Brave New Forest : In the Changing Forest Service, Old-Time Rangers Are Giving Way to Computers That Plan the Wilderness in Terms of AUMs, VDs and ‘Cavity Dwellers’ (Squirrels).

The out-of-shape Forest Service mules sweat and snort as the trail switchbacks up and out of American Canyon and enters Machesna Mountain Wilderness, east of San Luis Obispo. Halting his train of six mules, Ranger Bob Stone savors a wondrous panorama, one like those that greeted Spanish vaqueros during the days of the great ranchos. Oaks dot rich, rolling grassland, a landscape painted in soft greens and golds and browns. A solitary bull keeps watch over a dozen cows. Above the trail is a ridge line where Coulter pines touch the sky. Below rise the headwaters of the Salinas, the south-to-north-flowing “upside-down” river, of which American Canyon Creek is a tributary.

“Now this,” Stone declares, gesturing toward the magnificent view, “is excellence.”

Excellence is something very much on Stone’s mind. Los Padres National Forest management is on a “search for excellence,” which means that employees are strongly urged to participate in seminars adapted from the best-selling book “In Search of Excellence” by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman. The Forest Service is trying to take on a new image, one more like that of a dynamic corporation than a sluggish bureaucracy. Motivational seminars are only part of its new look. In the Forest Service’s search for excellence, the traditional managers of public land--the old-time rangers such as Bob Stone--are giving way to computer experts and planners schooled in the latest corporate techniques. The from-the-saddle surveys preferred by Stone are rarely made anymore; a ranger’s seat-of-the-pants judgment is being replaced by a Forest Service computer program called Forplan, which calculates how public lands are to be used and allocates resources according to mathematical formulas. Cattle grazing, for example, is figured in AUMs (Animal Unit Months) and trees in terms of MMBF (Million Board Feet).

Even the language of the modern ranger is changing; today it is sprinkled with acronyms, computer jargon and catchwords. Values clarification is a term currently in vogue. A recent “Toward Excellence” session revealed that many Forest Service employees were uncertain about the exact nature and purpose of their jobs. So a “Values and Norms Workshop” has been scheduled. The trouble is that Stone, after nearly three decades with the Forest Service, figures that he has his values straight and is less than thrilled about cutting short his Pine Spring Camp cleanup expedition to rush back to Goleta to watch videotapes titled “Looking at Barriers” and “What You Are Is Where You See,” or to participate in exercises called “Values I Seek in an Organization.” “If the Forest Service doesn’t know its values after 81 years, God help us,” he grouses.

The pursuit of values clarification and the search for excellence are of more than academic interest. As the Forest Service seeks to change its image, it is also planning for its future. Hanging like a low cloud over Machesna Mountain and American Canyon--and over all 1.8 million acres of Los Padres National Forest--is the “Land and Resource Management Plan.” That massive document--accompanied by an equally massive environmental-impact report and enough maps and charts to fill a saddlebag--establishes the management direction for Los Padres for the next half-century. Every national forest is undergoing the same process. In California, a quiet regiment of forest planners scattered in small-town offices is drafting the future for 20 million acres--a fifth of the entire state. The plans, now in draft or incomplete stages, eventually will spell out how every one of those 20 million acres is managed. The Los Padres plan, for example, lists seven detailed scenarios for how the land could be used. Whether the Forest Service chooses to fill the ridge tops with oil wells or set aside great tracts of wilderness depends a great deal on the kinds of values it chooses to embrace--those of fast-track young planners or off-the-beaten-track old rangers.

BOB STONE, A 27-YEAR VETERAN OF THE FOREST SERVICE, IS one of the last of the old-timers. A beard, slowly graying, covers half of a face that’s been weathered by a lifetime outdoors. He’s the kind of guy who sits tall in the saddle, who cusses mules and tips his hat to ladies. As a ranger, he knows a couple of hundred people and an equal number of horses on a first-name basis. He’s fought fires and treed and tagged mountain lions and may be one of the last rangers who can tie a diamond hitch.

