Our National Forests Are Under Attack, and Nobody is Even Talking About It!

 

You read that headline correctly. Our National Forests are under attack by forces that seek to dissolve the US Forest Service that manages them, and sell off our precious Public Lands to private interests that would seek to pillage them for their valuable resources, and/or limit access to those who can afford to pay their access fees. If you think I am deluded, pay attention, because while social media is full of pleas to save our national parks, nobody is paying attention to the National Forests. Although it has escaped media attention that the Park Service has regained multiple thousands of positions, the US Forest Service has lost 10,000 jobs, and is being told to eliminate another 7000 with little or no regard for its effects on families, homes, and the  economy or the communities and states they live in. Make no mistake about it, a cabal of primarily Western state senators and representatives, emboldened by the election of President Trump and his DOGE program under Elon Musk, are quietly clearcutting the caretakers of over one hundred and eighty-eight million acres of Public Land. OUR Public Lands.

Nobody is arguing that our national parks, the sanctuaries of our most unique natural, cultural, and historical lands, aren’t important, however it takes a lot more to shut down a national park than to do so with National Forest lands. To eliminate as much as thirty percent of the Forest Service workforce will place Irreparable harm on an agency that was already short-staffed before they were ordered to eliminate 7500 primarily seasonal positions last fall, followed by a 3000-employee cut on Valentine’s Day. This is being done behind our backs, folks. While your attention is being focused justifiably and intentionally on things like USAID, Social Security, DEI, and National Parks, the Forest Service is being reduced to a force that cannot possibly keep up with the demands of managing the Public Lands in their care. Those trying to destroy the agency will seize this opportunity to say, “Look, we told you so! They can’t manage it so let’s transfer it to the states.” Then, when the states can’t afford to manage it, they’ll be forced to sell the lands off to the highest bidder. That is the endgame. If you don’t think this threat is real, witness that in January the Supreme Court ruled against a Utah-based attempt to seize federal lands in that state, just one in a string of attempts to wrest control of federal lands managed for us under the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management in primarily, but not exclusively Western states.

While I certainly agree that government at all levels, but particularly at the federal level, has become bloated and rift with corruption and special interests that need to be eliminated, and a budget and massive deficit that need to be reduced, the US Forest Service is one of the best managers of both the taxpayer’s dollars entrusted to them and the land that it is their mission to manage. Selling off our Public Lands at fire sale prices will not effectively reduce the budget or the deficit. Selling off the timber on those lands while laying off the trained, educated, professional employees whose job it is to manage sustainable forests is both shortsighted and ultimately counterproductive. One of the Forest Service’s biggest problems is its historic inability to promote and lobby for itself. Many people in this country don’t even recognize the difference between a National Park and a National Forest, or that they are under two different, separate departments of the federal government with vastly different missions.

Unfortunately, the days of representative government are receding rapidly in our rearview mirrors. Party leaders on both sides of the aisle demand that senators and representatives vote their party line whether or not it is what the people who elected those representatives want or believe in. Both sides believe we, who sent them to Washington in the first place, are not smart enough to know what’s best for us. There needs to be a new way to reinforce the fact that the people we elect are there to represent us and our interests, not those of their biggest donors. Because of this, contacting your legislators may be only partially effective. But letter writing, emails, and phone calls have worked to restore over 3000 positions with the National Park Service. There is more to be done, but we need to get at it because there is the deadline of March 13th for the Forest Service to produce 7000 more cuts. Write, call, post, email. Make a ruckus. Let your and my elected representatives know that this has to stop. Tell them to end the attack on OUR Public Lands, OUR National Forests, before it’s too late to save them!

