A Test for Mike Dombeck's new Forest Service
By Mike Clark
Since early January, letters, postcards and email have been pouring into the office of Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck. Americans are urging Dombeck to set a new course for his agency, this time in a sea of clearcuts known as the Targhee National Forest.
The Targhee abuts Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, where the goal of managing public land is to keep the park and all of its wonders unimpaired for future generations. In contrast, the Targhee has been peeled away by decades of clearcutting. The "forest" is now a scar so expansive it can be seen even from outer space.
A closer look reveals still more damage. The Forest Service built a massive network of roads on the Targhee so that log trucks could carry the public’s timber to mills. The agency promised long ago to close many of the roads once timber extraction had been completed, but failed to keep its promise. As a result, snowmobile and all-terrain vehicle use has mushroomed on the Targhee’s more than three thousand miles of open roads.
Today, many of these roads are crumbling, sending silt into streams which formerly ran clear. Yellowstone cutthroat trout are suffering. Elk herds have dwindled because roads have carried humans into every pocket of the forest. The threatened grizzly bear, which appears to be starting a comeback on other national forests surrounding Yellowstone, is nowhere to be seen in huge sections of the Targhee considered vital for grizzly recovery.
So the Targhee has become a test case for the new fiber of the Forest Service. Not the kind chopped down and sent to mills when the Targhee was becoming a poster child for deforestation in the Northern Rockies. Americans are looking instead to the fiber of Mike Dombeck, a man demonstrating impressive strength of character as he pushes the Forest Service in a new direction that is long overdue.
Dombeck recently announced an 18-month freeze on road-building in roadless areas. Unfortunately this policy does not cover many forests, including the Targhee. Nevertheless, it represents an important first step to protect areas where water still runs clear and where fish and wildlife are generally in better shape than anywhere else in the country.
But the new policy does not address existing roads, which are causing damage every day on tens of millions of acres of publicly-owned land managed by Dombeck’s agency. That is why so many Americans are watching the Targhee National Forest.
Jerry Reese, the Supervisor of the Targhee Forest, is proposing to close 1,200 miles of road and place new limits on motorized use in broad areas of the forest. To Reese’s credit, the plan represents a step toward reestablishing balance in a forest that is owned— not by timber companies or by manufacturers of snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles— but by 271 million Americans.
Perhaps this is why 98 percent of the public comments received by the Forest Service favor road closures and limits on motorized recreation. The public sees that the agency’s proposal is not a "lockup" of the Targhee Forest; closing 1,200 miles of road would still leave 2,200 miles of road and trail open to motorized use on this national forest alone.
So where does Dombeck come in?
On other national forests, including the Dixie in Utah and the Stanislaus in California, backlash from the snowmobile and all-terrain vehicle industries has caused the Forest Service to buckle in its pursuit of responsible limits. Dombeck needs to ensure this will not happen on the Targhee. He personally should review comments from the public that are coming in by the thousands to his office and the office of the Targhee Forest Supervisor in Idaho.
Americans want careful stewardship, not exploitation, of their national forests and their admiration for Mike Dombeck is growing. But given the Forest Service track record of yielding to the motorized recreation lobby, many Americans are still reluctant to give praise. They are watching the Targhee intently to see if roads will be closed and if limits on motorized use will be established.
There would be no greater symbol for Dombeck’s commitment to maintaining healthy national forests than to begin healing a landscape where scars from his agency’s previous land ethic are visible from outer space, and where water, wildlife and fish are suffering because of too many roads.
Dombeck should support a new direction on the Targhee to give clear proof of what he stands for as he leads our national forests into the next century.
Mike Clark is Executive Director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition