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The United States Forest Service: The World's Largest Water Company

Mike Dombeck, Chief of the U.S. Forest Service
Outdoor Writers Association of America Conference
Sioux Falls, SD
June 21, 1999

Introduction
Forests are the headwaters of the nation. And as we near the 21st century, national and international tension and conflict over freshwater resources is increasing:

· Fish species and other aquatic resources are threatened with extinction from polluted or diminished water supplies. In the U.S. 35% of freshwater fish, 38% of amphibians, 56% of mussels are imperiled or vulnerable

· Billions of people worldwide lack basic water services

· Millions die annually from water-related diseases

· Agricultural production is constrained by a lack of irrigation water

· Groundwater supplies are consumed faster than they are replenished

· Dams, ditches, and levees fragment water-courses and alter the stream flow

· 75% of our nations' outdoor recreation is within ½ mile of streams or water body's

· 50 million people fish in the United States each year

Nationalism and economics often drove major wars of the 19th and 20th centuries. Without planning, cooperation, and forethought, wars in the 21st century may be fought over water and other resources. While the United States is relatively water rich, the western part of the nation - where most National Forests are located - is water poor. Increasing competition for limited water supplies is common to most municipalities in this the fastest growing part of the country.

In the next several years, hard decisions will have to be made about water and its allocation to agricultural production, urban development, and environmental protection. At the same time, the ``water world'' is becoming less stable. Many scientists note corollaries in climate change and increased severity and frequency of floods and length of drought over the last 25 years. In fact, our concept of what constitutes a 100-year flood is questionable given that such large events today seem to occur at five and ten year intervals.

Fresh Water: An Overview

Our earth is called the water planet for good reason. 70% of the earth's surface is covered with water - without it the earth would be a lifeless ball. Yet 97.5% of the water on the planet is salt water. Of the other 2.5%, the vast majority is locked up in the vast ice caps of Antarctica and Greenland. The small percentage of available annual renewable water is unevenly distributed through time and space - so unevenly that we spend billions of dollars every year to move it from wet areas to dry areas or to store it in wet seasons for coming dry periods.

California illustrates the issue. Most of its rain comes in the winter months - little in the summer when agriculture and families need it most. The vast majority falls in northern California's National Forests, yet the greatest demand is in southern part of the state. National Forests comprise only 20% of the state's land but produce about 50% of California's runoff.

Nationally, forested lands comprise about one-third of the nation's land area and supply about two-thirds of the total U.S., runoff. National Forest lands are the largest single source of water in the continental United States.

Water and the National Forests

When most Americans think of the 192 million-acre National Forest System they may think of forest products, livestock grazing, mineral extraction, wildlife management, outdoor recreation and wilderness experiences. But the most valuable and least appreciated resource the National Forest System provides is water.

Due to topography, location, vegetation, and geology of the National Forest System - how it collects snow and rainfall and channels water to lower-lying communities - these lands have more influence on national water supplies, particularly in the West, than any other single entity. This makes National Forest lands the nation's largest and most important water provider.

The roots of the Forest Service are in watershed management. In the 1890's, visionaries such as Gifford Pinchot believed that we ought to value forests for their ``effect on the climate and floods, rainfall and runoff, springs and erosion." The first Committee of Scientists, the National Forest Commission of 1897, recommended the establishment of 13 Forest Reserves for timber, water supply, and flood prevention. Watershed management is the oldest and highest calling of the Forest Service and a critical part of the Organic Act of 1897, which stated the purpose of federal forest reserves:

To improve and protect the forest within the boundaries, or for the purpose of securing favorable conditions of water flows, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber.

By 1915, 162 million acres of National Forests existed. At that time, there were few federal forests in the East because the public domain had already been transferred to private ownership prior to the advent of the conservation movement.

Between 1911 to 1945 about 24 million acres of depleted farmsteads and burned woodlands in the East were added into the National Forest System through the Weeks Act and placed under long-term management. Today, these thriving forests that support abundant fish and wildlife populations, represent one of our nation's greatest conservation and restoration success stories.

Forest management has come a long way since 1900. Consider:

· Wildfire commonly consumed an area the size of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Delaware combined each year.

· There were about 80 million acres of cut over forests that were either barren or lacked desirable tree species.

· The volume of timber cut nationally greatly exceeded that of forest growth.

· Reforestation was an afterthought. Aside from a few experimental programs, long-term forest management was not practiced.

