Six former chiefs of the Forest Service met in Missoula, Montana recently, and at least some of them agreed that forest planning is a waste of time. “Analysis paralysis,” Dale Bosworth called it, repeating a term the Bush appointee had coined first applied to planning when he was chief. “Just pouring more and more money into planning doesn’t seem to be getting us any further down the road,” said Jack Ward Thomas, who was chief in the early Clinton years.
Many in the Forest Service agree. Yet, as a top Forest Service official recently told the Antiplanner, the Obama administration plans to rewrite the rules for forest planning — something that every administration has done since Jimmy Carter. Such rewrites merely make more work for the national forests, which have to go back and redo work to make it comply with the new rules.
It is not hard to imagine why a new administration would want to put its stamp on planning rules. Most decisions have only short-term effects, but planning could theoretically affect an agency and the resources it manages for decades to come.
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On the face of it, this seemed outrageous. Why had the Forest Service spent so much effort on plans that made no decisions? If they made no decisions, why continue to spend any effort on them at all?
In retrospect, the court was right, though not in the way it meant. It turns out there has been very little relationship between what the plans said and how the forests are actually managed. As just one example, the plans collectively set an “allowable sale level” — the amount of timber that forest managers could cut each year — that was about four times the amount that managers actually cut. Part of this was due to environmental challenges of timber sales, but most was simply because the managers had no faith in the plans.
So if the Obama administration thinks that rewriting the planning rules will improve the forests, it needs to get out of the beltway and into the forests to see how they really work. The best thing it can do to the planning rules is replace them with one short mandate: spend no more time on planning than you have to.
Unless it was before he worked for Bush, Bosworth cannot claim the term analysis paralysis. Others have used it extensively prior to the Bush administration. Jesse Jackson used it in the 90s.
The problem with Forest Plans has been that they try to plan on a 100 year time horizon (long time horizons are the nature of forestry). However, the assumptions do not last 10 years. Globalization hit the paper and lumber industries hard, and it would be extremely difficult to plan for it. Moreover, no one wanted to plan for bad news.
So, the lessons learned from forest planning is to not believe that experts can foresee the future. Unfortunately, that is what the global warming industry wants to push on forest planners, only more so.
On the face of it, this seemed outrageous. Why had the Forest Service spent so much effort on plans that made no decisions? If they made no decisions, why continue to spend any effort on them at all?
Politicans drive the boat, because moneyed interests want to exploit our land for cheap. The toe-tapper helped write old forest plans.
Unfortunately, that is what the global warming industry wants to push on forest planners, only more so.
Chuckle.
DS
Forest planning’s purpose was to tightly regulate clearcutting and reduce logging levels on national forests. In those respects, it succeeded. Logging levels dropped from 12 billion b.f. annually in the 1980s to 3 bbf today. Clearcutting has almost ceased on national forests.
Back in 1976, when Congress imposed forest planning upon the FS, some legislators wanted instead to ban clearcutting outright. But the Forest Service was horrified at the notion that forestry amateurs (worse yet – politicians!) should decide how forests should be managed.
Senator Humphrey called the FS’s bluff. “Okay,” he said, in essence, “we won’t tell you how to manage the forests, but because you’ve shown yourselves to be so deaf to the public’s wishes, we will impose a political-style decision-making process upon you.” Humphrey knew exactly the consequences — “The days have ended when the forest may be viewed only as trees and trees viewed only as timber,” he predicted when the 1976 law passed.
A valid argument could be made that forest planning, having achieved its objectives, has now outlived its usefulness. But to say it wasn’t useful — that is, didn’t accomplish Congress’ intent — misses the narrow scope of that intent. Forest planning did exactly what former Forest Service Chief Bosworth decries. Planning’s “analysis paralysis” slashed logging levels on national forests, as a majority of Americans wished, and just as Senator Humphrey intended.
Forest planning’s purpose was to tightly regulate clearcutting and reduce logging levels on national forests.
How ironic, considering that the National Forests were established to grow timber for harvest.
Why is forest planning, which involves forecasting what happens to trees (that don’t move) over many decades, subject to analysis paralysis?
After all, we know with near absolute certainty what the weather, climate, and precipitation will be in 100 years, and that involves oceans, volcanoes, solar winds, bovine exhalations, and global driving habits.
How about using Hemp for making paper?