Sustainable Management on the Ground: Seven deadly sins and how to avoid them

Abstract

It is incredible that we are now on the precipice of celebrating the 1st century of the United States Forest Service, both because the organization is so old and, moreover, because it is so young. While asked to speculate on the greatest conservation achievements of the agency in its first 100 years, it is both tempting and hopelessly futile to determine the greatest accomplishments of any entity that reaches a century of service. As we passed the last century mark in this nation, I was both amused and dismayed at the preponderance of wisdom conjured up to select the best of the 20th century. We had it all.. .greatest sex symbol, greatest football team, greatest athlete.. .pick a category, and we were quick to make lists. The problem with these lists is that they were all made by people like you and me-folks who had no idea what was going on in 1905 or even 1955, and these lists tend to be overloaded with what might be only average accomplishments by the greatest we have seen in our own timelines. How do you compare the real Babe Ruth you never saw with a Barry Bonds you saw too much? How do we begin to comprehend the thoughts or challenges of Pinchot, Theodore Roosevelt, or those who fought through the Great Depression? By today's standards, Marilyn Monroe was probably overweight (although anyone who has her second or lower on their list of hotties is clearly delusional). Jackie Robinson can be evaluated as a second baseman, among many others, or as a human being, perhaps the toughest man who ever played the game, given the mental and social challenges he confronted and faced largely alone. It is all relative, and we have no way to relate to it all. One hundred years ago, no one had a clear view of the world in which we live, or in which they lived. The average lifespan of a human was almost exactly the average age of a Forest Service employee today (48), so changes in the environment were either subtle or beyond tomorrow. There were no breaking news briefs, no satellite images of the planet, no hour-by-hour weather reports-what the heck! Most of the maps were drawn in the dirt with a stick. My great-grandmother Budd walked alongside a wagon from Kansas as a girl and watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon as an elder. At the time she walked across half the continent to an unsure future, the things we now take for granted were unimaginable, absolutely beyond comprehension. Sustainability meant having enough to eat and, in the good years, enough to sell or trade for something else. The calves you sold paid their own way if you were lucky. The hay you made fed the cows that made the calves and the horses that made the hay. Spending money came from the muskrat, beaver, and mink you trapped or the work you could offer someone else. Meat on the table came from elk, moose, and deer. Come spring, after the thaw and before the runoff, a mess of fish was my grandmother's equivalent to live lobsters we now find in Wyoming superstores-an absolute feast, a return from the land, a change of pace and taste. In late summer, the quest became sage grouse-a chance to let work go for a day and provide a delicacy for the table. Sustainability