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October 18, 2011 in Idaho
Farnsworth’s forest
Idaho Panhandle National Forests’ leader outlines her vision
Mary Farnsworth talks about her new job as supervisor for the Idaho Panhandle National Forests in Coeur d’Alene on Friday.
(Full-size photo)
Mary Farnsworth is the new forest supervisor for the Idaho Panhandle National Forests, which covers 2.5 million acres in Idaho, Washington and Montana.
More than 400 wildlife species, including grizzly bears and wolves, roam the forest. It’s also a large employer, with more than 300 permanent workers and a payroll that swells by hundreds of seasonal employees each summer.
Farnsworth, 46, was most recently the deputy forest supervisor on the Deschutes National Forest in central Oregon. Early in her career, she spent a summer fighting fires on a Hotshot crew. She also spent 2 1/2 years in Washington, D.C., working on the National Fire Plan, a blueprint for managing the impact of wildfires on communities and ecosystems.
Here’s an edited version of an interview with her.
Q.You grew up in San Diego, a large urban area. What drew you to the Forest Service?
A.I’ve wanted to be a ranger since junior high school. … I was a longtime Girl Scout, and my family took a two-week backpacking trip in the Central Sierras when I was young. We came across a wilderness ranger. He was in full uniform, with a shovel in his hand and a radio and chest pack. Being a ranger seemed like the job to have. The Forest Service somehow got into my psyche as the perfect career.
Q.Tell me about your summer assignment on a Hotshot crew in Redmond, Ore.
A.There’s some serious physical fitness stuff going on to be a Hotshot. You’re working like a professional athlete every day. I enjoyed the camaraderie of working with 20 other folks under trying conditions. You’ve got to be on top of your game and you’ve got to be able to work with the other folks on your crew, supporting them. After that summer, I chose to apply for positions in fire management.
Q.You described firefighting as good management training.
A.There’s an expectation of leadership. You need to make decisions and get things done. You are held accountable for what happens.
Q.What are some of the challenges and opportunities you see on the Idaho Panhandle National Forest?
A.Completing the forest plan. It sets the direction for the forest, so we’re all on the same page, moving in the same direction. A lot of people are waiting for our new forest plan to be released. It’s been nearly 10 years in the making, which sounds like a horrendously long time. But there have been some changes in the rules, some things that have really held us up.
Another challenge is the federal budget. You just have to turn on CNN to see that our country is in debt. We have a tremendous amount of work to do on the forest, regardless of our budgets. We’re going to get a lot of work done whatever the budget is.
Q.Anything else?
A.In my short time here, I’ve got the impression that there may be some opportunities to provide more outdoor recreation. One of our biggest points of contact with the public is recreation. Tourism is a big deal in Coeur d’Alene, Sandpoint, Bonners Ferry and St. Maries.
Q.What’s your favorite outdoor activity?
A.I like all sorts of different activities. I like to ski, though I flop and flounder. … I also snowshoe, cross-country ski and I hike. When I was growing up in San Diego, I did lots of water sports. I’m looking forward to getting my kayak out on the lakes here. In the past, I was a competitive cyclist. Now, I ride for health, fitness and sanity. My job can be pretty stressful.
Tax-protesting Idaho state rep files for bankruptcy 
wheels on October 18 at 7:03 a.m.
Whatever happend to Betty Anderson who was with the FS in Cda and Missoula?
RedCedar on October 18 at 2:00 p.m.
Mary Farnsworth may be a really nice person and a fine manager, but why is it that the USFS always brings in managers from out of the area. No matter what National Forest you go to, the bosses are from somewhere else. It’s not that they don’t have forests in the places where these people are from, nor is it that there aren’t competent locals in the local forest that could be promoted into management. All I can figure is that it’s department policy to bring in outsiders so that their loyalty will be to the Forest Service bureaucracy rather than to the local people. It’s as if they are afraid of USFS management fraternizing with the enemy, with the enemy being the people who actually live nearest to the forest.
greenlibertarian on October 18 at 2:54 p.m.
-CBO
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/102xx/doc10294/08-06-BudgetOptions.pdf
When is this corporate welfare going to end?
greenlibertarian on October 18 at 3:04 p.m.
-CBO
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/102xx/doc10294/08-06-BudgetOptions.pdf
When is this corporate welfare going to end?
Aren’t we “broke” after all?
RedCedar on October 18 at 9:06 p.m.
In the Forest Service’s defense (never thought I’d be saying this), many of the timber sales in recent years have been primarily for stand improvement and fire mitigation. They involve removal of less-desirable or more flammable trees such as grand fir or lodgepole pine, while leaving the longer-lived, more valuable, and more fire-resistant trees such as white pine and larch. Logging and removing the marked trees without harming the “leave” trees is tedious and expensive. The days of the 160 acre clear cut on USFS land are over. Most of today’s sales have irregular boundaries designed to follow natural contours. They include wide buffers along creeks. They usually prohibit the loggers from building spur road and log landings, so they have to work within the exist road right-of-way, often while keeping it open for public travel.
All of this adds up to sales that do not attract very high bids. Many sales attract no bids, and need to be put back out with more good timber added in order to get anyone to bid on them at all. Add in the USFS’s bloated administrative overhead and it’s no wonder that they lose money. The thinking today is not so much “get out the cut” (I remember those days well) as it is to use timber sales as a way of doing some environmental improvements. The improvements could include fire mitigation, stand enhancement, wildlife habitat (typically winter elk browse), decommissioning of old roads, and so on. Looking at it as a money-making proposition for the government, it definitely looks bad. Looking at it as a way to subsidize environmental improvements, it looks cheap. Of course if you think that any logging under any circumstance for any reason is environmentally intolerable (not an absurd point of view either), then even the modern USFS approach is bad.
greenlibertarian on October 19 at 12:43 a.m.
Of course if you think that any logging under any circumstance for any reason is environmentally intolerable (not an absurd point of view either), then even the modern USFS approach is bad.
I’m not sure you could be more obtuse, Red Cedar which is disappointing as you usually present as a not intellectually challenged Republican, tho hardly partisan.
There’s little if any case to be made to out law ALL logging on USFS and state forest land, or private land for that matter.
I may be a tree-hugger, but have NO problem with SENSIBLE no cost to the taxpayer, logging operations. It’s a good renewable resource.
RedCedar on October 19 at 11:24 a.m.
I didn’t mean to be obtuse. I only meant that even though I think that careful logging can be used for environmental improvement at no cost to the taxpayers, I also understand the point of view of those who want no logging at all (you might not be one of them, but many people do feel that way). I don’t think such people are idiots. I just disagree with them. Every since this country set up National Parks and National Forests, there has been a legitimate and unresolved debate between “preservation” and “use”. The two groups of public land approach that dichotomy differently, especially in regards to hunting, logging, and mining, and it’s not obvious to me that either approach is perfect. Probably the best we can do is have a few “tree museums” in which a human is hardly allowed to look at the view without a permit, and a lot of land in which various other uses are allowed.