A Watershed Speech
“Our shared vision must begin with a complete commitment to restoration. Restoration, for me, means managing forest lands first and foremost to protect our water resources while making our forests far more resilient to climate change.”
— US Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack.
With these words, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack set out a new vision for
national forest management — one that harkens back to the foundation of the Forest
Service more than 100 years ago, with a primary focus on protecting water resources. While his speech did stray into the more familiar topics of hazardous fuel reduction, fire danger, insects, and other “timber management” issues, it was refreshing that in this era of climate change he chose water and watershed health to set the context of his remarks. It seems that it really may be a new vision for the agency. Roads, it turns out, are one of the biggest contributors to water quality problems on our national forests. Vilsack wasn’t afraid to mention this, nor was the person who introduced him, Congressman Norm Dicks (D-WA).
As part of his introduction, Dicks touted some of the initial successes of the Forest Service’s Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative (see many previous RIPorters).
Legacy Roads has provided $90 million in the last two years to protect and restore clean drinking water and endangered fisheries habitat by fixing culverts and performing other critical maintenance on needed roads, while decommissioning unneeded roads. While Legacy Roads continues, the agency is beginning to look at their road system in a different way, acknowledging both its oversized capacity and the profound ecological effects the system has, especially in light of the multi-billion dollar maintenance backlog. Even former FS Chief Gail Kimbell acknowledged the need to “rightsize” the forest road system in testimony provided to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees this spring.
And we must note that Vilsack did explicitly state that, “In many of our forests,
restoration will also include efforts to improve or decommission roads, to replace and improve culverts, and to rehabilitate streams and wetlands.” So there it is, in black and white – road decommissioning will be part of the future of national forest management. The agency is on the verge of moving in a new direction. They’ve been there before and then fallen back into their same old ruts. But by taking the bull by the horns at the beginning of his tenure, Vilsack has the potential to push the Forest Service into an agency focused on watershed restoration at its core. Speeches alone won’t make that happen. He must pressure new FS Chief Tom Tidwell to translate vision into reality by providing the structure and capacity to build a new Forest Service for the 21st Century —
one that focuses on restoring watershed health and water quality, especially in light of climate change.
We can only hope that there’s a brand new beginning for the Forest Service that immediately builds from the words Vilsack used at the end of his speech:
“But I return again to the simple act that we Americans often take for granted every day: turning on those water faucets. The clean water that emerges is made possible in large part by the stewardship of our working rural land and our forests in particular. My hope, and I trust you share it, is that together we can foster a greater appreciation in this country for our forests and that all Americans, regardless of where they live, see the quality of their lives, and the quality of their forests as inseparable.”
— US Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack.
With these words, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack set out a new vision for
national forest management — one that harkens back to the foundation of the Forest
Service more than 100 years ago, with a primary focus on protecting water resources. While his speech did stray into the more familiar topics of hazardous fuel reduction, fire danger, insects, and other “timber management” issues, it was refreshing that in this era of climate change he chose water and watershed health to set the context of his remarks. It seems that it really may be a new vision for the agency. Roads, it turns out, are one of the biggest contributors to water quality problems on our national forests. Vilsack wasn’t afraid to mention this, nor was the person who introduced him, Congressman Norm Dicks (D-WA).
As part of his introduction, Dicks touted some of the initial successes of the Forest Service’s Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Initiative (see many previous RIPorters).
Legacy Roads has provided $90 million in the last two years to protect and restore clean drinking water and endangered fisheries habitat by fixing culverts and performing other critical maintenance on needed roads, while decommissioning unneeded roads. While Legacy Roads continues, the agency is beginning to look at their road system in a different way, acknowledging both its oversized capacity and the profound ecological effects the system has, especially in light of the multi-billion dollar maintenance backlog. Even former FS Chief Gail Kimbell acknowledged the need to “rightsize” the forest road system in testimony provided to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees this spring.
And we must note that Vilsack did explicitly state that, “In many of our forests,
restoration will also include efforts to improve or decommission roads, to replace and improve culverts, and to rehabilitate streams and wetlands.” So there it is, in black and white – road decommissioning will be part of the future of national forest management. The agency is on the verge of moving in a new direction. They’ve been there before and then fallen back into their same old ruts. But by taking the bull by the horns at the beginning of his tenure, Vilsack has the potential to push the Forest Service into an agency focused on watershed restoration at its core. Speeches alone won’t make that happen. He must pressure new FS Chief Tom Tidwell to translate vision into reality by providing the structure and capacity to build a new Forest Service for the 21st Century —
one that focuses on restoring watershed health and water quality, especially in light of climate change.
We can only hope that there’s a brand new beginning for the Forest Service that immediately builds from the words Vilsack used at the end of his speech:
“But I return again to the simple act that we Americans often take for granted every day: turning on those water faucets. The clean water that emerges is made possible in large part by the stewardship of our working rural land and our forests in particular. My hope, and I trust you share it, is that together we can foster a greater appreciation in this country for our forests and that all Americans, regardless of where they live, see the quality of their lives, and the quality of their forests as inseparable.”
Resource Information
Article Type:
A Look Down the Trail
Road RIPorter Issue:
Issues:
Tribal Related:
Not Tribal-Related
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