An Agency Much Maligned (or another name)

Draft 5.6
August 9, 2026

For more than fifty years I’ve never had just one neighbor. In fact, I've had thousands of them. Some wore green uniforms and fought wildfire. Others marked timber sales, maintained trails, studied wildlife, battled bark beetles, or explained why roads were closing. Together, they were the United States Forest Service.

When I built my cabin next to the largest forest in Idaho, my connection became personal. Every decision about wildfire, thinning, prescribed fire, insects, recreation, budgets, or timber eventually found its way to my subdivision’s property line.

My relationship with the Forest Service has never been simple. As a young boy I admired Smokey Bear, the men in green pants with yellow fire shirts, and the idea that someone was watching over America's forests. Later, as I got into my teens and twenties, I watched hillsides with clearcuts, fought with the agency over filming in wilderness, and questioned whether a bureaucracy housed in the Department of Agriculture could ever truly see forests as more than a crop.

When Outdoor Idaho convened a group of current and former Forest Service leaders, including its recently retired chief, for an extended conversation in McCall, I had hoped to learn more about one of the most criticized institutions in the American West.

But as the cameras rolled, I found myself watching something I hadn't anticipated. It felt less like a television production and more like eavesdropping on an intimate family conversation.

These men and women had spent decades together—sometimes as supervisors, sometimes as subordinates and colleagues—in what they all referred to as their “family.” Luckily, we had managed to snag the former leader of this sprawling, sometimes dysfunctional household, Thomas Tidwell, the 17^th Chief of the United States Forest Service.                                          

This federal agency has long been one of the most controversial agencies in the American West, managing roughly 20 million acres in Idaho alone. That’s nearly 40% of the state’s land mass, a higher percentage than in any other state. 

Outdoor Idaho had covered the Forest Service in all kinds of ways, but we had never gathered the leaders of the F.S. to talk about their family’s failures and successes and concerns. I also suspected that no other television program had done it, either. For once, I wanted them to be their own critics. If they weren’t good at it, I jokingly warned them, we could easily find outsiders who would love the opportunity to voice their opinions of the Forest Service on statewide television.

"We were arrogant,” said former Forest Service Supervisor Jim Caswell, leaning into the assignment. "We really were. We're responsible for cutting on the national forest in places that we should have never cut. It just can't support that kind of forestry. We paid for that in the end."

I had known Brian Harris, the public information spokesman for the Payette National Forest, for years, and he liked my idea for a segment on FS leadership. It would be part of our March 2022 pledge special, “The Next Chapter,” on how agencies and individuals adapted to change. Brian had helped choose the six people who met in McCall that bitter cold morning, at the historic log building known as the Administrative Site.

We set up the chairs and the three TV cameras in the basement of the beautiful Civilian Conservation Corps building, but someone had forgotten to light the wood stove.  At least no one was going to doze off for the next 2½ hours!

Boise National Forest Supervisor Tawnya Brummett, representing a younger generation, spoke to Jim Caswell’s comments about arrogance. "We tended to think of ourselves as the experts on everything. We'd ask for public input, put it away in a tiny little file, and go on with what we wanted to do."

Another Forest Supervisor, Cheryl Probert, wondered aloud: “Is it beefed-up public involvement that we used as an opportunity to tell people why they were wrong?

“Our tagline is ‘Caring for the Land and Serving People,’” Cheryl reminded the group. She managed two national forests, the Nez Perce and the Clearwater. “We are all trained in caring for the land, but we have very few who understand the science of serving the people.”

In fact, said Cheryl, some people joined the Forest Service just to keep from having to talk with people. “That just doesn’t work anymore,” she said. (get exact quote)

I could tell Tom Tidwell was enjoying himself. He didn’t disagree with any of their comments. He had seen it all firsthand.  "I've always thought the agency was a little slow to really recognize what the public wanted from their land. And it is their land," Tom emphasized.

Tom’s roots run deep in Idaho. He was born in Boise and began his 40-year career in the Boise National Forest fighting fires not far from my cabin.  “I wish we could have learned a little faster and a little sooner,” Tom told the group. “I give credit to the environmental groups that I think really helped us. They kind of forced us to use the science and to take a step back. They also provided us some cover to be able to change. If we hadn't had the environmental movement in this country, well, I would hope that we would've been able to do it on our own, but I don't think we would have.”

Coming from individuals who knew only too well what life was like in the belly of the beast, I figured it must be cathartic to share their experiences in our program.  They were all familiar with Outdoor Idaho, so there was a certain level of trust. The problem was that when my colleagues and I determined what would be in our hour-long program, I had allotted only six minutes to the Forest Service discussion. I mean, how interesting could a talking-heads segment really be, I asked myself.

