This atmosphere of external vilification and internal dissention is a world
apart from that of forty years ago when the Forest Service enjoyed a high
degree of public accolade and organizational cohesion. Then, scholars cited
the agency as a model of public-spirited bureaucratic efficiency. ⁴ Today, the
typical view of the Forest Service might be exemplified by the following
quote from a March 1990 article in the LondonEconomist: "today the
service finds itself assailed from all sides and losing its leadership role in the
191 [million] acres of forests it professes to know best. . . . Compounding
the problem, is a stultifying, almost Stalinesque bureaucracy, demoralised
by the service's changing reputation. There are signs of internal revolt. One
forestry professor says his former students call up to say 'we're raping the
woods.'" ⁵ How and why did this sense of near universal dissatisfaction with
the Forest Service evolve? What are the bases of these various complaints,
which at times seem so contradictory? Has the Forest Service been a good
land steward? These are the issues this book seeks to illuminate.

America's national forests represent a grand experiment in the public own-
ership of land and natural resources. The national forest system now com-
prises 191 million acres -- one-tenth of the surface area of the United States.
Although the bulk of them are located in the West, they extend from the
hilly, deciduous forests of New England to the rainforests of Puerto Rico,
from the deep canyons and rocky cliffs of the Southwestern basin and range
country to the living glaciers of the Olympic Mountains of Washington,
from white-faced, cloud-shrouded Denali to the tropical tangles of the Ha-
waiian Islands. Spectacular river systems such as the Colorado, Rio Grande,
Snake, Missouri, and Allegheny emerge from national forest lands. Approx-
imately 50 percent of the water that falls as rain or snow in the West falls on
national forest land. Those waters quench the thirst and support the industry
and agriculture of thousands of communities and tens of millions of people.
The national forests are home to many kinds of wildlife, including grizzly
bears, mountain lions, elk, salmon, bald eagles, and spotted owls. They
provide important habitat for two-thirds of the big game in the West and for
hundreds of species of plants and animals currently at risk of extinction: The
federal government in 1990 listed over 560 U.S. species as threatened or
endangered; another 1,000 "candidate" species awaited listing or were cate-

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