U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service Region Five History Project

Interview with: Paul Barker Interviewed by: Phil Aune Location: Spokane, Washington Date: sometime in 2006 Transcribed by: Mim Eisenberg/WordCraft; October 2006

[Begin CD Track 18. (no Tracks 1-17)]

PHIL AUNE: This is Track 18. This is the Paul Barker interview. This is Phil Aune

[pronounced AW-nee]. The last name is spelled A-u-n-e. And I’m interviewing former regional forester Paul Barker. Paul, I’d like to start out the interview. Please tell us briefly what got you interested in forestry as a young man.

PAUL BARKER: My interest in forestry began in scouting and was amplified through a biology class in high school. When I was in the ninth grade, my second grade teacher asked if I would help her by taking some tests. She was working on her master’s degree in counseling. The test results indicated I had a high aptitude for forestry. I was accepted at the University of Idaho,

College of Forestry and began my professional education the fall of 1953.

AUNE: Given that, if you went to University of Idaho, what were your school years like at

Idaho, and did you have jobs with the Forest Service in the summertime, or how did that work?

BARKER: I started working for the Forest Service right after high school graduation. Full time employees on the ranger district were the District Ranger, Alternate Ranger, Packer, and District

Clerk. The district had just sold a couple of timber sales in an effort to salvage trees being killed by the spruce bark beetle. I was the only seasonal employee planning to take forestry in college and was assigned to the two timber sales. One sale was for 14 million board feet and the other was for 16 million board feet. An old log cabin remained on one of the sales from earlier white pine logging in the 1930’s. This became my home and headquarters for the next two summers.

The Ranger spent a week with me on site, teaching me the different tree species, how to identify spruce trees not infected with the bark beetles, and to find section corners and run section lines.

He taught me to use an abney and the criteria for locating roads and left me with a staff compass and abney, and I was on my own. I spent the summer running section lines and marking spruce leave trees. When I returned the next summer a new ranger was running the district. He said,

“You worked on those timber sale last year didn’t you?” I indicated that I had. He said, “Take that pickup out there and go up there and do what has to be done and let me know when you’re through.”

The timber purchaser, Ohio Match Company, indicated that they needed a couple of roads located, which I did. I went to scaling school so I could scale the logs when they started hauling logs off national forest system lands.. The Ranger came out one day a week to check on how things were going. Sometimes we would meet, but frequently he would just leave a note on my desk. At the end of the month, the Alternate Ranger call me and said I needed to come to town that weekend and make out a cutting report and to bring the scale books. I had no idea what a cutting report was, but fortunately the Supervisor’s Office was located above the Ranger’s office.

The Forest Resource Clerk was working that Saturday and was kind enough to train me. In those days they did not know what overtime was, so making cutting reports on Saturday and Sunday was free education.

AUNE: That was quite a bit of responsibility for a young man. What did you think about it in those days? BARKER: It just naturally happened and I assumed that was the way things were done. I worked fairly closely with Lawrence Glover the Alternate Ranger. Today we would call them

Fire Management Officers. He had a very simple work philosophy, “when it got light you went to work, when it got dark you went to bed.” This worked out well when we got into Hoot Owl operations due to extreme fire danger. I was on the sales the same time the loggers were.

AUNE: That’s pretty good for a kid from North Dakota, coming out to the wilds of Idaho and in less than a year, getting that kind of responsibility. As you got on in your career—you think about all the young people we hire today, with the kind of training they have to go through before we give them that responsibility—yours was a baptism by fire, though, wasn’t it?

BARKER: It was, and to think of a ranger today spending a whole week in the field with a seasonal employee, teaching him how to recognize trees, how to use an Abney, I don’t think that could happen today.

AUNE: I think you’re right, and it was a wonderful time to grow up in the Forest Service.

There’s no doubt about that. As you went on—you graduated from the University of Idaho. Is that correct?

BARKER: Yes

AUNE: What kind of degrees did you get in your education?

BARKER: I earned a bachelor of science degree in forest management from the College of

Forestry at the University of Idaho. The Forest Service continually updated my education, sending me to various training courses at UCLA, University of Michigan, Colorado State, the

University of Montana and Harvard University. Following a semester at Harvard University, I was appointed Regional Forester of the Pacific Southwest Region of the Forest Service.

AUNE: We’ll get into that a little bit later, as far as that goes. You obviously went on and— right after you left Idaho, where did you go to work? What was your first professional assignment?

BARKER: My first professional assignment was in 1957 on the Calder District of the St. Joe

National Forest. This is the district where I had worked the previous four summers. A year later

I was drafted into the Army. Following military service I returned to the Calder District. A year later in 1961, I was transfer to the East side of Region One to the Judith District of the Lewis and

Clark National Forest as an Assistant Ranger at Stanford Montana. I became the District Ranger of the Clark Fork District on the Kaniksu National Forest in Idaho in 1966. I then moved into the Kaniksu Forest Supervisor’s Office in Sandpoint, Idaho, as the Recreation and Lands Staff

Officer in 1969. Bob Lancaster selected me as his Deputy on Los Padres National Forest in 1972 and that was my first introduction to Region Five, other than previous fire assignments.

AUNE: Before we get to your move to the Los Padres, what were some of your major accomplishments that you felt you had early in your career up in the forests of Idaho and

Montana?

BARKER: Learning the culture and history of the Forest Service and its economic impact locally was important. Lawrence Glover, the Alternate Ranger whom I mentioned previously taught me a lot about the Forest Service, how it operated and how to get things done within the organization. As an Assistant Ranger, I was in charge of fire, timber management and recreation on the district. One day I called the timber staff officer in the supervisor’s office, and I said, “I’m not going to make any timber sales next year. I’m going to take the timber money and do a

Stage Two inventory of the entire district, and from that we’ll know how much commercial timber there really is on this district. A lot of what was being called commercial timber was

160 to 200 year old stagnated lodgepole pine that was 3-5 inches in diameter. Following the inventory I laid out five timber sales, which accounted for most of the commercial timber area on the district. There were a number of lodgepole stands fifty years or younger. Research indicated that lodgepole pine responds to thinning up to at least fifty years. I set up thinning contracts on those areas. For the balance of the area I told the Forest Fire

Management Officer, “I’ll call you if we ever get a fire in the lodgepole and ask you two questions: one, do you want me to put it out, or two, do you want me to do some management?”

[Chuckles.]

AUNE: What do you mean by that? You’re kind of smiling about this. What was going on at that time? What were you thinking about?

BARKER: This was 1963, and we needed somehow to convert that stagnated lodgepole pine into managed stands that provided better wildlife habitat and growth potential. There were no pulp mills in the area. One option, I thought, was selling post and poles. I contacted a couple of post and pole outfits in Lewiston, Montana, and they said, “What do you mean selling us post and poles? We’ve never been able to buy post and poles from the Forest Service. We’ve tried for years.” I said, “Well, I’ll sell them to you.”

Annually they produced about 25,000 posts and 3,000 poles a year. I made a post sale for

75,000 posts, 8,000 poles, and it covered only twenty-five acres. [Chuckles.] Obviously that’s not going to get much stagnated lodgepole converted. We had to look at some other options.

Prescribed or natural fire was one of the other options.

AUNE: Certainly today, when you look at stagnated lodgepole pine stands, you are well ahead of the rest of the folks because that’s the way it grows, and you were well ahead of your time. Paul, you also spent quite a bit of time in Idaho working in the recreation arena, and I know you were a pioneer in some of the ski area developments. Can you tell us a little bit more about some of that background?

BARKER: When I was recreation and lands staff officer on the Kaniksu Forest, we closed down—or just before I moved in as recreation and land staff officer—closed down the ski area at

Chewelah, Washington, which was run by a local volunteer community group. The lift was an all wood structure T –Bar. Most years, the snow level started about half way up the lift line.

The posts were rotten and the lift unsafe. The people in Chewelah wanted a ski area, and

Congressman Foley, who was speaker of the House at the time and from eastern Washington, contacted us, and asked, “Isn’t there something you can do to get a ski area going?”

The original location of the ski area was like a lot of early ski areas, close but not quite in the right location. We advertise for development of a ski area in the general location but higher on the mountain.

We rejected the only bid received because they failed to show they had 25 percent of the development costs in liquid assets. The good congressman again asked, “Isn’t there anything you can do to make this work?” I suggested to the Forest Supervisor that we give the group that bid, a planning permit good for one year. This would keep the project alive and give them a year to raise additional finances. He agreed and we proceeded along that line. The prospective developers asked if we would consider a promissory note as a liquid assets? I indicate we probably would, but I would need to check the legality with our attorneys. Our Office of

General Counsel agreed that a promissory note would be a liquid asset. Based on the promissory notes they met the financial requirements and we were able to issue the applicant a Special Use permit for development of a ski area. 49 Degrees North has been a successful ski area for the last 35 years.

AUNE: Was that one of the first big ski areas in northern Idaho, Washington?

BARKER: Schweitzer Mountain out of Sandpoint, Idaho was bigger and still is bigger, but

Forty Nine Degrees North was a real boom to both the winter and summer economic development for the small community of Chewelah.

AUNE: At that time, Paul, what kind of environmental documentation did you have to do to permit something like the Forty-Nine Degrees North ski area?

BARKER: The year was February 1970, and I think the Environmental Policy Act passed in

January of 1970. Our normal process was to do what we called at that time a multiple-use impact statement. After a quick read of the Environmental Policy Act, I expanded our process somewhat to look at additional issues. I released the document for public review and comment which the new Act required.. The only comments received were from individuals in Chewelah who favored development of the ski area.

AUNE: That’s kind of interesting. We might look back at that, comparing the kind of environmental documentation you have to go through nowadays, and talk about that, laughingly, as the good old days. As we go along, Paul, is there anything else in your early career that you want to talk about before we get you to the great state of California?

BARKER: Not that I think of right now.

AUNE: We can always come back to that. But obviously you had a personal side to your life at the same time. Could you tell us a little bit about when you met your lovely wife, Nancy, and something about your family and so on before you moved to California? BARKER: When I was on the Stanford District of the Lewis and Clark I worked closely with the Forest Resource Clerk in the Supervisor’s Office in Great Falls Mt. She had converted her upstairs into an apartment, which she rented to three school teachers. She lined me up with one of the school teachers. Due to conflicts in this young lady’s schedule, I had her line me up with another blind date. This blind date turned out to be my wife of 44 years, Nancy.

AUNE: This is a continuation. We’re now on Track 19. We had a problem there, and Paul was talking about, prior to it, where he met his wife, Nancy. But also as a young junior forester he would get called down to the regional office for training. Why don’t you pick that story up,

Paul?

BARKER: All of the young junior foresters were called into the regional office for training and orientation sessions, which was common at that time. There was a panel consisting of the regional forester, chief of personnel, a forest supervisor and a staff director. They discussed the typical career path of a young forester. After the panel was through, they asked if there were any questions. I said, “It appears to me, from observation, that you place young, single foresters on the remote ranger districts and newly-married young couples in the cities. It seems to me a more appropriate policy would be placing the newly-married couples on the remote districts and the young foresters in town, where they can meet some women.”

AUNE: I’m sure that went over with a great deal of aplomb [sic] there, that the regional forester agreed with you.

BARKER: It appears they obviously remembered my name. I was an assistant ranger for about five and a half years, whereas most people served in that position only two to two and a half years. [Laughter.]

AUNE: Good example of the power of regional foresters I’m sure.

AUNE: I guess we’re going to switch gears a little bit now, Paul. All of a sudden you were promoted to California. Tell us a little bit about how you found out about the job. Did you apply for it? What got you to California? How’d that work?

BARKER: I had applied for a planning job on the Flathead National Forest in Montana, and was not selected for that position. Bob Lancaster was looking for a deputy forest supervisor on the

Los Padres Forest to be in charge of planning, and through my forest supervisor, Andy Andersen, who knew Bob—he got my name. I was informed I was supposed to go to Santa Barbara for an interview, and if the interview went successfully, I would be offered the job of deputy forest supervisor in charge of planning. I flew down to Santa Barbara. Bob and I hopped into the forest plane and flew around the huge Los Padres Forest and talked about various issues. When we landed, he asked me when I wanted to report.

The reputation of the California region from those of us in Region One was that people in

California pretty much felt that if anything was going to happen in the Forest Service, it would occur in California first or more often. It didn’t take me long on the Los Padres to realize that was in fact true. [Chuckles.]

AUNE: There must have been some kind of trepidations about coming down to California.

Here you were, a young forester, born and raised in North Dakota and went to the University of

Idaho, and your early career was up in the wilds of northern Montana and Idaho, and all of a sudden now you’re moving to Santa Barbara, California. What was that like, for both you and your wife, that whole concept? BARKER: It was an adjustment, probably more so for my wife. She was involved in getting the kids in school, moving the furniture into the house, learning where grocery stores, doctors, dentists were located and making a home, in a completely new environment. I, on the other hand, was immediately immersed in work, in a well defined system I knew and understood.

She was not accustomed to driving the freeways or having to show identification for cashing checks.

We moved, to Goleta, in December of 1972, and rented an apartment in Isla Vista. The Bank of

America building was still boarded up from being burned during the demonstrations against the

Vietnam War. That was a type of activism we were not used to.

I can’t say it was culture shock until about two months after I had been on the Los

Padres. I made my first trip to the UC, Berkeley campus. The style of dress, the thinking, and activities that were going on during those very tumultuous times were an eye opener for a kid from northern Idaho.

AUNE: You mean it wasn’t like that at the University of Idaho at Moscow?

BARKER: The University of Idaho in Moscow was nothing like that, Phil.

AUNE: That must have been quite a comparison when you think about that. How did Nancy adapt? Did she kind of like Santa Barbara when you got there, after a while?

BARKER: After we got settled in she really enjoyed it. House prices were obviously a shock to us, coming from Northern Idaho, where we had bought our first three-bedroom home for

$16,000. The best we could find in Goleta was $35,000, and we hadn’t sold our house in Idaho, so that was all an adjustment to the California scene

When I got to the forest a number of different planning efforts were going on besides the overall forest plan. Fire planning efforts were well under way. The studies indicated that every decade from the 1900’s to 1970, 223,000 acres burned on Los Padres. Even with all the modern technology and equipment of helicopters, retardant planes and dozers, we were still burning

223,000 acres a decade in wild fires. The fire planners determined that the only way we were going to get on top of that was to begin using fire ourselves. If we could create a mosaic pattern of age classes in the chaparral by using a combination of natural fire and prescribed fire, we could began to have an influence on the amount of acreage burned. We did a lot of work with

Research out of Riverside on the use and monitoring of prescribed fires.

We determined the degree of heat obtained in the burrows and how that affected animals that lived there. The best green and dead fuel moisture percentage was calculated to manage the degree of heat generated by the fire. We wanted enough heat to cause the seeds in the ground to break dormancy and germinate, but not to hot to sterilize the soil. Research was just tremendous in helping us and getting us going in the right direction in prescribed fire. I had done a fair amount of prescribed burning in Region One, in our clear-cutting efforts, so this was a step up for me to learn that process in the chaparral.

AUNE: Paul, you mentioned the 23,000 acres annually on a decade basis would burn, and the forest wanted to start implementing that kind of a program on the Los Padres. How was that idea accepted by the rangers and the Los Padres staff in total? What did they think about that as a concept?

BARKER: They were pretty eager to get on board and move with that. A good share of the desire to move out in this area , I think, was leadership of Bob Lancaster and his insight in the planning for the forest. He said, “You know, we need to get back to basics.” This was before all the management gurus had come out with their books. He asked,, “What’s the Los Padres about? What is it we do best? And what do we do the most?” “It’s four things. It’s fire management, it’s watershed management, it’s wildlife, including rare plants, and it’s recreation. And that’s going to be our theme for planning on the

Los Padres, and every individual on the forest can easily understand what this forest plan is about, because it’s about four main things: fire management, watershed, wildlife and recreation..”

AUNE: That was pretty good for a guy from Idaho that had spent a career in timber and recreation, and all of a sudden now you get into the big-fire, watershed, recreation and wildlife arena with the Los Padres. If I’m not mistaken, isn’t the Los Padres one of the largest forests in

California?

BARKER: It is one of the largest forests in California, or is. You can argue rather the Los

Padres, Angeles, San Bernardino or Cleveland has the most intensive fire history, but the Los

Padres has had the two largest fires in California history.

AUNE: That must have been quite a baptism under fire, literally, in a welcome to California.

You also had one of the unique resources in California, the threatened and endangered species.

You had the California condor down at the Sespe area. How did that affect you at all, Paul, working with the condors?

BARKER: Fascinating period of time. When I arrived on the Los Padres, there were forty known condors, and the population was declining. The first time I saw a condor, Bob Lancaster

Bruce Van Zee and I were on a hike through the Ventana Wilderness with several other individuals. Bruce Van Zee and I ended up a day behind the rest of the group, to take care of a medical problem with one of the hikers. We were hustling to catch back up, and moving pretty fast and getting a little thirsty. Coming around a bend, we spotted a snow bank. We both dove for it and got out our Gatorade and made a nice refreshing snow cone. We left, walked probably fifteen minutes and looked up, and there were two adults, an immature and a juvenile condor circling. We fell down on our backs and watched them for about ten, fifteen minutes. It was my first sighting of a condor, and I saw 10 percent of the entire population. Van Zee made the comment, “I’m glad we didn’t see those before we saw the snow bank. I would have thought they knew something we didn’t.” [Both chuckle.]

AUNE: That must have been—working with that—you know, everybody talks about how hard it is to work with the Threatened and Endangered Species Act and so on, but there’s also the positive side of working with the threatened and endangered species.

BARKER: There is. During that period, we began the captive breeding program, which was extremely controversial. A number of conservation organizations were totally against it.

Nonetheless, we proceeded with it. The Audubon Society, I think, was the only conservation organization at the time that supported captive breeding. They were not overly enthusiastic but realized it was probably the only hope. .

We were also trying to increase the condor habitat, through purchase of private land within the condor use area. The California Department of Water Resources had built dams and canals throughout the state and had the responsibility to purchase land with wildlife habitat qualifications as mitigation for the lands they flooded. I had the responsibility of showing these folks the type of land that we wanted to buy, where it was, and explaining that it was good condor habitat. Birders from all over the world traveled to the Los Padres in hopes of seeing a condor. The individuals from the Department of Water Resources were always on the hesitant side to make any commitment. Prior to our trips they always questioned how I knew these land parcels were good condor habitat. “We don’t want to buy something that isn’t going to support condors and be accused of just adding private land to the public domain.” was there frequent pre trip comment.

I took them out three times, and every time I took them out, we saw a condor. The third time I took them out, they said, “Barker, you’ve got a pet condor, and you’ve got it caged somewhere, and when we get up here you’ve got someone else releasing him.” “No,” I said,

“We’re just after good condor habitat, and obviously that’s what I’ve been showing you.”

AUNE: That’s great. That’s kind of a fun story we’ll pick up a little bit more with threatened and endangered species again when we talk to you about your time as regional forester. The Los

Padres also is diverse in a lot of plant life. Could you tell us a little bit about that and your experiences?

BARKER: I don’t think there’s any forest in the nation that has the diversity of plant life that the

Los Padres has. It’s the northern extremity of the species that you find going south into Mexico.

It’s the southern extremity of the species you find going north into Oregon and Washington. It has the species associated with a coastal environment to high mountains on the west and on the east side, the species associated with a desert environment. In addition there are a number of disjunct species. All those conditions coming together on the Los Padres gives you a tremendous variety. It has more rare and endangered plants than any other forest in the nation.

One section that the Los Padres surrounds is an area owned by UC, Berkeley, and has the largest variety, number wise, of plants from the coast to mountaintop of anywhere in the world.

AUNE: That just shows the breadth of what happens and the kinds of complex natural environments that are found on the national forests in California. There’s also another part of that. It’s not only the diversity of the environments, but what about the diversity of the people that you had to work with in that area? Tell us a little bit about the human influences on that forest.

BARKER: I worked closely with the Santa Barbara Chapter of the Sierra Club. The members and officers were perhaps unique, in that they did not have to create controversy to generate membership or keep members, or show they had power or influence. Individually they each had their own political and economic influence. They were truly interested in what happened on the land. Any organization, Phil, whether you’re dealing with the American Bar

Association, the American Medical Association, the Pipe Fitters Union, Sierra Club, Wilderness

Society—there’s absolutely no reason for you to pay dues to such an organization unless they’re doing something for you, unless they’re out slaying dragons. And if there aren’t any dragons to be slain, they have to invent some. In many cases, organizations are inventing phantom dragons to be slain, using facts that are only ten percent accurate or truth full. The Santa Barbara chapter of the Sierra Club was not interested in creating false dragons but it what happens on the ground.

We were building fuel breaks at the time. The national Sierra Club was suing the Forest Service for use of herbicides on the forests in California. We proposed a project to use herbicides on a limited area of fuel breaks just outside of Santa Barbara. The local chapter said, “We do not like it. We disagree with it. We think it ought not be done, but we realize for that specific area there are no other alternatives. Because the Forest Service is experimenting with goats and other alternatives to herbicides, we do not object.” I submit there are not many places where the local

Sierra Club would take that kind of action vs. the National Organization.

AUNE: Heaven knows, there were enough problems to deal with and enough real dragons on a forest like the Los Padres and all the national forests, especially in California. Paul, I guess in summary, is there anything else you’d like to say about your time on the

Los Padres?

BARKER: Previous to coming to the Los Padres I had been involved with recreation activities and was recreation staff officer on the Kaniksu Forest. I had not experienced the intensity or sheer numbers of recreation users until I hit the Los Padres. This was particularly true with off- road vehicles (ORVs) in the Chuyama area, where heavy off-road vehicle use conflicted with the blunt-nosed leopard lizard a threatened and endangered species. Many of the ORV users were from the Los Angles area. Until you’ve dealt with urban populations in the millions using the forest, you don’t realize the extent and the immediacy of problems and damage that can occur.

AUNE: I can imagine the contrast of working with recreation developments like on the Forty-

Nine Degrees North ski area and the citizens around Chewelah versus what you had to do with the citizens of Santa Barbara. That’s quite a contrast, when you think about that.

BARKER: Yes, when you go from Chewelah, with a population in the town and the surrounding area of probably 3,000 people, to where you’ve got 12 million in Southern California, it’s an unimaginable jump.

AUNE: They didn’t teach you about that in forestry school, did they?

