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The public lands become the way by which we know we are democratic. We own them. So of
course we’re going to disagree about how they should be managed.
For the first hundred years of the American Republic, our attitude towards the public
lands was to get rid of them. General land offices just giving it all away as fast as
possible. That a nation would decide that some lands
will never be given away, that they will be held in the hands of the people, it’s a
remarkable step for a nation to make. National Forests exist not for the benefit
of the government, but for the benefit of the people.
The Forest Service always promised the American people that wisely managed these lands could
be used for hundreds of years to come. The people who are recruited into it, are
immensely idealistic and they really do think that they know best. And sometimes they get
into trouble in a democratic contest because of that.
The Forest Service was characterized by a palpable uniformity in gender, ethnicity,
background, education and profession. We didn’t get a full size badge. I now have
full size badge. So you can see how far we’ve come.
It’s like a thousand trains rushing over a thousand steel trestles. The agency from
the beginning was obsessed with fire. But it saw it as something that it would get over.
Remember, only you prevent forest fires. Cause everybody knows that he’s the fire
preventin bear. Smokey the bear.
Smokey bear had a mid-life crisis. He was fifty years old in a year when 34 firefighters
were killed. The National Forests could not have been sold
to the American people without the guarantee of use.
It wasn’t timber people fought over in the early part of the 20th century, it was always
grazing. Drawing lines on a map solves a lot of conflicts
if you can agree on where the line is. The heat was on to get the cut out and timber
was king. It paid the rent. It ran the fleet. It did everything.
Recreationists are also increasing their use of the National Forests and they’re gonna
run smack dab into each other. It’s about ecosystems.
Do they want them preserved and locked up and people kept out or do they want them managed
for multiple uses. Our western campgrounds have been taken over
by hippie types. People became more outspoken, wanting to get
more involved, unwilling to trust the government. That’s when we lost the white house.
And we went to the dark side. We don’t really know what we mean anymore
by ‘greatest good’ in the forest. Finding the greatest good is of course a tremendous
challenge because it changes over the years. Whose greatest good is it now? Whose greatest
good will it be later? And it is that debate and dialogue that make
the National Forests a very vibrant part of our national culture.