Idaho trip fulfills Dombeck

The day after he left the top job in the U.S. Forest Service 15 years ago, Mike Dombeck went fishing.

The sport was in the former fishing guide’s blood, and during his four years as Forest Service chief, he ran the agency not like a politician, but as a well-rooted scientist and fisherman.

He set up forest planning rules that put ecology ahead of social and economic uses for the land.

Following a three-year process involving 600 meetings nationwide and more than 1.6 million public comments — 95 percent favorable — Dombeck created a “roadless rule” policy that banned new logging and road construction in a third of the federal forest lands — 58.5 million acres — a key environmental legacy of the Clinton administration. Road building had been the single most devastating development to mountain streams, he said.

After settling into Washington, D.C., in 2001, the Bush administration took aim at the road ban and Dombeck’s forest planning rules. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said the agency would pursue “a more balanced” approach.

“Bush won,” he told The Spokesman-Review in a 2001 interview. “It was time for me to move on.”

Last month, Dombeck, marveled in the irony of where he was when he learned that a federal judge in California had thrown out the Bush administration plan to let the states decide how roadless areas would be developed. The judge’s decision effectively reinstated the 2001 Clinton roadless rule.

“I was in the Idaho backcountry getting my first elk when we got the news by satellite phone,” he said in a telephone interview from Stevens Point, Wis., where he is a professor of global environmental management for the University of Wisconsin. “I couldn’t have been in a more appropriate place.”

Dombeck had joined friends on mules and horses to pack 25 miles into a hunting camp.

“It was a heck of a lot of work getting an elk back there, especially for an old guy like me,” said Dombeck, 58. “And yes, it’s absolutely worth it.”

Tagging his first elk was a dream come true, he said. Hearing the judge’s ruling was another step in keeping the dream viable for future generations.

“My objectives were to keep the wild places wild,” he said. “This is just one example of the kinds of experiences that wild places provide. This is something that all the money in the world can’t buy if we let it disappear.

“It’s unspoiled public land.”