BARKER: No, they didn’t. [Chuckles.]

AUNE: One of the other things they probably don’t teach you about in forestry school, Paul, is this was your first assignment, I think your only assignment as a deputy forest supervisor. What was it like being a deputy and not the boss? You worked for quite a character in a guy named

Bob Lancaster, who many of us greatly admired, and he clearly was the boss. What did Bob have you do as the deputy? BARKER: It was easy working for Bob. He reserved about four thing things to himself and the rest I was free to deal with as long as I kept him updated. Bob was a disciplinarian, but fair.

One day he called me into the office and said, “Paul, we’ve got a problem.” I said, “What’s that?” He said, “Either you deal with the individual or I will deal with the individual, but it’s absolutely unfair to the guy for both of us to be on his case.” I said, “Thank you, I’ll deal with him.” That was just shortly after I’d gotten to the forest, and an eye opening in personnel management. Bob was the leader and there was no doubt what he wanted done. As his deputy, it was clear what he reserved to himself. On the few occasions when the staff confronted me with one of those areas I would listen to them. I would tell them this was an area that Bob reserved to himself, but based on what you’ve told me, I think this will be his decision. In a couple of cases they decided they need to do some additional work.

AUNE: What were some of those things, just as a quick example?

BARKER: A quick example was selection of personnel and the firing of personnel. The placement of individuals—he took advice, but that was his final decision and only his. Most other things, he said, “Okay, go do this, do that, take care of that,” but—

AUNE: One of the things that you hear is that a lot of forest supervisors liked to personally take on the external relationships. How did that work with your relationship with Bob?

BARKER: I dealt with the local media, organizations and group relationships, and Bob handled all the relationships at the state level, and all political contacts. One quick story: I was invited to a meeting at San Ysidro Ranch on the following Thursday. I told the woman calling that I would check my calendar and see if I was free. She said, “No, that’s not necessary. Just be there.” I told Bob about the call. Bob said, “Who was it?” I said, “Dr. Pearl Chase.” Bob said,

“She’s right.” [Laughs.] AUNE: You guys had a good understanding of how to work together.

BARKER: Yes.

AUNE: I’m sure a lot of that helped you later on in your career, in how you handled your job as regional forester, because you now had deputies that worked for you at a much higher level, and someone still has to be the boss. Would you care to comment on your formative years? How did that come out and help you later on as regional forester?

BARKER: From working for Bob Lancaster and later “Al” West, when I became regional forester I told the three deputies, “When I’m out of the office, one of you is always going to be in and be acting. And the one thing you need to understand is: Whatever decision you make, that’s it. The only way I’ll overturn a decision you make is if it will absolutely sink the ship.” I said,

“If we take a hit below waterline, I’m going to tell you. I’ll let you know if you make a decision that I would have decided slightly differently or for a different reason, and why you weren’t completely right. But we will live with that decision. The only way you can function as a deputy is for everyone in the region to understand that you have that authority.” So that worked out fairly well.

AUNE: We’re getting more of your assignment as a regional forester. I guess it’s probably about time now to move from the Los Padres, good formative years, a good transition from timber and recreation forests in northern Idaho and Montana, to a heavy people-influenced forest. What was your next job after deputy forest supervisor?

BARKER: In 1979 I moved from the Los Padres to Region Four, my third region, as Forest

Supervisor of the Sawtooth National Forest, in Twin Falls, Idaho. The forest also included the

Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA). The creation of the Sawtooth National Recreation

Area had been a very contentious issue prior to its passage by Congress. The previous supervisor. Ed Fournier. had pretty much done all of the development work for how the SNRA was to function. It was like having the privilege of moving into a finished house. I got to do the final decorating, but the real tough innovative and formative part had been done.

Numerous conservation easements were obtained from various land owners in the

SNRA and new innovations in conservation easements were developed. With each one we wrote, we learned new factors on how to best define that portion of the estate, we were acquiring in perpetuity, and what they could or could not do on the remainder.

AUNE: That experience on the Sawtooth—how long were you there for, the years?

BARKER: I was there from ’79 to ’82, and then moved to the Chief’s office in Washington,

D.C. as Assistant Director of Recreation & Wilderness in September of 1982.

I spent five years in the Chief’s Office. Although I went to Washington with some reservations,

I absolutely enjoyed both working back there and living there.

AUNE: Now, at this time, how many children do you have and what were the ages of your children through this time?

BARKER: I had two children, a son that was just entering his freshman year in high school and a daughter who was a senior in high school. I moved back and my wife and children were going to stay in Twin Falls until the house sold. Our daughter would stay with friends to finish high school. As it turned out, the house didn’t sell. Nine months later I went back for our daughter’s graduation, and in July we rented that house, and the whole family moved back to Washington,

DC.

AUNE: Before we get on a little bit more about the job, let’s think back a little bit. What do your kids talk about, your children—what do your children talk about with you today now that you’ve retired? How did they enjoy or what were their thoughts about being children of a Forest

Service mover and shaker?

BARKER: This last Christmas, we were having a discussion around the dinner table, and our son Eric, whose a writer, made the comment, “You know, amongst all my friends, I don’t know any of them that have had or had the opportunities Susan and I had growing up, simply from moving around and being exposed to all the different social areas, cultural areas, the diversity of people. It’s just really been an advantage.” Our daughter has made similar comments.

AUNE: Where is he a writer now? What’s he—

BARKER: He’s the environmental and outdoor writer for the Lewiston, Idaho, Tribune.

AUNE: Well, you know, it seems like when you’re moving in your career a lot, you always have these issues with the family and so on. You wonder whether they’re going to adapt and things like that. I guess you’re proud of your kids, as well as they are of you. Is that correct?

BARKER: That is correct, yes.

AUNE: And the Forest Service career and upbringing—they were part of the outfit, the family and the outfit. Is that correct?

BARKER: Yes, that’s correct. It was something that both have said from their experience,

“You know, we had no fear traveling anywhere in the United States or at least anywhere there’s a national forest, because we knew if we have problems, we could call the ranger, or the forest supervisor, tell them we’re sons or daughters of a Forest Service employee, and know there would be someone there to help or advise us.”

AUNE: That’s a great point, Paul, and I think it says a lot about the Forest Service and a lot about the Forest Service family. But let’s get back now to a little bit more of the details.

Moving into Washington, DC, you obviously get immersed in politics right away, and so when you moved to Santa Barbara in California, you got immersed in people and resources; now you’re getting immersed in people, resources and politics, so tell us a little bit about your

Washington office experiences.

BARKER: The word “fascinating” is probably a cliché, but it was, particularly dealing on the

Hill. Also learning how to get things done within the Washington office and in the community.

One of my eye-opening experiences was the first Senate hearing I attended. It had to do with recreation issues, and I’d helped put together the briefing book for the chief.

Following the hearing, I said, “This is all orchestrated. How did we know the questions that were going to be asked the chief?” And the individual said, “Paul, what’s the purpose of a hearing? The purpose of the hearing is to educate the members on the committee of the pros and cons of the bill. If the witness doesn’t know the general area of the questions that are going to be asked, he/she might not be prepared to answer them, and the educational value and purpose of the hearing is lost. After you’ve been here a little longer, you’ll get a call from someone on the

Hill saying, ‘I don’t know who’s testifying for you, but they might want to be familiar with this subject area., You then make sure that question gets in the briefing book. Our chiefs have excelled, in both being prepared and able to quickly pick up on questions that might come out of the air.

I attended a meeting with the chief, in Idaho’s Senator Steve Symms office, on a recreation issue. I had briefed the chief on the items I thought the senator was concerned about. The

Senator raised most of those issues, and out of the blue threw out a question that I absolutely did not anticipate. I had not briefed the chief on that issue, so I immediately jumped into the conversation and gave the senator about two or three sentences on the background on the issue. I figured that’s enough for the chief to get his thought process over to that subject, and I paused, as I paused, Max beautifully picked up with the rest of the explanation. This was impressive to me on Max’s retention ability. But that’s why he was chief.

AUNE: It also sounds—that’s why you were an excellent staff officer, because most good line officers have excellent staff officers to help them through the kind of difficult situations. You talked a little bit about those relationships. When you were a youngster, you were working with none other than Tom Foley, Congressman Tom Foley, who was speaker of the house. Who were some of the other people of note that you worked with when you were in the Washington office particularly? Do you recall anybody off the top of your head?

BARKER: Some of the Congressional delegates I recall working with were California senators,

Pete Wilson and Alan Cranston, Ohio Congressman John Seiberling, and a young senator from

Tennessee by the name of Al Gore. As a matter of fact, I was invited to be a panel member at a breakfast sponsored by Senator Gore and Congressman Seiberling on national forest policy issues and those particularly related to recreation.

After those of us on the panel gave our short presentation of probably three to five minutes, it was opened for questions, and the questions were the main purpose of the breakfast meeting. One of the staffers—I don’t remember whether it was Senator Gore’s staff or

Congressman Seiberling’s staff—asked me a question. He said, “Paul, can you point to any area in the United States where there has successfully been reforestation?” I said, “I don’t know how you got to Washington, DC, but I assume you weren’t born and raised here.” I said, “If you fly in to Washington, D.C., for at least an hour before you got here, you were flying over forests, all of which had been cut at least twice if not three times since this country was first settled. These forests were first harvested in the 1600s. Everything you’re flying over for the most part is second- and third-growth reforestation. That’s pretty successful reforestation. Pennsylvania was one of the thirteen original states. It was and still is the most forested state in the nation, and that’s after 400 years of civilization. To me, that’s successful reforestation.” I said, “If you want acre by acre, I can take you out and show you many.” And he shook his head. [Laughs.]

AUNE: I think those kinds of practical answers to complicated questions, Paul, kept you well, and I think that’s part of your background. Given all of the work with the Congress and things like that, what were some of the big issues that you were working on when you were back in

Washington in recreation? Were you working in the RARE areas, Roadless Area Review and

Evaluation? Was that a big issue at the time?

BARKER: RARE and RARE II occurred in 1970 and 1972, ten years prior to my moving to the

Chief’s office. I had, however, worked on both RARE and RARE II in the field. I did a good share of the RARE inventory for Idaho, north of Coeur d’Alene. In addition I was detailed to the

Washington office to help put together the nation environmental impact statement for RARE. I was also a member of the team that wrote the environmental impact statement for California for

RARE II. When I was in Washington D.C., the wilderness bills as a result of RARE and RARE

II, were starting to go through Congress. The big issue was whether we were going to have hard release language or soft release language. I believe it was the Colorado wilderness bill, which was the test of that. Soft release finally won out, the Forest Service was arguing for hard release. In the hard release language, the areas not considered for wilderness were released for all other multiple use management. The various environmental groups were arguing for soft release, that once areas became wilderness, the balance of the inventoried areas would still be considered roadless and considered again for wilderness at the next round of forest planning. AUNE: I was thinking, that would have been about the time also that the first statements were coming out about old growth; that is, preserving old growth as a resource area. Were you involved in any of those early old growth [cross-talk; unintelligible]?

BARKER: No, I wasn’t. One issue I was involved with was called the National Ski Area Bill.