On the steep canyon trail, Stone pauses often to let the mules cool. Foxy, Mandy, Honey, Shelly, Disney and Gilroy practice a curious kind of socialism; none want to lead, all want to follow. Most cantankerous of all is old Disney, a few hundred pounds overweight. For many years she patiently took tourists around Tom Sawyer’s Island at Disneyland. When rising insurance rates canceled the mule ride, Disney was shipped from Frontierland to the auction block, with the Forest Service narrowly outbidding a dog-food company. So Disney left the Magic Kingdom for what is often lyrically referred to as the “Middle Kingdom,” the majestic fog-touched coast ranges that stretch from Ojai to Monterey. Except for the occasional fat ranger and the annual indignity of marching in Santa Barbara’s annual fiesta parade, life as a Forest Service mule isn’t particularly taxing. Helicopter and computer surveys have eliminated many ranger patrols--and the need for beasts of burden. Still, nowadays it is the mules that see the most beautiful parts of the forest; their services are most often used in wilderness areas, where motor vehicles are prohibited.

As the mules plod up the eroded old trail that leads to the heart of the wilderness, Stone points out some peculiar trees. The valley oak, once common in California cow country, is having reproduction problems, and researchers have fenced off a stand to determine whether browsing by animals is affecting the trees’ ability to propagate. The Coulter pines growing in the Machesna Wilderness also are a bit odd. Botanists believe that these pines--unlike Coulters in other parts of California--may need fire to burst their large pine cones and thus help scatter their seeds.

But it isn’t strange pines, it’s strange plans that perplex Bob Stone. It is easy to understand why someone like Stone might be wary of the new Los Padres land-use plan, a report that describes the natural environment in a brave new world of words: Creeks become “streamside management zones,” trout become “harvest species,” and every glorious panorama is now a “viewshed.” More seriously, some forest rangers worry that when planners give a VD (visitor day) a value of $11.50, they are shortchanging the recreational needs of the public. These rangers fear that when the Department of Agriculture’s giant Univac computer multiplies a small number of visitors times $11.50, a place like the Machesna Wilderness will be adjudged practically worthless.

Pine Spring Camp offers two tables, two stoves and a wooden pit toilet. Stone soon has a fire started and a huge hunk of steak sizzling on the grill.

As he unpacks the mules and turns them loose in a nearby meadow, he witnesses a most bizarre sunset. The purple and gold rays of day’s end strike the huge Arco solar mirrors stationed down on the Carrizo Plain. Colored light reflects off the mirrors and throws eerie beams at Machesna Mountain. He stands in the shadows of the 19th Century and looks down at the weird glow of the future. He has entered the twilight zone. And so has the Forest Service.

Located far from the wilderness but close to the freeway, the new Los Padres National Forest Service headquarters in Goleta is a thoroughly modern building sandwiched between a Builders Emporium and the suburbs of Santa Barbara’s little Silicon Valley. Next to the handsome, expensive-looking building, the green pickups and horse trailers look a bit incongruous. Interior decor is nouveau corporate--cubicles, computers and potted plants. Everyone wears civilian attire; the only uniformed ranger in evidence is the mannequin standing in a glass case in the lobby. In full firefighting gear, it stares pensively through thick goggles at all who enter.

Here in the immaculate second-floor offices, forest planners drafted the new management plan for Los Padres. It’s a plan that incorporates a lot of other plans: the Oil and Gas Application Assessment, the Santa Ynez Recreation Plan, Smith’s Blue Butterfly Recovery Plan, Threatened and Unique Wildlife Plan and the Forest Off-Road Vehicle Plan. It also takes into account those critters with “local viability concerns,” including the Mt. Pinos lodgepole chipmunk, prairie falcon, rubber boa and giant kangaroo rat.

The recreation needs of humans also are factored into the plan. The Forest Service foresees a gradual aging of the population; consequently, the public is expected to become more interested in picnicking than backpacking, more inclined to sightsee than ski.

