For many people who are engaged in work having to do with this nation's forests—and for many others who have known RFF since its founding in 1952—Marion Clawson is virtually synonymous with Resources for the Future. He came to RFF in 1955, having served as director of the Bureau of Land Management for 1948–53. He is an important figure in the large community devoted to public policy regarding the national parks and outdoor recreation, other public lands, and American forestry. Throughout his career, Clawson has been an engaging public speaker and a prolific writer, penning countless articles and some forty books ("depending on how you count 'em," he says), twenty-three of them published by RFF. Clawson recently celebrated a landmark birthday, and Resources asked him to share his views on federal land management, "takings," and the state of American forests.
Congratulations on your ninetieth birthday. What's your secret?
Do you know how to get to be ninety? You have to be born a long time ago... and just hang on.
You have been studying American forests and public lands for a long time as an analyst, but you are also something of a historian. These days, there seems to be increasing dissatisfaction, particularly in the West, with federal ownership and management of vast areas of land. Is this something new?
You have to look at what's happening now in light of the long history of public lands. First was acquisition. Early on, there was the movement from the colonies to the union. Then, we had the Louisiana purchase, and we had a war with Mexico, which at least one critic said we provoked in order to get the land. We had a treaty with Great Britain over the Pacific Northwest. We bought Alaska from the Russians. As a result of all this, the United States government acquired an enormous amount of the world's surface.
Even before we acquired it all, we began disposing of it. Over the decades, we disposed of more than two-thirds of that land to private individuals and corporations through sale, through homesteads, through grants to war veterans, grants to railroads, grants to states. Beginning about 1890, we began reserving some land for permanent federal ownership.
The management of federal lands has gone through two eras and is in the midst of the third one. The first era I call extensive management—simple custodial management. Keep the fires out as much as you could. Keep trespassers out as much as you could. Demand for the land was low. That era ended about 1950 and was followed by a period of what I call intensive management. The government spent far more money on manpower and management. The demand for land had increased, and so had the revenues from the land. That era lasted roughly twenty-five years.
Now we're in the era I call confrontation—confrontation between users and the federal agencies. For one thing, users today have a great deal more knowledge than they once had. For another, I would argue that the United States is in a period of greatly increased distrust of government—people say, "Get the government off our backs" and "They're a bunch of liars." This attitude may not carry over into public lands issues explicitly, but it does implicitly. Finally, the confrontation grows out of the increased demand on the lands, so there is more competition between one user and another.
Whether you are talking about the Forest Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, or whatever, there has always been a relationship between users and agencies. On the one hand, the relationship can be one of cooperation. The parties say, "You are a nice guy, I like you. You know things and we'll talk back and forth. We can work out a plan together."
The problem with cooperation is that an agency can become the captive of the user group. Such charges have been flung around many times. If you are a conservationist, you talk about the agency's being captive to the ranchers. If you are a rancher, you talk about the reverse. The conservationists and ranchers talk about the mining people. Agencies are always somebody else's captive.
This situation isn't limited to public lands either. There is always the possibility that a government agency really is an arm of a private interest group.
Unfortunately, at the other extreme from cooperation, you have confrontation. Users seem to say, "Whatever those SOBs in that agency say, it ain't so, and we'll oppose it." There has always been some of that, but I think we are seeing more of it.
Does federal ownership still make sense? Is it time to dispose of some public lands?
I think federal ownership is here to stay. It may change, but it's here to stay. Some land, perhaps, may be disposed of. When I was director of the Bureau of Land Management, even then in the early 1950s, we used to say we had about half a million acres that we would like to get rid of—a little tract of land here, a little tract there.
But I think we need to examine the possibilities of changing the nature of ownership of federal lands. Long-term leases are one possibility. Here's an example. The Boone and Crockett Club of New York bought a huge ranch in northwestern Montana. The ranch butts right up against the Lewis and Clark National Forest. Say to the club, "You take over the management of the national forest and combine it with your ranch. We'll make it a lease, you pay us a nominal rent and comply with certain laws and regulations." Make the leases long—like fifty years—but be sure to permit reconsideration of the situatio
Recently, a movement has been forming in parts of the West that argues that the states should regain control of the federal lands. Are you familiar with the actions of Nye County in Nevada, which seems to have decided to take back the federal lands?