It allowed permits to be issued to ski areas for fifty years. The maximum authority the Forest

Service had to issue a special use permit was for thirty years, with the exception of transmission lines, which could be issued for up to fifty years. We argued with the proponents, the American

Ski Federation for a long time against the bill in its entirety and also with specific wording in the bill. Finally we defined what a major ski are was and said for a major ski area a fifty-year permit could be a possibility. We would not consider it for small areas. We argued that a lot of the small ski areas unfortunately are not economically viable, and to tie that land up for fifty years just doesn’t make sense. The ski area industry insisted that all areas should be fifty years. We said, “You go in that way; if the bill passes, it’ll be vetoed.” They said, “It’s not that important to the president.”

AUNE: Who was president at the time?

BARKER: The president at the time was Ronald Reagan. The chief visited with Secretary

Richard Lyng, and word got back to the ski industry that indeed we had the influence to create a veto if the bill was written for fifty years for all ski areas. At the last minute the wording was changed to what the Forest Service found acceptable.

AUNE: A lot of politics is the art of compromise.

BARKER: All politics should be the art of compromise, but on occasion some bills get steamed rolled.

AUNE: It sounds like that’s really what you were getting at, was compromise. BARKER: One of the testimonies that I wrote for the assistant secretary for a particular bill had to do with the state of California. I had taken the testimony over three or four days ahead of time and found out the assistant secretary was gone and would not be back till late Monday afternoon and the hearing was Tuesday morning. I thought, Well, that doesn’t give him any time to read the testimony. His secretary said, “Ride up in the limousine with him to the Hill, and you can brief him on the short ride up.” So I did.

We got to the hearing room, and the protocol called for some senators to testify prior to the secretary because they had to go back for their own hearings. While they were testifying, I was sitting next to the assistant secretary, and he is reading for the first time the testimony that I had written for him. He said, “Where is this in the bill?” I opened the ten to twelve-page bill, and as luck would have it, opened it right to the page where that section was and showed it to him. He made a couple of notes on his testimony, and read further, and said, “Where is this in the bill?” And I flipped back a couple or three pages and again, as luck would have it, right to the page where that particular section was and he wrote a couple of notes in his testimony.. That happened two more times.

He gave his testimony, and the first comment to him from a senator after his testimony was, “Mr. Secretary, I don’t know who wrote your testimony for you, but whoever did, did not read my bill.”

AUNE: [Chuckles.]

BARKER: The assistant secretary replied, “Well, Mr. Senator, Paragraph such-and-such reads this way,” and he read it back verbatim, out of the bill and said, “And how do you read Senator?”

[Laughs.] . AUNE: I want to digress a little bit. You mentioned President Reagan. He was back there. He also had a retreat and a ranch out near the Santa Barbara Ranger District on the Los Padres.

When you were in the Los Padres, was he president of the United States? Did you ever meet the man?

BARKER: Yes, I did meet him, not on the Los Padres, but when I was in the Chief’s office in

Washington D.C. He had a ranch on the western edge of the Los Padres. Denton (Denny)

Bungarz, who was ranger on the Santa Barbara District, dealt with the president and Secret

Service people when the president was in residence at the ranch. The engine crew that was stationed at Gaviota had to change the route of their morning run because they always ran around his ranch. The Secret Service said, “We know it’s you guys, but we can never be sure —you might be off on a fire, and someone else could run—so when the president is up here, change your route,” and they did.

AUNE: That’s fascinating. You think about Gifford Pinchot—he was great friend with

President Theodore Roosevelt, and here now we have ranger Denny Bungarz, Los Padres

National Forest, who was great friends with the real chief, Chief Ronald Reagan.

BARKER: Yes.

AUNE: Those must have been some interesting times, Paul

BARKER: In the middle of the Denny’s Ranger District, Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden had their place, so Denny had good experience dealing with the political spectrum.

AUNE: The left and the right, the yin and the yang. All in one place. Only in California.

BARKER: Exactly. It’s going to happen first or more often in California. [Laughter.]

AUNE: Getting back to Washington—it was always fun to talk about that. Part of the lore of the Forest Service is the Washington office assignment. Talk a little bit about your experiences back there. What was it like working in the chief’s office, the internal part? We know—you were talking briefly about the external part, but internally, you had a lot of career-oriented people back there. What was it like when you were there?

BARKER: You run into individuals who are absolutely specialists, knowledgeable in their particular field, and as issues and problems come up you’re sitting and dealing with the experts.

Individuals whose experience has been honed in the field and are now in the Chief’s office.

Point by point by point you go through the problem, and define how to avoid it, fix it, move beyond it, and the best way of implementing it. I know at times in the field, people say, “Aw, how did they come up with that?” It’s a matter of a lot of internal discussion by very knowledgeable people who have spent most of their career specializing in that particular area.

An example might be one of the issues we dealt with in recreation. The Environmental

Protection Agency, which is concerned with the protection of our total environment, wanted to sample the lakes in the West to determine their acidity. They came to the Forest Service, with a plan for landing helicopters at I think it was 150 lakes that were in wilderness areas. We said,

“No, you can’t do that. The wilderness law does not allow that.” They responded, “Well, this is for environmental knowledge and scientific knowledge and therefore that has to override the

Wilderness Act.”

We went through about three months of discussion at various meetings, which either I attended or Ed Bloedel attended. Each time we said, “No, you can’t land helicopters in the wilderness area.” They said, “You know, Paul, the head of our agency reports directly to the president. Yours doesn’t. We’ll overrule you.” I said, “ I don’t think so.”

Ed or I would brief Max Peterson, the Chief, on the meetings and their insistence that they were going to land helicopters in the Wilderness. It was getting close to the time when the survey had to take place, in September or October, and I think we were in the first part of

August. I told Max, “They’re convinced they’re going to overrule us,” and the comment they made in regards to the head of EPA reporting to the President. Max just kind of chuckled and said, “ Won’t happen.” [Laughs.]

He of course went to Secretary of Agriculture Dick Lyng, for whom we all worked. Max told me, “When you go to the next meeting with EPA, tell them we will assist them in collecting the samples and getting them to the lab in the correct amount of time. We had a meeting a week later, and the EPA said, “How do we do our survey without being able to land in the wilderness?” [Laughs.] They had gotten the word. Max put the word out to all the forests and the ranger districts that the survey needed to be done; we needed to show EPA how to correctly live within the meaning, purity and intent of the Wilderness Act. We were to help in identifying landing sites outside the Wilderness, and provide stock and runners to take the samples from the lake to the waiting helicopters so they could be tested within eight hours. It was a tremendous effort by the field people in upholding the concepts of the Wilderness Act and coordinating with an agency that should have been the first to uphold it but, for the expediency of their needs, was willing to violate it. Max said, “No way.” That was a great experience.

AUNE: I’m sure that was. That was probably in the big acid rain time. We were trying to figure out—comparing the lakes out west with the eastern lakes.

BARKER: Yes.

AUNE: One of the things in the Forest Service is you’re going to move on in your career into the Senior Executive Service [SES]. You were probably about that time in your career. Did you have some advanced training to get you into the Senior Exec corps? Were you qualified at that time? Tell us a little bit about your experiences there. BARKER: I was selected to go through the training for the Senior Executive Service. At that time, two of the courses you had to take—one was a seven-week course in Charlottesville put on by the Office of Personnel Management, and the other was a semester at Harvard under their

Senior Executive Fellows program. I had previously attend the seven week course. I went to

Harvard early in September and spent a semester there. I read more and faster than I ever did in my life. One time my roommate and I figured that on the average, we had to read 160 pages each night and over the weekend, 240 pages of material. You just got back to your room after supper, sat down and started reading and making notes. Great discussion. Great professors.

Classes ran five and a half days a week, from Monday morning at 8 till 1 on Saturday afternoon.

You could either take Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning, or Sunday afternoon off, but you couldn’t get all the work done that was assigned for the weekend if you took a whole dayoff.

AUNE: It sounds like it’s going back to college again but at a much more intense level— than when you were an undergraduate. One of the other aspects of that, if I’ve got that right, is you have to have some kind of assignment where you do some shadowing or some work outside of the Forest Service.

BARKER: Yes, with either another agency or at the executive level or private industry. My initial choice, I thought I had lined up to work with Simplot Industries out of southern Idaho, in their international operations, but that fell through at the last minute. Instead I spent three months with the Environmental Protection Agency. I spent most of my time working with bringing different disciplines together in a format that provided less conflict.

AUNE: It’s interesting. You say you worked for the EPA as part of your Senior Exec training, for three months. The Environmental Protection Agency is basically a regulatory agency, where

[sic; whereas] the Forest Service is both regulatory and management, with heavy [emphasis] on the management. How were you received in EPA, in that culture, where you were now a management guy working on [sic; in] a regulatory agency?

BARKER: With a little suspicion. The longer I was there, the more I was accepted, based primarily on the logic that they saw in my comments and philosophy. That sounds like bragging, and I don’t want it to be that, but they saw that it wasn’t always black and white. You either got a white shirt or you got a black one on, and there aren’t any other colors if you’re regulatory. In management, there’s the whole beautiful rainbow. [Chuckles.]

AUNE: I’m sure there were some valuable lessons learned as well, working with them. That’s part of working with people.

BARKER: Yes.

AUNE: You’re now in your twenty-year career—I believe your next assignment was regional forester.

BARKER: That’s correct.

AUNE: Okay. So you’re looking back—let me try to summarize this briefly. You started in working as a person in the woods in northern Idaho, and you’re working with resource questions on a day-to-day basis, pretty much solving them, in the traditional mode. Then you transfer and you go to Southern California, the Los Padres National Forest, and you do the same thing, but your relationship with human beings is much stronger there. You’re working with people. Then you advance in your career and become a forest supervisor, and now you’re trying to bring it all together. Then you move on to become a staff person in recreation in the Washington office, in the heavy, heavy dose of politics and working at that level. Question to you, Paul: Are you ready for regional forester right now with that background? BARKER: Having gone through the Senior Executive Service training and my experience in

Washington, and if you asked me that question at that time, I would have said, obviously, “Yes.”

Asking me that question now, after having been regional forester, no. Prepared, but not completely. I have a lot to learn as regional forester.

Normally before you are appointed to the Senior Executive Service you have to successfully complete an interview with the respective Secretary. In the Forest Service case that is the

Secretary of Agriculture. When I went over to meet with him, the chief told me, “Go over.

Have your interview. Be relaxed. Be yourself. Don’t sweat it. He’s already signed the papers.

You’re in Senior Executive Service. Enjoy your interview.” I should preface my meeting with the Secretary of Agriculture with the fact that he had been found in contempt of court for the

Consent Decree not being completed by the Forest Service in California. When I met with

Secretary Lyng, we visited about things in general for a few minutes and he said, “Now, Paul, do you know what your job is when you get to California?” I said, “Yes, Mr. Secretary. The experience that I’ve had in my career so far has included all the resources areas. The California region is either number one or two in all of those resources, and I’ve had good experience in those areas, and I don’t see any problem in handling that.”

He said, “Paul, that’s not what I’m talking about.” I knew, of course, that wasn’t what he was talking about, but I wanted to see how serious he was with what I was pretty sure he was referring to. He said, “So there’s no misunderstanding between you and me, Paul. The Secretary will Not be found in contempt of court again, Will he?” I said, “No, Mr. Secretary.” He continued, “ Paul, so you and I are perfectly clear: if it even appears the Secretary might be found in contempt of court, don’t call me, don’t write me, just clean out your desk. I’ll figure out where to send your last check. Now, do you know what your job is when you get to California?” “Yes, Mr. Secretary.” “Good. Enjoy your time.” [Chuckles.] And that was the end of the interview.

