Paul Thomas Richards Tester’s Logging Bill Ignores
Forest Service Experts
By: Bill Worf, Deputy Regional Forester (Retired)
U.S. Forest Service
I am a Montana native who graduated with a degree in Forestry from the University of Montana in 1950, when I started a career in the U.S. Forest Service.
When the Wilderness Act passed in 1964, I was serving as supervisor of the Bridger National Forest in Wyoming.
Forest Service Chief Ed Cliff and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman immediately tapped me to serve in the national office to oversee implementation of the Wilderness Act.
I moved from Wyoming to Washington, D.C., to administer the National Wilderness Preservation System established by the Act. I served in that position until 1969, when I was appointed Deputy Regional Forester for Wilderness, Recreation and Lands in Missoula.
Although I retired in 1983, I have remained involved in National Forest issues. In this capacity, I have strong feelings about the Logging Bill (S. 1470) introduced by Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT).
I share the senator’s concern about growing fire and insect problems in our National Forests.
The senator’s heart may be in the right place, but his proposed solution would result in severe long-term damage to the Forest Service as an institution.
The Forest Service is one of the most respected agencies in government. It contains the finest collection of natural resource professionals in the world. I spent my professional career as a proud member.
With his Logging Bill, Tester is saying he knows more about how forests ought to be managed than professionals who work for the Forest Service. Tester is telling us what to do and how to do it, even though what Tester wants may violate other federal laws.
If Tester gets away with dictating forest management in Montana, every senator and every representative in Congress will try to do the same. Instead of being managed by one professional agency that considers all the views of public stakeholders from throughout the country, our National Forests would be managed by local interests primarily geared toward resource extraction.
By effectively dissolving the Forest Service, Tester’s Logging Bill would create 535 fiefdoms, all with different management mandates dictated by different members of Congress. This would take away Americans’ rights concerning our public lands.
What Tester may not know is that the National Forest System was established in 1897 by Congress. Congress also established the Forest Service to administer these National Forests for the benefit of all Americans of present and future generations.
Subsequent laws provided additional guidance, including the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960, the National Forest and Range Land Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974, and the National Forest Management Act of 1976.
Congress passed these laws to ensure our National Forests are administered in a planned and sustainable way — in perpetuity.
Because Tester is a Hi-Line farmer, I figured he may not know much about Forest Service history.
So, I attended an open house on Oct. 26, 2009, concerning his logging bill. I shared with the senator that heavy corporate and political pressure had caused the violation of the 1960 Act mandating “sustained yield.” This unwise overcutting of our National Forests resulted in the closure of mills in Montana and elsewhere.
I followed up my Oct. 26, 2009, direct conversation with Sen. Tester by sending him a detailed letter on Nov. 12, 2009.* I included a 20-page comprehensive analysis of Forest Service reports which clearly shows the failure to maintain a “sustained yield” throughout the entire National Forest System.*
I strongly disagree with Tester that the answer to overcutting in the past is to overcut in the future!
Congressionally mandating logging quotas and legislatively dictating management would convert our National Forests into “private local forests.”
This is directly contrary to 113 years of precedence. When Congress passed the Organic Act in 1897, lawmakers were assured that National Forests would remain open to the public and not restricted to private companies or privileged groups.
The Tester bill effectively says that a handful of local extractive interests have greater knowledge than the professionals of our Forest Service.
This dangerous precedent would be viewed with glee by special interest groups of all kinds!
For that reason, I must oppose the Tester bill.
USFS Deputy Regional Forester (Retired) Bill Worf
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Editor’s Notes:
1. Retired Deputy Regional Forester Bill Worf of Missoula, Montana, worked for the U.S. Forest Service for 33 years.
2. * Despite his Oct. 26, 2009, personal promise to the retired Deputy Regional Forester, made in the presence of many witnesses, Sen. Tester never honored his commitment to respond to and address Bill Worf’s concerns. As of September 2010, Worf has not received any reply of any type from Tester or Tester’s staff regarding information verbally presented to Tester on Oct. 26, 2009, followed up by a November 12, 2009, personal letter to Tester, accompanied by 20 pages of detailed analyses, documenting Forest Service overcutting of timber and the agency’s past failures to provide for “sustained yields.” (Although blind, Worf devoted weeks of effort to researching, preparing, and typing this 20-page report for Tester).
3. “Hi-Line” is a colloquialism referring to northern Montana.
4. Bill Worf was born in 1926 on an eastern Montana homestead. A Marine during World War II, Worf is one of the few remaining survivors of the fierce battle for Iwo Jima, immortalized forever by Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photograph of the raising of the U.S. flag on top of Mount Suribachi by five Marines and one Navy Corpsman. Worf witnessed the original flag raising on the morning of Feb. 23, 1945. Rosenthal’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning photograph was a reenactment. Sculptors later used Rosenthal’s photo as the model for the cast bronze United States Marine Corps War Memorial, commonly referred to as “The Iwo Jima Memorial,” at Arlington National Cemetery.
5. In 1989, Bill Worf co-founded Wilderness Watch – A citizens’ nonprofit organization dedicated to providing oversight to those federal agencies involved in administration of the National Wilderness Preservation System. Worf continues working as an active member of the Governing Board for Wilderness Watch. The following is from: http://www.wildernesswatch.org/ :
WILDERNESS WATCH is America’s leading conservation organization dedicated solely to protecting the lands and waters in the 110 million-acre National Wilderness Preservation System. We strive for proper stewardship of these remarkable Wilderness reserves through citizen oversight, education, and continual monitoring of federal management activities. Please join us in ensuring that America’s Wilderness remains full of mystery, adventure, and biological wealth. Learn more >>
6. Bill Worf can be contacted at: wworf@bresnan.net or at: 406-251-6210.
7. This piece was edited by Paul Richards, owner of PR Media Consultants®, a leading public interest consulting firm since 1968, and an AlterNet blogger. Richards’ “Dispatches from the Wildlands,” which focuses on resource issues and Western politics is located at: http://blogs.alternet.org/paulrichards/ . Richards can be contacted at: Paul@PRMediaConsultants.com .
8. Sen. Tester, the timber industry, and Washington DC-based Big Green, or “Gang Green,” “conservation” collaborators have used many terms for Tester’s logging bill. The Tester bill’s official number is “S. 1470.” Tester, the timber industry, and “Gang Green” collaborators have interchangeably used: “Tester Forest Jobs and Recreation Act,’’ “Forest Jobs and Recreation Act,” “Tester Forest Jobs Bill,” “Forest Jobs Bill,” “Forest Jobs and Stewardship Bill,” and the “Tester Forest Jobs and Stewardship Bill.”
9. Editors and reporters, who should know better, mistakenly call S. 1470 the “Tester Wilderness Bill.” This is a grave misnomer. Tester himself is very clear that his legislation is NOT a wilderness bill! “Because there are many components to the legislation, calling it a ‘wilderness bill’ is a mischaracterization,” writes Tester. “It is a ‘forest jobs and stewardship’ bill.”
10. Editors and reporters have also called S. 1470 the “Tester Forest Management Bill” and the “Tester Public Lands Legislation.”
11. Grassroots conservationists generally lean toward more truthful monikers, such as “Tester Logging Bill,” “Tester Logging-Without-Laws Bill,” and “Tester Wildlands Logging Bill.”
12. “Tester Logging Bill” is now the term most utilized by the general public, with the more accurate “Tester Wildlands Logging Bill” preferred by many grassroots wildlands supporters.
Dispatches from the Wildlands™
©2010, Bill Worf and Paul Richards