I grew up in Nevada, but not in Nye County. Some would say that if the people of Nye County want it, they can have it. Nye County is a desert, not an attractive piece of real estate and not very valuable, even if it is as extensive as Vermont and New Hampshire combined.
Seriously, though, some of the claims that federal land should be turned over to the states are utter nonsense—if you don't mind a nonlawyer giving you a legal opinion. Historically, there's nothing new about requests to turn land back to the states. When Herbert Hoover was president, a commission on public lands proposed turning the land over to the states, but it wanted to reserve the minerals for the federal government. Of course, that's where the money was and the states politely said no.
If federal lands were to revert to the states, would they be better managed?
There's a long history of states managing state-owned lands. And pretty nearly all of it is bad. The state record for managing lands is far worse than the record of federal agencies by any standard you care to name. The lands would not be better managed and they would not be cheaper to manage. What will happen is that local politics will play a bigger role. I suppose there is some good and some bad to that.
There's a long history of states managing state-owned lands. And pretty nearly all of it is bad. . . The lands would not be better managed and they would not be cheaper to manage.
Ohio was the first state to get public land, in 1802. It was given one square mile out of every township of thirty-six square miles. This land was for public schools and the income from the land was probably enough to support the school. Then there were grants for agricultural colleges—each state got half a million acres for an ag school. Those were good things. The states also were given swamp land, and that caused a lot of fraud.
One of the classic stories of fraud is about a guy who swore that he crossed an area in a boat. Well, he did. The only thing he neglected to mention is that the boat was on a wagon being pulled across dry land by horses. A lot of the best agricultural land in the San Joaquin Valley in California passed into the state ownership under that shenanigan.
Any talk of wholesale transfer of federal lands to the states is political nonsense. I don't think it will happen.
Recently, legislation has been introduced dealing with the "takings" issue, the problem that arises when the federal government somehow limits the use that private landowners can make of their own property. If this legislation takes effect—it has passed in the House of Representatives and is now stalled in the Senate—the federal government would be required, somehow, to compensate landowners if government action reduces the value of the land. What do you think about this kind of legislation?
I see all sorts of problems. But I also sympathize with the landowners. Again, let's look at this with the perspective of history. The first zoning of city property took place in the early years of this century. The zoning was upheld in a classic Supreme Court decision in 1926, the Euclid decision. That Supreme Court decision was written by the most conservative justice on a very conservative court. He didn't give a damn about the usual arguments: he thought that zoning was a way of protecting land values. He wouldn't have been persuaded by the takings argument.
Remember, the earliest zoning controls were in the interest of safety, the interest of efficiency. The idea was that a neighborhood was more valuable if you could keep nonconforming uses out of it. Now the arguments are over a different range of things. You can't drain a swamp if you take away wetlands habitat. You can't cut timber if it will threaten an endangered species. It's harder to see where the social public values are in that, as contrasted to the private landowner's values.
Even if there is a public good, why should certain private individuals have to pay for it? Private property is wonderful institution, and I hate to see it get nibbled away. In many instances, I think that if the people who are advocating restrictions on private property were forced to pay, the level of rhetoric would decline.
Even if there is a public good, why should certain private individuals have to pay for it? Private property is a wonderful institution, and I hate to see it get nibbled away...
What are the challenges that face the government agencies that are responsible for managing public land?
Two or three things. One is to get some analytical content into this idea of ecosystem management. The Forest Service has gone gung-ho for ecosystem management, but it has got to define what ecosystem management means and then make it operational. I'm sympathetic with the point of view that ecosystem management is more rhetoric than it is operating procedure—even its advocates admit they don't quite know what they are trying to maximize.
Another challenge is that, somehow, the agencies have got to develop better ways of handling confrontation with interests that are not hostile, just active. And, many of us feel the Forest Service has not been as imaginative and innovative and creative in the last few decades as it was in an earlier period.
How much logging is being done on federal lands these days?
To put it in the most extreme terms, the environmentalists have pretty nearly taken the federal forests and lands out of wood production. First there was the controversy over the spotted owl, and the last one was over the marbled murrelet. My guess is that there will be other issues. The basic point is that the environmentalists are opposed to harvestable growth of timber. And various excuses will be found to block it.
