Subject: 'Time of change' at hand for Forest Service, Missoulian
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 08:37:44 -0700

Outdoor Enthusiasts:

Former USFS Chief Max Peterson offers his perspective on likely changes coming for our National Forests.

Date: 1/25/1 5:34 AM From: Bob Skaggs - PARKSX
January 23, 2001 Missoulian

'Time of change' at hand for Forest Service By SHERRY DEVLIN of the Missoulian

Former agency chief says overhaul imminent under Bush administration

Forest Service employees had best "fasten their seat belts," because "they are in for a major, major series of changes" as George W. Bush begins his presidency, former Forest Service chief Max Peterson said Monday.

"I would not assume that anything put in place over the last few years will remain in place," Peterson told several hundred foresters, academicians and scientists at a two-day conference on "Collaboration in Decision-Making."

The agency's chief during the Carter administration, Peterson said these are the days in Washington, D.C., when government officials tell their secretaries: "If the boss calls while I'm out, get his name."

"It is a time of change," he said. And it matters not that Bush received less of the popular vote than did his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Al Gore.

"The new president is still the president, and he will be for a number of years," Peterson said during the conference's opening session at the University of Montana. Bush, he reminded his audience, still received more votes - nationwide - than did Bill Clinton in either 1992 or 1996.

UM forestry professor Dave Jackson said the conference's post-inaugural timing was intentional. The next few months will be notable for the haste with which Bush rescinds the policies enacted by his predecessor, Jackson said.

The overhaul, in fact, began shortly after Bush's inauguration on Saturday - when his chief of staff issued a directive preventing any new rules from being published in the Federal Register. Any proposed regulations already sent to the Federal Register, but not yet published, also were withdrawn.

And any regulations already published in the Register, but which have not yet taken effect, were put on a 60-day delay. All will be reviewed by the Bush administration; those that do not pass muster will be rescinded.

The directive potentially affects the Forest Service's recent revision of its planning regulations and the order protecting 43 million acres of roadless national forest land from road building and development. It could stop the president's designation last week of national monuments at theMissouri River Breaks and Pompeys Pillar.


First, though, the Bush administration likely will "abolish the word collaboration," Peterson said. He, for one, won't mind.

"Forestry, in the last 15 years, has taken all these words that mean one thing and given them another meaning," he said. "Collaboration means conspiring with the enemy. We don't want to collaborate, we want tocooperate."

Same with the word "landscape," Peterson said. "That means to plant shrubs and rose bushes, but foresters want the public to believe landscape means a big wide area."

Peterson said the Forest Service's best approach would be to "get back to basics," including its simplest possible mission statement: "Caring for the land and serving the people."

Return as much authority as possible to district rangers, the former chief advised. Give people the money they need to do their jobs. Take the decision-making away from the courts. And practice cooperation by sitting down with adversaries as equals.

"Come to the table with a blank piece of paper," Peterson said. "I get called all the time by people who said they want to partner with me on something. And they arrive with everything on paper and decided. That's not a partnership."

"Academia and the public need to actively encourage the sharing of our national forests," he said. "Most of the problems are not technical or scientific questions. They are value questions, and those are the most difficult to solve."

The conference continues Tuesday in UM's Urey Lecture Hall with an 8:45 a.m. presentation on how collaborative decision-making works - by doctoral candidate Todd Bryan of the University of Michigan - with a rebuttal by University of Kansas law professor George Coggins. At 1 p.m., Norman Johnson, former chairman of the federal government's Committee of Scientists, and U.S. Senate staffer Mark Rey will discuss forest planning on large scales and from a sociopolitical perspective.