· Massive clearing of forestland for agriculture continued into this century. For example, in the last 50 years of the 19th century, forest cover in many areas east of the Mississippi had fallen from 70 percent to 20 percent or less. From 1860-1910, settlers cleared forests at the average rate of 13.3 square miles per day - much of this land included highly erosive steep slopes.

The two main purposes for creating the National Forest System were to maintain abundant forest reserves and to supply abundant water. Over the past 50 years, the watershed purpose of the Forest Service has not been a co-equal partner with providing other resource uses such as timber production. In fact, watershed purposes were sometimes viewed as a ``constraint'' to timber management.

Relatively few of the National Forests thoroughly addressed their original watershed purposes through forest plans. Water was typically considered in the context of stream corridor management, fish habitat, and to some degree water quality. This despite the fact that in addition to fishing and water-based recreation, over 3,400 communities rely on National Forest lands in 33 states for their drinking water, serving over 60 million people. Assessment of the watershed conditions needed to maintain the ecological function of forests, provide drinking water for downstream communities, and enhance and sustain public forest values will be of paramount importance as we revise over 60% of our forest plans in the next few years.

We recently assessed the marginal value of water on National Forest lands to be more than $3.7 billion per year. This $3.7 billion does not include the value of maintaining fish species, many other recreation values, nor the savings to municipalities who have reduced filtration costs because water from National Forests is so clean. Nor does it account for the millions of visitor days where people are fulfilled by the simple act of walking beside a cool clear stream, river, or lake. Healthy watersheds that produce high quality water also provide for a long-term sustained yield of other goods, values, and services. Given the fundamental importance of water to all life on this planet it is arguable that the value of water is ``priceless.'' Who would have thought that today we would be paying more for this bottle of water than the cost of gasoline?

Getting Back to Basics

How will the decisions we make on the land today influence what we are remembered for one hundred years from now? That should be the question that guides every decision we make. What made Pinchot's young Forest Service unique was a set of conservation values that were not always popular but were made in the long-term interest of land health.

Over time, our capacity to assist those who manage the more than 500 million acres of forests outside of the National Forest System has diminished. Our greatest value to society in the future will be to develop and deliver good science on watershed conservation and then help people to develop a shared vision for managing healthy watersheds.

The cleanest and greatest amounts of surface water runoff in the nation come from forested landscapes. Mindful of this fact, a year or so ago, Jay Cravens, a Forest Service retiree, offered me some advice on stewardship. He said, ``Mike, just take care of soil and water and everything else will be OK.'' That sage counsel guides our approach to watershed management.

In keeping with that philosophy, the Forest Service is making the changes based on the following guidance: The Vice President's Clean Water Action Plan commitments; Recommendations from the Committee of Scientists, charged earlier this year by Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman to improve the way the Forest Service does business; And consistent with our mandates from the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water acts, watershed health and restoration will be the overriding priorities in all future forest plans.

Future forest plans will develop strategies and document how we will:

· Work with other agencies, states and tribes to conduct assessments that will characterize current watershed condition and help inform decisions about management activities, protection objectives, and restoration potential of public lands.

· Maintain and restore watershed function, including flow regimes, to provide for a wide variety of benefits from fishing, to groundwater recharge, to drinking water.

· Provide for the protection, maintenance and recovery of native aquatic and riparian dependent species and prevent the introduction and spread of non-native, invasive species.

· Monitor to ensure we accomplish our objectives in the most cost-effective manner, adapt management to changing conditions, and validate our assumptions over time.

· Include the best science and research, local communities, partners, tribal governments, states, and other interested citizens in collaborative watershed restoration and management, and

· Provide opportunities to link social and economic benefits to communities through restoration strategies.

All future forest plans will also prioritize specific watersheds for protection and restoration. Accomplishing these priorities will be linked to annual budget requests and employee performance evaluations. We will develop priorities for protection and restoration based upon:

· Past disturbance history. Emphasis will be given to protecting undisturbed watersheds and roadless areas and integrating these areas into plans to protect and restore the integrity of watersheds.

· Water quality and other water-related objectives.

· Restoration potential and sensitivity to disturbance.

· Biological diversity of native plants, fish, and animals and special designations such as Wild and Scenic Rivers.

· Recovery of threatened, endangered, or other sensitive species.

· Potential to leverage restoration funds, partnerships, and the opportunity to work with interested and willing federal, state and tribal governments, communities, adjacent land managers, and owners.

Roads and Roadless Areas

Our interim suspension of road construction in roadless areas has helped to reduce the controversy in many of our forests. Our challenge is to make certain that the values that make these areas ecologically and socially important are considered and protected.

