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Sunday was my first exposure to much federal bureaucracy since the Newt coronation, and I was pleasantly surprised at what I heard from the federal land managers who work on the ground, rather than in distant capitals.
The exposure came at a session in Crestone sponsored by Colorado College and the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Council.
The Sangres are a curious mountain range. Geologists have written that they're the youngest mountains in the state, since they still have relatively soft sedimentary rock at their summits -- rocks that would be worn away in a less juvenile range. Along the flanks there are naked fault scarps, indicating relatively recent orogeny.
The Sangres rise suddenly from the level floors of the Wet Mountain and San Luis valleys. That makes them steep, narrow and difficult to cross. The only paved crossing in Colorado is La Veta Pass, and though Westcliffe and Crestone are only 15 miles distant for an energetic crow, they're about 110 miles from each other by road.
(If any of this makes you want to visit the Sangres
under the impression that they're scenic, be advised that
Hal Walter, who lives at the eastern base of the range,
says they're ugly little heaps of desert spoil near
Pueblo.
)
All manner of Forest Service employees were at the conference.
For about a century, federal land managers have been drawing arbitrary lines. A given parcel might be administered by the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Reclamation or the National Park Service. Each has a hierarchy of offices that proceeds through districts, states and regions to Washington. Each has biologists, cartographers, surveyors, engineers, geologists, historians, etc.
Some consolidation seems sensible, but previous efforts have been stymied by Congress because each agency has oversight committees. Committee assignments mean clout for senators and representatives, and eliminating federal agencies means eliminating committees, which means cutting opportunities for congressional prestige and patronage.
With a total reorganization of Congress in the works as a result of the Republican victories in November, nobody in power has a vested interest in perpetuating the old system. We could see real reform of public lands administration.
People don't really care whether they're on Forest
Service, BLM or National Park land,
said one forest
ranger. And it's little wonder that the public loses
respect for us when we're worried, not about being good
stewards of the public's land, but whether Agriculture or
Interior has jurisdiction.
Another complication of this administrative maze is that
you end up treating parcels of land in isolation, as
though upstream Forest Service land isn't connected to
downstream BLM land, or to the land over the ridge in
another ranger district, and yet the artificial
bureaucratic lines have encouraged that sort of
thinking.
So the rangers, instead of fretting about looming budget cuts Sunday, sounded kind of excited about the possibilities of total reorganization, now politically possible with a new Congress.
But as is usual for such seminars, I left feeling rather confused.
The hot term these days, one I heard often Sunday, is
ecosystem management.
Arbitrary lines on a map may
not represent natural
boundaries, but at least you
know where they are.
But what's an ecosystem? How can you tell when you've left one and entered another?
You might start with drainages, because the connections are easy to see. Metropolitan Denver lost on Two Forks because the EPA decided that the reservoir would alter flows along the Platte in Nebraska to the detriment of migrating birds. You can like that or not, but at least you can follow the river.
But given trans-basin diversion in this state, Grand and Summit counties are effectively in two drainages, South Platte and Colorado. What ecosystem do you put them in? Water diversions there have effects that reach both Nebraska and Mexico.
So drainages aren't a good organizing principle,
although they're enshrined along the Sangres, whose crest
divides half a dozen counties. Maybe we should quit
looking at them as a barrier,
said one speaker, an
economics professor, and as a spine that unifies. The
two sides are different, but they have much in common,
and he proceeded to explain a Sangres region.
His theorizing inspired plenty of criticism, as it should have. That's what these sessions are for, throwing out ideas and arguing about them. He conceded that his data weren't refined enough, on account of the difficulty of getting information at anything below the county level -- another example of arbitrary and antiquated boundaries that can obscure more than they illuminate.
While I'm not persuaded that ecosystem management
means anything, since I can't tell an ecosystem from a
bioregion, it does seem encouraging that there's some fresh
thinking and a willingness to explore new approaches --
even in the federal bureaucracies.
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