Forest Chief Talks Strategy For Managing Land Dombeck Tries To Balance Economics, Preservation

Contemplating a new policy to protect road-free national forest land, Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck says he’s alarmed by the rate at which chunks of privately owned forested land are disappearing.

Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman has asked Dombeck to develop a strategy for managing the agency’s roadless areas by early this year.

Over the past decade, the Forest Service has charted forests with sections of land 5,000 acres or larger that have no roads.

In November, several U.S. senators asked the Clinton administration to put those areas off limits to logging at least until individual forest-management plans are updated, a process generally conducted on 10-year cycles.

Several environmental groups are urging the administration to go further and ban logging in all unroaded sectors of 1,000 acres or more.

Dombeck won’t tip his hand, but during a recent interview with The Associated Press he alluded to a study by the Pinchot Institute for Conservation about the rapid rate at which private forest lands have been subdivided over the past two decades.

“I was astounded,” Dombeck said.

From 1978 to 1994, the proportion of private forest ownership of less than 50 acres nearly doubled, the report said, though it did not specify past or current percentages or the amount of land involved in those years.

“Ownership fragmentation and rapid turnover often has negative impacts on a variety of values and uses, and reduces the likelihood the land will be managed with a long-term stewardship perspective,” said the report by the non-profit research institute named after the first Forest Service chief, Gifford Pinchot.

Dombeck said those concerns are very real.

“When you think about the quality of forest, the quality of life, the options for the future, that has tremendous ramifications for access to hunting, fishing, recreation,” he said.

Dombeck said he’s especially mindful of the increasing demand on forests for things other than timber production as he considers the new roadless policy.

“The value of these roadless lands is increasing … We can’t just be talking about whether you are for or against cutting a tree. The forest is much more than that,” he said.

“Yes, economics are important. Yes, we have to use the best business practices. But we also need to keep our eye on the long-term health of watersheds.

“Let’s not manage them in a way that detracts from the values 10 or 30 or 50 years from now.”

A former fishing guide who grew up in the forests of northern Wisconsin at the end of that state’s logging era, Dombeck is especially attuned to historical trends.

“Back in 1812 in the United States, if you were a lieutenant retiring from the Army, you didn’t get a pension check, you got 1,100 acres of land. We had homesteaders. Railroads were given every other section of land,” he said.

“Land was used to promote the development of the economy, the stability and economic vitality of the country. But those value systems have changed tremendously,” Dombeck said.

“Today the country is developed. Jobs are changing. The areas that are prospering are where people move … because of the quality of life, the open spaces, the water quality, the outdoor recreation experience,” he said.

“The question now is, how do we maintain our open spaces?”

Dombeck said he understands that road-building into roadless areas “is the most contentious issue we face” at the Forest Service.

“The single most permanent thing we do” in terms of impact on the landscape “is probably roads. We need to be very careful and very sensitive,” he said.

“There are a lot of roads that aren’t needed anymore. There are roads that are bleeding sediments into streams and badly need maintenance.”

On the other hand, the 380,000 miles of Forest Service road - eight times the size of the U.S. interstate system - is an important part of the nation’s transportation system, Dombeck said.

“I grew up on a forest road in the Chequamegon National Forest in northern Wisconsin. Today it is a black-top road. It is a bus route, a mail route,” he said.

“Sure, a logging truck goes up and down the road, but so do tourists and lots of other people.

“We need to take a look at the whole road system and turn it into a transportation plan.”