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Pinchot Partnership
BY JANE BRAXTON LITTLE, JANUARY 2005
"Everyone was tired of the fight. Enough was at stake that people were willing to take risks to solve problems." - Emily Platt, Gifford Pinchot Collaborative Working Group co-founder.
Location: East Lewis and Skamania counties and the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in south-central Washington.
Objective: To promote policies and projects that create quality local jobs and benefit watershed health within the Cispus Adaptive Management Area and surrounding parts of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
Participants: American Forest Resource Council, Cowlitz Tribe, Destination Packwood, Family Forest Foundation, Gifford Pinchot National Forest Headquarters, Gifford Pinchot Task Force, Lewis County Commissioner, Lewis County Economic Development Council, Lumber and Sawmill Workers Local 2676, Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, Retired Loggers Group, Sustainable Northwest, The Wilderness Society, Labor Council, US Fish and Wildlife, Washington State and Thurston/Lewis Central Labor Councils, Yakama Nation
History: The Gifford Pinchot was one of the nation's top producing timber forests in the 1970s and 1980s. Production plummeted in the early 1990s following the listing of the spotted owl as an endangered species and implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan, but revived somewhat after passage of the "salvage logging rider" in 1995. After the rider expired in 1997, environmental groups - including the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance and the Gifford Pinchot Task Force - opposed to continued clearcutting and harvesting old-growth timber effectively shut down the forest by appealing 37 timber sales between 1997 and 2002, more than on any national forest in the Pacific Northwest. In Packwood and other timber-dependent towns, a steady drain of jobs resulted in unemployment as high as 30% and claimed the town doctor and a local elementary school.
At the same time, there was growing realization on all sides that the long-term health and productivity of the forest and of the local economy depended increasingly on proper stewardship of the extensive stands of second-growth trees on the forest. The clear cuts of the 1970s and 1980s and earlier were growing up as dense monocultures that did not support varied wildlife or productive watersheds, or produce high-quality timber.
In response, members of the Gifford Pinchot Task Force and the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance initiated a new conversation with Gifford Pinchot Forest officials and with local communities based on the idea of replacing old-growth timber sales with activities that focused on forest thinning and restoration.
Door-to-door canvassing launched in Randle, Packwood and surrounding communities introduced group members to issues that were important to local leaders - business owners, loggers, firewood cutters and Cowlitz tribal members - and brought home the economic hardships that the communities had endured without the jobs Forest Service timber sales had provided for decades. Mutual recognition of past impacts on both the forest and local communities nurtured a growing commitment to a better way to manage national forests.
Photo courtesy of USDA Forest Service
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In October 2002, members of the Gifford Pinchot Task Force, business owners and labor leaders organized a field tour with Gifford Pinchot Forest officials, timber industry representatives, tribal members, and local community members. Along with the predictable griping and finger-pointing, the two-day tour produced some unexpected confessions. When local woods workers shared the effects of mill closures and job loss on their communities, environmentalists expressed their dismay at this unintended consequence of their efforts. When environmentalists proclaimed their continued commitment to protect old growth and roadless areas, community members admitted they knew the previous rate of logging was not sustainable.
These declarations led the tour participants to meet again to focus on forest restoration and other shared values. Thinning, improving stream channels, and repairing or decommissioning roads could produce both jobs and healthier watersheds, they agreed. This came as a welcome revelation to Forest Service officials, who began tentatively to envision a future with less controversy, maybe even consensus.
The field tour gave birth to the Gifford Pinchot Collaborative Working Group, an alliance of environmentalists and labor, industry, tribal members, and community members. Its first test was the Smooth Juniper sale. Because environmentalists had promised to appeal and litigate over the sale's effects on roadless and riparian areas, Forest Service officials set the Smooth Juniper sale aside without issuing a decision. After the sale spent months on the shelf, a district ranger suggested that the new collaborative develop an alternative to the original sale. The option that the group devised drops some old-growth cutting units entirely and develops variable density-thinning prescriptions for others. Although the group struggled to find a balance between environmentally responsible thinning and economic viability, it came up with a timber sale that it believes will restore forest ecosystems through work contracted to local crews.
Accomplishments: In 2003, the Gifford Pinchot Collaborative Working Group designed two additional restoration projects. One of them uses a stewardship contract to perform pre-commercial thinning in a 50-year-old plantation. The other is a contract to improve roads and habitat for endangered salmon in Iron Creek. The group also worked with the Forest Service on future timber sales to incorporate good science and eliminate elements that might attract appeals and lawsuits. The group's efforts in 2003 contributed to the sale of 20 million board feet of timber on the Gifford Pinchot Forest - four times the volume sold in 2001.
Restoration projects continued in 2004, with funding provided by a local Resource Advisory Council, to decommission over two miles of road and conduct a programmatic environmental analysis of several thousand acres of forest plantations. The plantation review offers Forest Service officials a new planning process that provides a fresh perspective on plantations. It could result in up to three years of project work designed around non-controversial timber sales that help restore forest ecosystems and provide local economic opportunities. In February 2004, over 40 contractors attended a workshop held by the collaborative to educate them about stewardship contracting and other up-coming projects on the national forest.
Photo by Jane Braxton Little
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Along with these tangible accomplishments, the Gifford Pinchot Collaborative Working Group has built a base of trust among its diverse membership. Working through various contract issues has helped the members understand the National Environmental Policy Act and the cumbersome process it imposes on federal agencies. It has also helped them understand one another. Although the members hold many significantly different values, they have learned they can work together in the areas where their interests coincide.
Challenges/constraints: The achievements of the Gifford Pinchot Collaborative, which have come quickly for a fledgling group, may have set a precedent that will be hard to match. Despite its success in bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders, the group's long-term viability depends on its accomplishments on the ground. In addition to demonstrating that its plan of work can restore forest ecosystems, the collaborative must develop a program of work that provides a sustained level of local jobs.
Although the collaborative has discussed the need to increase local jobs by manufacturing products out of the wood removed from the forest, this has not been its focus. Without an emphasis on adding value to raw forest products, the local economy will probably continue to struggle.
The collaborative also must deal with the diminishing numbers and capacity of the local work force and the Forest Service. Both are losing jobs skills - tangible and intangible. And the group itself must weather internal changes as its members move on to other pursuits or leave the area. It cannot take for granted the trust that is one of its finest accomplishments.
The group is blessed with a welcome agreement about what needs to be done, but this consensus may exceed its capacity to make it happen. Keeping all of the stakeholders at the table presents an ongoing challenge, especially as the collaborative pursues the non-profit status that can allow it to hire staff and reduce its dependence on volunteers. As the flush of its early successes fades, it must replace enthusiasm with project work and jobs that demonstrate the original objectives.
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