AN INTERVIEW WITH MIKE DOMBECK
Memo to Obama: Reverse the Bush Environmental Legacy
Obama must deal with Bush's policy of "runaway" drilling, Clinton's forest chief saysBy David Frey, 2-15-09
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Mike Dombeck served at various times as Forest Service chief and head of the Bureau of Land Management under Clinton, and he advised the Obama transition team. Now a University of Wisconsin system fellow and professor of global conservation at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, Dombeck talks to NewWest.Net about the environmental hurdles facing the new administration.
New West: You led both the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service under the Clinton administration. What do you see as the biggest challenges facing those agencies under the new Obama administration?
Mike Dombeck: The biggest challenges, I think, that Obama faces is really reversing the trajectory and legacy left by the Bush administration. I would say with regard to the BLM, they need to get the runaway oil and gas development in five western states under control. Put a science base under it and focus on water and water quality, fish and wildlife habitats, which have basically been ignored while the Bush administration has made gas development the priority on BLM land at the cost of other resources.
With regard to the Forest Service, but it also applies to the BLM, by the Bush administration really suppressing and keeping their head in the sand on climate change, now the Obama administration really needs to reverse that. But we need to be taking a look at what role all public lands can play as they deal with the reality of climate change.
The No. 2 item, particularly with regard to the Forest Service is, basically the Bush administration did not allow the professionals in the Forest Service to lead. Outside of the Forest Service, nobody even heard of the chief of the Forest Service in the entire Bush administration. The Forest Service needs to regain its conservation leadership to provide leadership here in the U.S., but also, we ought to be a model of forest management in the entire world.
What should be Obama’s top environmental priorities?
As we take a look at focusing on climate change as a priority, we also really need to restore the watershed, restore lands, deal with forest restoration and deal with fire issues. I see those as local job programs waiting to happen, probably second to none since the Civilian Conservation Corps era. There are lots of jobs in small towns not only in the West but in states with large forests in the Midwest, like Wisconsin.
The other imperative I see in the Obama administration is really to reconnect people with the land. You’re probably familiar with Richard Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods. Eighty percent of people in this country now live in cities and towns and urban areas. There’s a greater need now to reconnect people with natural areas.
What do you see as the legacy of the Bush administration on public lands and the environment?
All I can say is, Theodore Roosevelt must be turning over in his grave when he looks at the legacy of the Bush administration, which was almost solely focused on the development of the oil and gas industry. The real travesty is the runaway, no-holds-barred public lands development in the West. There are all kinds of subtle things that occurred, like exempting the oil and gas industry in 2005 from compliance with the Clean Water Act, and sending directives out to the BLM that oil and gas permitting is the top priority of work. In my view, that is the biggest travesty that occurred in all public lands issues.
I would say the other one is totally disregarding the need to invest in our infrastructure back home, and that would include everything from roads and bridges. There was just no priority. Their priority was basically wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and dealing with terrorism. They forgot about our citizens in the US. I’m continuing to see the crumbling of infrastructure in everything from national park housing to the infrastructure of national forests, national parks. If you go to a lot of national parks, they’re all crumbling because there was no money to maintain them.
Given the financial constraints in the current economic crisis, will public land agencies have the funds they need to do the jobs they need to do?
Not even close. We really haven’t made significant investments in public lands for a long time. It hit a low point in the Reagan administration, and then it regained somewhat in the first Bush and Clinton administrations, but then it really bottomed out in the most recent Bush administration. It can be everything from investing in science to investing in infrastructure and the health of the land. All across the board, except oil and gas development, it was ignored.
I think we as a nation need to look at what our priorities are. I hope the economic stimulus package that is in conference right now will address some of these issues, but we didn’t get here overnight and we’re not going to get out of the hole we’re in overnight.
You championed the roadless rule to protect pristine areas of the nation’s forests. Now that it’s caught up in a legal battle, and Idaho and Colorado have gone their own ways, what would you like to see happen with that rule?
In spite of the extensive efforts of the Bush administration to overturn the roadless rule, there have only been seven miles of roads built in the US: three in Idaho for a phosphate mine, and four in Alaska. So, the bottom line is there really has been almost no inroads, no pun intended, into the intent of what we tried to do.
Beyond that, it really doesn’t matter to me what process is used. The important thing to me is what the outcome is. The outcome that I believe is important is we keep these wild places wild. They’re not making them anymore and we chip away at these wild places day by day, acre by acre. It’s important from the standpoint of water quality, from our legacy of biodiversity.
