Balancing economic concerns with environmental ones is a complex task. The U.S. Forest Service, founded under Theodore Roosevelt, has been proud of its professional, utilitarian brand of conservatism. Along with controlling the forests for varied recreational purposes, its main mission has been to manage timber in 120 national forests. Many now question this mission. Indeed, according to the Clinton Administration, the central issue regarding this agency is whether it has become so tied to the mission of harvesting wood that it is, in effect, a federal subsidiary of the timber industry, and if this is true, how far it should go in balancing timber with other interests.
Environmentalists and the timber industry, in a continuing war over logging on millions of acres of ancient forests on federal land, have joined the debate about the agency's future. What is up for review is not only its principal policies, but its employees and its procedures. Recently, the agency offered early retirement to more than 2,300 employees tied to the timber program. The agency is trying to retain people like biologists, hydrologists, recreation specialists, and even sociologists, reflecting a broader interest in managing the many aspects of the forest.
In a clear signal that the agency's priorities are shifting, President Clinton selected Jack Ward Thomas, one of the agency's top scientists and the principal author of plans dealing with the spotted owl, as chief of the Forest Service--bypassing senior foresters from whose ranks the chief had always been drawn. Many senior foresters publicly objected, saying that the appointment politicized the agency, but others in the agency welcomed it. Furthermore, the Clinton administration is asking Congress not to dictate the agency's activities line by line in the budget. That would allow local managers to decide how much timber to cut and where, and how much money to spend on protecting strea...