Plans abound for ocean beaches, sub-alpine forests, redwoods, chaparral, desert badlands and oak woodland. The plan divides Los Padres into 36 management areas and offers seven options for each area, ranging from Alternative I--the “maximum amenity” option, which would set aside great tracts of land in wilderness areas--to Alternative VII, the “maximum commodity” option, which, in the eyes of some conservationists, would open the forest to pillage and plunder by oil and mining interests.

“But the Forest Service’s preferred alternative is what we’re doing now,” explains Gerry Little, chief planner for the forest and the man responsible for gathering data for the new plan. “We tried to head for where we think the middle is, where the bulk of the people are. But that’s just our perspective until that’s either agreed with or disagreed with. We think the plan meets the needs of most user groups.”

“The plan,” he says, “is our contract with the public on how the forest is to be managed. What we’re really doing is documenting what management is. It’s never really been written down before.”

Forest management has changed of late, Little explains, because forest managers have had a change in attitude, in part because of the “Toward Excellence” training and other self-improvement seminars they’ve been given.

“We started out by training our people in meeting management,” he says. “Then each team member scoped out critical areas and set bottom-line standards. After that, we started looking for solution spaces that didn’t violate the bottom line.”

The seminars, he explains, really helped the planning process because “we were able to stay out of the confrontational mode and work on consensus building--reaching what we call a win-win situation.”

The Forest Service will always need fire chiefs, wildlife managers and even rangers, but the manager of the future will be a different sort, Little predicts. “The new Forest Service manager has to be a person who can communicate. More than ever before, he or she has to be very much a social scientist. As we consider the kinds of characteristics we look for in tomorrow’s managers, we give increasing weight to the social-science skills--communication, listening, that sort of thing.”

Kim Rivard, Forest Service computer scientist, is just the kind of person Little has in mind. She’s a brisk, thoroughly professional young woman who says that the major agent of change in the Forest Service is evident right in her “shop,” an air-conditioned-to-Arctic-temperature room full of computers. “Management information technology is changing the way we do business,” Rivard declares over the noise of two high-speed printers spewing out data. “Old Gifford (Pinchot, father of modern forestry) never had any idea about computers.”

“Even the good old boys here in the Los Padres realize we have to do business differently now,” she adds, proudly displaying a lapel button that reads “No Business as Usual.”

Contrary to popular belief, she says, she and her fellow programmers don’t count trees, but they do run Forplan, the linear programming model used for developing and analyzing forest-planning alternatives. Forplan is a mathematical method used to determine the most effective allocation of resources among competing demands. Objectives, costs and environmental restrictions are all expressed as mathematical equations. It’s as simple as y = a + bx.

Besides championing the new technology, Rivard is a big booster of the “Toward Excellence” programs. She’s a graduate of “Learning to Lead Tomorrow,” “Toward Excellence” and several other self-improvement courses. Recently she underwent training to become a facilitator for the Forest Services’ “Values and Norms Workshop.”

A values workshop is necessary, she says, because times are changing and people’s values are changing. For example, the Forest Service has always expected employees to work more than 40 hours a week, but that conflicts with personal needs and family concerns.

Conflicting land ethics are also discussed in the workshops, as well as the historic values of the Forest Service, going back to the practical conservationism of Gifford Pinchot. “We compare Gifford Pinchot’s values with ours, and see how Forest Service values can be updated. People realize that values are a matter of interpretation, and there’s room for a lot of difference in opinion.”

So far, the workshops have been a bigger hit in California national forests--such as Los Padres and Mendocino--than in more conservative regions of the country, Rivard admits. “I tried to start some of this values stuff in Utah, and wow, did I run into a lot of resistance. But here in California, folks are a lot more open to it, a lot more adaptable. You won’t find a lot of new management techniques in Utah. But here in Goleta, we’re on the leading edge of the new Forest Service.”

“These values workshops are great for the people participating, great for the Forest Service,” Rivard says. “Everyone gets something out of them. It’s a win-win situation.”

