Region’s Top Forester Inherits Unfamiliar Picture Agency’s Operations Shifted Greatly During 6 Years He Spent Away From Nw

When Bob Williams left his job in 1990 as deputy regional chief of the U.S. Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest, the agency was logging more than 4 billion board feet of timber a year on national forests in Oregon and Washington.

Now that he’s back, in the top regional slot in Portland, he scarcely recognizes the region that is struggling to produce only 1 billion board feet of timber for logging annually.

The emphasis, instead, is protecting the northern spotted owl, the marbled murrelet and a growing list of threatened and endangered fish.

“It has changed dramatically,” said Williams, who spent from 1990-95 as regional forester in Alaska. “Leaving in 1990 and coming back now, I never would have guessed there would be that much change in what the organization is doing.”

A lot of the change is for the better, said Williams, after federal court rulings that logging levels of the 1980s were excessive and violated U.S. environmental laws.

He said working relationships have improved among the Forest Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“Of course, the timber program is dramatically different. It is just a different place. We’ve got a lot fewer people than we had when I left here in 1990,” he said.

The Forest Service region suffered about a 30 percent budget cut and about the same reduction in employees from 1992-96, placing a strain on remaining employees, Williams said.

“I think oftentimes we don’t realize how much of our activity was supported by the timber program,” he said.

Logging helped bring in money to pay for additional wildlife biologists, archaeologists, public affairs officials. Timber profits also helped cover fixed costs, such as rent and utilities.

“All of a sudden the wildlife program is having to pick up an extra $50,000 to pay the rent and utilities, the ranger’s salary, those kinds of overhead things that don’t really diminish when the timber sale program diminishes,” he said.

Critics of the Forest Service’s budgetary practices long have complained that the agency fails to account for all the costs of logging, from road-building to erosion and damaged water quality.

Much of the money for reforestation and watershed repairs comes from a fund that is financed through a share of new timber sale receipts.

“It is one of the perverse incentives of the Forest Service,” said Mike Francis, director of the national forest program at The Wilderness Society. “This is money to mitigate the damage that they have caused with other timber sales.”

Chris West, vice president of the Northwest Forestry Association in Portland, said Williams appears anxious to bring environmentalists and industry together, but is handcuffed.

“There is no question they are not getting the money to do the job that is expected of them by this administration…. They don’t get the money they need and that makes them the scapegoat,” he said.

Williams, asked to express his own views about forest management policies and proper logging levels, generally defers to the wishes of his bosses.

“I’m here to carry out the rules as they exist and as they get adjusted,” Williams said.

But what’s closer to being the proper harvest level for the region - the 4 billion board feet of the 1980s or the 1 billion annual harvest of the 1990s? “Right is what the public prescribes for us,” Williams said. “These are public lands. We’ve got a process that determines what is right. Our job is to show reasonable alternatives, evaluate the effects as best we can, listen to people and try to strike some sort of a balance that is reasonable.”