AUNE: So you not only got to the Senior Exec corps, but you got your assignment as regional forester and about as clear a marching order as anybody—

BARKER: Yes.

[End CD Track 19. Begin CD Track 20.]

AUNE: We’re now on Track 20, and this is a continuation of the Paul Barker interview.

Paul, when we left, you talked about your clear direction from Secretary of Agriculture

Richard Lyng. You were pretty sure of what you had to do: keep him out of contempt of court.

Let’s talk real quickly—was Max Peterson chief at the time?

BARKER: F. Dale Robertson had just come in as chief.

AUNE: Okay. Well, let’s go down a little lower from secretary of agriculture to the chief, and both of them. What was their advice to you, now that you’re going to be the regional forester in

California? Did they have any?

BARKER: Essentially none. They gave me no marching orders, so to speak. The only comment Dale made was, “I thought you would sit in the director’s chair of recreation for a year or two before you became regional forester, but the way timing worked, this is a perfect time, and go out and enjoy yourself.”

AUNE: Okay. Given that—what year was that?

BARKER: That was ’87.

AUNE: Okay, 1987. BARKER: As I arrived in the region, we had just had a tremendous lightning storm that came up the back of the Sierra Crest, with something like 12,000 lightning strikes. Normally you get one fire out of 100 strikes. In this storm we got one fire out of 10 strikes. We had 1,200 fires within a couple days. That was my welcome back to Region Five. When I was on the Los

Padres, we had the Marble-Cone Fire, which was the second-largest fire in California history up to that point in time. Coming back to fires in Region 5 was not unexpected. During the explosions of fires, I made a trip to the Klamath and was visiting with the incident commander of the Klamath Complex of fires in fire camp. An individual came up and gave me a phone number and said, “Paul, you need to call this number right away.” I said, “Fine, thank you,” and stuck the note in my pocket. He said, “No, Paul, they wanted you to call right away and insisted that I make sure you call right away. It’s from the Secret Service.” And I thought, What does the Secret Service want from me? I got to a phone and got a hold of the individual, and he introduced himself as being from the Secret Service, and said, “As you know, or maybe you don’t know, next Friday the Pope is coming to San Francisco, and since he’s a head of state, the

Secret Service is responsible for making arrangements for his visit. You have all the buses in

California tied up, and we need buses to get the people from the outlying communities into San

Francisco for the mass. We need you to release 150 buses.”

I said, “I’m not going to release 150 buses.” And he said, “Well, you have no choice.

As we said, the Pope is head of state, and if you don’t release 150 buses, then we’ll go to the president, and he’ll order you to release 150 buses.” I said, “Do you really need 150 buses?”

And he replied yes. I said, “Okay, here’s the deal: You tell the Pope to give me three inches of rain, and I’ll give you 150 buses.”

AUNE: [Chuckles.] BARKER: The secret service agent responded, “This is serious business. This isn’t a laughing matter.” No sense of humor whatsoever on the part of the Secret Service. I said, “Do you really need 150 buses?” And he said yes. I said, “Okay, I’m not going to release 150 busses, but stay where you are. I’ll have someone call you, and they’ll have 150 buses for you.” He replied,

“Where are you going to get them? There aren’t that many left in the state. You’ve got them all.” And I said, “Just stay where you are, and you’ll get a phone call.”

I immediately called San Francisco, Presidio, Sixth Army Headquarters, and asked for the transportation department. The person answered the phone, “Master Sergeant, Sergeant of the Day. How may I help you?” I introduced myself and explained the situation, that the Pope was coming to town and the Secret Service needed 150 buses, and I said, “I’m not going to release them, but if I did, I would come to you to get 150 buses, and then both of us will be in jail because I can’t use government equipment if there’s private industry equipment available.” He said, “Yes, sir, and I’m not going to jail either.”

I asked, “Can you take care of the Pope?” He replied, “You keep fighting the fires, sir.

I’ll take care of the Pope.” I said, “Thank you. But before I hang up, is there anyone in your hierarchy that you would like me to talk to just to confirm this?” He said, “No, sir, that’s not necessary. I work for a very practical and skookum colonel. And besides that, he’s Catholic.”

AUNE: [Laughs.]

BARKER: So I turned it over to the good sergeant, and he took care of the Pope, and I never heard from the Secret Service again, and I’m sure the colonel for whom the sergeant worked got a front-row seat at the Pope’s mass that weekend.

AUNE: Those fires of ’87 started about the 20th of August, plus or minus, some time in there, and you’d been on board for how long as regional forester? BARKER: I’d been on board just a couple weeks. I had flown back to Washington, DC, to close on the sale of our house and help move. The moving van was due in a day or two. I got a call from the Region informing me of a fatality on one of the fires. I contacted a lawyer and gave my wife power of attorney so she could close on the house with out my having to sign the sales document and I headed back to California. The Forest Service family being what it was, the next morning, three couples showed up at our house to help Nancy pack and help get the van loaded.

AUNE: That’s a good expression of the Forest Service in times like that.

BARKER: One of the most unfortunate of circumstances on the fire line is the loss of a fire fighters life. It’s a tragic event and frequently a family with young children is left without a father or mother. We were to lose ten fire fighters before the fires were controlled. I attended a number of memorial services and reaffirmed in my mind the continued emphasis we need to place on safety. These fatalities are all young, vital individuals with families: one, two, three children, eight years and younger. It really tears at your heart, what those families now have to go through and rebuild a life. You’re thankful for the family nature of the Forest Service that provides some help to those people through that very unfortunate and stressful situation.

AUNE: From what I remember, Paul, on those fires of ’87, they were universal from the southern Sierra, a huge fire complex on the Stanislaus to the Klamath and Six Rivers National

Forests.. Just about every national forest had fires of several thousands of acres, and just about every forest had a major salvage effort. It was really quite a team effort. What kind of emphasis or direction did you have to place as regional forester in order for that to happen?

BARKER: One of the things I’m proud the region and the people in the region were able to accomplish was the salvaging of the timber that was lost and getting the lands rehabilitated. That took the efforts of everyone from administrative officers to wildlife biologists. Every discipline the forest service employed had to be involved and working together to make that happen.

There was a fair amount of advice initially from staff officers that we needed to centralize the whole effort, and I said, “No, you need to understand: the Forest Service is a decentralized organization. We aren’t going to centralize a salvage operation. Each forest is going to be responsible for conducting its own salvage operation. The Region will coordinate the resources and insist that people from non-affected forests will be made available to help out the forests that are affected. To work and work effectively, and hold individuals accountable it had to be the individual forest’s responsibility. And they got the job done done.

AUNE: Salvage is a complex issue, especially today. It’s very complicated, and it takes—as an example, the Biscuit Fire—it took four years to begin salvaging, and they salvaged less than 3 percent of that. Huge political problems, huge lawsuits and lots of work. What kind of pressures in those days did you get from the environmental community on whether to salvage or not salvage, as well as trade associations, the industry associations? Was a lot of pressure put on you from both sides of the argument?

BARKER: Yes, pressure from both sides. First, from the industry side: Their concern was from the standpoint of getting it done, getting it done quickly, before a large amount of the value in the timber was lost. They were also concerned about getting it out in sizes of sales that were compatible with what they were able to handle. From the preservation side, there was a strong push questioning whether salvage needed or should be done at all.

One thing I told all the forests, and from what I read in the paper, Phil, it’s different today, but I told all the forests I would exempt their environmental analysis from appeal after I read them and determined they were professionally and adequately done. Now from what I read in the paper, only the chief can do that.

AUNE: That’s exactly right. The chief is the only one. There were several times this has been tested in court, and the Forest Service lost under the authorities that you had as regional forester for exemptions. The exact wording never anticipated the degree of scrutiny that happened after the fires of 2000 and 2001, 2002, and the regulations were rewritten, and the chief is the only one now that can grant exemption from appeal. But that’s part of the growing of the questions and the issues.

BARKER: Unfortunately, too, it adds to the timeframe of getting things actually done before you lose value.

AUNE: Going back to the fires of ’87, obviously the loss of life has got to weigh heavily on someone with the responsibility of the job as regional forester—widows, families and so on. Do you recall anything specific that was going on at that time that you had a responsibility for in that arena.

BARKER: Obviously the assignment of investigation teams to determine the circumstances and cause of the accidents and help for the families. There was the follow up to the investigations, to determine if policies or standards needed to be changed to prevent that particular accident from occurring in the future. Fire fighting, rather wild land or urban, is one of the most dangerous and hazardous occupations in the United States.

AUNE: There’s no easy way to go through anything like that. It’s probably some of the most difficult things, I would imagine you have to deal with.

BARKER: Not an easy thing to talk about, either. AUNE: I can imagine, Paul. The fires ended, and it took almost to the first rains, if I remember right, before people were comfortable because of the size of those fires and so on.

BARKER: Yes.

AUNE: So now we’re coming into wintertime. You set the stage for salvage and so on. Think back on that now. Something else probably got your attention as regional forester. What was the next big thing on your plate that happened?

BARKER: Probably the next big thing on my plate that happened was my first court appearance in the consent decree. The consent decree started as a result of a discrimination complaint file by an employee of the Pacific Southwest Research Station in 1972. In 1977 it was certified as a class action suit and the Pacific Southwest Region was added to the litigation. Four years later a

Consent Decree was signed between the Class and the Forest Service. The Forest Service agreed to increase the percentage of females in the overall workforce to 43 percent, over the next five years, with specific percentages to be attained by grade level and by position classification.

The Justice Department represented the Forest Service, and during that first five years, the Justice Department said: You know, Region, you need to do something and show some progress, but don’t worry about it. It’s really unconstitutional. At the end of five years we’ll go back and argue the constitutionality of it, and we’ll win, and we’ll be through with it.

The Forest Service followed the advice of the Department of Justice and made some progress but did not meet the 43 percent goal or make the various grade level goals. The result was that Judge Conte found the Secretary of Agriculture in contempt of court and extended the decree for three years to meet the same objectives.

Regional Forester Zane Smith, unfortunately, took the brunt of the criticism for not meeting the consent decree. He had very little culpability, in my mind, in it at all. The reason for not meeting the consent decree in the first five years was primarily based on the advise of the

Department of Justice: Don’t worry about it. It’s unconstitutional. This was coming directly from Edwin “Ed” Meese III, who was attorney general and from the civil rights group inside the

Department of Justice.

Very few people, I believe, understood the consent decree, and I would say, Phil, probably only three—Judge Conte, Robert “Bob” Simmons, our Office of General Counsel

(OGC) representative, and eventually myself. Initially I did not understand where the judge was coming from. Eventually I got there, and part of that was with the help from one of our cooperators, who, at a social engagement, gave me some comments that were quite useful.

Judge Conte was coming from a position that he did not order the Consent Decree, the class came to him and said, ‘This is what we want to do.’ The Forest Service came to him and said, ‘This is what we want to do.’ And he said, ‘If that’s what you want to do, do it.’”

The Forest Service failed to do what they said they would do, and in the mind of the judge they were a disobedient child, and a disobedient child needs to be punished; hence the contempt of court citation for the Secretary of Agriculture and the extension.

