society of american foresters western forester · 2015. many landowners in the rural lower middle...

BY EMILY JANE DAVIS

Increasingly, wehear terms like“collaboration,”“collaborative,” and“partnerships”applied to forestmanagement. Whatdo these mean?Broadly speaking, they refer to howmultiple landowners, agencies, andother partners are working together toachieve shared goals. Why and howthis happens depends on the placeand the people. This issue of theWestern Forester examines severalforms of collaboration in forestry, andthe value that foresters can bring tothese efforts.

Common types of collaboration

If you live or work near national for-est land, you may have heard about“forest collaborative” groups. Thesevoluntary stakeholder bodies host dia-logue and provide input to the U.S.Forest Service on a given area of publicland that can range from a smallerwatershed up to the ranger district oreven the entire national forest scale.Collaboratives often have participantsfrom different sectors including localgovernment, the forest industry, envi-ronmental organizations, and otherstate and federal agencies. Facilitatorsor coordinators usually help lead a dis-cussion of everyone’s values and inter-ests, and keep these groups organized.There are often ground rules, policies,and other procedures to guide the con-

versation. Collaborative

groups typicallymeet regularly,review informa-tion from theForest Serviceabout plannedactions, takefield tours, andreview relevantscientific infor-mation. Theymay developwritten or ver-bal “zones ofagreement” thatarticulate thekinds of futuremanagement activities that the groupsupports. Collaboratives do not haveany formal decision-making authorityor jurisdiction on federal lands, so it isultimately the Forest Service’s choicehow to utilize this input. These groupsmay also engage in other activities suchas community outreach and monitor-ing.

There are over 40 forest collabora-tives active in Oregon, Washington, andAlaska, with the largest number inOregon. The Southern WillametteForest Collabora-tive and DeschutesCollaborative Forest Project, both fea-tured in this issue, are examples of thistype of collaboration.

Another form of collaboration is all-lands partnerships. These forest man-agement projects involve multipleorganizations and landowners plan-ning and/or implementing coordinat-ed actions across ownership bound-

aries. Adjacent landowners may plantogether to decide where, when, andhow to manage the forest. Theselandowners might be state or federalagencies, private industrial, privatenonindustrial, Tribal, or other inter-ests. These projects also often involvea range of partners for activities likemapping, inventory, landowner costshare, outreach, and other technicalassistance. It is common to see theExtension Service, soil and water con-servation districts, state and federalagencies, or nonprofit organizationscontributing services to make all-landsprojects function. All-lands efforts canlook very different in different places.

For example, numerous privatefamily forestland owners might coop-erate across their fence lines to collec-tively access resources or programs, as

Collaboration and Partnerships EngageForest Stakeholders

S O C I E T Y O F A M E R I C A N F O R E S T E R S

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January/February/March 2019 Oregon • Washington State • Alaska Societies Volume 64 • Number 1

Western Forester

In This Issue: Collaborative Forest Management

PHOTO COURTESY OF EMILY JANE DAVIS

Stakeholders participate in a coring exercise to compareassumed versus actual tree age and growth rate overtime.

the Ritter Land Management Team hasdone in Grant County, Oregon. A fed-eral agency might seek to coordinatewith the other landowners along itsboundaries to reduce the shared trans-mission of wildfire risk.

Benefits and challenges ofcollaboration

There has been a good deal ofresearch about natural resource col-laboration. Generally, it suggests thatcollaborative efforts can potentiallyproduce land management decisionsthat reflect diverse perspectives andcurrent science. Many also hope thatcollaborating will result in better eco-logical outcomes, and more economicactivity and social wellbeing from for-est management and wood productsprocessing. For private landownersand foresters, participation in a forestcollaborative or all-lands project couldhave additional benefits such as newopportunities to pursue land manage-ment goals, provide input on the larger

landscape, learn more about what dif-ferent agencies and organizations aredoing, and to meet other landownersand partners.

However, collaboration can also bechallenging. Working closely with oth-ers who hold diverse values can posefrustrations. Some personality typesmay find it easier to collaborate thanothers. Collaboration also requirestime investment. Not everyone has thetime or flexibility to attend collabora-

tive meetings or otherwise participatein these processes. For those who areresults-oriented, it may seem thatdesired outcomes do not come soonenough. Some environmental and tim-ber stakeholders in the West haveexpressed concerns about the efficacyof forest collaborative groups onnational forests and have also raisedquestions about the ability of thesegroups to fully represent their perspec-tives. For all-lands projects, it can bedifficult to find and align multiplepartners and sources of funding towork across boundaries in a coordi-nated way.

Contributing factors for functionalcollaboration may include how theeffort itself is organized. For example,neutral facilitation, adequate capacityand resources, and accomplishing“small wins” to demonstrate outcomescan help. In addition, trust among par-ticipants and in the process is thoughtto be essential. If groups or projects

2 WESTERN FORESTER ◆ JANUARY/FEBRUARY/MARCH 2019

Next Issue: Recreation

Collaboration andPartnerships EngageForest Stakeholders(CONTINUED FROM FRONT PAGE)

Western ForesterSociety of American Foresters

4033 S.W. Canyon Rd. • Portland, OR 97221 • 503-224-8046www.nwoffice.forestry.org/northwest-office/western-forester-archive

Editor: Lori Rasor, [email protected] Forester is published four times a year by the Oregon, Washington State,

and Alaska Societies’ SAF Northwest Office

State Society Chairs

Oregon: Meghan Tuttle, 971-273-2461,[email protected]

Washington State: Jenny Knoth, Ph.D.,360-460-2613, [email protected]

Alaska: John Yarie, CF, 907-474-5650,[email protected]

Northwest SAF Board Members

District 1: Tom Hanson, Forestry andArboriculture Consultant, ArborInfo LLC,206-300-9711, [email protected];www.ArborInfo.com

District 2: Mike Cloughesy, Oregon ForestResources Institute, 503-329-1014,[email protected]

Anyone is at liberty to make fair use of the material in this publication. To reprint or make multiple reproduc-tions, permission must be obtained from the editor. Proper notice of copyright and credit to the WesternForester must appear on all copies made. Permission is granted to quote from the Western Forester if thecustomary acknowledgement accompanies the quote.

Other than general editing, the articles appearing in this publication have not been peer reviewed for techni-cal accuracy. The individual authors are primarily responsible for the content and opinions expressed herein.

Please send change of address to:Society of American Foresters, 10100 Laureate Way, Bethesda, MD 20814

[email protected]

PHOTO COURTESY OF EMILY JANE DAVIS

Stakeholders in the Wallowa-Whitman Forest Collaborative discuss plannedforest health restoration treatments during a field tour.

Tom [email protected]

206 300 9711www.arborinfo.com

Providing information about trees and forests

involve government land managers,the role of these entities is particularlyimportant. Their willingness to trulywork with others and try new thingscan be pivotal to what is possible, par-ticularly when they are a majorlandowner in the area.