My colleagues had begun working on other parts of the hour-long program, so I was loath to pull rank on their hard work. This would be one of those times where I would rely upon Outdoor Idaho’s social-media efforts. I’d hoose what part of the multi-hour discussion to use for our TV show and then put more of the story on our website and Facebook page. Turns out the TV segment came in just under 7 minutes. The website version tipped the scales at 15.

                                             ***

As a boy I met Lassie at a county fair. To me she represented everything good about forests, rangers, Smokey Bear, and the Forest Service. Chief Tidwell smiled when he recalled those years. "Back then the Forest Service was the white-hat agency. We were on TV, and Ranger Rick was the hero. And, of course, Lassie was a big part of it.”

It was perhaps inevitable that my admiration for an agency that manages 191 million acres would evolve as I started seeing more clearly how the world works.  I have to say, my respect for the white-hatted Forest Service eventually landed in the toilet.

As I look back on it now, no agency caused more cognitive dissonance in my head than the U.S. Forest Service. Some of my friends worked for the federal agency, and they were upstanding people. Still, I had a hard time accepting that the Forest Service was part of the Department of Agriculture. Forests were more complicated than that. And why should the approach to forest management change every time a new administration settles into the White House?

When the Forest Service was created in 1905, Chief Tidwell explained, forest reserves were established to protect watersheds, provide a sustainable supply of timber, and safeguard landscapes that had already been stripped by careless logging, overgrazing, and catastrophic wildfire. That’s why most Americans viewed the Forest Service as the good guys.

But America changed.

I remember when things changed for me. I was heading to a lake in Oregon, hoping to camp, hike, and fish. I came around the bend of the dirt road, and in every direction, as far as I could see, the trees were gone. I stopped the car. No birds were singing. No animals anywhere. Instead of a forest, I was looking at stumps stretching toward the next ridge. I never made it to the lake. I turned around and drove home.

I promised myself that if the chance ever presented itself, I would warn people that the Forest Service was not always a friend of the forest.  How can there be the goal of “multiple use” of a forest, I wondered, if the forest had disappeared?

Looking back, former superintendent Jim Caswell viewed those years with remarkable clarity. "We had the green light," he told the group. "We knew what we were doing." The country wanted timber, communities depended upon timber, and the Forest Service delivered.

Then came a new generation of environmental laws that fundamentally changed what Americans expected from their public lands. "It always takes about ten years," Caswell observed, "for legislation everybody thinks is wonderful to become a nightmare when you're trying to implement it on the ground."

Years later, I got the opportunity to report my observations. One of the early shows I produced for Outdoor Idaho was a two-parter—something we almost never did—called “Searching for the Soul of the Forest Service.”   (Go to the station and get a quote from the tease of the show; it doesn’t appear to be online)

But back to that cold January morning in the basement of the old McCall F.S. building.

Each institution develops its own family dynamic, and the Forest Service is no exception. Spend a career together fighting wildfires, arguing over timber sales, hiking burned landscapes, testifying before Congress, sitting through endless public meetings and lawsuits, and eventually, you become something more than co-workers. You share victories and disappointments, admit mistakes, laugh at old memories, and recall regrets.

One regret that Jim Caswell still carries with him is how the Forest Service moved out of rural towns throughout the West. I certainly noticed it when I moved to Idaho City in the 1970s. Forest Service employees were on the city council, and their children went to the same school as everyone else’s. I’d see them in the restaurants and in the bar. The Forest Service was a major player in that small town.

This was back when someone working with the Forest Service could walk into an Idaho City bar and have an even chance of being bought a beer. And if he was a member of the fire crew, wearing the distinctive dark forest-green pants and bright yellow shirt, he would likely get all his beers for free. People might have problems with Forest Service policy, but everyone loved the fire fighters.

“That doesn’t happen anymore,” lamented Jim Caswell. “We’ve moved out of county seats. We just walked away. That’s a loss of community support. We’ve lost the ability to be really connected to the community. You can’t go down to the coffee shop on Wednesday at 6:00 a.m. and sit down with the ranchers any longer because we don’t have anybody there. That really bothers me.”

One of the younger members of our discussion was former fire fighter Jared Schuster. He got his start with the Forest Service in a small community. “I loved it. It was great,” he said.” You can make your own niche, and you can make a difference. I think that's amazing. But look at Warren, Dixie, Oak City, Red River. We pulled out of those old work-stations.”  (check video tape on this quote)

When the Forest Service was forced to do more with less, the easy answer was to shrink services and operate out of a centralized location, usually in an urban office.  