From a national point of view, we're not gravely handicapped if we don't harvest any wood off the national forests. There's enough privately owned forest, especially in the south, where the forests were cut out in the early decades of this century. Now the forests have grown back in many places.
But from a regional point of view, and from the point of view of particular timber processors that have relied heavily on buying national forest timber, taking federal forests out of production is a problem. For some companies, especially small operators, national forests were almost their exclusive source. If they can't buy it, they're out of business, Other companies, such as Weyerhauser, have lots of timber of their own.
I hear all kinds of talk about harvesting timber in national forests, but I say it's all shadow boxing. The fact is very little timber is going to be harvested in the national forests until there is a major change in philosophy. And I doubt very much that will happen.
Could the Endangered Species Act be used to prevent timber harvests on privately owned lands?
Yes, that is certainly a possibility. Some efforts have been made in that direction already. Not very much, but they could go quite a long way. It depends on what the arguments would be and what the real objective was. If the objective is to preserve old-growth timber, well, there isn't an awful lot unharvested on private lands.
Are the forests in the United States in good shape?
Yes, on the whole the forests in this country are in good shape. It's not generally recognized, but for seventy years we've been growing more timber than we've been cutting. There's about the same amount of forested land, about half a billion acres, roughly, as there was seventy years ago.
There have been some shifts, of course. A lot of low-grade farmland, particularly in the South, has gone back into trees. New England is far more forested now than it was in an earlier time. What's dramatic is not how the area has changed, but how the growth has changed. We have lost a lot of old-growth forest and what's left isn't growing—it's storage forest.
Is the forestry industry in good shape?
On the whole, the forest industry is in good shape, too. There are exceptions—the poor character we talked about who has been buying national forest timber and hasn't got any alternative sources, he's in bad shape. He's broke. And the community that depended on his payroll and so forth. They aren't in good shape.
What's dramatic is not how the area has changed, but how the growth has changed. We have lost a lot of old-growth forest and what's left isn't growing—it's storage forest.
Other than that, the industry faces the same challenges it has always faced, of economy and efficiency, of returns on investment, and so on. Certainly, the industry operates in a different climate of conservation than they did at one time, but we have talked about that.
Then, there have been all sorts of technological changes. Twenty years or so ago, we learned to make decent paper out of hardwood. So many areas, especially in the South, are mixed pine and hardwood stands. At one time, when we thought paper had to be made out of the pine, we cut the pine and we transformed the mixed forest into hardwood forest. This wasn't furniture grade, but low-grade hardwood. There wasn't anything you could do with it, until they found ways of making paper out of that. Now, a substantial amount of paper is made out of hardwood.
Would you care to speculate on the next technological leap for the forest products industry?
In the next hundred years—and I don't expect to be around for another hundred years—I wouldn't be surprised if we see increasing use of wood as a chemical base. This is a nonspecialist's guess. You see, the earliest use of logs was as logs. You build a log cabin. Then you run it through the saw and made lumber out of it. Then you made plywood out of it. You ran it through a shredder and made paper out of it. Maybe the time will come when we use it for chemicals. We use smaller and smaller pieces, and we reconstitute it into larger things. You can make all sorts of big things by reconstituting small ones.
One last question. When you were born, Teddy Roosevelt was president of the United States...
I don't remember it...
. . . and many conservationists think of him as having been the first president, or certainly the first president in the twentieth century, to have had a strong commitment to conservation. Do you have a sense that our national commitment to conservation is waning? Or is it an enduring value?
No, I don't think our commitment to conservation is waning; I think it's a growing value. Roosevelt made a contribution, but a lot of things have happened since. I like to tell this story—I think it's true but I don't guarantee it. When Roosevelt was president, he went to Grand Canyon National Park when it was set up as a park. He went and gave quite a speech from the back of a railroad car. "We must preserve the canyon. We must preserve the canyon," he said. Some old cowpuncher who was listening to this spat out his tobacco juice and said, "I'd like to see the durn fool try to get rid of it!"
Of course, the cowpuncher was taking Roosevelt literally. What Roosevelt really meant was preventing commercial development, preserving the quality of the experience when you visit a place like the Grand Canyon. I think most Americans would strongly agree with him on that.
A version of this article appeared in print in the October 1995 issue of Resources magazine.
A version of this article appeared in print in the October 1995 issue of Resources magazine.
