When Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack stepped to the podium at a park in Seattle last week, he didn’t just make a speech about the Obama administration’s vision for managing national forests in the 21st century: He ushered in a whole new era for the Forest Service – one that makes restoring the health of our forests the top priority for the agency.
Thanks to a court victory last month that tossed out misguided ideas for how the U.S. should manage its forests, President Obama now has a golden opportunity to replace them with his administration’s principles.
The result could be a mandate for the Forest Service to make decisions about managing forests based on the 21st century imperatives of global warming and clean drinking water.
