Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
new hazards in fire-prone forests, including the ponderosa pine and dry mixed conifer
types of the Southwest (Marzluff and Bradley 2003).
By the 1990s and early 2000s, the trajectories of these various strands of influence—
the conversion of dynamic forest ecosystems into engineered output-producing sys-
tems, the growing legal power of environmental interests to alter land management
practices on federal lands, and the continued residential development of private lands
on the boundaries of federal forests—began to collide. In the Southwest, as in much of
the country, policy battles over national forest management centered on whether par-
ticular areas of forest would be “set aside” for preservation (e.g., as wildlife habitat) or
“opened up” for resource extraction. In 1995, environmental advocates won a court
ruling that led to a sixteen-month injunction on federal timber harvesting in order to
plan for Mexican spotted owl (
Strix occidentalis lucida
) protection, and outputs of
wood fiber from federal lands declined rapidly (Nie 1998; Lenart 2006). This change
was followed by a series of active wildfire years that tested the suppression capabilities of
Forest Service firefighters. These fires also highlighted the dangers of both overstocked
forest conditions and the pattern of dispersed residential development that came to
typify exurban sprawl in the Southwest. By the time of the Rodeo-Chediski Fire in
2002, it was clear to many in the Southwest that the old model of the relationships be-
tween the federal agencies, the lands they manage, and the communities that live
nearby was out of date and in need of an overhaul. Significantly, these events took place
during a time when traditional patterns of top-down governance of public lands were
beginning to be called into question nationwide (Baker and Kusel 2003; McCarthy
2006). Stewardship contracting policy represented one step in the direction of a more
community-centered approach to public land governance.
Policy Constraints on Ecological Restoration
The policies that influenced management of federal forestlands for most of the twen-
tieth century included many that provided direction for the production of com-
modities (e.g., the Organic Act of 1897) and others that provided for the preservation
of environmentally valuable lands and resources (e.g., the Wilderness Act of 1964).
Active ecological restoration of degraded forestlands, however, has rarely appeared as
a management option in the tomes of laws and regulations guiding national forest
management. Contracting policy represents a specific example of the limited op-
tions available for restoration of federal forestlands (Moseley 2002). Under traditional
arrangements, the U.S. Forest Service could accomplish resource management ob-
jectives in one of two ways: if the primary purpose of a project was harvesting valu-
able timber, the agency offered a contract for the sale of that timber “on the stump”
to private harvesters and sold logging rights to the highest bidder. Alternatively, if a
project represented some kind of environmental improvement, including the har-
vesting of lower-value trees, the agency offered a service contract whereby it paid a
private contractor to perform the service. Prevailing policy arrangements offered fed-
eral land managers few options when it came to integrated contracts that included
restoration thinning, fuel reduction, or other work entailing the removal of both sal-