All-lands projects also may benefitfrom the assistance of “intermediary”organizations or people who can helpnavigate and combine the differentrules, funding, and landowner needsfound across ownerships. This hasbeen essential to the all-lands work ofthe Klamath-Lake Forest HealthPartnership, which readers mayremember from the April/May/June2018 issue of this publication.

Roles for foresters incollaboration

As resource professionals withestablished standards for education,ethical conduct, and experience,trained foresters may offer valuablecontributions to forest collaborationefforts. This may not always be feasiblefor the consulting forester or otherswho do not have latitude to participategiven their job or other commitments.

Depending on their specializations,foresters may bring knowledge of localforest types, operator and mill capaci-ties, and viability of planned activities.This technical information may aid acollaborative group or all-lands partnersin developing more feasible and eco-nomical projects. Foresters also may befamiliar with multiple area landownersand their goals, and could be uniquelyaware of potential opportunities for

working across boundaries. Further,projects involving private landownersmay require data collection, inventory,and mapping that foresters are oftenwell-suited to provide.

The stories in this issue help show indetail what collaborative forest manage-ment can look like on the ground. ◆

Emily Jane Davis is an assistantprofessor and Extension specialist atOregon State University and associatedirector for the Ecosystem WorkforceProgram. She can be reached at 541-520-2688 (cell) or [email protected].

WESTERN FORESTER ◆ JANUARY/FEBRUARY/MARCH 2019 3

To Learn More

For more information on collabora-tion, try the following resources:

A directory of forest collaboratives inthe Pacific Northwest:https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd567241.pdf

Collaboration resources from theNational Forest Foundation:https://www.nationalforests.org/collaboration-resources

Pinchot Institute article about all-lands projects:http://www.pinchot.org/doc/611

http://www.pinchot.org/doc/611

https://www.nationalforests.org/

https://www.nationalforests.org/

https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd567241.pdf

https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd567241.pdf

BY BOB PARKER ANDEMILY JANE DAVIS

orestland ownercollaborative and

cooperative venturesare increasing innumber acrossOregon and theNorthwest becausethey can be valuabletools enabling com-munities withshared interests andgoals, and similarchallenges, to lever-age their combinedstrengths towardattaining those goals.This is the case forthe Ritter LandManagement Team(RLMT), a non-industrial privatelandowner collaborative formed in2015.

Many landowners in the ruralLower Middle Fork John Day RiverBasin of eastern Oregon near the Ritterarea were united in their desire toenhance the health and productivity oftheir lands and sustain their commu-nity and way of life for future genera-

tions. They recognized that to do thisthey needed increased access to tech-nical assistance, funding for steward-ship programs, forest product markets,contractors, invasive weed control,and other services. So when theCommunity for Family Forestlandsapproached the community aboutforming their own collaborative group,they found a receptive audience.

It should be noted here that theword “collaborative” is often used in

various contexts and can be confusingor misleading as to the structure, func-tion, and goals of an organization. Forexample, the collaborative groupsformed by the Forest Service bringtogether various and diverse stake-holders for the purpose of providingmeaningful input to Forest Serviceland management decision processes.In contrast, the Ritter project is agroup of local, non-industrial privatelandowners with many shared inter-ests and goals who hope to expand thescope and scale of their land steward-ship efforts.

The road to a collaborative

The problems confronting theRitter area and other areas of easternOregon came to the attention of theCommittee for Family Forestlands(CFF), which serves to advise the


The Ritter Land Management Team: A CommunityCollaborative

F

Bob Parker

Emily JaneDavis

PHOTO COURTESY OF RITTER LAND MANAGEMENT TEAM

Over 30 landowners in the Lower Middle Fork John Day River Basin joinedtogether to form the Ritter Land Management Team to solve landstewardship challenges.

Norm MichaelsForestry LLC

Forest management tomeet your goals

• Management Plans • Reforestation• Timber inventory • Timber cruising

Over 40 years managing forests inOregon and Washington

[email protected]

Oregon Board of Forestry and the StateForester about family forestland issues.In 2012, the CFF traveled to GrantCounty to study eastern Oregon issuesand composed a white paper of rec-ommendations including collaborativeoptions. A core group of 10 Ritterlandowners and 11 local and regionalorganizations expressed their supportfor the recommendations.

As a result, the CFF, Oregon Depart-ment of Forestry (ODF), Oregon ForestResources Institute (OFRI), and OSUExtension formed a grant writing teamand applied for a USFS State andPrivate Forestry grant for educationand technical assistance, with inputfrom landowners and local organiza-tions. They also applied to theAmerican Forest Foundation for addi-tional funds. Both grant applicationswere successful, providing a total of$310,000.

A project coordinator was hired andhelped the organization develop aStrategic Action Plan and an Opera-tional Charter laying out the mission,vision, and goal statements developedand approved by the landowners. Aconsultant forester was hired to imple-ment a plan for analyzing the forest,range, and water resources and indi-vidual landowner priorities and inter-ests utilizing the Discovery Toolsprocess. This process is a templateused to identify a landowner’s geo-graphical location, their land manage-ment goals and objectives, projecttypes, mapped project locations, andtreatment descriptions. The resultinginformation provided the foundationfor the Strategic Action Plan. As activityincreased, so did landowner interest,and by 2014 the project included 30landowners owning 68,000 acres. InJuly of 2016, the landowners met andapproved formation of the Ritter LandManagement Team (RLMT) as a non-profit corporation.

The RLMT was soon successful insecuring a three-year $135,000 capacitybuilding grant from Meyer MemorialTrust. They were also awarded over$511,000 for the Rush Creek and Waltonrestoration projects from OregonWatershed Enhancement Board(OWEB). These projects includedjuniper removal, noxious weed treat-


PHOTO COURTESY OF BOB PARKER

A stand of open ponderosa pine, previously commercially thinned.

PHOTO COURTESY OF RITTER LAND MANAGEMENT TEAM

Juniper trees felled and awaiting removal.

(CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE)

ments, protecting anadromous fishbearing streams with fencing, andaspen restoration. An additional $59,000was awarded by Business Oregon for ajuniper sawmill feasibility study.

One of the principal goals for theRLMT is that their experiences couldbe used as a model for other commu-nities contemplating forming a collab-orative type of organizational struc-ture. Undoubtedly, the RLMT is fortu-nate to have a cohesive group oflandowners and many supportiveorganizations, resulting in significantaccomplishments in a short time.However, maintaining a sustainedeffort is a difficult task for any organi-zation and RLMT is experiencing theirshare of challenges.

Following are some suggestionsthat may be valuable for others to con-sider before deciding to form a collab-orative.

Lessons learned

Pick the place• It is advantageous for the commu-

nity to have a history of landownerinterrelationships, especially acrosslandowner type boundaries.

• A diversity of landowner types isfine, as long as there arebridges between them andthat there is mutual respectand connection. Ritter has ablend of multigenerationallandowners with deepknowledge of place andextensive hands-on landmanagement experience,and relative newcomers withvery different backgrounds.But there is strong level ofrespect for the skills andideas each group brings tothe community.

