the Committee reached back to Gifford Pinchot for inspiration for the title through his quote, "National Forests are made for and are owned by the people." The Report itself emphasizes strong public participation and states, "A collaborative-planning process rests on continuous, open participation by all stakeholders, interested parties, and the public. Simply providing issues for consideration or comments on proposals is nowhere near sufficient for a collaborative-planning process."
Throughout the Report the Committee incorporated both the pieces of the Agency's evolution of ecosystem management from New Perspectives to the Natural Resource Agenda and incorporated them either directly or by reference into the Report, as well as bringing in the recognized current state-of-the-art and science in ecological, social and economic arenas.
Most telling was the emphasis on sustainability and the paramount need for ecological sustainability in order to be able to provide for social and economic sustainability. They described sustainability in these words:
" (S)ustainability in this modern sense has three aspects: ecological, economic, and social. These different aspects of sustainability are interrelated: the sustainability of ecological systems is a necessary prerequisite for strong, productive economies; enduring human communities; and the values people seek from wildlands. Most basically, we compromise human welfare if we fail to sustain vital, functioning ecological systems. It is also true that strong economies and communities are often a prerequisite to societies possessing the will and patience needed to sustain ecological systems".
Other emphasis included:
A Forest Service Writing Team was formed by Chief Dombeck, to work with the Committee of Scientists, an Agency Steering Committee (members of which were now Chief Dale Bosworth and Associate Chief Collins), and Agency and outside experts to put into Regulatory language the recommendations of the Committee of Scientists.
This Writing Team was diverse in composition in terms of expertise, grade, job, and work location in the Forest Service.
From the start the Team was instructed by Chief Dombeck and Undersecretary Lyons to "not only think outside the box, but to remember there is no box!" We were asked to start with the COS Report and to then go back to original legislation and strip away any previous Agency developed regulations in our deliberative approach. It was clear that we were to frame the new NFMA Regulations in terms of modern science, ecosystem management, and where the Forest Service needed to head in the future, and to not be constrained by the Agency's past or present. It was clear to me that the vision of Chief Dombeck was that this effort would propel the Forest Service into a new planning and management era and a basically new and different approach definitely not "back to basics". Ultimately people in national leadership positions, who opposed these ideals and sabotaged them while Dombeck was Chief, gained power with political changes made after the 2000 national elections and the progressive evolution of ecosystem management policy since the late 1980s was broken.
Proposed 2002 NFMA Regulations and the Healthy Forest Initiative Dale Bosworth
In sharp contrast to the COS led effort for the 2000 NFMA Regulations, this Administration and Chief have seen fit to overturn that effort based on the flimsy premise that the existing regulations (2000) are not implementable without even trying to implement them! Implementation is a matter of desire and will, and clearly neither are present under the current Administration.
In the place of the independent and diverse COS, an internal group, composed largely of planners and process people wrote the proposed 2002 regulations. Conveniently left out or left to attempt to influence the product at the margins were the biologists, ecologists, and social scientists. a Forest Service version of ethnic cleansing. The proposed 2002 regulations are permissive and without clear assurances.
I will only briefly summarize the thrust of the changes and emphasis I believe were intended in the 2000 Planning Regulations, and compare them with the current initiatives, including the 2002 proposed NFMA regulations and the Healthy Forest Initiative.
As mentioned earlier in this paper, public deliberation, learning, joint-fact finding, and collaboration were key recommendations of the 1998 Committee of Scientists and were the heart of the 2000 NFMA regulations. To quote again from the COS Report, "Deliberation is a process in which a variety of perceptions, interpretations, claims, and contentions are openly discussed, critiqued, and challenged. Simply put, deliberation represents democracy in action .Clearly, a deliberative approach to participation takes time, involves numerous discussions across a wide cross-section of participants, and seldom leads to full consensus or complete agreement. Nonetheless, only through deliberative processes can collaborative planning create credible scientific strategies or public and stakeholder support."
The types of issues and controversy encountered in natural resource management decisions are often, nebulous, without clear definition or solutions, and are largely due to divergent world-views and values. Such problems are referred to as "wicked problems" (Shindler and Cramer, 1999; Shindler, Brunson and Stankey, 2002). In the COS Report (Table 4-1) the identified approach for reaching resolution is "Emphasis on both stakeholder and expert deliberations".