“If I hear the term win-win situation one more time I’ll go berserk,” Bob Stone declares, looking up at the stars as if for divine guidance. “This search-for-excellence stuff is getting out of control. The motor pool gave me a truck with no gas and bad brakes. I told them, ‘Guys, this is not excellence.’ ”

The Milky Way spills over Machesna Mountain. A sliver of a moon perches over the pines. Brandy is passed around the campfire. “I’ll tell you what I mean by values. The pulaski (a fire tool). Keeping it sharp is your job. But the new guys on the district say, ‘Stone, why don’t you let some maintenance guy sharpen that?’ No way. You keep your tools sharp because they’re your tools, and you may have to use them someday in a critical situation.”

But doesn’t the future belong to somebody who can push a pencil rather than sharpen a pulaski ?

Stone shakes his head slowly and throws another log on the fire. He’s silent for a few moments, then begins to talk with feeling about the places in the Middle Kingdom that he’s come to know, of Horse Canyon and Queen Bee, Buckeye and Sulphur Pot, Pozo, La Panza, Paradise Spring and Hi Mountain Potrero. He speaks affectionately about the people he’s met on patrol--miners, ranchers, cowboys, hikers, horsemen, fishermen.

Few rangers have ranged as far and wide, but then Stone isn’t really a ranger; he is classified by the Forest Service as a multidisciplinary technician, “capable of cross-functionalization.” Translated: He’s a guy who can fight a fire, build a trail, check a grazing permit. But this is the age of specialization, and the Forest Service has specialists for everything: wildlife management, watershed management, range management. Stone, however, insists that he’s not worried about being replaced. “Overspecialization leads to extinction. Look what happened to the dinosaurs,” he says.

An owl the size of a suitcase flaps by. “Who’s our client?” Stone asks the campfire. “The people? The Department of Agriculture in Washington? I think the land, but I probably have a minority viewpoint. Fundamentally, we have to answer why we exist. I mean, for the Forest Service, this isn’t some abstract philosophical question. Are we custodians taking care of public land? Or are we servants of the people, trying to please all user groups?”

It’s when the managerial mind focuses on wilderness areas that the need for values clarification becomes most apparent. Some Forest Service employees look upon wilderness as a kind of library, a place for research, learning and relaxation. Others, with a Department of Agriculture bent, regard the national forests as corporate farms and are uncomfortable with the whole concept of wilderness. A wilderness by definition should be left alone, but planners want to plan and managers want to manage.

“How should wilderness be managed?” is Issue 12 in the new Los Padres plan. Some observers, both in and out of the Forest Service, feel that a better question to ask would be: Should wilderness be managed? That is, of course, heresy. Plans and projects are what put employees on the fast track, and the thought of a planner declaring, “I did nothing in the Santa Lucia Wilderness” or “I did nothing in the San Rafael Wilderness” is almost too ridiculous to consider.

If some of the more gung-ho planners have their way, Stone says, bulldozers will clear plants and trees from ridge tops to protect the wilderness from fire; all the vegetation and wildlife will have a management plan, and each year portions of the wilderness will be set on fire in an attempt to stave off a potentially more serious (and more costly) conflagration. “Planners plan with the best of intentions, with no malicious feeling whatsoever, but often their plans take the wildness out of wilderness. There’s a spirit out here that doesn’t show up on the computer.”

Maybe he could bring up the subject at the next Forest Service “Values and Norms Workshop?”

“Pass the brandy,” Stone answers.

IS THE FOREST SERVICE ASKING US ABOUT ITS PLAN OR telling us? That is the question confusing about five dozen citizens gathered at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History to air their views on the future of Los Padres. The meeting is one of a dozen road shows scheduled around the state that are designed to give the public a chance to comment. Forest Service “facilitators,” as they prefer to be called, as cheerful and clean-cut as flight attendants, promise to take the assembled on “a walk through the document.”

On comes the slide show. Pretty pictures of Los Padres. “Why is such a plan needed?” intones the voice-of-God narrator. The plan is needed, the facilitators explain, because of the 1976 National Forest Management Act, which calls upon forest supervisors to spell out detailed prescriptions for their forests for the next 50 years. Timber, grazing, minerals, recreation, wilderness, wildlife, roads, trails and every other facet of operating a national forest must be examined and projected.

