Scholar suggests abolishing the Forest Service

Wildfires that spread throughout several western states this summer are yet another example that the Forest Service is broken beyond repair and should be dismantled, according to one academic.

Robert Nelson, professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland and author of "A Burning Issue: A Case for Abolishing the U.S. Forest Service," shared his views about why the Forest Service should be closed as the guest speaker Thursday at a monthly National Economists Club luncheon.

"It might seem that the idea of abolishing the Forest Service is a very radical idea," Nelson began, drawing chuckles from the audience. But the idea is neither new nor original, he said, citing many critics of the agency since its inception in 1905.

"What we need is a sharp decentralization of authority," Nelson said. "It no longer makes sense that one agency can have all of the answers."

Instead, he suggested, power to run the nation's 2 billion acres of land under the jurisdiction of the Forest Service should be given "to local forms of democracy," so that "local people try to work things out face to face," he said.

Describing the history and policies of the agency, Nelson told listeners that 50 years of bad policy decisions influenced either by economics or by environmentalists, and capped finally by the Clinton administration's "ecosystem management plan," led to this year's "catastrophic fires."

The fires this summer were less an accident than they were an accident waiting to happen, Nelson continued. Rather than use controlled methods of preventing tree density, which caused the fires to burn out of control, the Forest Service decided to "hope for good luck," Nelson said.

"There was a minimal effort, and [an] almost complete lack of action or concern on the part of the agency," he said.