The August coup - US Forest Service and timber policy

Sierra, Jan-Feb, 1992 by Paul Rauber

Counterrevolution in the Rockies: The timber industry flexes its muscle.

Finally, the reformers go too far. Meeting in secret, hardline defenders of the old order scheme to preserve the discredited command economy. Then comes the coup--only this time, there is no one to stand on a tank, and the reformers are transferred or fired as the old guard resumes control.

Thus was preserved the umbilical relationship between the U.S. Forest Service and the timber industry, whereby the portion of our national forests available for logging (the "Allowable Sale Quantity," or ASQ) is determined not by environmental considerations, but by the economic desires of the timber companies and the political needs of the western congressional delegation.

In recent years, a few brave Forest Service professionals have revolted, saying that the politically mandated ASQs cannot be met without illegally damaging wildlife, water quality, ancient forests, and biodiversity. In 1990, Northern Rockies Region 1 (which includes 13 national forests in four states) fell 30 percent short of its goal of 1.3 billion board-feet. Congress ordered it to make up the shortfall in 1991, but by the end of the third quarter only 16 percent of the prescribed "annual harvest" had been met.

Region 1's director was John Mumma, a 32-year Forest Service veteran and the first trained biologist ever to hold the job of regional forester. While hardly a blazing environmentalist, Mumma was a stickler for the law. "We have been legislatively required to sell a prescribed amount of timber," he testified to Congress last September, "but we have also been told that we have to comply with environmental and other laws. I have done everything I can to meet all of my targets. I have failed to reach the quotas only because to do so would have required me to violate federal law."

The timber companies and their allies in Congress were apoplectic. In a May 23 letter, Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) sternly reprimanded Forest Service Chief Dale Robertson. "Dale, I am very disappointed with the Forest Service's accomplishment and accountability for timber outputs in Idaho and the nation as a whole," he wrote. "You have serious management problems that must be addressed. It is my hope you will move to assure targets are met and line officers are held accountable." Craig's complaints were echoed by Senator Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Representative Ron Marlenee (R-Mont.).

The political heat being directed at the Forest Service is a result of the severe overcutting of private woodlands in the northern Rockies. (From the air, western Montana and northern Idaho look like checkerboards, forested areas alternating with clearcut land belonging to Plum Creek and other giant timber companies.) Having exhausted its own resources, the timber industry expects the Forest Service to increase the cut on the public lands, and is outraged when it does not.

John Mumma proved to be a convenient scapegoat. In June, western timber executives traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with Robertson's boss, Secretary of Agriculture Edward Madigan. They wanted the hide of either the Forest Service chief or Mumma. Madigan chose the troublesome regional forester. On August 23, Mumma was called to a meeting at the Denver airport with a Forest Service superior, Associate Chief George Leonard. The meeting lasted only ten minutes; Mumma was offered a desk job in Washington or resignation. A week later, he resigned as "a matter of principle."

At the same time, the Forest Service sought to muzzle critics outside its own ranks. Among the largest roadblocks to timber sales in Region 1 (and elsewhere) are the administrative appeals filed by environmentalists; Forest Service Deputy Chief James Overbay suggested solving this problem by forbidding such appeals. "When we make a decision [on] a timber sale, we need to stick to it and not reexamine it," he said.

Sierra Club Montana Chapter Chair James Conner called for Overbay's dismissal, charging that the Forest Service was becoming "a Stalinesque bureaucracy that is contemptuous of the demands of fair play and the rule of law in a democracy." The Forest Service's problem with the appeals, says Sierra Club Northern Plains Staff Director Larry Mehlhaff, is that "we keep winning them. And we win them because they're breaking the law."

On September 24, the House Civil Service Subcommittee, chaired by Gerry Sikorski (D-Minn.), took up the Mumma affair. "I'm here with a heavy heart," Mumma said as he began his account, "a heart that's in shock at what's happening in the national forests."

The subcommittee also heard from Lorraine Mintzmeyer, the embattled director of the Rocky Mountain Region of the National Park Service. Mintzmeyer's sin was overseeing production of a "vision document" on the future of Yellowstone National Park and its surrounding ecosystem that included mild calls for natural-resource protection. Moderate as it was, Mintzmeyer's draft was attacked by Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson (R), as well as by White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, who declared it a "disaster." Mintzmeyer testified that Scott Sewell, a political appointee at the Interior Department, told her that he was going to rewrite the report "to retain the appearance that the document was the product of professional and scientific efforts by the agencies involved, but that in reality the document would be reversed based on strictly political concerns." Mintzmeyer objected, and was reassigned to Philadelphia.