Public Lands Firings: A Little Order to Chaos

 

Let's try and bring a little clarity to this very disturbing issue; First, there are three agencies that took major hits frrom the DOGE cuts, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, (both of which are in the Department of the Interior) and the US Forest Service, of the Department of Agriculture. Second, the Trump administration is not planning to close any national parks. The parks will stay open, however will have reduced staffing and services. Last night, WCCO indicated, and I have seen this elsewhere as well, that the administration was already going to allow the rehire of law enforcement and some seasonal positions. The news report wasn't specific to the Park Service or Forest Service, but I am assuming it was the NPS since their interviewee was a laid-off interp Ranger. What they are planning to look at is every National Monument dating all the way back to when Theodore Roosevelt designated the first one, to determine their "viability." National monuments are made by Executive Order. National Parks, Battlefields, Historic Sites, Etc. are designated by Congress. That being said, our National Forests are under a far greater threat than our National Parks. We have a Congress, both the Senate and the House, that are very anti-public lands, and they feel that if they can gut the United States Forest Service, they'll be able to prove that the USFS (and by default the BLM) can't manage the resource and it should be turned over to the states. Of course, the states can't afford to manage it either, so it would then be sold off to the highest bidder. That is the endgame. If you hunt, fish, hike, camp, ski, ride ATVs, in other words, recreate on our federal public lands, your access to those places is threatened; threatened by staff reductions, threatened by greedy speculators and developers, threatened by a non-sympathetic Congress. The Trump administration is not the end of the world as we know it, any more than the Biden, Obama, or Bush administrations were. The pursestrings rest in the hands of our elected representatives, and that's who we need to win over to supporting our public lands. Big donors bring big bucks to their reelection campaign, but each person only has one vote. Your calls count, your emails count, your mail letters count, your presence at public hearings counts, and your vote counts. We are Public Land Owners and we vote. We vote for those representatives who support, and fund our land management agencies.

Before you go posting rumors and blatantly false information on Facebook, X, Instagram, etc., verify whether it's true or not. Yes, there is a problem, but don't make it worse by spreading false information.

Join the Fight to Save Our National Forests!

My name is Hans Erdman, and I am a retired park ranger, Patrol Chief Emeritus of the Minnesota and Wisconsin volunteer Backcountry Trail Patrol Association, host of the Old Ranger’s Backcountry podcast and a number of blogs, pages, and other conservation related presence across social media. I am also a proud United States Forest Service volunteer and have been for the past thirty-five years, even while working as a career park ranger for other agencies.

Today, February 1st, is the 120^th anniversary of the establishment of the United States Forest Service under the Department of Agriculture, by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905. I am posting this short message today, not just because of the Forest Service anniversary, but because this year, possibly more than any year since, our national forests, grasslands, and even our national parks are under attack. They are under attack from the same forces that Teddy Roosevelt and it's first Chief, Gifford Pinchot sought to protect our public lands from in 1905.

I am a life-long conservative, by every definition of the word. I am not a Republican nor a Democrat, but I will always vote for the person, regardless of affiliation, who most closely supports the things that I believe in. Do not even dare to accuse me of being anything but conservative. I was supporting Ronald Reagan when most of today’s legislators were still in diapers back in 1968. But I am also a conservationist and have been so even longer, when I decided my goal in life was to become the career that I lived and loved for twenty-six years as a Ranger. And I also believe that our government at both the state and federal level has become too big, too unwieldy, and too intrusive in our daily lives. It has also become too expensive for its own system to support. That much I can agree on with those who were attacking our public lands, however there is a group in Congress that is using the new administration’s push to reduce government spending as justification to gut our land management partners, specifically the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. During the first Trump administration, the same representatives from Utah and other Western states attempted to eliminate the division of law enforcement and investigations within the Forest Service, and even in the past month the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against another Utah-based lawsuit that tried to force the BLM to transfer the lands it manages in the beehive state to state control. These attacks have continued, and they always seem to originate with the Utah and Nevada delegations.

Our public lands in the United States are a unique and incredibly special heritage. No other country in the world has lands that are owned by us, the public, and allows access to those lands like our country does. Our national forests and grasslands comprise of 193 million acres that contribute over thirteen billion dollars to the national economy every year from forest visitors alone. Over 20 percent of our nation’s clean water supply comes from the more than 400,000 lakes and 60,000 miles of rivers and streams on national forest land. Most of those nearly 200 million acres are open to hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, bicycling, ATV riding, horseback riding, and myriads of other recreational opportunities. The Forest Service provides, excuse me, provided 7400 seasonal jobs that contributed to the local economy until last year when Congress drastically cut funding for seasonal employment. This argument of trimming the budget is a thinly veiled disguise. Their real intent is to eliminate both our public lands, and the agencies that manage so that they can be supposedly managed better by the respective, and most frequently western, states. Of course, those states do not have the budget, the manpower, or in many cases the training or desire to do so, and failing that, they would be forced to sell to the highest bidder. That is who these champions of budget reduction actually represent, those “highest bidders.”

