By
Jeff Ghannam
The Forestry Source recently held a far-ranging question-and-answer
session with USDA Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck. The interview,
which followed closely upon the one-year anniversary of Dombeck's
appointment as chief, focused on the challenges and achievements of his
first year. We also took time to discuss what he thinks the agency's
focus will be in the months and years to come.
The Forestry Source: What would you cite as the biggest
challenge of your first year as chief?
Mike Dombeck: From the
standpoint of challenges we've faced, there were significant human
resources management challenges, a huge backlog of EEOC [Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission] complaints, things like that that
were internal to the organization. The second set of issues that I've
faced were also internal and those were the issues of accountability,
the issue of financial management, and the complexity of the system that
we have here.
The Forest Service has a phenomenal data management and financial
management system. We do 75 million transactions a month and we have 800
data entry points. We have 40 systems, some that are not connected and
measure the same things differently in different parts of the country.
What we have is an organization that is very decentralized by its
culture and that's very appropriate from the standpoint of natural
resources management because Alaska is different from California and
that's different from Florida. However, a debit and a credit are the
same. So it's the internal controls, the accountability, the human
resources and civil rights challenge that were significant. A large
portion of my time was spent on that and we made significant progress.
In fact, we've made significant progress in implementing a general
ledger on a pilot basis in two regions and one research station. So
we're making tremendous progress in tying that whole side of the program
together, but it's going to take at least a couple of more years because
of the complexity and magnitude of what we need to do. We have to work
with partners, Congress, and the administration to work our way through
that.
Now you'll note I have not even mentioned natural resources. But it's
natural resources management that is the mission, the heart and soul, if
you will, of the organization. And let me say one caveat up front: much
of what we're doing is a work in progress. The development of land-based
performance measures for resources managers is important, I believe. We
took the first cut at that in July and we will be more closely refining
that and more closely tying it into the Government Performance and
Results Act, which is all about accountability. But I believe that a
resource manager should be graded on long-term conditions and trends of
the land they are responsible for. By that, I mean trends in water
quality and forest health and soil stability. Our challenge is to find
things that are easily measured so we don't spend all of our time
gathering data rather than implementing. So we need to strive for what
is the 'pulse rate, blood pressure, and cholesterol level' of a forest
and watershed in a way that is easily understood by the American public,
and reasonable to monitor from the standpoint of the resource manager.
The Source: You mentioned a need to partner with Congress
and the American people. Is this what you mean by 'collaborative
stewardship,' a proclamation you made during your first month in
office?
Dombeck: In general, I believe government is
decentralizing and has been for some years. We've also had new laws to
implement and new awareness of what people expect from the land, in
other words, their concerns about the environment. I think we're now in
the process of learning how to make those mesh, streamlining and
refining. I have to tell you that in my 20 years-plus of being in this
business, I think the decisionmaking process is more open than ever.
There's more opportunity for people to be involved than ever. But we
still have a long way to go. People are the delivery system. Not only
the employees of the Forest Service and other agencies, but also the
people we work with on the land. That was something that Gifford Pinchot
recognized at the turn of the century when he gave his rangers the
instruction to work with people.
The Source: You are reportedly going to give a 'state of
the forests' report relatively soon. Can you give us an early peek at
what that might entail?
Dombeck: The focus of the natural
resources agenda that I'll announce will be in about four or five areas.
The first is watershed health and restoration. I believe that we'll be
moving into an era that goes beyond protecting what's remaining. It will
be an era in which we'll broadly embrace true restoration. In fact, this
has been going on all around us. Think about the Appalachian Mountains
and the conditions they're in today compared to, say, the turn of the
century. We've rebuilt the topsoils and improved water quality there.
This is a tremendous success story of reforestation and the practice of
forestry. It's fascinating that we're talking about wilderness areas in
the Appalachians that were clearcuts created at the turn of the century.
So we're moving into this era of restoration instead of just protecting
the remaining pieces. One of the overriding priorities that I'm going to
ask Forest Service supervisors and employees and the public to make as
they continue on with the forest planning process is to make watershed
restoration health a priority in everything we do.
The Source: What else will you be focusing
on?
Dombeck: The cleanup of abandoned mines on national forests
is something else we'll be focusing on. The whole area of the
vice-president's clean water action plan is another. We plan on
ratcheting up our activities in the clean water initiative, hoping to
restore in 1999 more than 2,600 miles of streams, up from 2,000 miles of
streams we hope to restore this year. We'll be focusing more on
specifics with regard to watershed health and increasing the level of
funding to many areas.
