Dear HCN,
While there’s no question
that U.S. Forest Service management and decision making could use
some progressive reform, the Bush administration’s proposal to
establish “charter forests” takes it in the wrong direction (HCN,
3/18/02: Can ‘charter forests’ remake an agency?). Putting the
future of our public national forests in the hands of any narrow
collection of interests opens the door for all manner of
mischief.
Fragmenting forest management and
forest ecosystems, smoothing the way for corporate abuse or
reducing environmental safeguards will serve very few of us.
Citizen advisory councils and collaborative planning are
potentially good ideas, as is a streamlined (if sound and
accountable) decision-making process, but do we want to just hand
over management authority to anyone who
asks?
Here’s one example of local management gone
askew: County commissioners in northwest Colorado have proposed a
Working Landscape Trust to manage all federal lands in Moffat
County. Their proposal explicitly states that they do not support
any wilderness protection for public lands in their domain. People
are entitled to their opinions, but that doesn’t mean an
agenda-driven group like this is entitled to manage anything on
behalf of the American public.
Trying to bring
substance to its ambiguous charter forest proposal, the
administration makes a direct reference to the Valles Caldera
National Preserve on the Santa Fe National Forest. The new preserve
is a “model,” according to the proposal (and according to
HCN’s caption under a photo of the preserve),
but the administration is way off the mark.
The
Valles Caldera National Preserve came into the federal estate under
unique circumstances. The former “Baca Ranch” had been a private
working ranch for generations. After years of negotiations with the
willing sellers, the ranch was purchased using federal Land and
Water Conservation Fund dollars because of the significant cultural
and natural values it could provide to the American public. The
nine-member Trust does operate outside of the normal Forest Service
structure, but clearly within all the requirements of federal law.
The Trust is a wholly owned government corporation, whose members
are appointed by the president, not a special-interest group who
petitioned the government for a piece of
land.
This preserve is truly an experiment on a
grand scale, but we won’t see the results on the land for years or
even decades. We hope it eventually proves to be a model of
progressive, holistic, science-based public-lands management, which
is a lot more than we’d see from a “charter forests”
model.
Sara Scott
Denver, Colorado
The writer is the New Mexico program director for The Wilderness Society.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Charter forests and the Valles Caldera don’t mix.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