Start with early, diversifiedlocal leadership and owner-ship

• Begin engaging multiplelandowners and organiza-tions early to better under-stand them and get theirsense of ownership in theorganization.

• Immediately build anaction-focused, locally basedoperations committee that isaccessible to the group. Notall landowners need or want

to be involved with decision makingand a smaller, diverse and trustedgroup is often preferred.

• Secure a flexible source of basefunding that allows for early on-the-ground projects to show outcomes.Tangible outcomes help engage andmotivate potential members andbuilds trust.

• Provide leadership that is patientwith sorting through grant fund allo-cations and organizational arrange-ments.

Landowner and service providerrelationships

• Help orient and organize landown-ers to understand potentially availableresources and provide a list of possibil-ities.

• Also help orient agency serviceproviders to the landowners. Thisintermediary work continues to bekey. Agency personnel are typicallyvery busy, already overstretched, servelarge areas, and may not have the timeand interest in catering to one sub-area within their region.

• Develop a sense of the communitybefore process development. Proceed-ing with a pre-prescribed organiza-tional plan may lead to perceptions of

a top-down and restrictive effort. • Landowners may be split in their

interests. Some may be most interest-ed in actions that improve the produc-tivity of the land and the economicreturn while others are not. Balancingthose diverse interests is important.

• Expect that landowner interestand focus will fluctuate over time. Partof that may be normal changes inopportunities, markets, or desires butthe organization should be careful tonot over-emphasize projects that maytake energy away from main goalssuch as ground restoration work.

Pay attention to equityBe sensitive to landowner differences

and preferences. There may be big dif-ferences in ownership sizes, incomes,

and willingness or ability toinvest in stewardship. Not allopportunities that a collabora-tive can create are equallyaccessible to all.

• Plan for how the workwill be conducted across thelandscape to ensure moreequitable outcomes, and betransparent with the process.

• Landowner or organiza-tional viewpoints or prioritiesmay vary widely. What oneperson sees as essential maybe of little or no interest tosomeone else.

Foster peer learning and co-production of knowledge

• Prepare interactive learn-ing experiences emphasizingpeer learning over “expert”instruction for the sharing ofknowledge and technicalassistance.

• Provide information thatis flexible and tailored to localneeds. Don’t import “cookiecutter” ready-made informa-tion.


SOURCE: THE RITTER LAND MANAGEMENT TEAM

RLMT Partners

RLMT recognizes the following partner organizationswhose enthusiastic support and assistance have made thecollaborative possible: • Grant Soil and Water Conservation District• North Fork John Day Watershed Council• Monument Soil and Water Conservation District• Natural Resource Conservation Service• Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs• John Day Basin Partnership• Oregon Forest Resources Institute• Oregon Department of Forestry• Oregon State University• Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife• Sustainable Northwest• Oregon Department of Economic Development. • RLMT provides special acknowledgement for OSUExtension Specialist Emily Jane Davis for many hours ofhands-on work guiding the team through their formativeprocess.

To learn more. For more information on the Ritter LandManagement collaborative, visit www.ritterlmt.com.

Process• Establish some process, even if

there is resistance. Formal structuresprovide legal and insurance protection.

• Involvement in economic andmarket endeavors can rally interestbut also carry a great deal of risk.Experience has shown that purchasingland and equipment in particularshould be done cautiously with clearand documented arrangements.

• Lessons learned from public landsforest collaboratives may not be appli-cable and it’s not necessarily useful tocompare these groups.

• Give landowners the chance toname themselves. The term “collabo-ratives” may not reflect their vision ofhow they work together.

Hopefully this information will beof value for communities that are con-sidering forming their own group. TheRitter Land Management Team enjoysmany strengths that created an ener-getic and successful enterprise, andwhich will help sustain their visionand goals for outstanding landscape-scale natural resource stewardshipover the long-term. ◆

Bob Parker is an assistant professorand Extension agent at Oregon StateUniversity (retired). He currently servesas the executive director for the RitterLand Management Team and is theowner and manager of Parker ForestryConsulting LLC. He can be reached at541-403-0480 or [email protected]. Emily Jane Davis is an assis-tant professor and Extension specialistat Oregon State University and associ-ate director for the Ecosystem WorkforceProgram. She can be reached at 541-520-2688 (cell) or [email protected].


Solving the Juniper Problems

When asked whattheir highest stew-ardship prioritiesare, landowners inthe Ritter area pointto juniper encroach-ment as their singlebiggest concern.Juniper trees con-sume huge amountsof water and crowdout more desirableplants, which leadsto reduced rangeand wildlife habitatquality and negativeimpacts to the eco-logical and econom-ic viability of theland. Fixing theproblem isn’t easy. Removing juniper is difficult, and expensive, and there is littlecost-share funding to help or manufacturing facilities to sell juniper logs to.

The RLMT decided owning and operating their own sawmill would effectivelysupport stewardship efforts by utilizing juniper logs created as a byproduct of theirforest and rangeland restoration work. With help received from the WesternJuniper Alliance, Sustainable Northwest, and Business Oregon, in 2016 and 2017RLMT contracted for a business feasibility study that showed a sawmill was aviable option. RLMT is a 501c3 non-profit, so they subsequently formed a for-profitsubsidiary and purchased a portable sawmill with grant funding from BusinessOregon and the Oregon Community Foundation. The mill is now operational andselling lumber through Sustainable Northwest Lumber in Portland, Ore.

However, purchasing a sawmill is only the first step in a sawmilling adventure.Around the country, many collaborative and cooperative landowner organizationshave made similar investments. Some have been successful, but many have not.A landowner cooperative manager once made this suggestion about directlyinvolving the organization in a manufacturing enterprise: “I have three words ofadvice. Do not invest in capital. Do not invest in capital. Do not invest in capital.”In other words—think long and hard before buying machinery.

Just think about the challenges. A new sawmill venture must simultaneously,and successfully, leap numerous hurdles to survive: raw material supply, ade-quate manufacturing location, inventory cost, personnel, log and lumber handlingequipment, milling machinery, and marketing, to name just a few. Failure withone leads to the failure of all.

Many landowner association members bring great energy, enthusiasm, andbackgrounds rich in education, knowledge, and experience. But many do nothave experience or knowledge with running a mill, and/or they do not have abun-dant time to lend to the project.

New business startups are often undercapitalized and have little leeway toaccommodate normal financing and overhead costs, let alone equipment, per-sonnel, or market problems. Access to new capital from lending institutions maybe limited.

Finally, the organizational management and decision-making structure of thegroup may not fit well with the demands of running a business.

Fortunately, the RLMT as a group is strongly motivated to work together tosolve land stewardship challenges. In just a few years’ time they have a pro-duced a good track record of success and there is much room for optimism. Staytuned into the RLMT website (www.ritterlmt.com) for developments.

PHOTO COURTESY OF BOB PARKER

This Timber King portable sawmill is similar to theone purchased by the Ritter Land ManagementTeam. A feasibility study showed at least a 20-yearsupply of juniper in Ritter, and longer if expandedbeyond the area.

FORESTR 4ESTMGR

HOPKINS FORESTRYForest Managers performing herbicideapplication, young stand management,

harvest management, contract compliance,inventories, and forestry/natural

resources education

Dick & Paula Hopkins360-492-5441

[email protected]


BY PAUL WAGNER

he scenic townof Darrington,

Wash., is like manyrural timber townsin the PacificNorthwest. It proud-ly celebrates a legacyof forestry, steward-ship, and the economic benefits asso-ciated with such pursuits. Not surpris-ingly, the local high school mascot is alogger. Darrington and nearby com-munities like Oso, White Horse, andSwede Heaven also have a love fortheir community that is unique.

Never was that more on displaythan in March of 2014 when homes onSteelhead Lane near Oso were hit by amassive mudslide killing dozens ofpeople, destroying 40 homes, and clos-ing off the main highway to town forweeks. With the nation’s eyes on them,locals showed their strength in the faceof adversity with calls of “Oso Strong”and “Darrington Strong.” Help camefrom unfamiliar places includingnational and statewide conservationgroups that worked to preserve andboost that summer’s recreational sea-son for the area.

Finding common ground

Those relationships grew over thefollowing months resulting in a biggerand more lasting partnership—the

Darrington Collaborative. Since July2015, the Darrington Collaborative hasbrought together local communityleaders, environmental organizations,members of the local timber industry,and STEM youth educators to findcommon ground around sustainableforestry.

“The positive response to the slidewas overwhelming and opened upnew partnerships,” said Dan Rankin,mayor of the town of Darrington andowner of a small milling operation.“While we don’t all agree on manyissues, we do all support sustainableforestry and healthier forests.”

The collaborative works with theForest Service, local elected officials,Tribes, and local stakeholders tosimultaneously create a more ecologi-cally resilient forest, provide forincreased sustainable timber harveston the Mount Baker-SnoqualmieNational Forest, deliver economic ben-efits to the community of Darrington,and create educational opportunitiesfor Darrington’s youth through theSTEM program.

“We joined to take advantage of awin-win,” said Tom Uniack, executivedirector of Washington Wild, astatewide conservation organization.“It allowed us to work with the ForestService and local interests to add

capacity to restoration thinning proj-ects consistent with the NorthwestForest Plan, while investing timberreceipts in additional aquatic restora-tion projects and providing local eco-nomic benefits to the community ofDarrington.”

Project development

Everyone agreed that producing asuccessful first project was important.Funds were secured from Pew Trustsand Governor Inslee’s office to con-tract for layout and design of a forestand aquatics restoration project. Ourarea of interest and influence wasdefined as the Darrington SchoolDistrict.

PHOTO COURTESY OF OAK RANKIN

Oak Rankin instructs a student inuse of a data logger for waterquality measurements.

Forest Collaboration Blooms Out of Tragedy

T

PHOTO COURTESY OF TOM UNIACK

Members of the Darrington Collaborative update Congresswoman SuzanDelBene on the progress of their pilot Stewardship Project at Segelsen Ridge.

We provide practical solutions for wildlifeand other natural resource management.

Our goal is to provide you with the highestlevel of service and the most effective

solution to any natural resource concern.

[email protected] • 503-680-7939

WE SPECIALIZE IN:• Developing wildlife programs for

forest certification including SFI and American Tree Farm System

• Wildlife Surveys• GIS Services

Our conservation partners werefamiliar with forester Derek Churchillfrom his work with the OlympicCollaborative and trusted him as acontractor. Local members chose ademonstration location in theDarrington Ranger District AdaptiveManagement Area (Northwest ForestPlan designation). Restoration involvespartial cutting in dense second growthstands to encourage understory devel-opment and structural diversity morelike legacy forests. A healthy, resilientforest has open early seral patches,dense cover patches, trees spaced forgrowth, and abundant ground cover.Developing these multiple attributesfrom single cohort stands is our goal.

Always in mind are opportunitiesfor education. Through the collabora-tive, students from Tesla STEM HighSchool (Redmond, Wash.) andDarrington Middle School participatedin a series of education exchangesinvolving water sampling, forensics,coding, and other skills. Glacier PeakInstitute is working with the collabora-tive to involve students in measuringbaseline conditions and monitoringfuture conditions on collaborativeprojects.

Since the collaborative was impos-ing on a Forest Service workloadalready fully assigned and engaged, weused a Categorical Exclusion (CE) path-way of the National EnvironmentalPolicy Act (NEPA) for forest healthrestoration of 70 acres or less. With aCE, USFS time for input was mini-mized. Surveys for invasive plants, cul-tural resources, and road conditions,along with reports, were done by thecollaborative. Contractors laid out unitsand prepared silvicultural prescrip-tions. USFS NEPA coordinator PhyllisReed volunteered countless hours tokeep requirements on track and makesure our work would result in a signedDecision Notice to proceed.

Stewardship Authority was used inoffering the project. Aquatic restora-tion, a goal of the collaborative, wasachieved by replacing or removinginadequate or damaged culverts, andimproving water flows and road sur-facing causing erosion and sediment.A road heavily used by hikers, rockclimbers, and others was chosen sothe project also supported Darringtonarea recreation.

Pilot project Segelsen 1.0 was sold26 months after the DarringtonCollaborative was formed. It generated12,293 tons of saw logs and improvedaquatic conditions along six miles ofroad. Treatment in the stand will becompleted by October 15 of this yearwhen the contract terminates.

Working for success

Technology played a role in ourability to execute rapidly. GIS shouldbe part of most foresters’ tool kit. Weused USFS layers for stand year of ori-gin, roads, and topography; and NAIP2017 color imagery and LiDAR bareearth imagery to select our projectarea, map roads and streams, and lay-out draft unit boundaries. GPS wasused to map thin, leave, and specialareas. Dropbox file service was used toupdate and distribute project files.GPS was also used in road surveys tomap culverts, streams, and points ofinterest, and to build a data table ofitems and condition. A UAV flight overSegelsen 1.0 is planned to show thediversity created by a restoration silvi-cultural prescription. The imagery willbe used for monitoring, education,and promotion.

Another key to success is knowledgeof laws and policy that pertain to USFSactivities. We continue with CE proj-ects to provide additional output ben-efiting the Darrington area. To be effi-cient we are focused on law require-ments and policy direction rather thanprocedures that became cumbersomepolicy. We are in the process of settingup a meeting with the new regionalforester for Region 6 to clarify andstreamline what we do in the field.

There are opportunities forimprovement and the collaborativewill adapt as we learn. One example isin communicating to the local com-munity. After receiving feedback, westarted updating our website more fre-quently and reporting to a monthlylocal community group meeting tokeep them updated on projects.

