Foolishness
2024
Foolishness rarely strays far from any bureaucracy, in any organization, in any culture, in any era.
The raw foolishness of swapping reason and scientific research for ideology seems to be the current fashion in Washington, where something or other manages to cauterize common sense, often to the harm of our citizens, often to the harm of our land itself.
And so it comes as no surprise that the U.S. Forestry Service is shutting down 57 of its 77 research facilities in 31 states. The shuttering includes the Bozeman Forestry Sciences Laboratory in Montana, where vital science has helped us understand the impact of climate change on how scorched land grows back in the aftermath of devastating fires.
We are told that laboratory consolidation will bring efficiency. We are not told what we already suspect, which is our need for knowledge is far more important than this insignificant budget cut.
The rising stench of punitive politics overwhelms the fragrance of our forests. We would expect California to bear the brunt of this reckless shutdown and indeed it has. Six research and development facilities in California have been ordered to shut their doors.
(Curiously, the state of Mississippi has also been punished, losing six U.S. Forest Service research and development facilities.)
Here in the west, as the rains fall less often on our forests as they once did, we find ourselves struggling to understand what should be done to safeguard our treasures. Our responsibilities to the land soar well above the posturing of politicians feeding at the financial trough of lobbyists who could care less about our forests.
And how do we safeguard our treasures? Science will arm us with the answers, not those we entrust who so sadly mistake efficiency for effectiveness.