Representative Emmer, for twenty-six years I worked as a park ranger in your district. Representative Stauber, I live in your district and have voted for you every time you’ve run for Congress, but if you choose to take sides with those who would steal our public lands and our unique American Heritage of wild and public places from us, I will add my voice to those who oppose you. In 1984 I stood toe to toe with Governor Mario Cuomo when he tried to cut New York State’s Forest Ranger force, which I believe is one of the finest forest protection agencies in the world, in half because his downstate advisors told him they weren’t needed anymore. We won that battle, and, now as then, we’ll win this one.

I leave you with my favorite quote from one of my conservation heroes, the first chief of the United States Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot; “Where conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question shall always be answered from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run.”

We are the greatest number. Contact your members of Congress, contact your senators. As the song says, “This land is your land, this land is my land, this land was made for you and me.” Without your help, this land won’t be yours or mine or our grandchildren’s in the long run, if we don’t act now.

To paraphrase Smokey Bear, “Only you can protect our forests!”

Ride the Wild: The Beauty of Backcountry Bicycling

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous quote speaks about doing something that you’ve never done before, going beyond the known and exploring the unexplored. That’s a large part of why I first took up mountain biking in 1993, and even more so riding a “fat-bike” in 2012. The volunteer group I lead had been given two Surly Pugsleys, one of the original production fat-bikes, primarily for the winter events that we help with here in Minnesota. After I posted on Facebook about riding my mountain bike into an interior historic landmark on the Chippewa National Forest in north-central Minnesota, a friend encouraged me to try the fat-bike. I did, and it changed everything.

I ride a Cogburn; a Cogburn Outdoors CB4, pedal-powered bicycle with four-inch-wide tires and 20 gears. The Cogburn was the brainchild of Quality Bicycle Products (QBP), the Minnesota-based company that also brought the world the Pugsley, and its sister, the Salsa Mukluk. Originally marketed to those who wanted to ride their mountain bikes on snow in the winter, fat-bikes quickly gained popularity as an all-season, all-terrain, all-weather, human-powered ATV. Dozens of companies got in on the ride, some including the fatties in their existing lineup, and some building and marketing exclusively fat-bikes. At the peak of this, QBP introduced the Cogburn, a fat bike specifically targeted for outdoor persons. Advertisements for the new cycle encouraged riders to pedal their Real Tree® camo-painted vehicles, “to go deeper, faster, farther, and leave no trace,” in the pursuit of fish and game. Articles appeared in hunting, off-road, and even bicycling magazines, touting the Cogburn for hunting deer, grouse, elk, and backcountry angling, and even using it as a survivalist “bug-out” vehicle. Unfortunately, the Cogburn came out at a time when e-bikes were also starting to gain popularity, and new companies like Bakcou, (then called Backcountry Bikes) QuietKat, and Rambo were marketing their camo-coated products to the exact same audience. Introduced in early 2014, by 2018 the Cogburn was no more. But… I got one!

As I said, I have been mountain biking since 1993, including over two decades as a bike patrol park ranger, and as an EMS and trails volunteer. I have a custom-built 29-inch MTB that I might have never ordered if the Cogburn had been available a year or two earlier. It is the primary bicycle that I ride these days, and while at 70-years of age, I’m certainly considering an e-bike for my next ride, I’m in no hurry, and I certainly will never stop riding the Cogburn as long as I am physically able. Let me explain why: The first part is that, as a retired Ranger, I have a heightened respect for the rules, and the “Authority of the Resource” that created them. At the end of March 2022, the United States Forest Service issued guidelines on the use of e-bikes and e-Mountain Bikes on our National Forests and Grasslands, essentially categorizing electric-powered, or electric-pedal assisted bicycles as motorized vehicles, thereby restricting them to trails that are open to motor vehicles. Although I may not personally agree with these guidelines, they are the rules, and they are subject to change, but until they do I will obey them.