Through the extension, which I dealt with, the Justice Department still felt in their hearts it was unconstitutional. They provided—you’re getting what I frequently tell people is pure, objective analysis, which means my bias--- very poor legal service to the Region and to myself as regional forester.

At any court appearance that we had when the monitor would bring us back to court for failure to fulfill the terms of the consent decree, the Justice Department would fly out from

Washington D.C. the night before the hearing. For a hearing Tuesday morning at ten, they would fly out Monday, get into town about five o’clock. I would be waiting at the office to meet them and brief them. They would call me from their hotel and say, “Gee, you know, it’s six o’clock your time, but it’s nine o’clock our time, and we haven’t eaten yet, and by the time we eat it’s going to ten o’clock, and we need to get to bed. We’ll meet you in the morning.”

The hearing’s at ten o’clock in the morning. They’ve seen nothing about the hearing.

They’ve read nothing that had been sent to them. And so about eight thirty they show up at my office, and I have about a half hour, or an hour to brief them. Their response pretty much each time they came out was, “What have you done this time, Barker?” And by the time I finished the briefing, they would say, “Oh, yeah, you do have a case,” and they’d go into the hearing. I’d have the briefing book for them, laid out by questions I expected them to be asked. I was not allowed to sit at the table with them. The judge would start asking them questions. They wouldn’t even open up the briefing book that I’d gone through with them, pointing out the answers for these questions. And in many cases they would say they had no comment. And the clear answer was written in the briefing book.

At one point, I asked for a meeting with the Justice Department and the head of the civil rights department. That was denied. I wrote a letter with the help of Bob Simmons, again asking, and eventually they sent out a second- or third-level emissary, and after discussion I said,

“What you’re doing is leading into another extension, another contempt, and it’s not helpful at all either to the Region, to any of the employees, females or males, and definitely not to completion of the consent decree.”

And the response was, “Well, when these things come up, Paul, hold your breath and count to ten because we aren’t going to change.”

AUNE: You mentioned Bob Simmons at Office of the General Counsel as one of the persons that understood the true meaning of the consent decree, and you’ve obviously had discussions with Bob. In your side discussions about that and the way Justice was handling the case, what did you guys talk about? Surely you were really ticked off about the level of, quote, “service.”

BARKER: We were, and unfortunately in our system we didn’t have any recourse because the

Department of Justice handles these types of cases. The general counsel cannot—is not allowed,

I guess, to handle, for the most part, these types of cases. And so both he and I were frustrated.

We did the best we could to defend the Region’s action within the limitations that we had. After the hearings, we always met with the Justice Department attorneys and the consent decree monitor and the attorneys from the women’s class. I was told within the first three months of becoming regional forester that I could not meet with the attorneys from the class, women’s class without Department of Justice attorneys present.

AUNE: Who told you that?

BARKER: Department of Justice attorneys. And officially I didn’t. But San Francisco being a small town in a way, I discovered if you went to coffee at a given restaurant you tended to frequently run into the same people. If you happen to run into the attorney from the class, obviously you talked about some of those things you had in common. When we would get into these meetings after the court hearing with the consent decree monitor, Department of Justice,

OGC attorney Bob Simmons, myself, and the class attorney—the monitor would say, “Well, to prevent this from happening in the future, you need to implement these types of policies,” which were extremely confining, not helpful at all, and would add to the burden to trying to meet the decree in many cases.

Fortunately, as a result of discussion over coffee with the class attorney as well as working with the consent decree representative, I would say, “I’m not sure that’s helpful.”

Frequently the class attorney would respond, “The class is not interested in that at all.” And that particular burdensome requirement would be dropped. The Department of Justice was ready to say, “That’s fine. We’ll accept it.” And so occasionally, going to coffee, I was able to accomplish some things in the consent decree that made the process less burdensome. Bottom line out of this: The whole thing, as you’re aware, was very contentious. It started out as a woman’s issue, but after a short while was perceived as a white women’s issue, that women of color were not included. I had to constantly address that, this applied to all women. The male class brought suit several times alleging reverse discrimination and the goals were unconstitutional, the same theme the Department of Justice was hung up on. The judge’s view was of course that the constitution does not prevent two parties from entering into an agreement, which is what the Consent Decree was. The undertone through the whole thing was that unqualified women were being hired. I always maintain, “We’re going to hire highly qualified women and highly qualified women only. Not to hire highly qualified women would be doing a disservice to the women we already had on board. If I felt there were not any highly qualified women on the cert, I’ll hire a male. Yes, I may be back in court.” And I was, on numerous occasions.

At one point, the judge had a hearing I was not at, and the Justice Department wasn’t, either. It was a hearing on pay for the class attorneys. He made several adverse comments about what they were charging. And then he turned to Bob Simmons and said, “And you need to go back and tell your boss, the regional director or chief or whatever he’s called, that if he doesn’t get moving on this and moving aggressively, I’m going to give him a vacation at

Lompco, (Federal minimum security prison in California) at government expense, and I’m going to fine him in a way that the government can’t pay the fine, that he’ll have to pay it himself.” .

AUNE: Judge Conte. BARKER: Yes. He said, “Region Six doesn’t have a consent decree, and they’re doing better than this region, which has the consent decree, and I expect you to get moving, and you go tell your boss, whatever you call him, that he better get moving.” The judge had, unfortunately, been provided some erroneous data. Region Six had started, at the beginning of the extension, ahead of us in the percentage of the number of women in their region. But from that start to a point when the Judge threatened to send me to prison at Lompoc, Region Five had exceeded Region

Six’s attainment in percentage of women in every category. I put out a little article explaining that in the regional news. I didn’t send a copy to the judge, but I think someone else did.

As the consent decree went along, the more progress we made, it seemed like the more discrimination suits we got from other minorities, with the exception of the black working group.

The Black working group would come to me with a proposal: “We think this is happening.

Here are our three alternative ways of handling it,” each alternative, was fully staffed out with what they thought were the pros and cons and the implications. And it addressed the issue not just from the black working group but for the entire workforce.

I thought What a positive way to look at issues! We implemented a number of things that benefited the entire region as a result.

Every time I hired a male rather than a female I would be reported to the court.. One time John Butruille, regional forester in Region Six, called me. He said, “Paul, I don’t know if you can help me. I know you’ve got a consent decree, and if you say no, I understand that. “I’ve got a young forester here who has a six-month-old daughter needing a liver transplant. To have a liver transplant, she needs to be within two hours of San Francisco. Is there any way you can find a position for him within the consent decree?” I said, “John, you tell the guy to pack his bags. We’ll have a position for him when he gets here.” I explained the situation to Ray Weinmann our Director of Timber Management, and he said, “We really need help in our silvicultural department, and if this guy is as good as they said, we’ve got a GS-11 position, and we’ll put him right in it. We’ll help him find, temporary housing when he gets here. The individual moved down. His daughter ended up having two liver transplants. I was reported to the court for not hiring a woman in that position. As far as I was concerned, they could have sent me to jail and I would have done the same thing, because the consent decree from my standpoint, from the women’s standpoint, was not intended to cause undue hardship and inhumane conditions on anyone. To deny that family the chance to get to San Francisco and have a liver transplant for their baby was just unconscious able. It really frosted me that I’d been reported to court by the monitor for not hiring a woman in this case. Not by the class, but by the monitor.

When I retired I received a very gracious letter from Michael Nolan with a picture of his daughter, then two years old.

The monitor, who was appointed to oversee the consent decree, had worked in government, in a very centralized organization so understood centralizing everything, with all kinds of hoops to go through. Frequently we would miss one of those hoops and have a certificate of applicants with qualified women on it but couldn’t use it because some step had been missed. We’d have to go back, re-advertise and in that time process some other region would hire those people.

One of the allegations of the male class was they were suffering reverse discrimination.

My response to that was that up until the consent decree, males and essentially white males had somewhere between 94 and 96 percent of both the hiring and promotion, pie. Did they deserve

94 or 96 percent of the hiring and promotion pie? I suspect not but that was the culture not only in the Forest Service but pretty much the Department of Agriculture. With the consent decree, they were down to 62 percent of the promotion and hiring pie. It was probably pretty close proportionately to where they should have been. Once you’ve enjoyed 94 to 96 percent and you lose 30 percent of that, have you been impacted? Of course you’ve been impacted but not necessarily discriminated against. Had the Consent Decree been ordered by the judge, had it been ordered by a federal agency, Justice and the male class might have won their case. But the judge looked at it as merely an agreement between two parties.

Bottom line of that long tirade, dissertation, whatever you want to call it was that we hired some very qualified women in the region. Other regions also changed their hiring practices and increased both the percentage of women and minorities. Nation wide, the whole mix of the

Forest Service changed from essentially a white male-dominated organization to one far more reflecting the makeup of the country as a whole, both in the number of women and minorities employed.

Were those percentages that we had to meet exactly correct? No. I think they were not arrived at in the proper fashion. I would have come up with different percentages, but nonetheless that’s what the Forest Service agreed to do. At the end of the three-years extension, when I retired, we had met all of those requirements. We did not have everyone on board, but everyone who had been offered a job and accepted a job, when they reported in December or

January brought us up to 43 percent over all. And all the individual grade level and classifications percentages we were supposed to be at had been met

I was proud of being able to do that and keep the disharmony at a somewhat manageable level even though not all agree with the results or with me. That’s about the best I can say about the disharmony. I understand some of that still prevails in the region. AUNE: It certainly has created the Forest Service of today. I think historians will look back at what happened in the late eighties and the advent of change within the organization. There’s probably no more powerful change that had happened to the United States Forest Service starting in California than the advent of the civil rights program.

BARKER: Yes.

AUNE: Regardless of what caused it, regardless of how it happened, what’s your feeling today on where the Forest Service is heading? This is a leading question. Are they putting the right emphasis on—from what you hear? How much different do you think it is now than when you started as regional forester? Example: Your successor as regional forester is obviously dealing still with civil rights issues. What kind of magnification do you think it’s under now, and what’s his role, his or her role?

BARKER: That’s extremely hard for me to say, Phil. I’ll not cop out on it, but since I retired,

I’ve moved to Spokane, Washington. I’m aware of what’s happening in this area as far as what the Forest Service is doing, what the mix is. The mix I see is a reasonable proportion of females and males, females as regional foresters, forest supervisors, district rangers, and staff positions.

I don’t see a lot of minorities in this area, and that’s a disadvantage for us. We don’t have the richness of having a lot of other ethnic cultures. It’s also a problem that the University of Idaho and Washington State University deal with in trying to recruit both students and athletes to their respective schools, but it’s something that everyone is working on.

The impact of not only the consent decree but the litigiousness of issues when I was regional forester have continued for the last fifteen years based on what I see in this area. I can’t comment specifically to Region Five because I have been removed from that area for so long. What I perceive in this area seems like a degree of resignation. “We’re gonna get sued.

We’re probably going to lose. Is it really worth the effort to put up that sale, to consider that marina, to alter that grazing allotment, to build that campground? We really should maintain the road, and maintenance is excluded from the National Environmental Policy Act, but someone may consider that construction and we’ll get sued. Why put all that effort into something that will probably never make it. Lets put our efforts somewhere else.” I’ not sure where that somewhere else is.

It’s unfortunate, and I can well understand, after getting beaten so many times, why stick your head out to get beaten again? Unfortunately there are no winners in that type of situation.

