We won’t realize what we have until it’s gone

by Margaret Gorski, Stevensville

The avalanche of executive orders in the opening days of the Trump administration has created a whirlwind of reaction, from cheers of support to cries of outrage. One of the many consequences we will feel locally will be from the recent midnight firing of many Forest Service employees. 

Why should we care? Of course, the personal cost is tragic. Although individuals’ lives have been turned upside down, I have already heard some say, “Too bad, that happens all the time in business.”

Regardless, we all should care about HOW this downsizing of government is happening. We should care that laws and rules don’t seem to matter. We should also care that there has been no transparency, no real plan on how to improve efficiency or save money. Those at the top show no concern for the impact to the economies of small towns where many of these jobs are located. 

After the next predicted round of layoffs, no one knows how the Forest Service will adjust. In my long Forest Service career as a manager and recreation program leader, I weathered through many significant “reductions in force” (aka RIFs), budget reductions, and the inability to hire summer employees. Although much thought went into how to re-configure the work to minimize the disruption, it was usually the recreation, trails, wilderness, visitor information, and wildlife and fishery programs that were cut first. If Senator Sheehy’s legislation to create the FIRE SERVICE succeeds and the backbone of the Forest Service is removed from the local district level, it’s hard for me to imagine what resource and recreation staff will remain to do the work forest users expect.

What is the vision for what is left standing? On the face of it, the answer is so the government has fewer employees, costs less and is staffed with Trump loyalists. Taking a chain-saw approach to achieving that goal has short- and long-term negative consequences. In the short term, we can expect to see major reductions in service. I have already heard someone say, “What’s the big deal, we won’t notice. Trails don’t get cleared now anyway.” This is a case of “we won’t realize what we have until it’s gone.” We don’t notice a dirty campground toilet until it isn’t cleaned. We don’t notice that all those streamside camping spots on the forest are full of garbage until no one picks it up. We don’t notice that the road or trail is clear of fallen trees until it’s not. We don’t know how important it is to many of us to be able to access our favorite hunting area until we can’t.  And if you think this reduction in Forest Service staff is going to increase the “pace and scale” of timber harvest or thinning projects, guess again. When a forester or marking crew must cover the work across three national forests instead of one, it will take months longer than it does now to get the projects planned and implemented. And if you think it will be faster if it’s done by private contractors, don’t get your hopes up. Congress isn’t likely to appropriate money for that work either. 

So, what is the grand plan? Over the years there have been powerful people who have tried to get their hands on our nation’s public lands. I would not be surprised if this short-term chaos isn’t meant to help their long-term strategy to ultimately privatize much, if not all of it. Their goal is to make the government look incompetent. Severely reducing the size of the Forest Service workforce will make it impossible for the agency to do the work the public has grown to expect. Then their hope is that we won’t object too loudly when the land and its management are privatized, and our access is taken away. Should that happen, it will be a national tragedy when we all finally realize what we had, and now it’s gone. Is that what we really want?