well, I'll bite I guess. Among the various jobs I've help for the Forest Service, my current one would be described as wildland firefighter.
I'm curious, do you think the Forest Service would get better at managing the land with 90% less funding? Or should the Forest Service divest the land?
Yeah, on a big incident there are a lot of people standing around. There's lots of reasons for this, we can dive into it if you want. I wont defend a lot of it, but a lot of it is out of our hands. Often local politicians (county commissioner type) want to keep the FS around long after the fire is a threat for various reasons (like maybe the team can keep bringing in money to outfitters and local businesses who are supplying the fire). Do you want every person in a yellow shirt digging handline?
Have you ever worked with contract engine crews? There's a lot out there that most people would not want unsupervised at their evacuated house.
I also agree the FS isn't good at enforcing laws, and yeah, in lots of places we struggle to manage the forests the way we would like to. Often this comes down to lack of funding and litigation.
What is your vision for the FS's mission?
I haven't found what the USFS does a good job of to be honest. My take is the USFS has already turned over the management of wildlife on it's land to the state so it probably makes the most sense to allow the states to mange things like the grazing and timber resources along with local law enforcement as opposed to federal LEO's. States are simply better at managing land and get more for the resources. Sheriffs departments are simply better at enforcing laws than the USFS LEO's. Grazing rights states could probably get around $20 per AUM, vs $1.35 the feds get. States will get more logging projects done, more wood utilized, less fires, less $ wasted fighting fires, etc.... You see it around places like Bozeman where USFS land is completely overgrown and projects get stopped by lawsuits but miraculously on state land the projects keep moving.
The reason everyone stays around after fires is to milk uncle sam for every last dime. It's a big business opportunity.
So I think we can check the following off what the USFS is good at.
1. Managing forests, utilizing wood, etc.. Very little focus on utilization.
2. Managing grazing rights, literally getting pennies on the dollar and not holding lease holders accountable.
3. Managing wildlife, already turned over to state,
4. Running a nationwide trade school where they have to hire contractors to do most of the actual work since USFS cant' seem to get it done. No idea how this happened.
5. Managing recreation, evident by the offices all being closed on weekend so usfs staff can go home. lol
6. Enforcing laws. This is all but non existent for off roading, littering, camping more than 14 days, unoccupied campers, etc...
7. Managing fuels, fire management where they spend nothing in an area for wood utilization but will drop millions to fight a fire. Even worse situations like New Mexico where USFS staff caused billions in damages. Great management right there.
8. Real Estate. With so many claims, private land mixed in huge pieces of USFS, private homes on leased USFS land, Land locked inaccessible land, etc. its hard to say they really have done a good job of managing the real-estate situation.
So to be honest I am really not sure what function the USFS could really do other than a small staff that worked with the states to collect information on forests while turning most of the management of the land and funding over to the states. At that point the states would take over and hire the best staff including some of the best USFS folks while leaving most of the dead weight to find another job.
As far as me I have personally built fire stations with huge reimbursement funding from fires on federal land. My family is heavily involved in federal contracting so I have seen this incompetence from many federal agencies not just the USFS. I have done many contracting projects for the USFS and have had many interaction with USFS Job Corps training centers. For example I managed a full renovation of the USFS offices in Chadron NE, where for 3 months we watched a girl who literally sat and played on her phone almost all day. She did not realize we could see her and she literally just played all day. I have been around many USFS fire crews including my brother is a life long USFS employee including working fires. So yea I know a bit about the USFS. I also own businesses across the street from the USDA office so I have first hand knowledge on what they accomplish on a daily basis.
As far as fire crews it just seems like a huge money grab. Contractors, fire fighters, VFD's, air support crews, etc all get in line to make a killing off the USFS. I am sure you have seen plenty of it.
I appreciate your honesty