The Source: Tell us a bit about the long-term objectives of
the recently announced forest roads policy and why you decided to
announce it now?
Dombeck: The roads issue
has been very controversial for well over a decade. It's been under
attack for a long time. In 1996 we came within one vote in the House of
losing 80 percent of the program. And last October we came within one
vote of losing 25 percent of the program. It's an issue that in the eyes
of the American public is seen as, 'Forest Service roads equals logging
equals subsidies.' We have to redefine the roads program. The primary
objective is to get on with it before we lose the program. The program
is underfunded now to the point that we are unable to maintain 60
percent of the 380,000 miles of roads in the forest system. And because
of this lack of funding we have this pitched battle between the various
interest groups.
What we need to do is to view the roads as an important part of the
transportation system of rural America. So part of the objective of the
policy is to do about three or four things. Number one, to use the best
science and technology to develop the underpinning policies and
framework for the decisionmaking process. That includes very close
collaboration with local communities and the states because they are
part of the transportation system. Number two, because of the $10
billion backlog we have in restoration and maintenance costs that we are
not funded for, we have to have a process for determining what roads are
needed and then take care of them appropriately. If the roads are
bleeding sediments into streams, are unsafe, and causing other kinds of
problems, people are not going to be satisfied, which leads to the
controversy. We have to determine what roads we don't need and then
decommission them.
The Source: Let's talk about a couple of other Forest
Service programs. With national forest timber sales decreasing over the
last several years, there`s been more of a demand for timber from
nonfederal forestlands. What concrete steps is the Forest Service
undertaking, particularly with its state and private forestry program,
to help alleviate this increased demand, especially with regard to the
private nonindustrial private forestland sector?
Dombeck: I
think one of the objectives that every citizen should have is less
dependence on imported wood. One of things I'll be focusing on with the
natural resources agenda I'll be announcing is a renewed emphasis on
partnerships in the state and private forestry program, particularly on
the importance of forest inventory and analysis. I believe we need to
tie that in with criterion indicators. We'll be working closely with the
state foresters and other professionals in this. In my job, you're
always looking for areas of agreement. And the one area that there's
full agreement is that of the 700 million acres or so of forests in the
country, much of it privately owned. An important part of what private
owners do, whether they are woodlot owners or owners of industrial
forests, is forest inventory and analysis, and we'll be emphasizing that
significantly.
The Source: You've touched on some international issues
with your mention of imported timber and criterion indicators. Another
program that has changed at the Forest Service is the international
forestry program. Given the cutbacks in the program over the last
several years, can the Forest Service continue to play a leadership role
in global forestry discussions?
Dombeck: I think we can maintain
our leadership and I also think it's very important that this country
maintain this leadership. We do this through the development of science
and technologies and making them available to other countries. It's
important that other countries are able to apply the appropriate
technologies to avoid environmental degradation, watershed degradation,
and other similar issues. The international community continues to look
to the Forest Service and the United States for those kinds of things.
That will not change irrespective of the funding levels of the
international program.
The other thing that's important from the standpoint of international
cooperation is the invasions we have of exotics. The research for the
biological controls really needs to be done in those countries where
those species come from, whether it's the Asian long-horned beetle or
any other kind of exotic. We need to be able to prevent those kind of
things as much as we can, and we want to do that before those problems
reach our shores.
The Source: Speaking of problems in our forests, let's turn
to forest health. Do you think we have a forest health problem in this
country?
Dombeck: Well, it's not as simple as a yes or no
answer. I wish it were. We have a lot of work to do from the standpoint
of the fire risks we have in the wildland-urban interface. But I have to
tell you that I think that many of the forest health issues are as much
social problems as anything else. One of the challenges that I have, and
hope to make significant progress with, is to work with people in giving
them a better understanding and getting support for what we do to
address forest health, the importance of active management, and applying
the best silvicultural techniques. People love forests and people love
trees. As the profession of forestry and natural resources management
moves into the 21st century, it will be significantly different.
In the eyes of many people, when they fly into Portland or Seattle,
they view the practice of forestry as what they see out of the airplane
window. The fact is that we no longer do the large clearcuts that we did
30 years ago. We need to move toward more light-on-the-land approaches
to forest management. I think we've moved significantly in that
direction already. One of the points I made when the TSPIRS report came
out [which announced that in fiscal year 1996 the Forest Service timber
program lost money for the first time] was that the reason the balance
sheets are not what a lot of people would like them to be is because
we're doing more work with regards to stewardship. We're practicing
forestry in a way that maintains ecosystem health. Are we all the way
there yet? No, but we continue to make progress toward all the concepts
of ecosystem management.
The Source: You mentioned fire risks. Last year, Secretary
Babbitt was outspoken about the increased use of prescribed burning to
reduce the potential for catastrophic wildfire. Where are you with that?
Dombeck: Prescribed burning, as you know, is one of the
important tools in the toolbox for dealing with forest health issues.
But in combination with prescribed burning, thinning and fuels
management is also important and is probably one of the fastest growing
programs we have within the agency. My experts tell me that we can
probably only burn about 10 percent of the areas that need to be burned
now without some sort of prior treatments to reduce the fuel loads. So
there's a lot of work that needs to be done out there. Part of the
challenge is to figure out a way to pay for it. In the past, we've put
the cost of everything we do on the back of timber. I think an important
message that we all need to carry is the importance of making
investments in the land, investments for future generations. We can't
expect to turn a profit every time we do an activity on the land.
The Source: How else do you see forestry changing in the
future?
Dombeck: What we have to do is to continue to look ahead,
be leaders in educating the public about the importance of healthy
forests and forest management. This is important not only from the
standpoint of managing the wildlands in the national forest, but it's
important from the standpoint of urban forestry. Sixty million acres of
urban forests that, in addition to the aesthetic values they provide
with beautiful tree-lined streets in cities, play an important role. I
was recently with American Forests and looked at some of their programs
like CITYgreen. I learned that if you planted three trees of the right
species in the right location around a single-family home in the city of
Atlanta, you would reduce [that home's] air-conditioning costs by 40
percent. Also, increasing the canopy cover in urban and suburban areas
reduces stormwater runoff costs. So the importance of forestry and
forest management is all across the board. It's not only in the
intermountain west or northern Wisconsin, where I grew up. But it's also
in big cities like Washington, DC, Boise, Idaho, and Atlanta.
I think we need to broaden our view. I'm back to the point that
people love trees. People want to see healthy forests. They don't want
to see forests with large insect infestation problems, brown trees, or a
mountainside that's black from a catastrophic wildfire. And it's
foresters who know how to prevent these things.
The Source: Speaking of broadening our views, the SAF
membership recently voted to expand its definition of a professional
member to include all those who are involved in 'the broad field of
forestry.' Along those lines, how can foresters reach out to other
disciplines involved in forest management?
Dombeck: The more we
integrate other professions and disciplines in what we do, the more
progress we make. This is something that's been going on for decades and
we need to get better at it. But the thing that I would encourage all
other members to do is to be active in your professional society. Stay
on the cutting edge, publish as much as you can, as time permits,
because this is the way we stay current and maintain our leadership.
The Source: You recently held an informal outreach session
at the SAF national office with representatives of various natural
resources professional associations, SAF among them. What kind of
followup activities have you done or are you considering in order to
continue that spirit of outreach?
Dombeck: Part of the whole
push for collaborative stewardship is to be as inclusive as we can,
where we can. Knowing that one does not have all the answers, we need to
accomplish things together.
The Source: As we wrap-up, what do you think has been your
biggest achievement in your first year as chief?
Dombeck: I think
we've made significant progress on internal challenges. In addition to
that, we're moving forward to get into the lead in laying professionally
based policies on the table. The roads issue is the first one, and now
through the natural resources agenda that I'll be rolling out over the
course of the next six to eight months in various pieces. What I think
is important is that the natural resources managers, the employees of
this agency, focus on laying policies on the table for the Congress, for
the administration, that are based on science and professionalism-and be
part of that debate.
The Source: Is there anything else that you'd like to share
with forest resource managers?
Dombeck: I would like to talk
about the importance of settling the debates and the importance of
focusing on the long-term benefits of good, sound forest and land
management. As we attempt to focus more of our organizational energy,
and more of the taxpayer dollars that we manage, into zones of
agreement, one of the shifts we need to make is to talk about what we
leave on the land and the desired future condition of the land, rather
than what we take. |