PERSONNEL
Duties of Forest Officers. Forest officers are the servants of the people and they are expected to assist in every way possible those who wish to use the resources of the Forests. Their first duty is to enforce the regulations under which all permits, leases, sales, and rentals are made. These regulations cover every phase of National Forest activity and in conducting business under them they must not let personal or other interests weigh against the good of the Forests. For the good of the Forest Service their conduct must be prompt and courteous and their business methods sensible and effective. They make it their business to prevent misunderstandings and violations of forest regulations rather than to correct mistakes after they have been made.
On the National Forests there are permanent employees and temporary employees. Under the former heading come the Forest Supervisor, the Deputy Supervisor, the Forest Assistant, the Forest Ranger, Lumbermen, Sealers, Planting Assistants, and Forest Clerks. Under the latter category come the Forest Guards, the Field Assistants, and the Temporary Laborers. All permanent positions are in the classified Civil Service. Vacancies are filled from a certified list of those who have passed a Civil Service examination or by promotion from the lower ranks.
Figure 9. Forest officers in front of the Forest Supervisor's summer headquarters. Note the many telephone wires that lead from the office. This is 50 miles from the railroad. Lassen National Forest, California.
Figure 10. Scene in front of the Forest Supervisor's headquarters. Sheep leaving the National Forest summer range in the fall to go to winter range in the valley. Lassen National Forest, California.
The Forest Supervisor. A Forest Supervisor is in charge of each National Forest and he plans the work of the Forest and supervises its execution. He works, of course, under direct instruction from the District Forester and is responsible to him. When the amount of business on the Forest warrants it he is assisted by a Deputy Supervisor. Both these positions are filled by the promotion of experienced men in the classified Civil Service. The Forest Supervisor's headquarters are located in towns conveniently situated with regard to the most important points in his Forest. The town is usually located on a railroad and centrally located with regard to the various Ranger districts of his Forest. His headquarters are usually the center of the system of roads and trails which covers his entire Forest. From his office also the telephone system radiates in all directions to his various District Rangers. In short, the Forest Supervisor's office is so situated that he has at all times full knowledge of all the activities of his Forest; he is therefore in a position to give advice and directions by telephone to his Rangers and other subordinates almost at any time of the day or night. Such intimate communication is of especial importance during the fire season.
Some Forests have two headquarters, one that is occupied in the winter and the other that is occupied in the summer. The summer quarters is usually most advantageously situated as far as the business of the Forest is concerned, but owing to deep snow, which seriously interferes with mail and telephone connections, a more accessible winter quarters is occupied from October to May.
The force of men the Forest Supervisor has working under him varies of course with the amount of work to be performed. The permanent force is usually from 10 to 15 men, which during the fire season may be increased to from 25 to 40 and in cases of great fire emergency sometimes to several hundred men, by the addition of temporary employees.
The Forest Assistant. The other permanent men on a National Forest are the Forest Assistant or Forest Examiner, Forest Rangers, and a Forest clerk with his assistant, the Stenographer and Typewriter. The Forest Assistant or Examiner ranks next to the Deputy and his work is directed by the Forest Supervisor, to whom he makes his reports. The Forest Assistant is the technical man of the Forest force, who upon making good is promoted to Forest Examiner. He is employed upon such technical lines of work as the examination and mapping of forest areas; reports on applications for the purchase of timber; marking, scaling, and managing timber sales; the survey of boundaries; and nursery and planting work.
Not only is a Forest Assistant called upon to perform these various lines of technical work. The very nature of the country he is in indicates that he must be an all-round practical man. He must be able to ride, pack, and drive. He must often live alone and therefore must do his own cooking, washing, and take care of other personal needs. He must be strong and healthy and capable of undergoing hardships, at least be able to stand long days of walking, climbing, and horseback riding. His various duties and the different situations that arise often call for knowledge and practical ability as a carpenter, a mechanic, a plumber, an engineer, a surveyor, and many other lines of work. Perhaps more important than his education and ability are his personal qualifications. His temperament must be such that he must feel satisfied and contented under the most trying conditions. He must be able to do without most of the comforts of modern civilization for most of the time. For these reasons the country-bred western youths are more liable to make a success of the work than the city-bred easterner.
The Forest Ranger. The Forest Ranger's position is one of the most important and at the same time the most difficult positions on our National Forests.
The Forest Ranger's headquarters are usually at the nearest business center to his district and if that is not practicable permanent headquarters are provided on the Forest. In any case his station is located as near to the center of the business activity of his district as possible. If his headquarters are centrally located in his district, trails, roads, and telephone lines lead out from his cabin to all parts of his district. His station is built and maintained at government expense and usually has, besides his living quarters, a barn, tool-house, pasture, corral, and other necessary improvements.
The Forest Ranger performs such routine work as the supervision of timber sales, grazing, free use, special use, and other contracts and permits, the carrying out of the protection and improvement plans for his district, and other administrative duties. The average Forest Ranger has a territory of from 75,000 to 150,000 acres to take care of. On June 30, 1917, there were about 1,100 Forest Rangers employed on the National Forests who were assisted by over 900 Assistant Forest Rangers and Forest Guards. The protective force was therefore about one man for every 77,800 acres or about 121 square miles.
The Forest Ranger must be a man who is physically sound and capable of enduring great hardships. He is often required to do heavy manual labor in fighting fire under the most trying conditions. For this reason he must have great endurance. They are usually men who have been brought up in timber work, on ranches or farms, or with the stock business. They are therefore thoroughly familiar with the region in which they are to be employed and especially acquainted with the rough, semi-primitive life which is characteristic of remote places in the West.
He must be able to take care of himself and his horses in regions remote from settlement and supplies. He must be able to build trails, roads and cabins; he must be able to ride, pack, and drive and deal tactfully with all classes of people. He must know something about land surveying, estimating, and scaling timber; of logging, mining laws, and the live stock business. His duties include patrol to prevent fire and trespass; estimating, surveying, and marking timber; the supervision of cutting and similar work. He is authorized to issue permits, build cabins and trails, oversee grazing business, investigate mining and agricultural claims, report upon applications, and report upon and arrest for the violation of Forest laws and regulations.
The Forest Clerk. The Forest Clerk performs the clerical work and the book-keeping in the Forest Supervisor's office. He sometimes has a Stenographer and Typewriter to assist him and to do the mechanical work of correspondence. Lumbermen are specialists who are thoroughly well versed in all that pertains to logging, milling, scaling, and cruising timber. They are assigned temporarily to Forests where need for their work arises. Scalers are men thoroughly familiar with the art of scaling or measuring logs, ties, poles, cord wood and other forest products. Planting Assistants are specialists in nursery and planting work. Their duties include the preparation of seed beds, seed sowing, transplanting and care of seedlings, and field planting. They are assigned to the Forest Service nurseries.
The Work of Forest Officers in the Winter
Figure 11. Forest officers and lumberjacks burning the slash resulting from a timber sale. The snow on the ground makes the burning less dangerous. Washakie National Forest, Wyoming. Photo by the author.
Figure 12. Forest officers at a winter timber-cruising camp repairing snow shoes. Besides cruising the timber, these men make a logging map of the government lands, to show how the timber can best be taken out. Lassen National Forest, California. Photo by the author.
Temporary Laborers, Forest Guards, and Field Assistants are employed during the field season when additional work on the National Forests warrants it. Forest Guards perform temporary protection, administrative, and improvement work; Field Assistants, usually students of forestry serving their apprenticeships, are usually employed at minor technical work and timber cruising; Temporary Laborers are employed by the day or month at any kind of improvement or maintenance work.
Forest Service Meetings. A general meeting of the Forest force is usually held annually to give the Forest officers the benefit of each other's experience, to keep in touch with the entire work of the Forest, and to promote "esprit-de-corps." The time and place of the meeting depends upon circumstances, but it is usually held at a time of the year when there is least danger from fire. Often joint meetings are held with the forces of adjacent Forests. This annual meeting idea is carried through the entire Forest Service. The Forest Supervisors in each administrative district usually meet at the district headquarters once a year and the District Foresters of all the districts together with representative officers from the Washington office usually meet annually at some centrally located district office such as the one at Ogden, Utah. These meetings assist greatly in keeping all the work in the various branches of the Service up to the same standard of efficiency, in avoiding mistakes by learning the experience of others, and in correlating and summarizing work done on similar problems in widely different regions.