During the first round of forest plans, roadless areas were considered for their value as potential wilderness or opened to other uses. Over time, we have learned that unroaded areas have many other values beyond their potential value as wilderness or developed use areas. We must sustain and protect those other values such as:

· Source drinking water areas. (Areas, the source of drinking water)

· Reference areas for research to assess the health of developed lands.

· Areas of high or unique biological diversity.

· Areas where other unfragmented lands are scarce.

· Areas of cultural or historic importance.

· Areas that provide unique or important seasonal habitat for wildlife, fish, and plant species.

Protecting unroaded areas is not enough, however. If we wish to restore the health of our watersheds, we must address already roaded areas, too. Many roadless areas have become sanctuary's, areas of high biotic integrity where remnant populations of many native species persist. Ironically, roadless areas are often among the least biologically productive portions of the landscape - typically higher elevation with steep slopes, unstable soils, and often areas of low productivity.

Aldo Leopold once said, ``recreational engineering is not so much a job of building roads into lovely places but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind.'' Watershed restoration cannot occur without the help of interested and willing private and state landowners. We know today that we cannot simply protect national forests, refuges, and parks and by extension hope to protect our natural resource heritage. Public lands cannot be managed in isolation of other federal, state, and private lands. From the forest to the sea, we must work in partnership with communities to link neighborhood creeks and tree-lined streets to the ocean-bound rivers, state parks and forests.

It is my expectation that the long-term road policy will significantly limit, if not eliminate costly new road construction in sensitive areas that can degrade water quality, cause erosion, imperil rare species, or fragment habitat. We will also move aggressively to close, obliterate, or otherwise decommission unauthorized and unneeded roads. We will need the help of Congress to maintain needed roads while decommissioning others.

Protecting and Restoring National Assets

Forest Service managed lands are uniquely positioned to contribute to the conservation and restoration of habitats for fish, shore birds, migratory waterfowl, large ungulates and endangered species. National Forests and Grasslands are essential resting-places and habitat for many migratory species of fishes and birds that travel thousands of miles each year.

The top-down regulatory approach that defined the effective environmental protections of the 1970s and 80s is gradually giving way - perhaps sharing power is a more appropriate way to put it - with a different kind of movement. It is taking place outside of Washington, D.C. - where so often we confuse politics for progress. It is taking place in communities such as this all across the nation where loggers and environmentalists, ranchers and anglers weary of the controversy are sitting down in coffee shops, and leaning against the tailgates of pickups, in diners getting to know one another and learning that their differences need not define their relationships.

For too long, we have allowed the extremes to define our agendas. In places such as Kalispell, Montana, and in western Oregon where groups such as Flathead Common Ground and the Applegate Partnership demonstrate that if we focus on broad areas of agreement instead of the narrow areas of controversy, we can accomplish mutually agreeable goals on the land.

We are passing through the end of a tumultuous two decades in natural resource management. Litigation, new information, court ordered injunctions - all prompting great, and often overdue, change - but not without great social and economic disruption. This nation is founded on the premise that diverse groups, creeds, and races of people can come together in good will and resolve any challenge, no matter how daunting. Margaret Meade once said, ``never doubt that a small group of dedicated people can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has.''

Such must have been the thinking of Defenders of Wildlife, the Montana Logging Association, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Intermountain Forest Industry Association in coming together to form Flathead Common Ground. This collaborative group has led to a jointly supported proposal to:

· Decommission 116 miles of old and unused roads to help grizzly bears.

· Restore many miles of stream.

· Burn 8,700 acres to improve deer and elk browse and regeneration for white bark pine.

· Harvest timber and treat vegetation on 633 acres.

Efforts such as these remind me of a wonderful quote by the writer Barry Lopez in his aptly titled essay, Waiting on Wisdom. He says,

Restoration work is not fixing beautiful machinery, replacing stolen parts, adding fresh lubricants, cobbling and welding and rewiring. It is accepting an abandoned responsibility. It is a humble and often joyful mending of biological ties, with a hope clearly recognized that working from this foundation we might, too, begin to mend human society.

Everyone needs water. Everyone needs clean water and all the benefits that flow from it. Watersheds and streams are the kidneys of our grasslands and forests. They are the barometers of the health of the land. By focusing on areas of agreement such as water quality improvement, maintaining stream flows, and allowing for the ecological processes that make our forests hum and tick, we can bring people together to restore the soil, water and air upon which we and future generations will depend.

Submitted by: Chris Wood

Modified: 6/24/99

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