Jack Ward Thomas: The Journals of a Forest Service Chief

by Harold K. Steen (Editor), Jack Ward Thomas

Jack Ward Thomas, an eminent wildlife biologist and U.S.
Forest Service career scientist, was drafted in the late 1980s to head
teams of scientists developingstrategies for managing the habitat of the
northern spotted owl. That assignment led to his selection as Forest
Service chief during the early years of the Clinton administration. It is
historys good fortune that Thomas kept journals of his thoughts and daily
experiences, and that he is a superb writer able to capture the moment
with clarity and grace.

The issues Thomas dealt with in office and noted in his journals lie at
the heart of recent Forest Service policy and controversy, starting with
President Clintons Timber Summit in Portland, Oregon, dealing with the
spotted owl issue, and the 1994 loss of fourteen firefighters in the Storm
King Mountain fire in Colorado. Against a
constant backdrop of partisan politics in the White House and Congress,
Thomas discusses issues ranging from grazing in the national forests,
long-term pulp timber sales in Alaska, and the Forest Service Law
Enforcement Division to the New World Mine near Yellowstone National Park.
He considers the timber salvage rider and its linkage to forest health,
the Department of Justice and Counsel on Environmental Quality influence
on Forest Service policies, and interagency management for the Columbia
River Basin.

Woven throughout these excerpts from his diary is Thomas's conviction that
the effective, ethical management of wildlife depends on how the
management effort is situated within the broader human
context, with all its intransigence and unpredictability. Writing in 1995,
Thomas says, "Things simply dont work the way that students are taught in
natural resources policy classes--not even close. . . .There is simply no
way that scholars of the subject can understand the ad hoc processes that
go on within only loosely defined boundaries. Wildlife management, he
says, is "90 percent about people and 10 percent about animals," and when
it comes to learning about people, wildlife managers are on their own.
This book is the record of how one man met that challenge.

About the Authors

Jack Ward Thomas is Boone and Crockett Professor of Wildlife Conservation
at the University of Montana. Harold K. Steen, former president of the
Forest History Society, currently teaches conservation history at New
Mexico State University.

417 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2004

Reviews

[Glennie]

The head of the USFS wrote a few books that sounds really good but are hard to find. Head during spotted owl crisis

[Janice]

It was interesting reading about what the Chief of the Forest Service was thinking, 1990-1996, during a time that I remember from my Forest Service Hydrologist perspective. Probably only interesting to Forest Service employees and government history buffs.