 “I’m not suggesting you go back, because I don’t think you could, even if you wanted to,” said Jim Caswell, “but it’s a loss. I think it’s a bad deal, and that’s something you really need to think about as an agency nationwide.”

                                                 ***

My respect for the Forest Service grew that January morning in 2022.  What impressed me most was that these weren't Forest Service officials defending an agency. They were people trying to understand an institution they had loved enough to spend their lives serving. Families can be stubborn. They can make mistakes. And sometimes only family members can speak honestly about both the strengths and the failings of the people they call their own.

 Three things stood out for me that I could agree with. One is that the F.S. as an institution is actually capable of change, and in a fundamental way.

“When I was a young buck, we were talking about diversity and having targets and being evaluated,” said Jim Caswell. “And I kept thinking, gosh, I don’t know if this is ever gonna work. But you can see the results today, vividly. Just think about who's in leadership in this outfit at every level across multiple forests,” he marveled. “If you go back to 1965, almost every one of 'em was a white male. That is no longer the case.”

The value of collaboration is another point of agreement that I took away from our discussion. “Collaboration” had become the new coin of the realm, thanks in large part, I’m thinking, because women were taking leadership roles in the agency. Women seemed willing to reach out and bring conflicting views into the conversation. They understand that sometimes compromise is necessary to keep things on track. 

For Tom Tidwell, collaboration meant less time in court. “I have been sued as much as any Forest Service employee,” he said. “To be fair, we won the majority of those lawsuits, but the problem was that we were getting sued. Today there’s very much less litigation than there once was.”

Tom remembers when he became a believer in collaboration. It was an Idaho example, over what to do with 12 million acres of the state’s roadless land. To this day, he marvels that it worked. Rather than forcing a decision from Washington, people who had spent years fighting one another sat down at the same table.

“I still look back on that experience. It’s still probably one of the more meaningful experiences I've had in the agency, about how you were able to bring people together in a way and allow them to really share their thinking. You didn't challenge a person's values. You listened to them.

“And what came out of that was an agreement where the administration could buy off on it, the governors bought off on it, the communities bought off on it. I look back on that Idaho roadless rule, and I'm still somewhat in amazement that we were able to do that.”

To someone like Molly Eimers, one of the youngest members in the discussion, collaboration is the only thing she’s known. “I just feel tremendously grateful for the growing pains that I think you have all weathered,” the young archaeologist told the group. “I don't really know the Forest Service without collaboration. I feel like that is one of the primary pillars of the Forest Service that I know, that I've been a part of.”

Gender diversity and collaboration—two changes that suggest the behemoth federal agency is actually capable of moving forward.                                                     

One thing I didn’t expect to hear from the former chief of the U.S. Forest Service is that public lands are a place to create memories. Here’s a Forest Service official who has climbed to the top of an agency placed in the Department of Agriculture for a reason. And he is announcing that “yes, commodity production is important, but public lands are the place you can take your dog, ride your bike and your motorcycle, where you can hunt and fish.”

“That’s the real benefit,” said Tidwell. “Commodity production is just an additional benefit. The real benefit is where we get to go play, it’s where we get to enjoy ourselves, and it’s where we get to create memories.”

I would expect to hear those words from the director of the National Park Service, where the goal is to inspire public appreciation and stewardship in places like Yellowstone and Glacier National Park. I didn’t expect to hear those words from the chief of the U.S. Forest Service, where the slogan has occasionally been “Get the Cut Out.”

Another point of agreement is certainly not a surprise. Our discussion had wandered through timber, wilderness, recreation, endangered species, budgets and politics. Yet all of those issues seem to live in the shadow of one overriding question. Can we keep our forest—and the communities around them—from burning?

Whether fair or not, much of the public now judges the Forest Service by those criteria. If smoke fills the valleys each summer, people ask why more isn’t done. If prescribed burns escape, they ask why the agency lit them in the first place. If timber isn't harvested, they blame the Forest Service. If logging increases, others fear the forests are once again becoming little more than tree farms.

The agency finds itself criticized from every direction, so it’s understandable that when the conversation turned to wildfire, Tom’s voice carried a different urgency.

“When I first came in as Chief,” Tidwell explained, “our scientists and I would talk about longer fire seasons. And they  would say, ‘Wait a minute, Chief. They are 78 days longer, cuz we have the research. So when you talk about it, say 78 days longer on average across the country.’ 

“In 1995 wildfire suppression accounted for 16% of the USFS budget,” said the chief. “By 2015 more than half of the total budget went to fighting fires. The result of that was 50% less foresters, 50% less engineers, 50% less wildlife and fisheries biologists, 50% to 60% less archeologists. And it affected the summer crews also.”

