National Forestry and Grassland Administration

Transcription

[Music] Female voice #1: Public lands are so important we're just real privileged to have a nation with such a variety. Male voice #1: A career in the Forest Service is really what you want to make it. Male voice #2: I make tremendous amounts of change and difference every year. Female voice #2: And there is a ton of opportunity. Male voice #3: The training opportunities are there. Male voice #4: Take advantage of any opportunity, however small. Female voice #3: Challenge yourself Male voice #5: Learn for yourself get the experience. Female voice #3: If you want to spend two weeks in a totally different ecosystem, start asking. Male voice #6: It's not only how good you are but also the relationships you develop with others who can help mentor you. Female voice #4: We administer this land on behalf of the citizens of the United States. Female voice #5: When I drive around here and walk across this land, I know the work I have done in my career makes a difference. [Music] I'm Clara Johnson. I'm here in Washington D.C. in a training assignment learning about the legislative process. When I leave Washington D.C. I will take on an assignment as Forest Supervisor. When I first started with the Forest Service I was nineteen years old. I was living in Mississippi, majoring in agronomy. I knew very little about the agency. I didn't have misconceptions, so much as, I didn't know anything about the agency. I didn't know that they had campgrounds, they provided skiing opportunities, they provided other recreational opportunities. I didn't know any of those things about the agency, and in my twenty years I've been able to discover that the agency provides all kind of opportunities for all kinds of people. I've been very fortunate in this agency. it's been an opportunity to meet some of the most wonderful people, some of the most dedicated people, in the world. I've had good teachers, good trainers, ... ah, good advisors, and I've been able to move from a Forestry Technician -- as a GS-4 -- to now the Forest Supervisor which is a GS-14 position. The job is complex; the job can bring controversy along with this complexity. You have to learn to work with that. Um ... you have to understand what your role in the Forest Service is and do your best to do the job that they've hired you to do. The Forest Service is part of the Department of Agriculture, whose buildings you see behind me. Here's a brief overview of the agency's history and its organizational structure. Narrator: The Forest Service is the largest of more than thirty agencies within the Department of Agriculture. The Chief's Office, in the Washington D.C. headquarters, oversees the agencies three major branches: These branches are each organized a little differently, but all three have field offices across the United States and Puerto Rico. The National Forest System has nine regions. Each region is managed from a regional office. The regions are composed of national forests, which are divided into ranger districts. Many people confuse the Forest Service with the Park Service, which is within the Department of the Interior. The National Park Service is dedicated to the preservation of significant cultural and natural sites. The Forest Service has a conservation mission. Our goal is to maintain healthy ecosystems while providing a wide range of benefits to the public. The idea of conservation arose in the late 19th century. At that time, the nation's natural resources were being rapidly depleted. The crisis called for strong, visionary leadership. In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt became president. Roosevelt's close friend, Gifford Pinchot, was an influential and charismatic figure who had helped to bring scientific forestry to the United States. Together they would shape the future of public lands. Roosevelt expanded the federal forest reserves that would soon be dedicated as national forests, and, in 1905, established their administration under the Forest Service. Gifford Pinchot became the first Chief of the Forest Service. Pinchot's ideas about forest management were to leave a long-lasting imprint on the agency. In those early years, the Forest Service consisted of a handful of administrators in Washington and a dedicated cadre of horseback forest rangers in the field who did everything from putting out fires to surveying forest boundaries. Today, the Forest Service has more than thirty thousand employees working across the nation and in international programs around the world. Our people and occupations are as varied as the landscapes on which they work. [Music] I think what Gifford Pinchot said, at the beginning of the Forest Service, is even more relevant today, and that is that: "the Forest Service should offer the greatest good for the greatest number in the long run." We've implemented the vision, in a number of ways, as the values of the American public have changed. It used to be, early on, that we were pretty focused on outputs, commodities, timber production, grazing, mining, those kind of things. In the last twenty or thirty years, the values of the public have changed to be more interested in threatened and endangered species, water, wildlife, recreation, those kind of things. And so, still our basic motto is "caring for the land and serving the people," but in terms of meeting what the American public wants, we are more focused on a ... a more balanced approach of commodities and amenities. The motto of the Forest Service is "caring for