U.S. Forest Service Under New Management?

The U.S. House Appropriations subcommittee on interior, environment, and related agencies today asked the Government Accountability Office to look at the possibility of moving the U.S. Forest Service out from under the Department of Agriculture bureaucracy and into the Interior Department's realm of management, according to the Washington Post. The change would put the 193-million acres managed by the Forest Service alongside its more appropriate public-land bedfellows, the National Park Service (84-million acres), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (96-million acres), and the Bureau of Land Management (258-million acres). It would also place the Forest Service lands under the control of the Secretary of the Interior, an office once held by Stewart Udall, whose son (Tom) and nephew (Mark) are featured in the current issue of Outside ("The West Will Rise Again").
--Jason Kerkmans