Get Outdoors - Volunteer: A New Era for the Forest Service?

Since its creation in 1918 as an agency of the Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service has always focused its resources on harvesting the land. Whether by timbering, mining or grazing, extracting a "crop" has often been the agency's reason for being.But that's starting to change.

The Forest Service's traditional money-maker, logging, is no longer very profitable and in recent years recreation has overtaken it as the primary use of the national forests. Recreation does not contribute as much to the federal government, but its effect on the national economy is profound. In 2000, recreation on national forest lands is projected to contribute $97.8 billion to the Gross Domestic Product, while national forest logging will contribute $3.5 billion.

The Forest Service, at least at the national level, recognizes this shift. In 1998, FS Chief, Mike Dombeck, announced a new 4-part Natural Resource Agenda. Recreation was recognized as one of the 4 elements, along with watershed health and restoration, sustainable forest ecosystem management, and forest roads. Acting on Dombeck's new plan, the FS this fall invited American Hiking Society and 60 other conservation and recreation groups to a summit in Washington D.C. to develop and expand the Forest Service Recreation Agenda.

The Recreation Agenda will likely govern hiking in national forests and grasslands for the next twenty years. It will also determine how much access to forest lands will be granted to mountain bikes, horses, snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles.Representatives of all these interests attended the Summit, intent on either preserving their existing use of national forests, or carving out new spaces. Despite outreach by the Forest Service, many conservation groups were disappointingly absent from the meeting and it was dominated by motorized recreation interests and ski area operators. Like the summit proceedings, the final Recreation Agenda will be skewed toward increased access to motorized vehicles and away from environmental protection unless those missing groups and hikers participate in upcoming meetings.

At stake is the hiking experience, which encompasses far more than a clearly marked trail. It includes wild animals and plants and healthy land. It includes roadless landscapes, clear air and clean water. It includes quiet, slow travel. All of which could suffer if hiker's voices are absent from the Recreation Agenda.

In spite of years of logging, there is still lots of good hiking in the national forests. The FS, in fact, manages 133,087 miles of trails, 4,268 miles of wild and scenic rivers, 34.5 million acres of Wilderness, ~1/3 of the entire National Wilderness Preservation System, and 80% of the habitat of elk, bighorn sheep, and mountain goats and in the lower 48 states. That's a lot of wild land.

Yet the Recreation Agenda reads much like a corporate marketing plan. While it includes land-based discussions about sustaining ecosystems and educating people in natural resource conservation, the mission statement declares that "the recreation program is founded on quality customer service." Key issues such as natural settings, services, communities and relationships are identified, but the Forest Service's role in balancing recreation and conservation is addressed with such phrases as "provide seamless delivery" and "review professional business practices."

The language sets an odd commercial tone, as if visitors to national forests are nothing more than consumers and the Forest Service a provider of customer service. The change is probably due to the fact that in the last few years the FS has taken lots of criticism for the failures of its accounting systems and is trying be more responsive and accountable. In some ways, that's a welcome shift - a recent survey, for example, revealed 8,000 miles of un-inventoried national forest trails.

But treating national forest visitors as consumers may not be the best way to manage public lands. In business, after all, the customer is always right. If the new Forest Service is indeed founded on "quality customer service," land managers would be obliged to accommodate the wishes and whims of every visitor, rather than manage the land to protect watersheds or sensitive ecosystems. A more sustainable Recreation Agenda would cast national forest managers and visitors as fellow stewards who have as much responsibility to protect the land as they do the right to use it.

Thankfully volunteers are a common theme throughout the Recreation Agenda. "We pride ourselves on innovative partnerships and collaborative relationships to accomplish the recreation job," says the mission statement. Generally a good partner to trail organizations, the Forest Service is using the Recreation Agenda to signal its desire to improve.

Warts and all, the Recreation Agenda is an important step. Not only has it raised the credibility and status of recreation within ranks of the Forest Service, but it also outlines a significant shift away from the agency's reliance on logging. "The Agenda is a tool for internal and external energy and acceptance," says FS Recreation Director, Denny Bschor. Changing the culture of the Forest Service will not be easy, but the Recreation Agenda is certainly heading it in the right direction.Over the next several months, the Forest Service will be following up its Recreation Summit in Washington, DC with meetings around the country. This is an important opportunity for hikers to influence the direction of the Forest Service, and we should take advantage of it. Visit the USDA Forest Service web site for a listing of scheduled meetings.