Service Agriculture

Mismanagement has consequences

Service Agriculture

The all natural fix

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

 

            The letter dated May 5, 1944 is only five pages long, but it erased 60 years of history.

            It is neither a contract nor a memorandum of understanding or agreement. It is a writ of finality. It was signed only by then Gila National Forest supervisor, L.R. Lessel, and a bureaucrat examiner named L.A. Wall. The family that received the death sentence, the family of Peter Shelley, was not party to the signature page.

            The letter outlines the conditions observed in the Mogollon Creek Allotment. The letter paints the condemnation of shortcomings very vividly. It describes the shortage of water availability, the absence of administrative boundaries, and the variable use of country that ranged by the Forest Service admission from “numerous areas of non-use, some localized overgrazing, and a tendency to not graze far from water”.

            The sentence imposed on the Shelley family was the permanent eviction from the greater use of lands they had occupied since 1884 and a one year moratorium from the lands within the use area inspected by the agency officials.

Doesn’t that seem odd?

            The evicted lands (six townships) had not been stocked for several years. Those lands, the first designated wilderness in the United States, had been destocked for the purposes of affecting drought strategy stewardship, the Depression and bank calls, and the estate settlement of Peter Shelley. The family made the mistake of signaling they were going to start restocking ‘the wilderness’. The Forest Service was not about to allow that to happen.

The family was immediately vilified and blitzed by inspection. The penalty imposed for stocked lands that actually had cattle was the complete elimination of lands not impacted by cattle for years!

            With no pre-warning, no knowledge of recourse, and no hint of a workout strategy, the family went from some 5,000 head of cattle on the Forest in 1930 to 0 in 1945. Such is the land stewardship and public relations skills of federal land management agencies.

             Agency management expanded

            The Lessel letter is historically significant as an example of how that agency has put forest lands at risk.

            First, there was arrogance. The agency demanded all cattle be moved off the lower country into the higher reaches of what the family was unknowingly going to retain for the purposes of allowing the agency personnel to “ascertain the disposition of the cattle, their natural movement, areas of heavy use and areas of light and non-use, disposition of water and practicability (sp) of water development, all needed to develop a plan of management.” A reasonable assumption would have been that after 45 years of forest management (the Gila was declared a Forest Reserve in 1899) the agency would have knowledge of how cattle used the country.

            The Shelleys obliged the demand and moved the cattle.

            Lessel did not elaborate at all on the removal of 216 sections of the unoccupied “wilderness”. He simply stated its only use henceforth would be “for stray cattle (since no fence was allowed), permitted horses, mules, and burros, and use in (Shelley permitted) enclosed pastures in specified areas.” Since the latter were only traps for holding cattle while working, no one knows to this day what the use of those enclosed pastures might have been.

            He criticized them for the absence of water development and demanded five specified springs be improved immediately. He also criticized them for not building trails. His instructions were to “carry on a regular program of brushing out trails with rock work for easier working of cattle (and agency personnel access?) to make water and some areas of feed more accessible.”

            He hesitated on administrative fencing considerations and in its place he instructed “one or two riders are needed at all times to keep the cattle distributed”. How the family was going to pay for the labor and all those improvements with cattle stripped from the allotment was not an issue in the discussion. The demand was to do it or further penalty action would be taken.

            Taken as a whole, the tyranny of modern federal overreach is certainly not new. The impact on that family in 1944 had dire long term consequences, but the agency didn’t care, and … care less today.

             Empire building   

            The phenomenon of empire building must be inherent in man.

            It seems particularly strong in men that hold an administrative advantage over others. Such is the case of the United States Forest Service in the Gila.

The management of that forest highlights another phenomenon. In the absence of a market driven model, the void is filled by the need to protect. In the absence of a physical product, the only way to justify a career manager is to adopt a proxy value. That proxy invariably becomes preservation of the land.

Over a number of years, the Gila had scores of sawmills that operated variously. That diminished until not a single commercial saw mill remained.

The history of fuel removal mismanagement on national forests commenced with the decision to fight all fires following the national tragedies of 1910 through 1912. That was compounded by the steadfast agency policy of disallowing administrative fencing of allotments. Cattlemen were unable to control feral cattle legally and the agency was oblivious to the consequences.

Even when Congress finally ordered administrative fencing to be done in 1916, Gila administrators drug their feet until 1922. That was the year another major influence in future policy took place. Aldo Leopold came to the Gila and history has shown his interactions with the Shelleys profoundly changed him and his agency’s management. He heard the Shelleys talking about “wilderness” their term for the expanse of country they were evicted from in 1944.

He was in awe of the concept. There is every reason to believe his description of where the demarcation of wilderness boundary began is where only the horsemen ventured. His influence was widespread and permanent. The courtesy he was shown by that family began the process that evicted them in 1944.

The designation also prompted the need for perpetuation of an unblemished wilderness setting. That reinforced the no fire doctrine.

The process continued. Sheep were removed from the Gila in 1948.

Ultimately, the policy became no fire, no logging, no mechanical removal of fuel, no chemical thinning, reduced or no grazing, no road building, no trail building, and only selective fire wood removal. The outcome was the acceleration of a massive depository of fuel with no remedy of mitigation except for it to burn and … burn catastrophically it does.

The Gila’s current burn rate is 275,000 acres per year (and that isn’t enough to return the forest to a manageable state by fire alone). The fires are hot enough to turn the land surface into moonscape. The communities of Apache Creek, Reserve, Luna, Gila Center, Glenwood, Pleasanton, Alma, Mogollon, Silver City, Pinos Altos, Ft. Bayard, Hanover, Winston, Kingston, Beaverhead, Lake Roberts, and Hillsboro are all highly vulnerable to pending devastation.

It is past time for categorical change.

Service Agriculture

The blame for mega fires because of global warming is unacceptable. Even if it is true the remedy remains exactly the same. Every historical component of fuel reduction must be accelerated. Logging with commercial lumber production, grazing and complexity of grazing, fire, mechanical thinning, chemical thinning, new forest product development, and firewood removal must all be vigorously pursued. The measured values of success must be community vitality, down stream flows of water, and forest product production.

Furthermore, the United States Forest Service created this debacle so they must finance the remedies. The agency is spending as much as $1.5 billion annually fighting fires. That suggests they must be prepared to spend a similar amount to restore forest health and vitality.

The problem is the Forest Service is incapable of restoring any natural balance short of burning forests from administrative boundary to administrative boundary and beyond.

Over the years of mismanagement, the agency oversaw the destruction of most of the original infrastructure needed for any measure of commercial success. They managed forests to levels they themselves deem as uneconomic. The route back is to commence compensation for grazing and logging services similarly to the practices of letting contracts for thinning projects.

Agency mismanagement has completely altered the regional economics of historical industries. The capital requirements and the regulatory burdens make it necessary that a different approach be taken. Private enterprise alternatives are no longer capable of withstanding the onslaught of agency oversight in any expanded capacity of the current model, but real solutions are required before increased American community assets and lives are lost.

The time of Service Agriculture has arrived. Remember that term. It has become imperative for the future.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “It is already ‘trendy’ to rent goats to consume brush accumulations in certain parks and urban areas. Nothing is more natural in converting rank cellulose than the alimentary tracts of managed ungulates.” 

What an indictment of a federal agency. 

And for all those who thought the agency changed during the rise of the environmental movement in the late sixties and seventies, note what they were doing in 1944.  There was no ESA, no NEPA, and no environmental lawsuit.