The second, and more personal reason is that most of my off-road cycling, be it for fishing or as a volunteer, takes place on national, state, and county forest lands. I love riding through the tall pines of northwestern Wisconsin and northern Minnesota to access some backcountry stream in pursuit of trout, or pedaling down an old logging road to find a trail that will take me, deeper and farther into the forest, to a creek with deep, dark holes that may or may not hold native browns. I travel at five or six miles per hour, slower going up hills, and faster going down. If I fall, and I do, (My Police Cycling Instructor always said that if you’re not falling, you’re not learning. I’ve learned a lot in 30 years.) the forest floor cushions my landing.

You see things from the seat of a bicycle that escape the eyes and the attention of the motorized visitor. Bear, deer, pheasant, grouse, raccoons, turkeys, majestic bald eagles, squirrels, and even a long-tailed weasel have crossed my path while riding. Once I rode into an abandoned sandpit on the Chippewa National Forest to the amazing sight of over twenty bald eagles feeding. Another time, I watched two adult eagles in pursuit of a red-tailed hawk that had gotten too close to their nest, like two F-15s chasing a P-51. Or I might have missed that 12-inch brown trout leaping into the air in pursuit of a mayfly if I were riding in a UTV. Although I’ve never seen one, one trail that I ride frequently has an authentic “moose crossing” sign tacked to a tree. I’ve seen their tracks but never had to face one of the wily ungulates in person. Another time, while pre-riding the course for a mountain bike race we would be helping at, I came across a good-sized black bear methodically tearing down the flagging the race director had put up only hours before. However, what was probably my most memorable wildlife encounter came one summer afternoon as I was pushing my mountain bike up a steep hill on a backroad in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest. I frequently ride solo, as I was that day, when I got the feeling that I was being watched. I looked up from the roadway to the top of the hill and saw an adult Timberwolf standing there, watching me. I reached for my camera (this was before cell phones) and when I looked back, the wolf was gone. But, when I reached the top of the hill I found his tracks; pawprints the size of saucers. Interestingly, it was on that same ride that I encountered a pair of ATV riders, which were totally legal in that area, and they shared a can of soda with me as I told them the tale about the wolf. As residents of the area, they were more impressed with the fact that I was riding that trail on a bicycle than the fact that I saw wolf.

 

And it’s not just the wildlife. Chicken-of-the-woods fungus on trees, Jack-in-the-pulpit, lady slippers, Columbine, little white flowers that I don’t know or maybe don’t remember their name. There’s a lot of beauty on the forest floor, and you are likely to miss it, roaring by at 20, or 40, or 55 miles an hour. Fall colors rides are one of my annual must-dos. The yellows, reds, oranges, and browns are magical when viewed from the seat of what I have named, “the Official Fat-Bike of Fall,” the Cogburn. And winter? Winter is the season fat-bikes were invented (in Alaska) for. The very first time I rode a Pugsley back in 2005 was in late winter with fat-bike pioneer (and Pugsley designer) Jon Evingson. As I rode down a local snowmobile trail and out onto Linwood Lake, I remember thinking, “I’ve found my snowmobile.” I garnered strange looks from the ice fishermen going by in their pickup trucks, with their drivers’ doors open, but I gave them strange looks right back. One of the early Cogburn advertisements showed the bike being used for ice fishing access. I’m not an ice fisherman, but I get it. It’s far safer to ride a 35 pound bicycle out on lake ice than a 3000 pound pickup truck. Side note: one time while riding across a frozen Chequamegon Bay on my fat-bike, I looked down to see a fish frozen in the ice. That wouldn’t have happened in a truck or UTV.

How will my eventual changeover to an e-bike, something that is drawing ever closer now that I’m in my 70s, change all of this? Right now, that’s hard to say. I believe a lot of it depends on factors like what specific e- bike I buy, what rule changes take place on their use on state and county public lands, and how my health fares in the months and years to come. I do know that I won’t give up the Cogburn. We’ve had too many adventures together, and it’s restored the fun to mountain biking that I thought I had left behind.