WILD BILL
Forest Service Mocks Public Involvement
By Bill Schneider, 9-22-05
The concept of public involvement is not hard to understand, but many agencies, most recently the Forest Service, don’t get it—and definitely don’t like it. Instead, agencies all-too-often purposely thwart the legally mandated public involvement process to implement internal plans decided in advance, regardless of what the majority of their customers think should happen.
Witness the news this week from the Bitterroot National Forest. The Forest Service had proposed a hazardous fuel timber sale near Sula in the southernmost Bitterroot Valley, Montana’s first project under the provisos of the 2003 Healthy Forest Restoration Act.
The merits of this project are somewhat irrelevant to the point of this column. Good or bad, no matter. What matters is how the FS shammed the public involvement process—and gave us the proof of it, sort of like a bank robber dropping his business card during his getaway.
In a normal public involvement process, including this one, the agency puts several alternatives before its customers, you and me, the owners of federal land we let the Forest Service manage for us. After comments come in, the agency is supposed to objectively review them and then make its decision. Ethically and legally, the agency must consider what the public has to say, but there is no requirement to agree with the majority. Not a bad idea, though.
In this case, the FS had obviously already made its decision and only went through the process because the law required it. As the FS gathered public comments, the agency was already out laying the groundwork for its chosen option, spending $161,940 to mark trees to be cut when the involvement process ended. When first asked, the FS would not admit to this sham. We only know this and have this exact number because the Native Forest Network used the Freedom of Information Act to force the agency to release public information that should have been freely accessible.
After this embarrassment, nobody in the FS can say with a straight face that they ever planned to seriously consider anything from the public involvement process. Likewise, no member of the public can realistically expect the FS to do anything but what the agency had already decided to do behind closed doors, i.e. the so-called preferred alternative.
In fact, FS spokeswoman Dixie Dies told the Missoulian that the tree marking work was done so the agency would be ready to move quickly with the project if the preferred alternative is chosen later this month. (Note the if word, which should have been the when word.) "If we didn't get started working on it now, maybe it would be another year before we could do anything," Dies said.
What she meant to say is: We plan to move ahead with our preferred alternative without any consideration of what comes out of the public involvement process. We don’t really care what the public thinks.
At least she didn’t pretend the decision had not been made in advance. To this, I say arrogance knows no bounds.
Several green groups opposed this Healthy Forest project, and they worked hard to encourage people to send in comments opposing the preferred alternative. Consequently, 98 percent of about 10,000 people commenting oppose the preferred alternative. Nonetheless, we all know the FS plans to ignore this overwhelmingly one-sided sentiment and do the opposite, what the agency wanted to do all along.
“We find it incredibly disingenuous that during the public comment period, a period where they said they would take the public's comment and incorporate it into their plan, they were just moving ahead with the plan that they apparently already have chosen,� Matthew Koehler, director of the Native Forest Network, told the Missoulian.
Chiming in, Larry Campbell of Friends of the Bitterroot, another group opposed the FS plan, said: “It is an indisputable fact that as the public was asked to study and comment on several alternatives contained within the draft (environmental impact statement), the Forest Service simply went ahead and spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars marking the logging units for their alternative.�
All this is unbelievable, but not unusual. This usurping of the public process happens all the time, but rarely does the agency give us hard evidence that they view the public involvement process as little more than an annoying delay. Anybody trying to have an impact on what happens on their land (often referred to as the National Forests) knows similar incidents. A notable recent example is the Roadless Rule, perhaps the most important decision the FS has made in decades because it could protect the last wildland left on our national forests. More than 90 percent of public comments supported the Roadless Rule, but the FS fought it all the way, never implemented it, and eventually dumped it off to the governors hoping local politics would accomplish their goal of building more roads into the last wildlands.
Now, as this is written, the Lewis and Clark National Forest is digesting about 36,000 public comments on their draft travel plan for the Rocky Mountain Front, which is another name for their motorized recreation promotion plan. Assuming the vast majority of comments oppose the preferred alternative (which has not been determined as yet, but seems likely), will the FS change plans? Or has the decision already been made?
Agencies routinely discount comments generated by green groups, and discounting them is probably fair, since they’re like mass-filled class action suits. But ignoring them? That’s simply unacceptable behavior for a public servant. Keep in mind, of course, that groups on both sides of an issue can do it. Credit should be given to those that do—only possible, of course, after putting in many hours of volunteer time.
This insulting behavior by agencies really needs to end. Instead, they need to genuinely consider public comments and make our feelings part of the decision on what to do on our land.
Footnote: And Suddenly, It Gets Worse: The morning after this column was posted brought news that the Bitterroot National Forest still desperately needs a good public relations person.
Yesterday, September 22, the Bitterroot National Forest officials, obviously smarting from the bad publicity, had a “press conference� to “show community support� for their preferred alternative. Sula District Ranger Tracy Hollingshead told New West that the meeting “wasn’t open to the public; just to the press.� However, the FS invited six local residents (not members of the press) who supported the preferred alternative to the meeting.
When three local residents opposed to the project showed up (including Stewart Brandborg, son of a former Bitterroot National Forest Supervisor whose picture still hangs in the gallery of past supervisors in this building), they were escorted from the building by armed guards. Even though this “press conference� was by all definitions, legal and otherwise, a public meeting by a public agency in a public building, the Forest Service refused to let anybody opposed to their plan attend. To this, I must repeat my statement about arrogance knowing no bounds. This should be ample reason for the Regional Forester to immediately replace all Bitterroot National Forest supervisory personnel involved in this travesty.
"I've never been turned away from that building," said Jim Miller, Friends of the Bitterroot president, told the Missoulian. "I've been coming here for decades. I've never been treated like that in my whole life. Like we were some kind of physical threat."
Bitterroot Forest Supervisor Dave Bull said those opposed to the project were excluded because community members who had helped craft the agency's preferred alternative had felt intimidated during a field trip this summer where both supporters and dissenters were allowed. “We felt we needed to make a safe environment for them."
"In all my life, I've never seen where the public couldn't attend a press conference," the 80-year-old Brandborg said after being refused entry to the public meeting.
Later, Bull met with Miller, Brandborg and Larry Campbell of Friends of the Bitterroot outside the front door of the Bitterroot National Forest office in Hamilton.
"This has been the worst demonstration of process that I've ever seen in the management of public lands in my life," Campbell said after his talk with Bull.
But Supervisor Bull did say something that we all agree with. "This thing has spun so far out of control that maybe we need to start someplace else."
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