Today marks the 100th anniversary of Gifford Pinchot’s first day on the job as a Forest Service employee. I took this opportunity to discuss the natural resource agenda and what it means to be a conservation leader with the National Leadership Team. I’d like to share that discussion with you before the holiday weekend celebrating our nation’s birthday. As an organization, we pride ourselves for our conservation tradition and expertise. I’d like to get a little beyond the sloganeering and examine what that truly means. As Pinchot said, "we must go vigorously forward, apply what knowledge and common sense we [have] to the task ahead, and everywhere and always prefer results to routine."

To me, a conservation leader is someone who consistently errs on the side of maintaining and restoring healthy and diverse ecosystems even when --no, especially when -- such decisions are not expedient or politically popular. If we are to redeem our claim to be the world’s foremost conservation leader, our job is to maintain and restore ecologically and socially important environmental values. A highly diversified society increasingly demands that our stewardship result in a legacy of healthier landscapes.

For example, our proposed suspension of road construction in roadless areas will help us develop not only a science-based long-term road policy but one that also reflects the values that society places on wild places, old growth, wilderness, and on intact and unfragmented landscapes.

I recently read a letter from a line officer who chided local managers for being behind schedule relative to meeting the region’s "timber targets." My expectation is that line officers will demand similar accountability for meeting watershed restoration, fish and wildlife habitat, riparian, recreation, cultural resource, and wilderness management goals.

We need to do a better job talking about, and managing for, the values that are so important to so many people. Values such as wilderness and roadless areas, clean water, protection of rare species, old growth forests, naturalness -- these are the reasons most Americans cherish their public lands.

For example, twenty percent of the National Forest System is wilderness, and in the opinion of many, more should be. Our wilderness portfolio must embody a broader array of lands -- from prairie to old growth. As world leaders in wilderness management, we should be looking to the future to better manage existing, and identify potential new, wilderness and other wild lands.

We have a real opportunity to employ our science and professionalism and lead the debates on use, management, and conservation of natural resources. But we must step out in front of these issues instead of serving as a wrestling mat for interest groups. If we do not become more flexible and adaptable in responding to conservation issues and social demands, we will become less relevant as time passes.

Conservation leadership extends far beyond the National Forest System. I want our Research program to do more to promote and improve conservation and more efficient utilization and recycling of wood fiber. As national wood consumption rates continue to increase, so must our efficiencies.

Many of our State and Private Forestry employees are working hard to ensure that the benefits of public land restoration extend to the more productive habitats on private land. We must do more. We also need to help ensure that as private and state lands help to meet the nation’s demand for wood fiber, they do not compromise their own productive capacity.

Fifty years ago, Aldo Leopold wrote his seminal work, A Sand County Almanac. In it, Leopold spoke of his personal land ethic and the need for land managers to extend their own ecological conscience to resource decisions. The Forest Service natural resource agenda is an expression of our agency’s land ethic. If we are to redeem our role as conservation leaders, it is not enough to be loyal to the Forest Service organization. First and foremost, we must be loyal to our land ethic. In fifty years, we will not be remembered for the resources we developed; we will be thanked for those we maintained and restored for future generations.

Thanks for your hard work.

MIKE DOMBECK, Chief

Eloquent words, Mike, and viewed from someone outside your organization, long overdue. Perhaps this is butting in to an internal affair, but let me ask, none the less, "What about the Monongahela National Forest?. What about the Tongass?!" Editor. _