The Once and Future Forest Service: Land-Management Policies and Politics in Contemporary America

The news from the Far North is not good. In the spring of 2007, University of Alberta scientists reported that portions of the Canadian tundra were transforming into new forests of spruce and shrubs much more rapidly than once was imaginable. "The conventional thinking on treeline dynamics has been that advances are very slow because conditions are so harsh at these high latitudes and altitudes," reported Dr. Ryan Danby, a member of the UA research team. "But what our data indicate is that there was an upslope surge of trees in response to warmer temperatures. It's like [the forest] waited until conditions were just right, then it decided to get up and run, not just walk."¹

The multifaceted impact of global climate change is chilling. As tundra converts to forest cover, species and their habitats must move higher up or die off. Sheep and caribou are already responding to the environmental transformation that has affected members of Canada's First Nations, who are dependent on these food sources. Moreover, the process feeds offitself: trees absorb more light than tundra does and they emit that energy as heat, further warming the atmosphere and reinforcing the very conditions that allow more spruce to flourish on the formerly treeless terrain. "These results are very relevant to the current debate surrounding climate change," Professor Danby noted, "because they provide real evidence that vegetation change will be quite considerable in response to future warming."²

The scientific data, and their myriad implications, raise key questions about how human institutions will respond to a human-generated crisis. This is particularly relevant to those land-management agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service that are responsible for innumerable bioregions and ecozones. How will it steward its 193 million acres of forests and grasslands as the climate and landscape shift in relation to one another?³

That confounding question comes at a fascinating moment in the agency's history. Established in 1905, in the immediate aftermath of its centennial celebrations, the Forest Service found itself with a golden opportunity to consider whether its prior commitments will allow it to celebrate its bi centennial. That may seem an odd statement. After all, the Forest Service has managed to weather serious challenges in the past, a legacy suggesting that it might prove as nimble when confronted with future trials, however unpredictable as those global warming may pose. Th at said, the agency's history may not be a useful guide to a future layered with the dilemmas that a warmer earth is expected to produce. But however traumatic climate change may be, however disruptive its impact on the agency's previous patterns of behavior and action, analyzing its past still may provide insight into its future. How will its leaders, line officers, rangers, and staff daily face complexities posed by an integrated series of forces that may overwhelm their capacity to manage landscapes? How will they respond to the welter of opportunities and challenges that already have emerged and will arise? These are not just policy questions but also have a historical dimension, for as Richard Neustadt and Ernest May observe in Thinking in Time: "Seeing the past can help one envision alternative futures."⁴

This article is concerned with some of the alternative futures that the U.S. Forest Service might face, in particular three possible paths that could redefine its structure and mission. For the sake of clarity, I have segregated the three tracks, but in reality they might well merge or intersect at various points, a speculative approach that is designed to provoke a larger discussion about land management in an age of climate change.

Scenario One: Evolutionary Dynamics

The Forest Service has evolved in relation to the lands that it manages, establishing a dynamic interaction between environment and the professional conservationists who seek to manage it, which confirms a broader claim: "History has repeatedly demonstrated that the health and welfare of human societies are fundamentally dependent on the health and welfare of their forests." This reciprocity, in its particularity and...