The royal forests (Rep. Tom McClintock)

Practiced in the marketplace, we would renounce these tactics
as predatory and abusive. In the public service sector, they are intolerable.

Combined, these actions evince an ideologically driven
hostility to the public’s enjoyment of the public’s land – and a clear
intention to deny the public the responsible and sustainable use of that land.

Most recently, the Forest Service has placed severe
restrictions on vehicle access to the Plumas National Forest, despite volumes
of public protests. Supervisor Bill Connelly, Chairman of the Butte County
Board of Supervisors writes that “The restriction applies to such activities
as: collecting firewood, retrieving game, loading or unloading horses or other
livestock, and camping.” He writes, “The National Forests are part of the local
fabric.  The roads within the
National Forests are used by thousands of residents and visitors for transportation
and recreation. These activities generate revenue for our rural communities,
which are critical for their survival.”

This is not a small matter. The Forest Service now
controls 193 million acres within our nation – a land area equivalent to the
size of Texas.

During the despotic eras of Norman and Plantagenet
England, the Crown declared one third of the land area of Southern England to
be the royal forest, the exclusive preserve of the monarch, his forestry
officials and his favored aristocrats. The people of Britain were forbidden
access to and enjoyment of these forests under harsh penalties. This
exclusionary system became so despised by the people that in 1215, five clauses
of the Magna Carta were devoted to redress of grievances that are hauntingly
similar to those that are now flooding my office.

 Mr. Speaker,
the attitude that now permeates the U.S. Forest Service from top to bottom is
becoming far more reminiscent of the management of the royal forests during the
autocracy of King John than of an agency that is supposed to encourage,
welcome, facilitate and maximize the public’s use of the public’s land in a
nation of free men and women.

After all, that was the vision for the Forest Service set
forth by its legendary founder, Gifford Pinchot in 1905: “to provide the
greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people in the long
run.”

In May of 2009 and April of 2010, some of my California
colleagues and I sent letters to the Forest Service expressing these concerns.
I have also personally met with senior officials of that agency on several
occasions in which I have referenced more than 500 specific complaints of
Forest Service abuses received by my office.

All that I have received to date from these officials are
smarmy assurances that they will address these concerns – assurances that their
own actions have belied at every turn.

It is time for Congress to conduct a top-to-bottom review
of the abuses by this increasingly unaccountable and elitist agency, to demand
accountability for the damage it has done – and is doing – to our forests’
health, to the public’s trust, to the government’s revenues and to the nation’s
economy – and to take whatever actions are necessary to restore an attitude of
consumer-friendly public service which was Gifford Pinchot’s original vision
and for which the U.S. Forest Service was once renowned and respected.