It could be administrative. It could be legislated. I think there are a variety of ways it could be dealt with. I think the important things that we accomplished with the moratorium, followed by the rule, is the assumption used to be we would go into these roadless areas. The assumption now is we will not go into these areas unless there’s a vital reason to do it. That’s an important turnaround. Much of the remainder of the fight is symbolic. In the last eight years, with a very pro-development administration, they have not been able to develop roads in roadless areas.
Stay tuned for more of our interview with Mike Dombeck.
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Comments
$100 million worth of "shovel-ready", NEPA approved restoration, fuel reduction, etc projects just in the northern Rockies. Funding this backlog would produce 1,400 full and part time jobs. Full story at: http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2009/01/02/news/local//news03.txt
Next, check out this proposal for a National Forest Watershed Restoration Corp at http://www.wildwestinstitute.org/pdf/watershed_eco_stimulus_proposal.pdf .
An infusion of $250 million annually for watershed restoration work on national forests would create 3,500 direct jobs in addition to other jobs sustained or created indirectly.
Both of these proposals were sent to members of Congress and people and organizations advocated for there inclusion in the stimulus bill. I know the watershed restoration was in an early vision of the stimulus bill, but I'm not sure what made it into the final stimulus bill as I've been out of the loop helping care and comfort a dear friend in Oregon who's battling the the advanced stages of cancer.
Please read below from another article in this fine ezine:
Thousands of jobs immediately will follow from the investments in fish and wildlife habitat improvement contained in the stimulus package, Cooper said, a factor that compelled the ranks of union sportsmen to align behind the bill. Earlier this month, the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO joined the TRCP in a joint letter calling on Congress to include funding for shovel-ready projects that could give a boost to the American landscape and the economy.
Fortunately, he added, several of those measures were included in the final bill passed by Congress.
The press release included the following examples:
* $375 million for restoration of the Mississippi River and its tributaries, the nation’s largest recreational fishery.
* $280 million for the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service for refuge operations and maintenance and $165 million for resource management.
* $230 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s operations, research and facilities.
* $500 million for USDA Forest Service wildland fire management efforts.
* $27.5 billion investment in highway infrastructure includes set asides for park roads, parkways, forest highways and refuge roads.
* $290 million for the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s watershed and flood prevention operations.
* $125 million for the Bureau of Land Management for projects including abandoned mine and well site remediation, road and trail maintenance, watershed improvement and high priority habitat restoration.
I say all this because I continue to hear about what is lost, what might be lost, but never about what is being gained on an annual basis. My inclination is to believe that we have annual net gains in wildlands, as per Wilderness Areas east of the Mississippi created out of cut out timber holdings bought by the USFS, and private ranches bought by NGOs and resold to USFS that are prior developed inholdings now in Wilderness. The Baucus Plum Creek sweetheart deal would be adding land to the NREPA deal, and that might have been PCT's play to get a better price now than to be condemned and get whatever a Federal appraiser comes up with, at which point you usually go to court and litigate the final payment. The guy who bought Pacific Lumber, the redwood timberland holders, and others who were condemned by the Feds for the Redwoods NP, managed to up their payout in total for the group, to more than a billion dollars when all the litigation was over. I don't think that will be possible for Plum Creek for cutover ground with species ordinaire reprod.
No matter, the Feds are gaining ground, not losing it, each year, and the total acres of roadless and wilderness seem to grow each years as roads are "de-commissioned" (a process of de-building a road, which again disturbs the landscape), land is added by purchase, and the natural processes do their thing on once disturbed or resource extracted lands. Recent Central and South American studies are revealing prior development on tropical rainforest lands from perhaps hundreds of years ago. Other studies are showing abandoned farm land becoming viable tropical forest in less than 50 years, with all components working. In fact, there are whispers that the tropical forests are gaining area, not losing it, as re-growth in that species rich environment reclaims abandoned land with speed and vigor. Dombeck tells only one side of the story, and did while working for Clinton and Babbitt. Since them, rural poverty in the West has expanded arithmetically, and their legacy is anti-people. They had a chance to clean up the mining industry and did not do it, and to now blame Bush is disingenuous. I do hope that Obama does require strict accountability and enforcement of existing law. He has an overflowing plate, and apparently a Bush work ethic, which is to be expected from a guy who recently was in the work three days a week Senate. Now if we can just get the Speaker out of her jet and in the House more often, we might drag ourselves out of the mire.