Hence in the 2000 NFMA regulations there was a strong emphasis on upfront collaboration, identification of issues, joint problem solving, the development of shared landscape goals and proposed actions, and public assistance in monitoring. It was still left up to the Responsible Official (RO) to determine which issues to take forward into a NEPA decision, but the expectation in the regulation is clear that far more than the traditional public involvement was expected. To assist the RO when forward progress appeared to be stopped, Advisory Committees would be available for advice and counsel and to lend credibility for moving forward.
In stark contrast are today's solutions calling for streamlining, making processes more efficient and faster, and simplifying the collaborative process.
Such an approach is fine for routine or problems where there is high agreement on the problem definition and solutions, but emerging research on wicked problems hold little hope it will be successful in that arena.
Streamlining, shortening, and simplifying the decision making process are the same tried, tested and tired approaches that have led the Agency and society to the present contentious, high volatile and conflicted situation we find ourselves in today. It is the problem, not the solution!
In Weick and Sutcliffe's (2001) highly acclaimed book, "Managing the unexpected assuring high performance in an age of complexity" they hold that the key to success for highly reliable organizations is a reluctance to simplify the complexities that define their operating environments. Yet, the Forest Service, sadly, seems intent on doing just that, in the false hope that by simplifying the processes and attempting to narrowly frame the issues, the complexities of conflicting values will somehow disappear. Doing away with the "red tape" and "gridlock" sounds worthy on the surface, but when one looks deeper it is fraught with consequences that will likely ultimately further diminish Agency credibility and public trust while polarizing the issues even more.
The proposals for new Categorical Exclusions for Forest Plans and forest health projects would be reasonable if there were deliberative processes in place to provide ample and assured discussion and dialogue. But with no such assurances stated explicitly in the 2002 NFMA proposed regulations (as there was in the 2000 Regulations) or in Agency policy, and given the significant lack of public confidence in the Administration or the Agency's desire to protect the environment, they are divisive and out place. Before they can be considered, trust in the Agency's credibility and motives must be established.
Despite attempts by the Chief and Associate Chief to mold public sentiment otherwise, there is little doubt that the proposed 2002 NFMA regulations weaken environmental protections, particularly for biological diversity concerns, and place the sustainability of national forest and grasslands at increased risk.
While it is true that there are, at a minimum, three parts to ecosystem management and sustainability social, economic and ecological it defies logic to argue that all three are equal in importance. Ecological sustainability is the solid foundation that the other two must rest upon for there to be any hope of permanence for future generations. Think back to Jack Ward Thomas' quote on killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Leopold offered this pertinent observation, "Obligations have no meaning without conscience, and the problem we face is the extension of the social conscience from people to the land."
While offering two approaches to sustainability is an interesting way to invite comment on the issue in the proposed NFMA regulations, in reality, neither are much different from the other and neither is completely satisfactory in providing for ecological sustainability. If you were to combine the two alternative sections, you would arrive back at a more complexly worded version of the 2000 NFMA regulations, but at least you would have a more complete version of what is needed.
The proposed regulations are further weaken the sustainability provisions of the 2000 regulations by not providing recognition of the unique role or intrinsic values that roadless areas can play in sustaining biological diversity, and by ignoring the need for large scale reference areas as baselines to measure the affects of management against. The 2002 proposed Regulations relegate the importance of Roadless Areas back to their 1982 role of only "being considered for recommendation as potential Wilderness".
Fundamentally disturbing is the dropping of references to invertebrates and non-vascular plants in the proposed 2002 regulations; these groups were afforded coverage in the current 2000 regulations. Many invertebrates are keystone species species so important to ecological processes that many other species and perhaps complete ecological systems rely on them. Pollinators such as bees and butterflies are examples. I acknowledge that inventory, monitoring and management of these species is difficult, but if not now, when will we start? Rudimentary and adaptive approaches are needed so we can begin the learning and exploration needed to protect their viability.
The Forest Service is sorely missing the mark and falling down on its stewardship responsibility by insinuating that the three aspects of sustainability are equal and not raising the need for the American society to have a dialogue on how to live within the sustainable capacity of the land. The dialogue on a consumption ethic begun by Dombeck has fallen silent. As former Deputy Chief Jeff Sirmon teaches, leadership is mobilizing people to act - where is the conservation leadership?
