A western showdown: before he can reinvent the Forest Service, Mike Dombeck will have to outsmart western Republicans on the Hill

For starters, Dombeck wants to end the system under which the agency makes payments to counties with national forests out of a fund equal to 25 percent of its annual timber receipts. Instead, he proposes creating a permanent appropriation of $275 million to stabilize payments to forest-dependent counties and school districts. Chris Wood, Dombeck's speechwriter, says the current system is obsolete and forces counties to become advocates for unsustainable rates of logging. "Why is it," he asks, "that the wealthiest nation in the world is paying for the education of our rural kids on the back of our federal timber program?"

And Dombeck faces another challenge. Because "ecosystem management" involves the integrated management of natural systems, from salmon to mushrooms to ponderosa pine forests, it doesn't lend itself to line-item budgeting. The GAO acknowledged as much in its new report when it said, "Currently, there is no clear link between the Forest Service's ecosystem-based goals and objectives and its budget line items, funding allocation criteria, and performance measures."

To speed institutional change, Dombeck directed his staff early on to establish new performance measures for every forest supervisor in the country within six months. "We need these measurable standards -- aquatic ecosystems restored and maintained, acres of noxious weeds treated, acres of abandoned mine sites reclaimed," he said. "I'm not sure the fact we can't afford it is a valid argument. Sometimes you've got to make investments in land."

Again hoping to derail Dombeck's reform efforts, in February, Craig, Young, Chenoweth, and Murkowski fired off a letter threatening to slash the Forest Service budget to a "custodial" level that would leave the agency with only enough money to put out fires, maintain major transportation routes, and perform other essential mandated functions. It was another Mark Rey masterpiece. "In the face of continuing controversy over Forest Service management, it is increasingly clear that the costs of managing the National Forest system are increasing ... and may, in the view of some, outweigh the benefits being received by interest groups, communities, and the public," the Republicans, wrote. "While it is painful for us to contemplate, the time may have come to instead consider ways to reduce the investment of billions of dollars each year in light of the increasingly diminished returns on that investment" In other words, if the Forest Service isn't producing timber and forage, what's the point of funding it?

Senator Craig has even taken aim at Dombeck's personnel management, demanding justification for the chief's decision to reassign four of his five deputies -- as if it were any of the senator's business. But congressional interference in internal Forest Service matters is nothing new. It's a longstanding western tradition, one that undermined the authority of Dombeck's predecessor, Jack Ward Thomas, and that has been the undoing of many a progressive forest manager. Dombeck, however, seems undeterred. Unlike Thomas, Dombeck knows better than to fight his battles without a corps of trusted lieutenants. He has fired or reassigned entrenched Forest Service administrators who might have worked to undermine his agenda, and replaced them with his own management team. One of his first official acts, performed at the behest of his bosses, was to fire veteran deputy chiefs Gray Reynolds and Mark Reimer, who epitomized the Forest Service old guard. Dombeck also brought two trusted aides with him from his stint as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management: Chris Wood, his speechwriter and media guy, and Francis Pandolfi, his chief of staff.