Controversies
The history of the Forest Service has been fraught with controversy, as various interests and national values have grappled with the appropriate management of the many resources within the forests. These values and resources include grazing, timber, mining, recreation, wildlife habitat, and wilderness. Because of continuing development elsewhere, the large size of National Forests have made them de facto wildlife reserves for a number of rare and common species. In recent decades, the importance of mature forest for the spotted owl and a number of other species led to great changes in timber harvest levels.
In certain fire-adapted ecosystems, the ensuing decades of fire suppression unintentionally caused a buildup of fuels that replaced the historically natural fire regime of slow-burning, relatively cool fires with fast-burning, relatively hot wildfires in the fire-adapted forest lands across the nation.
In the 1990s, the agency was involved in scandal when it illegally provided surplus military aircraft to private contractors for use as airtankers. (See U.S. Forest Service airtanker scandal.)
Another controversial issue is the policy on road building within the National Forests. In 1999, President Clinton ordered a temporary moratorium on new road construction in the National Forests to "assess their ecological, economic, and social values and to evaluate long-term options for their management." Five and half years later, the Bush administration replaced this with a system where each state could petition the Forest Service to open forests in their territory to road building.
Some years the agency actually loses money on its timber sales.
Read more about this topic: United States Forest Service