One original local member of thecollaborative stepped down and themanager of Hampton Lumber’sDarrington sawmill came onboard.Hampton has also hired a Darrington-based coordinator for other forest col-laboratives they are involved in.

A grant received from Washington

State DNR for landscape restorationefforts will allow us to contract for pro-viding condition surveys and reportsfor an Environmental Analysis (EA) ofthe North Fork Stillaguamish Water-shed, which should reduce the timeand expense of a USFS prepared EA.With an EA, we can do larger projectsthan under a CE, and it also creates anopportunity to use Good NeighborAuthority and involve the DNR. Sevenadditional project areas have beenidentified. Layout is underway on twoof them as 70-acre CEs and an addi-tional two will be larger projects undera N. Fork Stillaguamish EA.

Optimism is our path forward; onecan complain about how things are orfigure a way to get things done. ◆

Paul Wagner, an SAF member and lastyear’s WSSAF chair, is president ofAtterbury Consultants, Inc. He can bereached at [email protected] or206-499-0080. Tom Uniack, executivedirector of Washington Wild, also con-tributed to this article.


DarringtonCollaborative Members

Voting MembersDan Rankin, Darrington MayorPaul Wagner, Washington State

Society of American Foresters Steve Skaglund, Three Rivers

Contract LoggingTim Johnson, Hampton Darrington

Lumber MillTom Uniack, Washington WildMegan Birzell, The Wilderness SocietyThomas O’Keefe, Ph.D., American

WhitewaterJon Owen, The Pew Charitable TrustsOak Rankin, Glacier Peak InstituteMike Town, Tesla STEM High School

Non-Voting MembersJulia Terlinchamp, Office of WA

Governor Jay InsleeShawn Bills, Office of Senator

Patty Murray Kelly Marquadt, Office of

Congresswoman Suzan DelBene

ContractorPaul Fischer, Resilient Forestry

BY PETE CALIGIURI ANDED KEITH

ver the past 10or more years,

forest collaborativegroups have prolifer-ated across thePacific Northwest toaddress some of themost pressing forestand watershedrestoration and man-agement challengeswe face. Restorationefforts in dry, fire-adapted forests is agood example of onesuch challenge fac-ing forest collabora-tives in southwest,central, and eastern Oregon.

Analysis by The Nature Conservancyand U.S. Forest Service demonstratedthe immense scale of active forestrestoration needed across the fire-adapted forests in Oregon; more than6.5 million acres (nearly 4 million ofwhich are on federal forestland) are inneed of active restoration, includingthe use of prescribed fire to increase

forest resilience to natural disturbancesand reduce wildfire risk to local com-munities.

Beyond the sheer challenge ofrestoration at the scale commensuratewith the ecological need is the chal-lenge of re-introducing prescribed firein forest types that depend upon thiscritical natural process but haven’tseen fire in nearly a century. Moreover,doing so in the context of today’shuman-dominated landscapes, wheremultiple ecological, economic, and

social values (think recreation, forestresilience, aesthetics, wildlife, timber,community wildfire protection, andmore) are layered on every acre of ourforests, means that collaboration isrequired to find solutions that willmeet these varying needs.

In central Oregon, local collabora-tive stakeholders and partners havestepped up to take on this challenge.And while we recognize that restora-tion in our dry fire-adapted foresttypes involves multiple steps, includ-ing commercial and non-commercialthinning, brush mowing, and pre-scribed fire, the final step of restoringfire is all too frequently the activitythat is not being completed.

In response, over the past two yearsstakeholders representing tribal, state,and federal land managers, local elect-ed officials, landowners, recreationgroups, conservation and environ-mental organizations, scientists, pri-vate citizens, loggers, and forest prod-ucts industry have been workingtogether to address the challenges andopportunities to increase the use ofprescribed fire as a critical step in thelarger forest restoration process.

We started by engaging local, region-al, and national experts to betterunderstand the ecological, economic,and social dimensions of our currentprescribed fire paradigm. We thenused this information to advance astrategy that balances stakeholder val-


PHOTO COURTESY OF ALLY STEINMETZ

Collaborative stakeholders and partners at work on the Deschutes NationalForest.

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ues in our fire-adapted forests, whilealso addressing two important barriersthat are limiting the use of prescribedfire at a meaningful scale on theDeschutes National Forest. Thoseidentified barriers were state-level pre-scribed fire smoke management regu-lations and community social licensefor prescribed burning.

Addressing challenges andopportunities to prescribedburning

On the first issue, local collaborativemembers played a central role inbuilding a coalition of collaborativemembers and partners across the stateworking together to envision a moreholistic approach to prescribed fire

smoke management. In this case, thediversity of stakeholders driving thisprocess translated into a network ofhighly effective and trusted messen-gers advancing proactive solutionswith a coordinated, unified voice dur-ing the statewide Smoke ManagementPlan Review Process led by the OregonDepartment of Forestry and Depart-ment of Environmental Quality.

It was through this collaborativecoordination effort that novelapproaches to proactive communica-tions and community outreach strate-gies surrounding prescribed fire,smoke, and public health began toemerge.

In central Oregon, this translatedinto an effort to expand our already

“big-tent approach” to collaborationby inviting new partners from ourregion to join the effort. This includedlaunching a new collaborative groupwith a range of “non-traditional” part-ners, such as county health services,air quality regulators, and publichealth experts, many of whom cametogether for the first time to workalongside forest and fire managers todiscuss challenges and opportunitiesrelated to prescribed burning, smoke,air quality, and public health. Theeffort culminated in the creation of a


PHOTOS COURTESY OF PETE CALIGIURI

Comparison between prescribed (top) and wildfire smoke from the samevantage point along Highway 20 traveling toward Sisters, Ore.

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new online community outreach plat-form (www.centraloregonfire.org) anda variety of communication tools toensure that timely, relevant informa-tion regarding fire (prescribed andwildfire), air quality, and public healthmessages reach the public. Our goalswere to provide simple steps that indi-viduals (and particularly smoke-vulnerable populations) can follow toreduce their exposure to smoke, whilesimultaneously providing the informa-tion and advance notice of prescribedfires and potential smoke impacts tomaintain and steadily increase thesocial license needed to scale up pre-scribed fire treatments over time.

Our collaborative groups have alsoinvested significant time, money, andresources in a variety of communityoutreach and engagement strategiesall aimed at increasing communitysocial license for prescribed fire.

In a fire-adapted forest landscapewith nearly 200,000 neighbors andmillions of visitors annually, commu-nity engagement is not optional. Andin the context of prescribed fire, wherethe impacts include trail and road clo-sures, aesthetic changes (albeit tempo-rary), and some smoke in the air forshort-durations in the spring and fall,social license becomes an absoluteimperative and a major limiting factoron the widespread use and acceptanceof prescribed fire.

