Forest Service to rate employees on green goals

U.S. Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck yesterday announced a new method of rewarding agency employees that is intended to ensure that all USFS programs "promote ecological responsibility."

The environmental health of public lands, not logging targets or cattle-grazing totals, will become the goal of the USFS staff, Dombeck said in a speech to the North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference in Burlingame, Calif. Employees will be evaluated by how well they improve soil erosion, stream purity, wildlife and fish abundance, watershed health and other ecological factors.

The new practice reverses 50 years of operations in which "getting the cut out" has been the dominant goal for 191 million acres of U.S. forests.

Environmentalists "cheered" Dombeck's announcement. Louis Blumberg of the Wilderness Society: "It sounds like it is going to be a welcome change. ... For years there have been perverse incentives that rewarded people [for] cutting down the forests."

But the timber industry is concerned that the new direction will further reduce logging on federal lands below levels that one industry official called "almost nonexistent" (Paul Rogers, Knight Ridder/Seattle Times, 3/29).