Forest Service ends staffing in Spokane
Starting this week, Spokanites will have to go out of town to find the U.S. Forest Service.
The 35-year era of local national forest presence ended Friday with the retirement of the agency’s lone Spokane public information employee.
Linda Schulte, 58, downsized the office she’d been sharing with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management before leaving the Forest Service after 30 years of service. The change is just another sign of reductions in federal public lands services.
The BLM, at 1103 N. Fancher Road, will continue to sell $6 national forest maps for Washington and North Idaho, as well as Christmas tree and wood-cutting permits and Golden Age and Northwest Forest access passes.
However, Forest Service customers will have to go elsewhere to get wilderness maps as well as maps and information for forests outside this region.
Steve Mitrovich of Northwest Map and Travel Book Center, 525. W. Sprague Ave., said he will continue to carry all Forest Service recreation and wilderness maps for the Northwest.
However, losing the local office eliminates his easy access to regional Forest Service information, too.
“The Forest Service has no clearinghouse for maps,” he said. “That was a function the USGS in Denver was supposed to take on years ago, but they never have. Now, even I will have to go through individual forests to get their maps so I can sell them.”
Schulte’s retirement is among the first 11 early buyout agreements offered by the Colville National Forest in a downsizing plan to eliminate 34 of roughly 150 positions by 2008, said Rick Brazell, Colville National Forest supervisor.
Other employees from the 1.1-million acre forest leaving Friday, in order of seniority, include John Ridlington, Ross Perkins, Jim Nash Diana Baxter, Dan Lynn, Joe Gordon, Todd Gordon, Edie Golesch, Ken Bancroft and Ken Sollock.
But Schulte was the lone Forest Service voice in the urban wilderness of Spokane.
Anticipating the chance to reach hordes of visitors attracted by Expo ‘74, the agency opened its first national forest public information office in Spokane in 1970 on the main floor of what is now called the Thomas S. Foley Federal Courthouse.
Schulte was assigned to the office in 1977, when a national forest map cost 50 cents, and survived staff reductions and three office relocations. She shared space in the downtown Post Office with the U.S. Geological Survey Earth Science office until it was phased out five years ago.
“The BLM has graciously agreed to continue selling some of the maps and permits for our huge customer base,” she said. “That’s a huge service.”
But Spokane is losing that personal touch.
“It’s a big loss,” said John Fallows, a Spokane hiker and customer Schulte came to know on a first-name basis. “She basically kept an eye on me for 20 years. I’d call ahead for trail and road conditions and I never got in trouble, thanks to her.”
Schulte said Fallows returned the favor by bringing photos into the office that enticed her to take her husband hiking into the Columbia Wilderness (now the Mark O. Hatfield Wilderness) near Cascade Locks, Ore.
“I’ve had some wonderful experiences doing my job, including outreach talks to schools and organizations,” Schulte said.
“One day a week, I used to go out with a different Forest Service employee to learn what they do and where they do it. That took me to forest fire lookouts, on a cattle drive, to a mine and into the (Salmo-Priest) wilderness. One year we had astronauts doing survival training up near Colville.
“I had a chance to see more areas of the forests than most employees get to see, and I had access to the people who are experts in their fields. This career of mine has been the ultimate; it wasn’t even like a job.”