Amid the local response to the elimination of dozens of jobs on the Payette National Forest, you can hear a familiar undercurrent: We should just do away with the U.S. Forest Service and let the State manage our forests.
Before you jump on a stump and declare the State should take over our public lands, consider this: Dustin Miller, the director of the Idaho Department of Lands, last month told the Joint Finance Appropriations Committee of the Idaho Legislature that Idaho “couldn’t afford to pay the fire bill” if the state took over management of the 20 million acres of national forests in Idaho. It is exceedingly rare to hear an Idaho official admit that, but there it is.
Mind you, he was only talking about the fire bill. That’s not to mention the cost of road maintenance, timber administration, recreation management and all the other work that goes into managing for public access and multiple use. Miller made his remarks while asking for $100 million for IDL just to keep up with fighting wildfire on state and private lands in 2024-25.
So don’t kid yourself. State management of federal lands is not economically viable. It would simply be the first step on the road to selling our hunting and fishing spots, campsites, and timber resources to the highest bidder. And we know all too well where privatization leads. It dead ends in locked gates, orange paint, and no-trespassing signs. Is that really the legacy you want to leave your kids and grandkids?
On the other hand, promising things are happening through state-federal partnerships such as the Good Neighbor Authority and Shared Stewardship that increase capacity to harvest timber and reduce fuels on federal, state and private lands. Last year, for example, 24 percent of the volume of timber sales on Idaho’s national forests came from Good Neighbor Authority projects, Miller said.
How can that work continue to get done if the U.S. Forest Service, already stretched thin in the midst of a hiring freeze, loses key personnel through indiscriminate firing?
If you were a smart business operator who needed to cut costs, would you make the reckless personnel cuts this Administration is making? Or would you analyze which jobs are essential, which workers are most productive, and how you could reduce costs without degrading your product or service? That sounds like a job for a skilled surgeon wielding a scalpel, not a billionaire blindly waving a chainsaw.
Is there waste in the federal government? No question. Does Congress need to revise laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest System Planning Rule to streamline forest management? Absolutely. Do we need to update Forest Management Plans to recalibrate objectives, standards and guides to match conditions on the ground? You tell me. The Payette National Forest is handcuffed to a resource management plan that is more than twenty years old. What part of your world looks the same as it did twenty years ago?
Contact Idaho’s congressional delegation and tell them you want realistic, responsible management of federal land that is sustainable for generations of Idahoans. Effective management demands that Congress provide federal agencies the modernized legal framework and statutory tools to function efficiently. And it requires adequate funding and staffing of the U.S. Forest Service.