Hopefully that’s not happening in California, where they’ve been sued so many times that it’s part of the routine

I had a friend from California visiting a month ago, concerned about old growth. I said,

“I’m really not concerned about old growth.” I said, “I look at old growth the same as I look at you and me. You know, we’re both going to die. My concern is where’s the old growth for tomorrow? What’s being done to the young stands that are forty sixty, eighty, a hundred years old to make sure they stay healthy and productive to reach old age? I’m seeing a lot of obstacles thrown in the way of keeping current young stands healthy, particularly from insects and disease and I’m not sure they’ll reach old age. Who’s looking out for the health and vigor of the younger stands? I don’t see the thinning, the management going on that I think ought to.”

AUNE: We’ll come back to some of this, Paul. I want to change the focus a little bit.

Obviously the consent decree was such a huge impact in your personal time as regional forester, particularly in those early years. A California regional forester lives in a crucible with media everywhere. I want you to think about and talk a little bit about your relationship with the press, television and so on, and the media in general as regional forester. How did that go, good, bad and indifferent? What was going on in California from 1987 on? Start with the fires. How was the press on that? That was probably one of the easier ones.

BARKER: I want to contrast my comments somewhat with what I read in the paper today. The media coverage of the fires in ’87—and that’s radio, television, print media—was extensive. It was fantastic, as accurate as they could make it in getting the information they needed to write the story in the time they needed to meet their deadline. The media were out on the sites. They were in the air. The only problem I think we had occasionally was our air officers had to be police airmen frequently to keep the news helicopters out of the flight patterns for our helicopters and retardant ships. But by and large, I thought the coverage was good. It was accurate. It kept the people informed.

What I read now is one, the terminology has changed. The acreage figures are not for the three or four individual fires in the complex, by and large, they’re for the total complex. It sounds like it’s a single fire and much, much bigger than it is when it’s actually three or four fires. And there is little detail about the location You know, how close is it to this road? It seems to me, when I look back and think back on the coverage and the stories I read, in

California they provided that depth of detail for their public, for their readers, for their listeners.

And that was a very important service, and I don’t see that detail in this area.

And of course this probably bothers no one but foresters or those of us who work with land, they have switched from reporting the size of fires in acres to square miles.

AUNE: I’ve had the same feeling, Paul. When I read the fires are twenty-three square miles, that just seems to me we’re shinning something on. BARKER: Yes. And it seems to me there’s an agenda in that. This is an interview—you did not ask me to make editorial comments, so I’ll pass at that point.

AUNE: What kind of emphasis did you place with your staff, your public affairs staff, on how you wanted a regional forester to be treated by the media? Or did you have [unintelligible]?

BARKER: I wanted the regional forester to be accessible to the media. The regional public information officer and her staff in many cases could handle most inquiries and provide the information. But they also needed to be sensitive to the fact that occasionally the reporter needs to talk to the region forester. When they sensed that situation, I was available. I also had just great help from California state forester, Walt— Hal Walt, in setting up meetings between the two of us and the editorial board of the Sacramento Bee, Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco newspapers, and the editor of Sunset magazine. That gave me additional access to the opinion writers of those papers and a chance for both Hal and me to discuss management of the national forest and forest management throughout the state.. That was an access that I might have been able to engineer, myself, but with much greater effort. Hal was able to do it with no problem at all and was very helpful in that aspect.

When I went out in the field, I tried to meet with the local media in the various towns if a forest supervisor thought that was beneficial to her or his relationships. One particular radio talk show host that—unless you were on the road between eleven thirty and three in the morning you probably never heard him—invited me down several times. I’d drive to downtown San Francisco and sit in his studio for three hours on call-ins. Calls came in from up and down the coast as far away as northern Oregon. The program, I found out, did get as far as Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. I got a letter from the public information officer on the Coeur d’Alene Forest saying, “I was driving home late the other night and going through the channels, and all of a sudden I said, I recognize that voice. That’s Paul Barker.” [Laughter.] And it was one of these late-night talk shows that I agreed to be on.

All those were helpful in getting additional information out that the public needs to know.

Did they all buy it? I suspect not. I know not. But you have to continue to make that effort to educate and inform people. This is the least we can do.

AUNE: Continuing on with the theme of the press, a lot of sides on issues will use the press to put the Forest Service in a bad light, whether it’s environmental or the industry side, saying the

Forest Service is over-cutting, not cutting enough, and put you on the spot, things like that.

Now, going back to the consent decree, was there pressure from any of the sides, through the media, on you as regional forester to get the case out, or was there a lot of media coverage on that at all? Of course, you don’t have to deal with that if you don’t feel—

BARKER: I recall very little media coverage on the consent decree. There was, obviously, when the secretary was found in contempt of court. There were one or two other articles, but by and large it was not, as I recall, a media-generated issue, they just weren’t really interested in it.

AUNE: Okay. That’s what I recall. It was basically a local one, and particularly in your time.

BARKER: Yes.

AUNE: I remember later on there was a white male class complaint and Congressman Herger, it might have been beyond your time, but he brought that into the press quite a bit.

BARKER: That was just as I was retiring, yes.

AUNE: That one sticks in my mind as the biggie on the press. Well, Paul, I guess we’ve talked about the impacts on fire, the fires of ’87 and the consent decree; that’s the human side internally. You must have had a lot of resource management issues. How’d you deal with that?

Where did you go with the environment in general and all the resource issues? BARKER: Resource issues were relatively easy to deal with because of the staff I had in the region. Both the staff directors and the specialists in the regional office, and on the forests were top quality and that meant I always had excellent information and advice.

AUNE: Now, this is the time prior to the Northwest Forest Plan.

BARKER: Yes.

AUNE: Prior to the big spotted owl issue. Is that right?

BARKER: We were still in the process of the final determination of the spotted owl habitat areas. As you recall, it required 1,600 acres of old growth forest that a pair of owls needed in

Washington; 1,200 acres in Oregon; 600 to 800 was all they needed in California. Why less in

California? We had more critters in all of our areas: moles and voles and everything else that they fed on. Due I suspect, to more total effective “edge” than either Washington or Oregon had.

The controversy over the spotted owl started when I first came to the region. At that time, to have a viable population of spotted owls, which is what the Endangered Species Act required you needed 1,500 pair, spread across its normal range. I said, “Oh, not a problem. We’ve got

1,500 pair in California, and obviously Oregon and Washington have some, so it’s spread across the range, we’re home free.”

“No, Paul, we can’t count all 1,500 pair in California because some of those are in second growth, and spotted owls don’t reproduce in second growth, so we can only count the ones in old growth.” I don’t know if we the Forest Service, or Sierra Pacific Industries were the first ones to find breeding pairs is second growth. Anyway, we found breeding pairs in second growth. Ah, we’re home free. We can count all 1500 pairs. Well, spotted owls, if I remember correctly—and correct me, Phil, on this—but they normally, only have one or two young per year. That’s their average. When we found breeding pairs with young in second growth, the immediate answer was, “Well, we still can’t count them because they don’t breed as often, nor do they have as many young.”

And I’m saying, “How do we know that. We just found breeding pairs for the first time in second growth. They have one or two young on average. They’re breeding. They’re having young. One—that’s at least within their average. What do you mean? And how do we know, that they don’t breed as often or don’t have as many young?” And I said, Boy, I know where this thing’s headed. This is a surrogate for stopping all cutting in national forests, which in fact it was.

AUNE: Those are all interesting points, Paul, because the science was relatively young when you were regional forester. The critters were popular. They were found obviously in old forests, but they were also found in young forests. We know a lot more about them today than you knew then. Still the interesting thing is it’s still not resolved.

BARKER: Yes.

AUNE: They’re still debating it to this day

BARKER: And in that whole effort I mentioned Sierra Pacific. Whether they were the first to find a breeding pair in the second growth or the Forest Service, I not sure. But Sierra Pacific, against the advice or counsel of other timber owners, hired wildlife biologists and surveyed their entire land holdings for spotted owls, both the old growth and second growth, Their effort had to help add to the scientific knowledge of the spotted owl. The leadership of “Red” Emerson and his foresters, “Bud” Tomascheski and his son, Daniel “Dan,” I think somehow has a role in the overall history of National Forest management in California. As the state developed, the timber industry developed and the Forest Service grew and developed, with all of its various activities.

AUNE: That is a good point. BARKER: It may be a separate theme from this issue that someone might want to look at.

Maybe they have.

AUNE: Yes, yes, that’s an interesting one. This is just off the record. You and I don’t have to be part of the record. But during the listing process, there was the petition to list the California spotted owl, and of course the Fish and Wildlife Service turned that down because of the evidence provided by the forest products industry and Forest Service but principally the forest products industry. The very point you made about finding spotted owls in young-growth stands and not only find them but in huge abundance, much higher densities in heavily managed forests than you do in the areas that were set aside as, quote, “spotted owl habitat” areas. That petition was denied, and then they were sued. The Fish and Wildlife Service was sued in federal court last year, and the Fish and Wildlife Service came back to the defense of not listing, and to this day the California spotted owl is still not listed. Why? It’s an abundant population. You can’t find an area in California on national forest or industrial where you can’t find spotted owls, unlike—

Now going back to it, I’ll give you a question: Earlier in our interview we talked about the California condor, and you mentioned forty individuals of California condors, and here we now have a species right now, the current estimate in California is 2,800 pairs of spotted owls.

And you can’t find a forested area in California that the spotted owls are not around. What do you feel about that level of information? It’s just incredible. Here, you know a species that is disappearing, and yet recovery is well under way, and you talked about—if I’m not mistaken,

Paul, you guys actually pushed for captive breeding as a way to solve the problem.

Where do you think we’re going with this stuff on threatened and endangered species?

This is time for you to editorialize. BARKER: Part of what is wrong, and it’s wrong in any system, is that the agency is put on the defensive and by and large has to prove a negative. Some say it’s impossible to prove a negative, but that’s the position the agency is frequently put in. Every answer that you have, you can easily ask another question for which there is no answer. Part of all of this is an effort to stop cutting trees. I won’t say the harvest of the timber for wood products. Plain stop cutting trees, live, dead, whatever. My eighty-three-year-old friend and I cut firewood all summer long, twenty, thirty cords. Eventually I suspect there’s going to be an effort to stop us from doing that, under the contention that things are better left alone and once you cut a tree, it’s gone forever.

That comes from the fact, I think, that as we look across your beautiful yard, across the street, and there’s a new house going up. There were trees where that house is. There won’t ever again be trees exactly where that house is, and that’s the mind-set people see. They see an area with trees. A new building goes in, and the trees are gone. Therefore if you cut trees, they’ll never come back. And that’s absolutely false.

In this area, northern Idaho, northeastern Washington, you have to work very, very hard to keep trees out. The good Lord intended trees to grow here. Through the Midwest, He intended grass to grow there. In timbered areas, trees are going to grow. I go back and look at the clear-cuts I made and planted, and I’m saying, My gosh! They should have been thinned, twenty, thirty years ago. We planted eight by eight spacing, and nature came in and planted two by two spacing. We probably didn’t need to plant at all. Nature is going to regenerate this timber country whether humans replant or not. Stop and look at the young white pine trees and their leaders are two feet, three feet, just absolutely amazing growth. But all of that, whether you’re talking about spotted owl or whatever, it’s a surrogate to stop cutting. The next effort, I suspect, is going to be on wolverine. You spent, what?—thirty- plus years in the Forest Service. How many wolverine have you seen?