As a forest ecologist I am interested and dismayed how the present Administration and Agency leadership have taken to misleading the American public over the wild fire issue by once again erroneously and dangerously simplifying the issues.
Fire plays many roles in natural ecosystems. In some, fire naturally occurs frequently and serves to recycle nutrients, thin landscapes and created diversity; ponderosa and longleaf pine systems come to mind. In these systems, thinning may indeed be part of a restoration strategy. Prescribed fire has an important role in all fire influenced systems, although where fire intervals have been missed and fuels are unusually heavy, stage burning may be needed (Mutch, 1994).
In other systems such as spruce-fir and lodgepole pine fire occurs only at long intervals and under just the right climatic and stand conditions often precursed by insect outbreaks. When it does occur, it does so impressively and destroys the existing structure while initiating a natural cycle of renewal.
Most information on wildfires, the National Fire Plan or the Healthy Forest Initiative however is grossly simplified and generalized and couched in terms of the unnatural destructive nature of fires that we are experiencing, and the answering is lies in thinning. The truth be known, many of the fires that have garnered the national press, enhanced by Agency mis-information, are well within the natural and historic range of what should occur in healthy functioning systems. Aber in an Ecological Society of America issue paper states, "Easy answers are almost always wrong because of the immense variability among forest types and regions as well as differences in the social and economic context of each forest" (Aber et al, 2000).
Rather than roading and harvesting unroaded areas, which has been proven by the Agency's own and other research to increase the risk of wildfire, fire pre-suppression efforts should be directed to the human-wildland interface and in working to ensure defensible space and fire-safe zoning and building codes (Agee, 1993; Clark and Sampson, 1995; USDA-Forest Service, 1996; USDA-Forest Service, 2000b; Franklin et al, 2000; Blaine, 2003). In the earlier Western Forest Health Initiative of 1994 a recommendation was made that to address western forest health issues, Agency policy should be to stay out of roadless, old-growth, and riparian areas, and focus on short return-interval fire regimes, areas enjoying broad consensus for action and the wildland interface.
Equally disturbing in the proposed 2002 regulations is the de-emphasis of the role of science and independent scientists in the management of the National Forest System.
To begin with, the 2000 Regulations were based on the recommendations from an independent Committee of Scientists. The 2002 proposed Regulations have no such basis and were spawned by Agency planners more interested in undoing the 2000 Regulations and turning back the hands of time than in continuing the evolution of policy.
The 2000 Regulations were very specific in the use of science and roles of scientists in the planning process. New procedures were established for internal and external science review boards and consistency reviews, and for the involvement of scientists in framing management hypothesis to be tested by adaptive management and monitoring. Most of these assurances have been stripped away in the 2002 proposed Regulations, and in their place nice sounding but non-binding guidelines remain. Instead of new, complimentary and broadened roles for scientists emerging, science leadership has chosen to argue that they wish to be left alone to do their independent research let the managers explain the rationale for their decisions. Instead of looking outward to increase science capacity by the greater involvement of scientists from other federal and state agencies, universities, non-governmental organizations and independent contractors through partnerships, Agency leadership took the stance that only internal scientists are good enough and since they couldn't do the increased workload the 2000 Regulations are unimplementable.
Inseparably with the science issue is adaptive management. Envisioned in the 2000 Regulations were two levels of adaptive management project monitoring (small "m") and sustainability Monitoring (big "M"). The 2000 regulations proposed a single planning framework to intricately link these two levels of planning into a single system. Projects would be designed and monitored to test management activities and their results and forest plans would be Monitored to test whether collaboratively established landscape goals and sustainability were being met by the aggregation of the multitude of projects implemented over the planning period.
This idea got very lost in the proposed 2002 regulations. In fact the definition of adaptive management was framed only address project monitoring and to completely ignore monitoring for sustainability and the sum of the parts. And the assurance that projects be monitored was dropped as a requirement, leaving the amount and type of monitoring to be done as completely up to the Responsible Official, making adaptive management optional. The link between project and programmatic planning in a single framework was destroyed.
I summarize with a quote from the Raleigh News and Observer's editorial on the proposed 2002 planning regulations, "To abandon good rules for weak rules or no rules only sets in motion further development and exploitation of our forests that could put the long-term well-being of those lands in danger. Red tape and regulation may be a pain for big business, but sometimes they can be a worthy and necessary fortress".
