The Wonder Of It All ★ The Paradox of Bureaucratic Pride
Breaking the Narrative: Responding to Negative Feedback [Series Entry No. 7]
Doug Gochnour boasts of a 39-year career as a retired National Forest Supervisor near the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, presenting his tenure as a badge of honor and a definitive critique of cattle grazing.
This perspective relies on a highly subjective view of institutional success, one that measures achievement by years accumulated on the payroll rather than the actual condition of the land.
By prioritizing rigid regulatory frameworks over practical, land-based solutions like managed grazing, this style of governance effectively removed a traditional tool for fuel reduction.
The result was an environment where bureaucratic box-checking took precedence over active, adaptive management resulting in the devastating wildfires that has plagued the West for decades.
The reality of that oversight is a legacy of management frameworks that have left forests highly vulnerable to devastation. When institutional outcomes result in systemic failure, decades of service become an indictment of policy rather than a benchmark of achievement.
In contrast to this administrative inertia stand the men and women who live and work directly on the ground.
As true stewards of the land, these individuals are actively protecting and enhancing the environment through the practical, daily application of cattle and sheep grazing, as well as logging.
Through boots-on-the-ground labor and managed livestock grazing, these stewards achieve the genuine land restoration that decades of bureaucratic oversight have failed to deliver.
Do You See What I See?
— Vincent Easley II
Image: Painting by Mia DeLode Artist
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"Session #2 on this 24x20" :) Not sure I have the first post in the hitching rail in the right place but other things are falling into place :) One more session is "likely" to finish it... Top title suggestions are: Spirits, The Wonder Of it All, and, Do You See What I See? :) Which is your pick?"