Lots of things here to comment on...first is to apologize if my earlier post seemed condescending...wasn't meant to be.
I'm well aware of the way the USFS works. All the hullabaloo involved in USFS (and other land management agencies) decisions is one of the direct reasons for the current mismanagement of our forests.
No argument from me there.
Somebody sues, the FS can't afford to fight it, and the one who sued gets their way, all in the name of further mismanagement.
Oh, the FS can and has afforded to fight this sort of lawsuit time and again...and more often than not lost because the law requires specific things and not doing so is illegal. We tried doing things "our way, correct in our professional opinion"...got our asses kicked too, legally speaking.
What passes for mismanagement to one is responsible stewardship to another, and that's a fact.
Suing and backing up the suit with the severely abused Endangered Species Act is big business, corporate style, just ask the Center for Biological Diversity.
Why does a federal judge or some city slicker attorney get to have a say in a forest management decision? I doubt many of them have much of a background or even an interest in forest management, and they probably consider the paved valley of Yosemite to be "wilderness".
Because in this country we see it as the proper way to conduct public policy to allow the folks who pay the bills, i.e. taxpayers, to have a voice in how public lands are managed...even when they are ignorant and base their positions on emotion. Attorneys are not the ones having their say, precisely...it's the interest groups that bring the suits, based on the laws our duly elected officials pass at the behest of their constituents. Judges have a say of course because that's their job...that's how our system of government works.
The Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960 is focusing less and less on timber. Without healthy forests, water quality suffers, range quality suffers, wildlife suffers and rec areas suffer.
Here again...what defines a healthy forest is something our society has not agreed upon. Your statement is obviously correct, but how we go about achieving a "healthy forest" generates much debate still.
The whole of Congress and Federal forest management policies need a severe reform, it is broken as it is.
Everything needs a reform as everything changes.
No question, you are right. I would only point out that the experienced professional and technical forestry management specialists in the FS and other agencies know how to do these things well, it's the policy makers who are in the dark.
Good post, forestryworks.