To that end, the collaborative groupand its stakeholders and partner

organizations are instrumental to oursuccessful community engagementefforts. Each individual on the collabo-rative is a gateway and trusted mem-ber to different segments of the largerpublic and the communities of centralOregon. And as such, they are key toeffective communication that trans-lates into growing awareness of therisks to our forests and communities,understanding of the need for forestrestoration, and support for increasedtreatments, such as prescribed fire,even when it means a beloved trail isclosed for two weeks or we wake up toa little smoke in the air each spring.

Looking forward

We’ve made great progress toimprove the enabling conditions forprescribed fire use in central Oregon.But our work is far from done. Whilewe have made great strides in therealm of prescribed fire smoke man-agement and social license for pre-scribed burning, we recognize thereare other social, cultural, legal, finan-cial, and operational barriers to wide-spread prescribed fire use and accept-ance that warrant focused attention.

With more than 450,000 acres of fire-adapted forest in need of active restora-tion on the Deschutes National Forestalone, a county-wide population pro-jected to reach nearly 250,000 by 2025,and five of the top ten most wildfire-exposed communities in Oregon, wealso know the solutions will not beeasy. Yet thanks to our collaborativeapproach, and the diversity of stake-holders and partners that are workingtogether toward a common vision forhealthy and resilient fire-adaptedforests and fire-adapted communities,we are well positioned as we look for-ward to the challenges ahead. ◆

Pete Caligiuri is a forest ecologist forThe Nature Conservancy and Ed Keithis county forester for Deschutes Countyin Bend, Ore. Both SAF members, Petecan be reached at [email protected] Ed at [email protected].


PHOTO COURTESY OF PETE CALIGIURI

Restoring low-intensity, prescribed fire to fire-adapted ponderosa pineforests on the Sisters Ranger District following thinning and mowing treat-ments as part of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Project.

BY MIKE BRINKLEY AND TIM BAILEY

he RigdonCollaborative

LandscapeRestoration projectcovers 105,000 acresin the upperWillamette Riverwatershed. TheWillamette NationalForest, Middle ForkRanger District(MFRD), and theSouthern WillametteForest Collaborative(SWFC) have workedside by side for twoyears to develop a“restoration blue-print” called theRigdon Landscape Analysis. By work-ing together, the Forest Service andpartners are hoping to implement upto three NEPA projects that improveforest resilience to disturbance, restoreunique habitats, and protect privateinholdings while providing socioeco-nomic benefits.

A land of meadows andsavannah

The Rigdon area is located at theheadwaters of the Willamette River onthe west slope of Oregon’s Cascademountains. It is named for Stephenand Zilphia Rigdon who ran a wagonroad stage stop and way station in the19th century. The landscape includes26,000 acres of dry, mixed coniferhabitat, a vegetation type that is cur-rently at the northern edge of its natu-ral range. Climate and fire, along with

prescribed fire maintained by NativeAmericans, resulted in open, mixedconifer forests of Douglas-fir, pon-derosa pine, incense cedar, sugar pine,and Oregon white oak. Trees werewidely spaced and the ground vegeta-tion was composed of grasses, wild-flowers, and scattered shrubs.

Cold, clear, springs fed tributariesand historically provided spawninghabitat for Chinook salmon and bulltrout. Wide floodplains of multiplechannels were once common, espe-cially near confluences, and braidedstreams provided for high-qualityspawning and rearing habitat.

A history of fire suppressionand logging

The Rigdon landscape has beendramatically altered by fire suppres-sion and logging. One-hundred yearsof fire suppression resulted in thedevelopment of a dense secondarycanopy of primarily Douglas-fir in themixed conifer forests. Pine and oaksavannahs have become closed-canopy forests with sparse understoryvegetation, resulting in the loss ofspecies diversity such as elk and deerpopulations that have little forage veg-etation as open forests close.

The construction of Hills Creekdam extirpated the salmon, and bulltrout were removed in favor of other

fish species. Vegetation and riparianforest harvesting changed streamchannels and increased the tempera-ture of streams. Road construction andmisguided attempts to promote fishpassage by removing natural debrisjams resulted in additional loss of


PHOTO COURTESY OF SARAH ALTEMUS-POPE

A culturally modified ponderosapine tree in the mixed conifer foresttype that has experienced profoundchanges over the last 100 years dueto fire suppression and ongoingforest succession. One hundredyears ago it could have beentypified as an open grassy savannacontaining scattered older Douglas-fir, ponderosa pine, and Oregonwhite oak.

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spawning and rearing habitat. Overall,the landscape has lost diversity andresiliency that is important in the faceof wildfire and climate change.

Restoring the land

Numerous agency directives existfor conserving and restoring prairie,oak, dry mixed conifer, and Douglas-fir habitats that have been altered byfire suppression and other manage-ment activities. Restoration of theRigdon landscape provides an impor-tant opportunity to fulfill these goals,and to make these overly dense forestsmore resilient in the face of wildfire,insect outbreaks, and future climatechange.

Several significant restorationprojects have already been completed.In 2010, the Jims Creek SavannaRestoration Stewardship projectrestored 450 acres of oak savanna andpine forest in the heart of the Rigdonarea. This collaborative stewardshippilot project removed Douglas-fir treesless than 24 inches, leaving maturemixed pine and Oregon white oak.Post-harvest, the project area wentfrom 160 trees per acre to 20 trees peracre with a lush and varied understoryof native forbs and grasses that areattractive to many wildlife species,including big game. Ground fuels werereduced by prescribed burning.Oregon white oaks have sprouted andare now present throughout the proj-ect. Overall, the project preserved cul-

tural resources, restored sensitive habi-tats, provided economic benefits to thesurrounding community, and is a suc-cessful template for future projects.

In 2017, the Middle Fork WillametteWatershed Council oversaw a mile-long floodplain restoration project thatremoved road berms from previouslogging that had channelized StaleyCreek. Root wads and large tree stemswere deposited in the new channels toprovide complex aquatic habitat. Afterjust one year, native riparian vegeta-tion has returned and recent aquaticsurveys have found repopulation ofnative fish, including bull trout.

Rigdon Landscape Analysis

In 2017, the Forest Service formedthe Rigdon interdisciplinary teamcomprised of multiple resource spe-cialists to undergo a FacilitatedLandscape Analysis Design process tounderstand the ecological systems andidentify target landscape objectives.The final Rigdon Landscape Analysis(RLA) report identified landscape ele-ments, ecosystem flows, and desired

target landscape objectives. About half of the dry mixed conifer

forest in the Rigdon area is now com-posed of plantations and naturalstands of 150 to 300 stems per acre,which is significantly denser com-pared to the historic average of five to25 large trees per acre. Most standsnow consist primarily of 100- to 150-year-old Douglas-fir, although abouthalf of the savanna legacy trees stillexist. Target vegetation landscape pat-terns for mixed conifer forests call foropen late seral forest with scatteredpatches of other seral stages. Mechani-cal treatments such as density reduc-tion in mature stands and plantations,revegetation of native grasses, forbs,and oaks, and prescribed burning canrestore much of the mixed conifer for-est, promote resiliency and increasebiodiversity. Post treatment, this land-scape would be maintained in opencondition with a frequent fire interval.

