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If the administration does indeed double the amount of logging over the next four years, botanists say there will be no way to conduct the required surveys of rare plants and animals prior to all timber sales because there simply is not enough staff. In the entire U.S. Forest Service there are only 179 botanists, and of those, fewer than 100 are actually out walking the ground. (In comparison, the agency employs over 10,000 foresters and forestry technicians.) With an average of one botanist per 1.5 million acres, often wildlife biologists and even foresters conduct botanical surveys. These employees are not required to attend botany-specific trainings or even to have any educational background in plant knowledge. "That's just not right," says a Colorado botanist who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's so critical to have areas that are preserved. If you don't care for the plants, there's no wildlife - but nobody else seems to be looking out there for these sorts of things."
Recent policy proposals by the administration will further strip scientists' power to protect fish and wildlife. While the National Forest Management Act sounds about as exciting as a Honda sedan, this law has been key to environmental oversight of the country's forests. Yet the administration today announced changes to this nearly 30-year-old law so that when specific forests want to revise or amend long-term management plans, they would not have to consider how new timber sales or ski areas or other actions would impact the environment.
More troubling, changes to current law include relaxing a Forest Service requirement to protect all viable populations of native fish and wildlife species - called the single most important legal tool for protecting wildlife in national forests. The new rule will undermine the legal basis for protecting old-growth habitat and could result in much more logging of ancient forests. "This would take away the main tool that Forest Service wildlife biologists have had for 20 years," says Mike Anderson, a senior resource analyst for the Wilderness Society. "A lot of species probably will be pushed toward extinction. It's a pretty bleak outlook on all fronts."
In this hostile political climate, many agency scientists look ahead to the next four years with despair. They know what politicians and timber lobbyists would like to ignore: that when rare plants no one has ever heard or species few people care about disappear, the entire ecosystem - even water quality - is affected. Such ripple effects and long-term impacts have made even career scientists like Shull rethink whether they want to continue to work for the federal government. "They're going a way I don't agree with. My principles and morals don't fit anymore with the people in charge here. When I bring up an issue of protecting species, it's met with anger," says Shull, her voice heavy. "Since Bush has been in office it's just this feeling that they [upper management] can say and do anything and get away with it."
Rebecca Clarren writes from Portland, Ore.
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