Tag: public commons

I was taken aback by the administration’s decision to dismantle the U.S. Forest Service. Jim Pattiz outlined what happened in his substack post, “Trump Administration Orders Dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service.” What they are doing is bad. While the news broke suddenly, and agreements were signed quickly, the future of roughly 193 million acres of forests and grasslands not carved up with roads or clear cut logging has been up in the air for decades. With this administration, loggers and anti-government agents appear to be getting their way.

In 1970, Joan Didion opened her celebrated book The White Album by saying, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” The U.S. Forest Service action reminded me of this and the competing stories it represents.

One story, summarizing Scott Russell Sanders in A Conservationist Manifesto, goes like this. The national forest represent a wilderness with something to teach us. We are part of a living biome. We should protect these wild places as a habitat for wildlife, as a reservoir of natural processes, and as a refuge for the human spirit. The U.S. Forest Service adds a layer by being a research arm of the federal government.

Another story , according to Sanders, asserts that to “lock up” these acres from development would cost jobs, handicap economic growth, and “threaten the American way of life by denying us access to fuel and timber.” We Americans should be free to go into the warehouse that is nature and do whatever we want, regardless of consequences. It is squandering resources to not harvest timber from national forests and refrain from building roads there.

My story is we lie to ourselves by saying we can lawsuit our way out of this. Already, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club filed lawsuits challenging the USDA’s “interim final rule” that removed public comment and environmental review procedures for forest projects, arguing the fast-track rules violate the Administrative Procedure Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. I wish them well. But shouldn’t we be able to agree that the 8.5% of land these acres represent should be set aside and preserved? It is very American to settle this in courts rather than in the hearts and minds of citizens.

In typical fashion for this administration, they are moving very quickly to dismantle the U.S. Forest Service. The headquarters will move from Washington, D.C. to Utah, and much of the research into how to prevent forest fires, and related issues will apparently end. Many employees will resign because they can’t support what the administration is doing or leave because moving to Utah is not a pleasant prospect. This is the change Republicans seek.

On my daily walks through the woods on a gravel trail, I consider the quiet and beauty of place. The sounds of bird life fill the air, and the air breathes fresh and clean, that is, unless a wind blows in from a concentrated animal feeding operation. We all need this type of solace from time to time.

We do what we can to survive in a Republic. Lawsuits are part of that as are competing stories about our experiences with the same things. I seek to be part of the biome and contribute to its well being: At the same time, I seek to understand all these stories and more, to contribute more than I take, while taking only what I need to survive and protect the commons for future inhabitants of Earth. That is a just path.