Los Padres, the only forest in the state that is easily accessible to both Southern California and the Bay Area, gets about 4,293 MRVD (thousands of visitor days per year) and ranks 15th in total recreational use among the nation’s national forests. Each year, 33 watersheds provide 715,000 acre-feet of water, 400 miles of streams produce 13,000 pounds of trout, and 1,175 miles of trail cross the forest, 50% of which is highly sensitive to slope failure and 68% of which is blanketed by chaparral.

Planner Gerry Little gets a big laugh when he jokes that “reading the plan is a sure cure for insomnia.”

Citizens are not bored, however, but bewildered--mostly by the language of the plan. Once upon a time, that old forest spokesman, Smokey the Bear, warned: “Remember, only you can prevent forest fires.” Today the Forest Service declares: “Use preventability indices, initial attack objectives and burned acreage targets to hold unplanned ignitions within tolerable numbers or loss limits.”

The plan’s jargon sends citizens scurrying to the glossary. A favorite piece of land may be CAS (Capable, Available, Suitable) and ready for BMPs (Best Management Practices). Squirrels are “cavity dwellers,” and lizards, toads and other animals not killed or eaten are “non-consumptive species.” The language is so obscure that a reader sometimes can’t tell the forest from the TS (timber stand).

The plan does not ignore people. The number of humans packed into an area is expressed as PAOT--Persons At One Time. Public sentiment generates ICOs--Issues, management Concerns and Opportunities. Humans seem to be a management problem for the Forest Service, perhaps because the agency has assigned them to “Common Interest Groups,” then given an uncommon definition to Common Interest Group: “people with a common interest, but who do not necessarily recognize that common interest or cooperate to pursue common interests or mutual goals.”

Ironically, the Forest Service’s Values and Norms Workshop handbook suggests: “We are contributing to the public’s misunderstanding of what conservation and wise use is by the development of the language we are using in planning. We need to eliminate acronyms in dealing with the public.”

A dozen people step forward to comment on the places that mean something special to them. Forest Service facilitators write down all of the comments and promise that all responses will be entered into and considered by the computer.

“Nothing is written in stone; the document is just a draft,” Gerry Little assures the citizens. “In the end it all comes down to implementation.”

The detritus from generations of camping trips lies partially buried 100 feet from Pine Spring. Bob Stone stuffs cans, bottles, a rusted lantern and an old camp stove into plastic garbage bags. Even the most amateur “garbologist” can divine that many campers rolled their own; Prince Albert appears on 100 cans.

The mules prove difficult to round up, even though Stone tells them that if they haul the trash for him, he’ll provide some extra feed for them. “It’s a win-win situation,” he shouts, but the animals pay no heed. Stone finally captures them but then is faced with another problem: There seems to be no tidy way to load 150 pounds of trash onto each mule. He secures the cargo tightly, but the lumpy loads offend his muleteering ethic.

Back on the trail, it’s Gilroy who slows progress. She shows her love of the wilderness by trying to eat most of it. To Gilroy, nature is a well-stocked delicatessen full of black and white sage, manzanita, chamise and that most peculiar gastronomic delight, poison oak.

Slow the mules may be, but slow is the only way to see this quiet country of tumbled-up hills, ancient oaks and infinite blue distances. Machesna Mountain Wilderness is only 20,000 acres, 1% of the national forest, .02% of California; however, its importance lies not in terms of gross acreage but in the amount of wildness preserved. To the few who seek out these places, to the many who care how public lands are managed, it can be less than reassuring to know that Forest Service plans call for Machesna Mountain Wilderness to be “managed to preserve wilderness values,” when the agency must hold workshops to discover what these values really are. Perhaps when Forest Service planners state that Management Area 64 will offer “maximum solitude, self-reliance and challenge while traveling on primitive trails,” what they are really saying is that they plan to leave Machesna Mountain Wilderness alone.

Quail scurry for cover under the chaparral, a faint ocean breeze carries the fragrance of salt and pine, and the oak-studded potreros glow golden in the sunlight of a late afternoon.

“I guess I’ll keep patrolling out here until they teach the computer how to pick up trash,” Stone says, pulling on old Disney’s lead rope.