But what if you went a step farther?

What if you took the entire Forest Service — and its 193 million acres nationwide — out of the Department of Agriculture and instead placed it alongside the National Park Service under the Interior ­Department?

That’s the subject of a new study under way by the ­Government Accountability Office.

The study is being undertaken at the request of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies, said Robin Nazzaro, the GAO’s director of natural resources and environment. That committee is chaired by U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash.

Dicks recently joined with U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, D-Vancouver, and Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray in forming a citizens advisory committee to address future management of Mount St. Helens.

George Behan, Dicks’ spokesman, did not return calls from The Columbian regarding the new GAO study, and the subcommittee would not release a written request for the study from Dicks and the ranking minority member, Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kansas. However, Behan told the Washington Post in a March 25 story that Dicks believes merging the Forest Service into the Interior Department would help shore up the agency’s budget and align agencies with similar missions.

Fit to manage timber?

Not everyone agrees the Forest Service is a good fit with the Interior Department, especially as it relates to selling timber.

“Interior tends to have single­-use perspectives on their land management,” said Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group in Portland. “Whether it’s national parks, the Bureau of Reclamation or wildlife refuges, there tends to be less multiple-use management in Interior.”

Others think the idea is long overdue.

Cliff Ligons retired two years ago as manager of the 110,000-acre Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument — part of the Department of Agriculture — but before then, he worked for the Bureau of Land Management in Spokane under the Department of Interior. He said lumping the agencies together under the Interior Department won’t change anything, other than promoting efficiency.

“The Forest Service could still be the Forest Service,” said Ligons, who now serves as a board member of the environmental group Gifford Pinchot Task Force. “You’re not really taking away the culture of the agency; you’re just realigning it to an organization whose mission is more closely related. The BLM harvests trees, the Forest Service harvests trees.”

Previously considered

The idea of shifting the Forest Service isn’t new.

In fact, the Forest Reserve Act of 1891 identified forest reserves — among them, the present-day Gifford Pinchot National Forest — to be managed under the Interior Department. The modern Forest Service was formed in 1905, when the Transfer Act shifted it to the Department of Agriculture.

Ever since then, various presidential administrations have suggested moving it back.

“This is by no means the first time this idea has been floated,” said Al Sample, president of the Pinchot Institute for Conservation, an environmental policy think tank in Washington, D.C. “It may actually work this time.”

Besides the search for budget efficiencies, Sample cited a fundamental shift in the agency’s direction.

In recent years, the Forest Service has moved away from timber harvesting and embraced a policy of “ecosystem management.” Nationwide, the agency sold only 2.3 billion board feet last year.

“When the national forests were producing 11 or 12 billion board feet of timber a year, it seemed to make good sense to leave it in a department that was all about sustaining crops,” Sample said.

Historically, Sample said, members of Congress have liked it that way because federal timber helped to sustain local economies. That’s why Congress has generally fended off previous attempts to streamline or merge the Forest Service with other land-management agencies.

“All of the previous attempts to move the Forest Service have come from the executive branch,” Sample said. “This is the first time in history the suggestion has come from Congress.”