the land and serving people," and that caring for the land part includes what's called multiple use. Multiple use means that we provide a huge range of services and products to the American public. We offer everything from timber sales to christmas trees, to firewood, to mining activities, to grazing on national forest lands, wide variety of products. I think people would be surprised to know that on national forest lands we have everything from Native American sacred sites, to fossil beds, to old pioneer trails. A lot of the history of this country is on national forest land. Another major use is recreation. And, in fact, recreation use on the national forests is skyrocketing. We offer everything from hiking to mountain biking to hunting and fishing to motorcycle riding, it goes on and on. Just about anything you can do recreating out of doors you can do on national forest lands. The Forest Service has a huge responsibility because we manage such a huge land block, and some of these activities have the potential to harm the land, and so we do things in a very careful way. We spend a great deal of time doing planning and monitoring to make sure that the activities that we do are done in a very careful way. And if there are impacts that we mitigate those impacts. There's no doubt that the work that we do in the Forest Service is controversial, it always has been and it always will be. I think we just have to acknowledge that. We have controversy internally as well as we do externally, we mirror the American population. I think we are doing a better job of listening to the general public who uses the national forest. That doesn't mean the controversy will go away. I think we have to get used to the fact that because we are such a large public land agency and there are differing sets of values, that it will always be controversial the research that i've done shows, that generally, eighty percent of the American public thinks we are doing a good job at what we do. And there isn't a project on my Ranger District that I wouldn't take my mother out -- or anybody from the public out -- and show them and say: "I am proud of this, this is good land management, it fits with the land, it works." I think the most important thing to remember is that people who work for the Forest Service care passionately about the resources and the agency, and that we're all in this for the same reason: we want to bring "the greatest good to the greatest numbers in the long run." [Music] Caring for the land and serving people really goes beyond the national forest boundaries. About seventy percent of the forested lands in this country, the United States, are privately owned. If you think about the landscapes and watersheds they're all connected. You know, boundary lines don't mean very much when you look at those ecosystems, out there, and how they function. One area that I really didn't know a whole lot about, in fact I didn't know anything about, was this thing called State and Private Forestry. You know, it was ... like ... foreign. And it wasn't until I was in a district ranger position, that I really started to see that there were some things related to ...ah ... ah, the land that wasn't colored green on the map. We have responsibilities to work with non-federal ... ah, entities: private land owners, ... ah, state organizations, ... ah, tribal governments, others that also have land under their oversight or responsibility, and so you have to think much broader scale. One of the ways that federal dollars can be made available to be used on private lands, is through state organizations like the State Forester. We don't have authorities, per se to spend money ... federal dollars on private land, but through the states, they then through a granting process can make funds available for different things to be done on private lands. In the state and Private Forestry program we have an array of services and programs. Some of those are conservation education, and basically we're working with different organizations to get out educational materials, videos ... site visits to help the public and school age children to understand their environment and what it's all about. Economic assistance to rural communities is about providing funds through grants to help rural communities maintain a vital economic base. Another service that we provide is Cooperative Fire Protection, working with the state's and rural fire departments to provide a first line of defense to private land from fire. There's another program called Urban and Community Forestry, which is really about connecting eighty percent of our population, which live in cities, ... ah, to the land. Another program area within the State and Private Forestry arena deals with forest health. And this is an important arena because, really, forest health doesn't recognize land ownership boundaries. It's in our interest to also work with other landowners to provide technical assistance and support so that we can collectively, jointly, deal with any insect and disease problems that may occur out there, on the land. Because land is not dissected in this artificial way, watersheds exist despite our efforts to carve 'em up, you know, with all these different ownerships. And so you have to think much broader scale, and so State and Private Forestry programs allow you to look beyond the green on the maps. [Music] Really right from the beginning of the Forest Service, the Forest Service understood that if it wanted to have scientific credibility the scientists had to be independent, and so, research has been a separate branch of the agency. Male Forestry Tech: Sugar maple: 9.1 Besides which we provide science guidance, not only to the National Forest System, but to everybody who manages, or even just cares, about forests: industrial foresters, private landowners, conservation organizations ... all use our research results. And we expose our research to the same quality control and peer review that scientists everywhere do. The managers in the National Forest System, and really, all managers who want to practice sustainable forestry, have to turn to science. You can't take a management action in a forest without a good scientific basis for predicting what the consequences of that management will be. And of course now, with forestry being as controversial as it is ... it's even more important to base management decisions on solid science. And that's not just biological science. You really need to understand how people react to forest management activities. That's an important kind of social science research. So you need social scientists and wildlife biologists and plant biologists working together and sharing their results. Organizationally, the Forest Service research has the same kind of regional organization that the National Forest System does, but we call our headquarters ... our regional headquarters, stations, And each station has perhaps a dozen different locations where research is actually carried out and those are called labs or projects. One of the things that's really special about Forest Service research, is we can answer questions that it takes decades to answer. University research is often constrained to be the length of a PH.D. Program or the length of an individual professor's career, but the forest service goes on much longer than that. Right here, of course, we do forest management research, focused primarily on plants and wildlife. But the breadth of Forest Service research is really amazing. We have colleagues that are interested in how nutrients cycle in forests. I have colleagues that are studying how urban trees reduce the energy needs of cities. The U.S. Postal Service came to my colleagues at the Forest Products Lab when they wanted to make self-stick stamps recyclable, and it was the Forest Products Lab that helped them do that. I often meet people in the National Forest System or in State and Private Forestry who have no idea the Forest Service even has a research branch, much less the breadth and depth ...um ... that that research branch covers. [Music] The impetus for modern-day forest fire suppression actually dates back to a couple of incidents that happened in the northern states back in the 1870s, when entire communities came under siege from forest fires. The Forest Service itself, did not come into existence until 1905 ... and, by that time, there was widespread public demand for forest fire suppression. In the last 100 years, since we went to full suppression of forest fires, ... um, something occurred that was not expected and that was the forests became overgrown, with young trees. Now when we have wildfires today, timber stands that survived fires for thousands of years are now burning to the ground, ... ah, because of the increased amount of fuel on the forest floor. Well, what we've learned from our past mistakes is that we need to change the federal fire policy and we've done so. Under the new federal fire policy, our primary activities will be to put fire back into the forest as a maintenance tool, and so, we're going to be doing prescribed burning or mechanical thinning, of millions of acres of national forest lands. The presence of thousands of structures in what used to just be the wildlands, has resulted in us not having the ability to let fires burn, which was the natural cycle of things. Prevention of human caused fires continues to be important especially in these interface areas. In 1950, a black bear cub was found orphaned following a New Mexico forest fire. The state game warden that found the cub turned him over to the Forest Service to be adopted as the nation's fire prevention symbol. Today, Smokey Bear is recognized as the fire prevention symbol of all state and federal fire agencies. And Smokey is a national treasure. [Firefighter on radio: chief one,] [engine 22 loud and clear.] [I copy engine 22, respond] Here in southern California, the occurrence of fires was quite rare naturally. For example, in the area we're in right now this only burned every 60 to 80 years under the natural cycle. Now it's burning every 10 to 20. So the Smokey Bear message is very applicable. We want to prevent human caused fire. And it's still very applicable to large parts of the United States. But at the same time ... ah, there are large areas where the forest has become overgrown due to excluding the natural lightning fires that maintained that forest. And so, people need to understand that both philosophies have a lot of merit. Every Forest Service employee should participate in fire management activities. There are plenty of jobs that are not out on the fire line where you operate in support of the firefighters. There's several functions involved in running a large operation such as logistical support, planning, financial ... all of those areas, employees who don't have the least bit of fire experience can participate and support the firefighter. And we set up these small ... um, temporary cities wherever we have large fire and it's like being on a big camping trip with an extended family. And ... ah, it's living in those fire camps, in other parts of the country, and coming in contact with people you've met before from other geographic areas that gives you that feeling of camaraderie ... of being part of a giant national family of firefighters. And it's what we love doing the most. There's a lot of aspects of our jobs back home that are not as enjoyable as when you're actually on assignment, traveling, living in your firecamp, and having that camaraderie with the people from the other geographic areas of the country. [Music] The Forest Service's role, here on admiralty island, is very much one of land stewardship. Admiralty is part of the Tongass National Forest, which is really the last great temperate rain forest in North America. And as a national monument declared in 1978, it has unique values of wildlife ... including these bears that are all around us, the cultural values of the Tlingit people that have lived here for thousands of years ... Geologic and other scientific values. In addition, all of this is layered with the wilderness designation that Congress gave it in 1980. Wilderness means very much undeveloped, where man is a visitor that does not remain. I love working on this island mostly because there are no roads here. We get here by boat, by plane, really it's very different from most experiences that people have in the lower 48 states. I like the way when we walk down the beach, the tide erases our footprints. Most of the trails on this island have more traffic by bear and deer than they have by people. I love the bears, I love being around the bears, and feel privileged to be around them. So it's an exciting place to work and it's very fulfilling in a lot of ways. Specifically, we don't manage the bears as the Forest Service, that's the job of the Department of Fish and Game for the state of Alaska. Our job on Admirality Island is to protect the bears' habitat and to guide the use by the public. We want to keep the island wild and that's always a challenge when visitors want easy access to it. Aldo Leopold was a Forest Service employee in the earlier part of this century. By the twenties, he was a leader in the conservation movement. And just before his death in 1948, he wrote the book on land ethic and conservation: A Sand County Almanac. It's ... ah, one of the books that I referred to many times throughout my college career and even in my professional life. And in it he describes, really very much how we ought to have our relationship with the land and developed the conservation and land ethic. And Leopold's work represented a pretty significant change for the Forest Service and the nation as a whole ... ah, Really Pinchot's time, which was the birth of the Forest Service was all about trying to maintain products from the forest. Maintaining a timber supply into the future ... ah, at a time when timber companies were extracting it very quickly. But Leopold represented a whole new way to look at the forests and the landscapes in general. You know, Leopold wrote, in A Sand County Almanac, that: "there seems to be a tacit assumption that if grizzlies survive in Canada and Alaska, that's good enough. And, it's not good enough for me. Relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating happiness to heaven, one may never get there." So I guess I just feel fortunate that I have gotten there and I get to work around these bears all the time. It's a real privilege. [Music] My passion is public lands. and we're just privileged here in ... in the United States to have public lands. I'm Charon Geigle, I'm a Visitor Information Specialist in the National Grasslands Visitor Center in Wall, South Dakota. Lots of people stop here on their way to the Black Hills National Forest as well as to points west. So they're looking for things to do here or on their way to those destinations. Sometimes we're called "frontliners", and frontliners are the first face that people will see when they come through the door of a Forest Service building. For a visitor, it may be the first time they've ever met anyone that worked for the Forest Service. Ah, they may have no idea what our mission is, they may have no idea what we even do, ... ah, they may even believe we're the Park Service. We're the first face people see and so our image, our professionalism, ...ah, the answers that we give, are absolutely critical to be able to assist the people that come through that door or call on the telephone. Forest Service employees have an opportunity to be very much a part of the community that they live and work in. The District Ranger offices are very often part of the community, as in Wall. The visitor center is right downtown Wall, the District Ranger office is downtown Wall. So it's important that ... that I'm part of the community, and not just the Forest Service community, but the community in which I live. The Forest Service is a real special agency in that we have a variety of ecosystems that we manage for. And of course "forest" is in our agency name, Forest Service, so it's a real surprise to some that the Forest Service administers 20 national grasslands. There are very few public lands throughout the nation that are grasslands and so, they're just a real precious resource. The diversity of plants and animals in a grassland is just as exciting as there are in ... in the forest. There's just a magic about it. "Anybody can love the mountains, but it takes soul to love the prairie." I'm proud to work for an agency in which we can really accommodate so many opportunities and so many values. [Music]