Former Forest Service official decries “fed bashing”

Thursday, Jan. 27, 2000 | 9:46 a.m.

"How we treat each other is often indicative of how we treat the landscape," Gloria Flora told about 100 people gathered at Flathead High School Wednesday night. "It is not about winning or losing. It is about creating an environment that people's children can inherit."

Kalispell was Flora's first stop on a speaking tour sponsored by the Montana Human Rights Network and Montana Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Other planned stops are in Hamilton on Thursday and Helena on Friday.

She said harassment caused her to resign as supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyable National Forest 18 months after leaving as supervisor of the Lewis and Clark National Forest, headquartered in Great Falls.

Change, however, is enveloping the West, she said.

The national forests have been subsidized for a century by Americans, who in many cases never saw them, but they feel strongly about the environment. She referred to a recent survey purporting to show 76 percent in favor of President Clinton's roadless initiative.

It is easy to blame the federal government, to talk of armed rebellion, but the problem stems from technology, Flora said.

At a time when timber harvests were rising in the 1970s, the number of jobs in the lumber industry were falling. People simply cannot expect to carry on the same as their parents, she said.

"My father made a living selling ice from a horse-pulled cart," Flora said. "If I followed the same line, I'd be selling stainless-steel refrigerators online. Survival requires change."

One of those changes would involve an effort to restore public lands, using money from the Forest Service and private incentives, she said.

She referred to several incidents of harassment, including one in which Flathead County Commissioner Dale Williams compared Flathead National Forest Supervisor Cathy Barbouletos to a Nazi.

It would be difficult to convince the millions of people who lost relatives to the Nazis that it has anything to do with forest policy, Flora said.

In another instance, she said, a congressmen being apprised of complaints about harassment by her former employees commented, "They're federal employees - what do you expect?"

"Fed bashing is a tough word," she said. "It's the dark side of the lack of civility."

It is like racism because it targets a single group, and it goes all the way to the top, she said.