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Retiring forest supervisor often took public pounding Mike Lunn weathered change from sales to conservation photo by Paul Fattig The battered steel thermos on the right has seen Mike Lunn through most of his nearly 32 years with the Forest Service. Unlike the thermos, which is dented but otherwise unchanged, the mission of the Forest Service is much different now than when Lunn began his career. By PAUL FATTIG GRANTS PASS -- Shortly after he began working for the Forest Service, Mike Lunn quickly discovered that a fragile glass thermos didn't survive long on the job. In 1970, he bought a rugged metal thermos. With more bumps and lumps than a logging skid road, the battered but functioning thermos now sits on the desk of the retiring supervisor of the Rogue River and Siskiyou national forests. "I went down and paid about 10 bucks for that steel thermos," Lunn said. "It's been bounced around in the back of pickup trucks, in the back of snowmobiles. It's pretty tough." Some observers would say that thermos reflects Lunn's own toughness in surviving the public pounding that often comes with his high-profile position. But Lunn has given as good as he got, including taking on Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck. After nearly 32 years with the agency, including 10 years supervising the Siskiyou forest, Lunn, 55, is retiring on Dec. 31. Tom Riley, deputy supervisor of both forests, will be the acting supervisor until Lunn's successor is named next year. Lunn has been described as a paradox combining old and new management styles. Several agency employees, who declined to talk on the record, described him as a decision maker who shoots from the hip. Yet other employees say he is a square shooter. "I think very highly of him in that he is very in tune with civil rights," said Sara Beck of Butte Falls, who is considered legally blind. A 20-year Forest Service employee, Beck requires special-access technical needs to do her office work. "He has made sure that any injustices are corrected," she said. "I really appreciate that." After an article in a weekly newspaper in Brookings aired a concern by a woman who was told by a local doctor that she didn't have the right "hormonal make-up" to be a firefighter while battling the Repeater Fire in the Gold Beach Ranger District last fall, Lunn dispatched a letter to the editor which described the doctor's comments as absurd. Yet Lunn's decision last month to transfer Ashland district ranger Linda Duffy, prompting a public outcry, was perceived by some as an effort to undercut a new direction in the Forest Service. Then acting regional forester Nancy Graybeal rescinded Lunn's decision. The matter is now under review by regional officials. Environmental activist Steve Marsden has had as many disagreements as agreements with Lunn during the past decade. "He's done some good things," Marsden said. "But the Forest Service has a lot of institutional hubris. Mike brought some of that old-guard institution to his job." Lunn, who has a bachelor's degree in forest management from Oklahoma State University, doesn't apologize for his approach to the job. "They talk about wearing green underwear," he said. "Mine are about as green as they can get. "I love the Forest Service. I love the mission of the agency. I love the land we work on. And I love the fact that the public really cares about the national forests." After Lunn took exception to comments by Dombeck published in newspaper articles, he sent what he described as constructive criticism to the agency's chief. "... I am deeply offended and frustrated by the continuing characterization by you and members of your staff that the folks who hold line officer positions in the field are either incompetent or unmanageable," he wrote on June 30. "I felt there were some people being mistreated," Lunn said later. "I got a lot of positive feedback from people across the United States in the Forest Service." That feedback included a telephone call from Dombeck, he said. "I've got a lot of respect for the way our chief has talked about our role as conservation leaders," Lunn said, adding he also appreciates the fact that Dombeck encourages feedback. Since joining the agency in February 1968, Lunn has worked on forests throughout the Pacific Northwest, and served as a supervisor on the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska. This year, he became the first supervisor to head both the Siskiyou and Rogue River forests. "When I joined the Forest Service, we were all pretty much alike -- almost all white and male," he recalled. "And we were almost all foresters." But change was in the air. The National Environmental Policy Act was passed by Congress. By the end of the 1970s, the foresters in the Forest Service were joined by specialists, including biologists and soil scientists. "All of a sudden, you had kind of a cultural change in the Forest Service," he said. "You heard a lot about `combatologists.' They weren't well accepted at first because they were fighting to influence how we made decisions. "We all had such a clear single vision of our mission, which we felt was to cut timber. When new people came with different values, it was hard to work with them." After all, the agency was continuing its mission of supplying timber for the post-World War II boom, he noted. Other changes included were more women and minorities on the staff, he said. "We've come a long, long ways in changing the composition of our work force," he said. "We have women all through the system. We have a lot of minorities." "It has been excellent for the Forest Service," he said. "I used to say that and not believe it. Now I believe it. I've seen how differently we think and how much more in concert with the public we can be because of those changes." The reason, he said, is that the public is diverse. "People should keep in mind that the agency has always been shifting in the direction it's going," he said. "We started out in the early part of the century with basically a protective function. We protected the watersheds against fire, timber theft, cattle grazing. "By the '50s, our mission had shifted to producing timber to recognize the American dream," he added. "We jumped in and did that. It's always been evolving." The agency has evolved back to its conservation approach, he said. "That has been a real positive evolution," he added. "It's not something Chief Dombeck did. Hell, we've been moving that direction for the last decade." Lunn accepts that he hasn't pleased everyone. "I believe I have a fairly strong sense of ethical treatment of people and listening to people, but I also know at some point I've got to make a decision that some people aren't going to like," he said. "Then I have to have the moral courage to live through it." That includes a decision to log such controversial sales as Sugarloaf and China Left in the Siskiyou forest, a decision that resulted in numerous arrests of environmental protesters. At one point, Lunn's home was threatened. "It got real hairy there for a while," he said. "But we got through it. People had the opportunity to protest, exercise their First Amendment rights." Yet the most difficult task he faced was paring staff in recent years because of budget cuts. A decade ago there were nearly 1,000 full-time employees on the two forests. There are now a little more than 200 full-time employees on the Siskiyou and roughly 250 on the Rogue River forest. "Knowing the quality of folks we have, and having to go through the steps involved in that, it was real difficult," he said. "I think that was the first time most of us in the federal government realized we weren't different than anybody else, that we were affected by decisions made outside our control. "We lost some really good folks. We had to worry about some folks committing suicide because they had lost their jobs. It ruined some marriages. It was a very trying time." Lunn and his wife, Callie, plan to move to Central Oregon after their daughter graduates from Grants Pass High School in June. He intends to wade full-time into work as a facilitator for Creating a Sustainable Future for Fish, Water and People, a nonprofit project based at Washington State University. "We have some major needs to clean up watersheds," he said. "At the same time, we need to try to protect the economies and cultures of our region. I think those things are doable. "But we get all these turf and ego issues between agencies, between interest groups, between individuals," he added. "The purpose of our project is to try to get everyone to work together to solve problems." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA