In the cool green depths of Upper Michigan's 800,000-acre Hiawatha National Forest, amid the fragrance of sweet fern and venerable hemlock, U.S. Forest Ranger Edwin Youngblood, 38, eased his pickup truck along a sand-soft logging road one day last week. He sang out a warning to a gang of pulp cutters to take only the jack pine that rangers had paint-striped for cutting, told them to heave dead branches 50 feet back from the roadway, out of cigarette-throw range.
In the quiet blue haze of North Carolina's high Pisgah National Forest, Ranger Ted Seely,...