Since Dombeck is still a politician, and less a scientist, I would also say that the invisible Chief of the Forest Service was his bosses doing, and when you make the office a political plum, to go to unqualified Federal employees who don't come up through the salaried employee service and the attendant training, what can we expect? The USFS budget was balanced on the timber sale program for 50 years, and Clinton killed that with the help of people like Dombeck. The promised infill to their budgets never happened, and in Region 6, which used to fill the USFS budget coffers more so than any other region, all we see is combined Forests and less than half the ranger stations we had 20 years ago. All contracting is out of the Regional office, and all contracting officers are Regional employees. No stimulus shovel ready projects may you expect, no matter who budgets for what. They do not have the man power or the expertise. In fact, they are right now seeing who in retirement would come back to oversee projects. Now ain't that a great stimulus? Put retired people to work to relieve unemployment.
You threw soft balls at Dombeck and got softballs back. The story was a party line diatribe and expected. And, the pea is under the middle shell. Or is it the right one? Or the left? Ah, there is no pea, suckers.
Curse and critiicize as they may, without actual production of real agriculture, mining and timber, there is no creation of real value. Margaret Thatcher nailed it when she said that socialism is wonderful, until you run out of other people's money. We've regulated all real production in the U.S. out of business and now import it from countries who don't have to live by the same regulations. The day is near when global warming books will be traded for Economics 101.
There are no bigger hypocrits on the planet Earth than Al Gore, Bruce Babbit and Dombeck. Fat cats protecting the tax dependent trough they're slopping at, while scorning and criticizing any industry or individual who should dare to actually produce some real value for someone other than themselves while making a profit. And if that's not hypocritical enough, realizing personal profit on private real estate and business deals that are only available to persons in their respective position and wealth stratas. Gore & Babbit anyway and it wouldn't be surprising if Dombeck also based on his obvious stature.
I also grew up in a rural area and sadly watch as the overwhelming majority of "users" of the Forest and public lands are increasingly Forest Service and gov't personnel, driving around in brand new, gas guzzling, completely over-built (for what they're used for) vehicles, arrogantly sipping their designer coffee and looking down their nose at commoners like me.
Anything that actually gets done on public land, is contracted out to very few contractors who can "qualify" to bid (but have little if any real connection to the environement they're working in). Consequently these "projects" cost the taxpayers far more than when real users of old, simply maintained roads, springs, fences, burned firebreaks, and took care of the land they loved and fed them, regardless of who held the deed. Simply put, they weren't going to sink the boat that they were riding in.
But you will never ever hear even a single story of those good stewards today - only how the ground was raped, pliiaged and plundered. I'll conceded that there were irresponsible users who did such things. Even though they were the exception, not the rule, they were the basis for the arguments that the Foreest Service, BLM, state land managers and gov't in general needed more authority to regulate and control. Well good people, that brings us to our current forest conditions that when fires start (even by Mother Nature), cannot be put out or controlled. This situation cannot be blamed on global warming either, it is purely the result of 40+ years of piss-poor management by people paid to be there, but who don't make their living directly off that land!
I conclude by returning to my first question. Assuming these well educated, well fed, far removed gurus are correct and all we need is a bunch of local work crews to do the handywork - WHO'S GOING TO PAY FOR IT?
With due respect, I do not know that this is your name just because you listed it. I will however give you the benefit of the doubt and respond in a civil manner.
First, yes I've heard of the government. I am curious who you consider the government to be? And more importantly, where you think the money that it spends comes from?
Second, if you will kindly re-read my post, I made no reference to, defense of, or comment in any manner to the Iraq conflict or former President Bush.
Third, I'm certainly curious how you can tell by the lack of or inclusion of what appears to be a complete name (truthul or not), where someone grew up? I do have a wife, children, business and a few assets gathered over many years of hard work. I do not have any desire to be personally approached, contacted or possibly the target of someone who disagrees with my prerspective because they lack the communication skills to have a civil discussion. Once again, with due respect I'm not convinced that informing you where I was raised and grew up, other than in a very rural area in the southwest, is going to convince you.
Last, may I suggest that you consider reading a book entitled "I Chose Freedom", published in 1945 by a high level Russian engineer named Victor Kravchenko. It chronicals his life of growing up in Russia during Stalin's rise to power. He defected to this country in 1943. If you should choose to read it, you will better understand my views about the GOVERNMENT. I would be interested in any books you care to suggest.
Best Regards,
jk
We have a President who "cares for the environment and is going to do something for global warming". He will be crawling in Air Force One and will be flying to Denver, Colorado for the 2 minute signing of the spendalot bill. Of course not only will he be flying , another plane load of secret service etc will be going, I don't know if the vehicles for secret service and the POTUS can be in that plane or if a third will carry them to Denver. That should do a lot for the environment and burn up a lot of that nasty fuel he does not want extracted from the ground.
Each President will be judged by history on his own and for his own actions.
And imagine my disillusionment when the USFS conducted white-ash-intensity burnout operations in a roadless old growth forest in our area during a 1999 wild fire... then backfired and burned out another roadless area in another fire in 2000. That was Dombeck's Forest Service incinerating roadless old growth forests. As a local firefighter said, the replacement time for the cabins potentially saved by the burnout is 5 years; the replacement time for the forest lost is more like 500 years, minimum.
Bearbait's point about local watershed groups doing the watershed restoration is true in my part of the west, also (northern California), so Larry's "the government will do it" comments don't ring true for me on that point.
To get Congress to fund forest restoration at the appropriate level will require lots and lots of citizens demanding it of their representatives, at decibel levels high enough to get attention over the economy, Iraq, Afghanistan, climate change, health care, etc. Are enough people willing to lobby hard enough and long enough?
Thanks to everyone who took the time and effort to comment. I find myself agreeing in part and disagreeing in part with everyone else, but the most impressive part is that we the people are discussing our government and its policies.
I was only posting on this matter to see what kind of response I would get. However some of the subject matter regarding the closing of the forests and the expansion of the roadless areas are to carefully looked at and should be open to public discussion. I am all for the preservation and health of our forests and environment and support the thinning of the forests to prevent the wildfire situation of two summers ago. I have property at Placid Lake up the Swan Drainage and spent the entire summer on pins and needles wondering if we would have a cabin to go back to. I am forever indebted to the brave souls who held the firelines. My father was a smokejumper and traded jumping out of planes into machine gun fire for jumping out of planes into raging forest fires.
The only whine I know is a good Jewish whine "I Wanna Go To Palm Springs".
Peace
Give it up Larry, all of your posts only try to bash people and you never can contribute to the positve side of anything.
Bearbait, Crowe, Marion and jk, I think you really proved to Larry and his fellow so called "majority" liberal thinkers, just how ludicrous their arguments really are.
jk, right on the mark on Clinton/Babbitt/Dombeck. The west was almost devastated with their reign of terror for 8 years. They bash Bush and all he did was barely hold the line and didn't do much one way or the other, than cave in to listing the Polar Bear. What a crock of crap! Global Warming, Al Gore and Obama's crew are going to make Bush look like a prince in a very short while. Radical environmentalism is the death knell of modern society as we know it.
Paz sea contigo, amigo
Thanks for the compliment. I am a true Montanan, and have always carried the Montana Attitude wherever in this world I have traveled. I am in the music business and I have kicked so many doors in, that I am a seasoned veteran of the rock and roll wars. Hit and run rock and roll. Swoop down from the mountains and terrorize the city for a while. I used to have the most "not give a shit attitude" about everything, but since I quit the drinking and drugs, and essentially "Grown Up", I have begun to get more involved in matters that are important to me, like the political landscape, the environment, and the 2nd amendment. I believe that your rights are like a big bundle of sticks, and if you begin to remove sticks from the bundle, we all know what happens---The bundle collapses.
I have had to live in California off and on because the music business is in New York and Los Angeles, and I didn't want to live in New York, preferring the beachs and the desert of Southern California. I own property at Placid Lake that has been in my family for about 100 years, and that is where I head as soon as the business is finished or when I get off touring. My dad was in the Smokejumper book, only not in the contentious objectors book. He was in the "Battle of the Bulge" and is one of my personal heroes. I have him to thank for teaching me the skills to survive in the woods, all of which I use to survive in the urban landscape of today. Lots of my friends of today are LRPS and special forces in various branches of the services who I don't get to see enough of, because they are all working somewhere in the world.
We would probably like each other as people, and get along famously, as long as we put politics and religion aside, because I can tell that we are as far apart as can be at least on politics. However I have lots of friends and some family members that are further to the right than I am, and some that are not as far to the left as you are. However, we both have a love for Montana, and firearms, so on that note we would be best of friends.
I was born in Great Falls at Deaconess Hospital.
You do write well and certainly have a command of the King's English. (And his Espanol too)
Best,
George A. Crowe
I'm soooo sorry for butting in here, being an outta stater and all. I didn't appreciate how only Montanans are New West. But, yeah, I got it.