AUNE: [Chuckles.] Zero.

BARKER: Zero. Therefore there aren’t any, are there? Or there aren’t very many. I’ve been fortunate. I’ve seen two in thirty-five years. And right there lies the fact for another challenge.

They prefer undisturbed forests. I don’t know if they absolutely require it or not. But prove me wrong. I’ve spent umpteen days a year out in the forest, for the last five, six years, and I haven’t seen one, so obviously they must be endangered. Now, prove to me that they aren’t. How many are there? We can’t do it. And so here is a potential for a whole ‘nother effort to try to stop cutting or thinning

To finish up my editorial comment, what I think we need is another Land Law Review

Commission but with a slightly different orientation. To look at the purpose of the original legislation that established the National Parks, National Forest, Wildlife refuges, the Bureau of

Land Management. Look at all the agencies’ original purpose for which they were established and ask: Is that purpose still valid? Is it still being met and if so reconfirm that purpose. Timber was intended to be cut, thinned, and salvaged from the National Forests. Reconfirm that it is still one of the purposes of the National Forest.

AUNE: Before we get into all of that, Paul, obviously the job of regional forester is complex, and you faced it right away, the fires, the consent decree, spotted owls, et cetera. I think it’s fair to say that everybody would characterize a lot of that as negative impacts on your time and your life. Now, you’re getting towards the latter part of your career as regional forest. What did you positive to change some of that? I know you’ve created the Environmental Agenda. Tell us a little bit about that.

BARKER: One of the things that was going on at that time, Phil—a fair amount of talk or rumor, of creating a Sierra Crest national park or Sierra Crest monument managed by the Park

Service. I saw that as a negative influence on what the land was capable of providing. I had made the statement to a multi-agency group, primarily National Park Service people, that the

Forest Service had a fair number of answers to problems the Park Service was having with overuse, crowding, lack of forage for wildlife, and pollution from cars.

I said, “We surround every national park in California. The national forests have the ability to manipulate vegetation for the health and vigor of the vegetation, to emphasize particular vegetation for specific species of wildlife, be it summer or winter range. We can provide the ground to construct campgrounds and a parking lots so you can have shuttle buses going in and out of the park.” I said, “I’m willing to provide the land for recreation sites surrounding the national parks, to manipulate vegetation to increase habitat for your special wildlife species, because that’s part of our charter. We can do that. You can’t do that very effectively in the parks. We can.” I was never approached on that by anyone for follow up information.

I also felt I suppose somewhat like Henry Ford. We needed to change the way we did business. If we wanted to stay in the business we were in, we needed to change, and Henry Ford realized that. If he wanted to stay in the business he was in, he needed to produce a car other than black and produce it much more efficiently. We needed to change the color of our vehicle.

I came up with the Environmental Agenda, and I suppose part of this is going back to

Bob Lancaster and his philosophy on the Los Padres Forest. What are the basics? What are we about? I came up with three things: sustainable development for people, preservation, and diversity of ecosystems. I came out with this in February of 1990—the population in California in the next decade I think was going to increase to 20 million people. That type of growth would have and was having a dramatic impact on rural land. We needed to be in tune with the changing times if we were to stay in the business we were in. If you built a car today with a suspension that the Model T had and the steering capability and the braking system the Model T had, they’d run you out of town. We’ve had increased knowledge in every aspect of land management. I feel sorry for the young foresters, biologists, wildlife and fisheries biologist, archaeologists of the future—they’re going to have so much more knowledge, basic knowledge and technical knowledge than we had that it’s going to be much harder and much easier, at the same time, for them to manage. It was time to change the way we did business.

Under sustainable development for the people, we would still produce timber, but less of it, from 1.9 billion feet down to 1.4, the first time in the history of the Forest Service that a region has reduced its allowable sale amount. We would manage for watershed quality and wildlife diversity and plant diversity, and as we managed for those types of values—aesthetic quality, wildlife, watershed, water quality—we would do that through management of the vegetation. As we managed that vegetation, some timber is going to be produced; some grazing is going to be produced; there are going to be opportunities for recreation. All that will be part of sustainable development for people.

Going back to a comment William Ruckelshaus, the first director of the Environmental

Protection Agency said, and I’ll quote, “Many in the past have assumed that the goals of environmental protection and economic development are incompatible. The Commission on

Environment and Development report proved those assumptions wrong. Neither environmental protection nor economic development is sustainable without proper attention to both.” The

Environmental Agenda’s bottom line was an attempt to provide proper attention to both.

Under the preservation, we would increase the wilderness acres by 500,000 acres, the wild and scenic river mileage by three or four hundred miles of wild and scenic rivers. This was about the amount that forest plans were recommending.

Under the biodiversity aspect of wildlife, one thing that we don’t emphasize, but in the hundred years’ history of the Forest Service, no species has become extinct that is dependent on national forest system lands. Under the biodiversity heading we would provide for a wide diversity of habitat, including old growth forest. We would deal with the small unique ecosystem as well as the complex total ecosystem in the Environmental Agenda.

AUNE: You grew up in North Dakota.

BARKER: Yes.

AUNE: I’m sure that part of your time was in northern Minnesota, and you had a chance to see, in the forties, perhaps, some of the scrub forests that are there now.

BARKER: Yes.

AUNE: And those lands from the forties—that’s what you’re saying—are now producing about

25 percent of the nation’s timber..

BARKER: Since 1950, the total forest acreage in the United States has increased. Why is that?

If we look at the South, the Southeast, land was cleared, put into cotton, corn, tobacco and other crops. They made good money for a number of years but the yield could not be sustained and the land was abandoned. Weyerhaeuser, Crown Zellerbach, Potlatch and other timber companies have moved down there and bought up the land. They’ve replanted it to timber, so we’ve gone from taking timber out of production and putting it into crops, corn, cereal, cotton, back to putting it back into timber, and the total acreage of forest land in the United States has been increasing since about 1950.

AUNE: One of the things, Paul, is I’m listening to all of this, and a lot of the words you used in the Environmental Agenda is ’90—sustainable development, managing for biodiversity and those concerts—in the late eighties, early nineties, those were coming along, but mostly in academic circles. Your colleagues—your brother and sister regional foresters; I know your brother regional foresters in those days—what did they think about your Environmental Agenda?

Would you care to comment on that?

BARKER: By and large, they were not impressed at all. At a social gathering that involved just the chief of the Forest Service and the nine regional foresters, the regional forester from

Region Eight said, “Chief, you need to overturn Barker’s Environmental Agenda. It’s going to escape California, and it’s going to adversely affect the rest of it, and it needs to be overturned.”

He went on with several reasons why. He finished, and regional forester from Region One immediately jumped in on why the Environmental Agenda needed to be overturned, repeating most of the same reasons. I was sitting there fuming, thinking some less than complimentary thoughts about my fellow regional foresters. I thought common courtesy would have caused them to at least alerted me to the fact that you’re going to take me on in front of the chief and would be ganging up on me. But I had no alert, so I was trying to keep those thoughts out of mind and think of a very cogent response.

After Region Eight and Region One, the Region Nine regional forester chimed in followed by the Region Two regional forester giving their reasons for overturning the

Environmental Agenda, most of which were a repetition of previous comments. After the

Region Two regional forester spoke, there was a pause, and John Butruille, Region Six regional forester, spoke up, “Chief, you know, Paul’s agenda is going to escape California, and I’m

Paul’s closest neighbor, and it can’t get here soon enough.” And I thought, Oh, thank you, one supporter! And then Michael “Mike” Barton from Region Ten said, “Chief, I’ve read Paul’s

Environmental Agenda, and I’ve got only one comment: I wish I had his guts.” The chief at that point said, “For the rest of you, either before or when you get home, reread Paul’s Environmental

Agenda and then get with the program.”

AUNE: I think, Paul, that speaks so highly of you. I know it’s not bragging, but it’s a statement of the facts, what was said, and I think this might be a good spot to generally wrap it up as your interview as regional forester, because you lived obviously through some very trying times, and you left as regional forester about the time the change was occurring in the administration as well. The Clinton administration was coming on line. That’s another story. But you were at the end. The regional forester, the last regional forester in California prior to the huge change that took your Environmental Agenda and trumped it in spades: the words, the rhetoric, the laws, the implication, the change in the emphasis and so on. You were a bloody timber beast with your

Environmental Agenda ---compared to what happened. Given that little entrée, I’d like to have you sum up your feelings and what happened to you in your career. Take whatever time you need. This will be kind of like the last part of this. Think about it now and kind of capsulize encapsulate where you went, all the way from North Dakota to regional forester of California.

BARKER: In my career, every place I was, every job I had, I thoroughly enjoyed, as a JF (junior forester) and as assistant ranger. I said, This is it. I don’t care if I go any further. I’m thoroughly enjoying what I’m doing. I never really looked at what the next job above me was, because I so thoroughly enjoyed doing the job I currently had. I thought, If I get a promotion,

I’m going to have to leave here, and the next place isn’t going to be as nice, as good and as rewarding, and so I’m just really happy where I’m at. The new locations got increasingly better, more rewarding and more enjoyable each time I moved. Even when, I went reluctantly back to the Washington office, I thoroughly enjoyed living there and working back there. I would have been completely happy to finish my career back there. Some may say, “Damn, I wisht he had!”

[Laughs heartily.] I had just a thoroughly enjoyable career.

Two things, made it enjoyable: one, because you’re working with the land, and you can see the productivity and the response of things you’re doing on the land; and secondly working with the people. The esprit de corps that the Forest Service had—you’d mentioned we had the family type—I think some of that is slowly eroding away from the Forest Service, as they become more centralized As I mentioned starting out, a pretty simple dictum: When it got light you went to work, and when it got dark you went to bed.

AUNE: [Chuckles.]

BARKER: Whatever needed to be done between those two times you did it, and you did it with whatever you had. We never had an excess of money and tools, but you made what tools you had accomplish the job that needed to be done. And so there was an inventiveness, a creativeness in all your work as you moved through the organization. That just added to the enjoyment.

AUNE: Let me ask you, do you think that in the year 2010 that a new young professional—a forester or wildlife biologist, landscape architect—could have the same sense of optimism that

Paul Barker had when he left forestry school about a career in the Forest Service?

BARKER: I would hope so, and I would hope that they would come out with bright eyes and all kinds of ideas on how to do things better than what was done in the past, and how to make things grow faster or stay alive longer, and figure out how to allow off-road vehicles to enjoy the open outdoors without causing the adverse environmental impacts many of them do. If we look at changes, off-road vehicle use of public land is probably one of the greatest impacts on the land in the last thirty, forty, fifty years. We still need to learn how to address that. Haven’t got there yet. And hopefully they’ll come out knowing they’ve got the solution and be as positive and as satisfied in their career as I’ve been.

AUNE: Thanks, Paul. I’m sure we could talk for hours more, but I think we probably better wrap this up.

BARKER: Yes.

AUNE: Thank you very much for your excellent interview.

BARKER: Thank you for being willing to take the time and do that. You made the comment early on: the length of the interview depends on how long you talk. You should have said,

“Keep it down to three hours.” [Laughs.]

AUNE: No, this has been fine, Paul. I’m going to close it right now. Thanks, Paul.

[End of interview.]