Conclusion and Challenge
If you've read this far thank you!
I wrote this critical paper out of a passion and love for the Forest Service if I didn't care as strongly and deeply as I do it would have been much easier to let it go and simply walk away to my new challenges in Southern Nevada.
I hope that as a minimum, you will have had your memory jogged on where and how we as an Agency have evolved over the course of the past 15 years or so. I hope you will stop and question where are we headed and ask "are we doing the right thing." I urge you to remember that managers do things right, but leaders do the right thing, and that we all have it in ourselves to be true leaders regardless of grade, title or location in the organizational chart.
Debra Meyerson (2001), in her book, Tempered Radicals, presents a final consideration I wish to pass along to those of you who wish to continue to effort to make the Agency better and more responsive to its conservation mission.
She defines tempered radicals as, " people who want to succeed in their organizations yet want to live by their values and identities, even if they are somehow at odds with the dominant culture of their organizations .They want to rock the boat, and they want to stay in it." They wish to bring their whole selves to work.
This is an extremely difficult balance to maintain. Tempered radicals are constantly pulled in opposing directions toward conformity and towards rebellion.
Strategies used range from resisting quietly and staying true to one's self, to organizing collective action. Change often comes in the form of small, incremental change small wins.
Asserting the nonconforming aspects of oneself can facilitate organizational learning and change by questioning current practices and providing new alternatives. Tempered radicals provoke learning and adaptation through the perspectives they bring as people who are not fully assimilated into the system. They are more likely to think out of the box because they are not in the box.
When people act in ways that outwardly express a valued part of themselves, they make that part of themselves real, and deny the dominant culture the right to define who they are. These actions make it possible for others, who share similar views to share their thoughts, identities and values, reduce isolation, and provides support for learning, dialogue and change.
I hope those of you who feel and think different and who must or want to stay in the Forest Service will obtain and read this book it will help you to secure some peace of mind and sanity. Somehow as an Agency we have slipped from Chief Robertson openly encouraging people to be different to a current era of isolating and marginalizing the dissidents despite words about welcoming diversity. If this Agency we love is to survive we simply must increase the diversity of discussion and how we frame and resolve issues. This must occur both internally as well as externally.
Despite presently feeling marginalized and isolated, I can truly say I have enjoyed my Forest Service career and all the wonderful opportunities it afforded me to work in incredible country with incredible people. I have had the huge honor of being able to lead organizations and programs and am humbled by my experiences.
I wish could have remained and felt I was contributing I hope some day an opportunity will present itself permitting me to return. But right now, being true to my convictions and land ethics will not allow me to remain. I see the only honorable course as leaving and continuing the crusade for change from outside the Forest Service.
I wish those of you who remain fun, wisdom and a real concern for the land and the people you serve.
In closing I challenge you to meet the intent of my favorite Leopold quote:
"A thing is right only when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the community, and the community includes the soil, water, fauna, and flora, as well as people".
I can think of no better definition of ecosystem management.
References:
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Allen, Gerald M. and Ernest M. Gould, Jr. 1986. Complexity, wickedness, and public forests. Journal of Forestry 84(1):20-23.
Blaine, Mark. 2003. Never too rich. Never too thin. Forest Magazine. Winter: 14-18.
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Raleigh News and Observer. December 2, 2002. Unkindest cut A Bush administration relaxation of logging rules in national forests will be a long-term threat to woodland preservation. Editorial.
Roberts, Nancy. 2001. Chapter 20: Coping with wicked problems: the case of Afghanistan. In: Learning from International Public Management Reform, Volume 11B, pages 353-375. Elsevier Science Ltd.
Seattle Times. December 4, 2002. Out of step with forests and the public. Editorial.
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Shindler, Bruce A.; Mark Brunson; and George H. Stankey. May, 2002. Social acceptability of forest conditions and management practices: a problem analysis. USDA-Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station. PNW-GTR-537. 68p.
Thomas, Jack Ward, 1999. The U.S. Forest Service What now? Evergreen Magazine.
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USDA-Forest Service (Robertson, F. Dale). December, 1989. Chartering a Management Philosophy for the Forest Service. Internal Publication. 4p.
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USDA-Forest Service (Thomas, Jack Ward). October,1994. The Forest Service Ethics and Course to the future. FS-567. 9p.
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