Forest conservationists have a love-hate relationship with the Forest Service. Created to protect Western forests from the dangers of irresponsible private sector management, the Forest Service promised an efficient, responsive, and scientific approach. But things didn’t turn out that way. Despite the rhetoric of “multiple use”, political planning prevailed. That process encouraged, and often forced, […]

1997 marks the centennial of the National Forest System. This is America’s best example of centralized government planning and management, our glorious experiment in “sylvan socialism.” In the Federalist Papers, America’s founders urged us to consider each law and policy as an experiment to be evaluated and perhaps modified. The end of a century’s experiment […]