As part of the RLA process, theForest Service welcomed input fromthe public. Over two years, the SWFCRigdon Collaboration Committee



The South slope of Warner Mountain in the Rigdon project area includes alarge portion of mixed conifer forest. The Jim’s creek pilot project is the moreopen timbered area located in the lower left. Upslope is the Moon point spe-cial interest area that contains many small meadows and sensitive habitats.

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(RCC) facilitated seven learning ses-sions, eight field trips, and multipleroundtable discussions between inter-disciplinary team and RCC members.The RCC developed landscape-levelzones of agreement to share with theinterdisciplinary team to consider indrafting the Rigdon LandscapeAnalysis and to develop future pro-posed management actions.

The RCC recognizes that the “past,more open and grassy forest condi-tions that were maintained by the his-toric frequent fire regime will be moreresilient to the effects of wildfire andinsect outbreaks in the face of a pro-jected warming climate.” The RCCworked in subcommittees to draft spe-cific restoration goals to share with theForest Service:

• Landscape conditions should berestored in order to provide for diversehabitats, structure of streams and veg-etation, wildlife, and landscaperesilience in the face of wildfire and awarming climate.

• Vegetation and wildlife habitatshould be restored to previous, moreopen conditions in the dry mixedconifer where the vegetation structure,species abundance, forest density,and/or the fire regime have beenaltered.

• Streams and waterways should bemaintained or restored to a conditionwhere natural processes and functionprovide the habitat and water qualityconditions necessary for all nativespecies and life stages.

• Landscape management shouldtake into consideration economicopportunities and social and culturalvalues, such as recreation access, sce-nic views, healthy, abundant wildlife,community safety, and overall qualityof life.

Implementing restorationprojects

The Rigdon interdisciplinary teamis proceeding through NEPA require-ments with the goal to begin imple-mentation in 2021 and the years after-ward. The SWFC plans to stay engagedto provide specific project level zonesof agreement if needed. As projectsmove into the implementation phase,the SWFC will stay engaged through avariety of stewardship authority toolsto help fund future restoration work.

More about the Rigdon CollaborativeLandscape Project and updates areavailable at the SWFC website south-willamette.wixsite.com/swfc/rigdon. ◆

Mike Brinkley is a retired scientist witha focus on healthy forests and water-sheds. He is an active member of theSouthern Willamette Forest Collabora-tive, representing the Many Riverschapter of the Sierra Club, interested inplanning restoration in the Rigdon

landscape. Tim Bailey received his B.S.in Forestry from Southern IllinoisUniversity in 1974. From 1980 to 2014he served as a forester, project planner,and silviculturist on the Middle ForkRanger District of the WillametteNational Forest. He was working on therestoration of the Rigdon landscapewhen he retired and continues to do sowith the Southern Willamette ForestCollaborative.



Restored Staley Creek Floodplain at old bridge site after contractors removethe berms, filled in the scoured-out channels, and placed hundreds of piecesof large wood in the stream and on the floodplain. The new, dynamic land-scape will dampen flood events, raise the water table, and increase floodwater storage.

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o confrontchanging

climate, wildfire risks,and smoke, collabo-ratives are leading anambitious effort torestore resilience tothe dry forests andnearby communitiesof the Rogue RiverBasin of southernOregon. By engagingcommunity ondeeply held values,broadening partner-ships, and developinga science-based riskassessment andstrategy, collaboratives are assistingcommunity and commerce in retoolingtheir cultural relationship with the for-est landscape. These efforts have cen-tered on the U.S. Department ofAgriculture Rogue River—SiskiyouNational Forest (RRS) and the U.S.Department of Interior MedfordDistrict Bureau of Land Management(MBLM) and are extending to providean all-lands approach to address theshared risks across public and privateownership.

Wildfire is intrinsic to NorthAmerican forests, yet fire impacts areincreasing due to climate change actingon homogenized landscapes of overlydense forests with altered forest com-position formed by a century of fireexclusion and extractive logging. RogueBasin forests bridge diverse ecosystemsunder a Mediterranean climate, result-ing in productive dry, mixed-coniferforests featuring diverse native hard-woods and shrubs. Consistent with dryforests of nearby regions, eight-yearfire-return intervals historically pre-vailed, with fires common in the springand fall—in addition to summer. Thepattern began fading in the 1850s withEuro-American settlement and the

forced removal of native Americanswho had thrived with extensive fire use.

In the contemporary checkerboardof public and private lands withsprawling communities at risk, firesincreasingly threaten natural habitatsand human communities—despiteaggressive fire suppression. Arisingwith the alarm over regional smokeand fire impacts, a ground-swell ofsupport has grown for proactive, eco-logical thinning and controlled burn-ing. Consecutive summers with multi-ple fires and long periods of unhealthyair threaten long-term human health,summer tourism-based business, thereal-estate market, and the broadereconomy, amplifying ongoing dia-logue and the urgency to act.

The conceptual framing for collabo-rative restorative forestry work in theRogue Basin is based in forest and firescience and an approach guided bythe National Cohesive Wildland FireManagement Strategy, a nationalvision for wildland fire management.Promoting a view of shared risk man-agement among all stakeholders andacross all landscapes, the strategy artic-ulates the need for meaningful progresstoward three goals: 1) resilient land-scapes; 2) fire-adapted communities;and 3) safe and effective wildfireresponse.

As landscape-scale collaborative

projects have developed in the RogueBasin, experience, learning, scope, andpartnership depth have increased(Table 1).

The Ashland Forest ResiliencyStewardship Project (AFR) focused onthe City of Ashland’s at-risk municipalwatershed located on the RRS. TheUSDI Secretarial Applegate Pilot on theMBLM demonstrated ecologicalforestry concepts developed by profes-sors Jerry Franklin and Norm Johnsonof the University of Washington andOregon State University, respectively,and with community engagement ledby the Applegate Partnership and thebudding Southern Oregon ForestRestoration Collaborative (SOFRC), anon-profit with a board of directors andcollaborative participants.

Meanwhile, the Ashland projectexpanded to an all-lands framing in theAshland Forest All-lands RestorationInitiative (AFARI) with support of theJoint Chiefs Landscape RestorationProgram to complete work on the feder-al AFR footprint, and thousands of pri-vate non-industrial lands fundedthrough the USDA Natural ResourcesConservation Service and significantco-investments from the OregonWatershed Enhancement Board.

Sophisticated community engage-ment is a hallmark of these collabora-tive projects. In Ashland, the ongoing

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE NATURE CONSERVANCY (DARREN BORGIAS)

Kerry Metlen points out elements of ecological thinning for the AshlandForest Resiliency implementation review team.


