Forest Chief Drops Plan For Closures Widespread Opposition Keeps Regional Forest Offices Open

The Clinton administration, faced with stiff opposition from Congress and some national-forest users, abandoned a plan Wednesday to save money by closing two regional Forest Service offices.

The administration also backed off a proposal to rearrange the agency’s regional boundaries.

That means Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington will remain in the Portland-based region. Under the abandoned plan, the eastern halves of those states would have been combined with Idaho and overseen by the agency’s Ogden, Utah, office.

The reorganization proposal also would have closed regional offices in Juneau, Alaska, and Missoula placing Alaska under the jurisdiction of Portland, and Montana in the region based in Denver.

The Alaska and Montana congressional delegations objected strenuously.

“Managing our forests from Portland would have been like managing California’s forests from St. Louis,” Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said Wednesday. “I’m pleased that after reviewing all the facts the Forest Service came to this obvious conclusion.”

Montana Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat facing a tough re-election bid this year, also lobbied heavily against the closures.

Any changes in boundaries would require congressional approval.”The decision wasn’t made based on whether it would fly in Congress,” he said. “The decision was basically made on public input and the response we got” opposing the plan.”I have no idea what people will suspect. But there was a considerable amount of response by (Forest Service) employees, by the public, by industry, by the environmental community,” he said.

Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas said he wasn’t sure how much money the Forest Service would have saved by closing the regional offices.

He said most of the regional boundaries are unchanged under the agency’s revised plan, with a few exceptions:

All of Idaho would move into the Intermountain region based in Ogden, Utah. Currently part of Northern Idaho is in a region with Montana. The proposed boundary changes were intended to organize the national forests on the basis of ecosystems. For example, the Oregon and Washington forests east of the Cascade Mountains are more like those in Idaho than those in Western Washington and Oregon.

Thomas said the agency remained committed to the concept.

But he said comments from the public as well as Forest Service employees showed there were strong traditions, cultural ties and existing working relationships that would have been broken up by the changes.”They were used to operating the way they were,” he said. “There was a lot of social connection. For example, Virginia identified themselves with the South, as does Texas.”