Director of Legislative Affairs, U.S. Forest Service
Jake Donnay is the Director of Legislative Affairs for the U.S. Forest Service in Washington D.C. He grew up in Sauk Centre, a rural community in Minnesota, alongside the other roughly 3,500 other “Mainstreeters” as they are affectionately named after the town’s most famous author, Sinclair Lewis. Like many kids who grew up in the country he spent a lot of time outdoors. He spent most of his time on a 40 acre woodlot that his parents owned. “We called it The Shack,” he says, but whether there was actually a structure there or not is beside the point for kids interested in spending more time outside than in.
Jake’s not exactly sure how he got interested in studying forestry over anything else, but he made his way to the Twin Cities ready to start something new. “I saw a forestry degree at the U, and I thought, hey, that looks pretty interesting, probably not knowing exactly what it all meant. I somehow started out in CLA and quickly realized, well, this isn’t where the forestry degree is so I’ve gotta transfer.”
The St. Paul campus offered Jake a sense of familiarity, coming from a rural childhood, and he found comfort there while getting the broader university experience in Minneapolis. “You just kind of blend in, at some point, and do your own thing. I was at a point in my life where I was ready to get out in the world and chart my own path. The forestry program was a perfect mix of a small community with access to the resources of a BigTen University”
“I never really figured out a good way to study. I wanted to absorb everything rather than only focusing on ‘what I needed to know’ to pass the exams,” he says, so he logged a lot of hours at the natural resources library. Studying got easier as he progressed through his B.S. in Forest Management, and reached the point where he could focus on the policy side for which he was developing both an aptitude and appetite. “What really stood out for me was the policy side. Drs. Paul Ellefson, Mike Kilgore, and Dorothy Anderson really piqued my interest there.”
Jake figured he’d head to law school after finishing his forest management degree, but things didn’t work out that way. His road, like all roads to the present, is a winding one dotted with crooked markers and sudden turns. He took a position with the North Central Research Station as a research technician. As much as he enjoyed “running around measuring research plots,” he knew forest policy was still his main interest. He headed to Washington D.C. for an internship at the Society of American Foresters (SAF). He saw that most of the professionals in the policy arena had an advanced degree of some kind, so he came back to the University of Minnesota to get a M.S. in Natural Resources Policy and Economics, studying once again with Dr. Mike Kilgore.
Jake used the contacts he had made during his internship with the SAF to land a job with the Pinchot Institute for Conservation before moving on to the National Association of State Foresters. Soon he made his way to the Forest Service where has spent the last 8 years in the legislative affairs unit. “The role we play is a liaison between the Forest Service and Congress.” When someone from the Forest Service testifies before Congress, Jake’s unit helps them prepare. Their goal is to resolve issues before they become problems. “It could be anything from a very complex issue such as mining near the Boundary Waters to explaining why a gate is closed across a Forest Service road to someone’s favorite fishing hole. Usually if Congress is involved, the issue is pretty complex, and our office’s job is to help them understand that complexity.”
Jake sees issues like wildland fire drawing the attention of Congress and future administrations. “The wildfire issue will be with us for a while because of the scale of forests and the treatments necessary to mitigate the fire threat across public and private land. Treating 20 million acres of National Forests nationwide over the next 10 years is the scale and time frame that our research is indicating. That doesn’t include the 30 million acres of other forest ownerships that also would need to be treated, so fire is a big problem and it’s going to take a big investment over time to sort it out. For a long time fire was viewed exclusively as a threat, and generally the strategy was to immediately suppress all fires everywhere—even though we’ve come to recognize fire as a natural part of the ecosystem. Nationally, there are many people who live in and near wildlands as well as millions of acres of overcrowded forests with too many trees per acre. Along with drought conditions particularly in the Western U.S. there is lots of pressure in the system, so when lightning strikes or accidental human ignitions occur, it creates the big fires we see in the headlines year after year.”
Thankfully, Jake will be there to guide that process and help the Forest Service and Congress work together to keep the issues of today from becoming the problems of the future. What’s his best advice to students for the future?
“There are a couple quotes that have stuck with me in my career. The first is ‘if you choose a job you love, you will never have to work a day in your life.’ And the second is ‘the harder you work, the luckier you get.’ I am one of the lucky ones who enjoys my work and it has led to a lot of opportunity in my career. My advice would be for students to really explore and find an area they are passionate about. It will serve you well in your career development.”
Image 1 description: Jake Donnay, a white man with glasses wearing a suit standing in front of an American flag.
Image 2 description: Jake Donnay, a white man with glasses wearing a suit standing next an arrangement of flowers in the U.S. Capital Building.
The Forest Scene newsletter is published biannually in the spring and fall, featuring stories and updates from the Department of Forest Resources. Readers can download issue 26 of Forest Scene as an interactive PDF that is fully tagged and compatible with most screen readers, or read the individual stories here in a web-based format.