Large wildfires used to be rare in the West. No longer. This has put the Forest Service in the crosshairs. Tom experienced that pressure throughout his eight years as chief. He knew it would be part of our discussion that day in McCall, and he came loaded for bear. 

“There’s still this expectation that the federal agencies, working with our state partners, can suppress every fire. And that’s a myth. It’s not going to happen. It never has, and it never will,” he said. “When you get these large fires, the science is very clear that no amount of suppression is going to change the overall size of that fire. 

“When it comes to being able to protect homes, we do a tremendous job,” said Tom. “But the science will show that all the work, all the effort that goes into the size of those large fires is basically the same, whether we are there or not. They don’t stop burning until the weather changes, or they burn a different field type. 

“I have to admit, at times it’s really hard not to get defensive. I just want to tell people, well, this is the way it is. Climate change is real, and this is what’s causing it.” 

                                                      ***

 

As Tom talked about longer fire seasons, I wasn't thinking about national policy. I was thinking about the view from my deck. What Tom said both scared me and provided some assurance. But anyone who builds in what’s called the wildland-urban interface should not expect the Forest Service to save his cabin.

Luckily, I have never been shy about thinning trees with my Stihl chainsaw. I must have some logger blood in me, because I love the process. Plus, I partially heat with wood. However, I got into trouble when I cut a few of the ponderosa pines on my acreage that were potential fire hazards. The subdivision covenants plainly state that the only trees to be removed are ones where the house is to be built. I figured, rather than ask for permission, I'd ask for forgiveness if somebody noticed.

When my Forest Service entomologist cousin Don Curtis from Oregon visited in the 1970s, he noticed how close my conifers were to one another. He had written about the western pine beetle and how they bore into conifers to lay their eggs. Don told me the insects would be arriving in Idaho shortly, and that trees that don’t get enough water will be especially vulnerable to the beetle.

He then took red paint and marked all the trees that he thought needed to be cut down.  When the beetles did arrive, some of my neighbors lost all their large conifers. My ponderosas and firs were 30 feet apart and had access to enough water to produce sap to physically push out and drown the invading beetles. I didn’t lose a tree. Of course, I cut down a third of them.

                                                    ***

For more than half a century I've lived beside the Boise National Forest. From my deck I've watched smoke columns rise, listened to chainsaws, celebrated prescribed burns that worked, worried about the ones that didn't, and watched generations of Forest Service employees come and go.

Over those years I've also come to understand something else. The Forest Service wasn't just my neighbor. So were the people who wore the green uniform. Some became friends. Some became sources. A few became sparring partners. Many became all three.

Tom Tidwell said that public lands are where we create memories. I think he's right. Timber matters. Grazing matters. Watersheds matter. But the memories are what people carry home.

Looking back, I realize that's what my little cabin gave me. Not simply a place to live beside a national forest, but a front-row seat to watch an imperfect agency struggle to care for lands that belong to all of us—and to meet neighbors who cared just as deeply. That's a pretty good return on investment.

Every administration inherits a different Forest Service, and every administration leaves it a little different from how they found it. The agency that once measured success in board feet now measures it in partnerships, recreation, habitat restoration, and how well it prepares communities for wildfire. It’s a safe bet that getting the cut out will once again become a top priority.

Every November, when the smoke finally clears, I breathe a little easier. Another fire season has passed, and my cabin still stands.

Somewhere beyond the ridge, thousands of my neighbors—the ones in green uniforms and the ones without them—are getting ready for whatever comes next.

My cabin lives on borrowed time. So do all of us who choose to live in the forest. But each autumn I find myself celebrating another season survived, grateful that one of the most maligned agencies in the American West still has people willing to answer the call when the smoke begins to rise.

And so, my cabin, my delight, my albatross, here's to another year. I'll sleep a little easier tonight.

                                           --30--

 

 

 

Every November, when the smoke finally clears, I breathe a little easier. Another fire season has passed, and my cabin still stands. Somewhere beyond the ridge, thousands of my neighbors—the ones in green uniforms and the ones without them—are getting ready for whatever comes next.

A forest Service official told me once that if it ever does burn, there is so much wood in my cabin that it will burn for more than a week. It’s the kind of building that fire fighters appreciate, he said, because it won’t crash down on them like a house made with 2x4’s.

Given where I built, I realize my cabin lives on borrowed time, and so I celebrate each year at the end of each fire season. I pray one of the most maligned agencies in the West will be there when I need them, along with Idaho City’s superb volunteer fire department. But I understand the odds.

And so, my cabin, my albatross, my delight, here’s to another 53 years. With such a strong community at my back, I will sleep easier, at least for another six months. 
                                                                     -30-