Transforming our Relationships with Forest andFire—Scaling Up from Ashland Watershed to theRogue Basin

T

Darren Borgias

Kerry Metlen

AFARI reflects the City of Ashland’sdeep historical engagement in water-shed protection. When the RRS plansfor watershed thinning of commercialsized trees in the 1990s met withprotests, the city involved the commu-nity and concerned stakeholders inconsidering restorative commercialthinning on its municipal lands in thewatershed—and successfully complet-ed the project, building public trust inactive, restorative management. By2005 the RRS, using a provision of theHealthy Forest Restoration Act, invitedthe City to develop a community alter-native to protect the watershed andcommunity from severe fire whilerestoring forest resilience. The RRSembraced the community design inthe final AFR Stewardship Project, andthe City endorsed it.

Success of AFR and the AFARI buildson collaborative relationships enabledby shared investment, understanding,and risk formalized in a 10-year MasterStewardship Agreement among theRRS, the City, Lomakatsi RestorationProject (LRP)—a local non-profit—andThe Nature Conservancy (TNC).

As the land manager, the RRS is acritical partner and conduit for corefunding. The City leads communityengagement and brings experiencemanaging its adjacent land. LRP bringsfoundational experience implementingprojects under Stewardship Authoritywith a flexibly-scaled, skilled ecological-forestry workforce, integrating forestrycontractors and workforce develop-ment, along with engaging diverseyouth and tribal interests. The NatureConservancy adds science engagementand a conservation perspective, leadingmultiparty monitoring for transparencyand accountability. An ImplementationReview Team provides external reviewby staff from the Oregon StateUniversity Extension Service, the envi-ronmental advocate Klamath SiskiyouWildlands, and the SOFRC.

Under Stewardship Authority,retained receipts from the 14 mmbfrestoration byproduct timber sold onAFR has been rolled back into the proj-ect, now nearly completed. With ongo-ing engagement, the community hasdeveloped a sense of ownership andpride in their accomplishment. And theCity has provided for ongoing mainte-nance using controlled burning by

establishing a water billassessment that generates$175,000 annually.

Modeling a 20-yearproject

To help bring such proj-ects to a meaningful region-al scale, the SOFRC andpartners layered conceptualand design elements of thefoundational collaborativeprojects into modeling a20-year Rogue BasinCohesive ForestRestoration Strategy. These early proj-ects demonstrated the integration ofvalues through landscape design withstrategic treatment placement and var-ied prescriptions to address the keyshifts in forest composition, structure,and wildfire risk. The projects alsogenerate timber as a byproduct ofrestorative forestry, while supportingthe recovery of the northern spottedowl. The Rogue Strategy articulates aprincipled and comprehensiveapproach to restoring forest and com-munity resilience to fire across the 4.6-million-acre basin. Completed in 2017,the Rogue Strategy articulates a collab-orative vision for a 1.1 million acre, 20-year program of work that focuses onthinning and controlled burning. Aquantitative wildfire-risk assessment isat the core of the Rogue Strategy, con-necting complementary partnersfocused on landscape resilience, fire-adapted communities, and safe andeffective wildfire response.

The Rogue Strategy provides data,

tools, and approaches to integratingwildfire risk reduction with endan-gered species recovery and climateadaptation. It identifies forests to pro-tect intact, then uses optimizationsoftware to place ecological thinningand controlled burning where accessi-ble and appropriate. The outputsaccount for forest density reduction,reduced wildfire risk, and resultingtimber revenue and jobs for threealternative scenarios. The all-landsscenario, mirroring the AFARI project,reduces wildfire risk to human com-munities and old growth habitats by50%, while annually delivering 83 mil-lion board feet of federal timber, therestoration byproduct, to local mills.

Leveraging funding andengagement

Proactively treating 1.1 million acresover 20 years at a cost of $600 million isdaunting, requiring co-investmenttoward shared landscape-scale objec-

PHOTO COURTESY OF ASHLAND FOREST RESILIENCY

Ashland Forest Resiliency partners, with one of >3,000 log truck loads ofrestoration by-product timber sold as part of the Ashland Forest ResiliencyStewardship Project.

PHOTO COURTESY OF LOMAKATSI RESTORATION PROJECT (JOSH BUDZIAK)

Lomakatsi sawyer fells young Douglas-firencroaching on much older ponderosa pine.




tives. Modeling this co-investment,SOFRC, in partnership with eight coremember organizations, has successful-ly secured funding from OWEB andmatch from partners to launch the newRogue Forest Restoration Initiative(RFRI). The $6 million/six year pledges

from OWEB, backed with $3.8 millionin match from an expanded group ofpartners, will touch down with treat-ment implementation and communityengagement on six projects distrib-uted across the Rogue Basin.Successive implementation of staged

projects distributed among manage-ment units will seed the approach indifferent communities. RFRI will lever-age engagement on these initial proj-ects to catalyze further understandingand support of new co-investments toexpand and integrate across the basin.

To succeed, the RFRI Partnershipmust become a trusted institution withwide and diverse affiliations. Federalland treatments alone require a five-foldincrease in the treatment schedule andfunding. Considering the possible andpotentially avoided costs (Californiaspent $15 billion in fire remediation andrecovery from the 2018 fires), the invest-ment in the Rogue Strategy appearswise. Industrial forest owners, the insur-ance industry, water utility fee payers,tribes, and county government couldpotentially become co-investors. Smokeimpacts have spread the risk from local-ized fire-vulnerable locations to broadcommunities now energized to proac-tively manage forest landscapes. To ouradvantage in going to scale, the regionretains a viable timber industry, a grow-ing and highly-trained workforce, andsignificant economic activity.

Collaboratives are manifesting aproactive, middle way past historicaltension between resource use andconservation, sidestepping a falsedichotomy between the needs of peo-ple and nature. Fortunately, broadpublic and partner support for proac-tive, restorative mechanical treatmentswith controlled burning has beenbuoyed by successful projects and thepositive news coverage about theSOFRC’s Rogue Strategy. The AFARIand RFRI are grounded in best scienceand collaborative partnerships to inte-grate objectives and deliver long-termlandscape-scale solutions. The RogueStrategy provides a foundation for ashared landscape vision to transformssociety’s reactive stance toward wild-fire to proactively and positivelyengaging with fire. ◆

Darren Borgias is Southwest OregonForest Project Director for The NatureConservancy, Ashland. He can bereached at [email protected] or 541-708-4989. Kerry Metlen, an SAF mem-ber, is a forest ecologist with The NatureConservancy, Ashland. He can bereached at [email protected].

Table 1: Prominent collaborative forest stewardship efforts in theRogue Basin. Analyzed acres (ac) are of the entire landscape, fromwhich fewer acres are planned or funded for treatment (Trt). Core part-ners were involved in project design, formal agreements and/or con-tributed substantial funding or match. Supportive partners providedreview. Participating partners were engaged in workshops or fieldtours that informed project development and were only included if theywere Core or Supporting partners in a separate project.

AshlandForest

Resiliency

ApplegatePilot

AshlandForest

All landsRestoration

RogueForest

RestorationInitiative

Rogue BasinCohesive

ForestRestoration

Strategy

*AP= Applegate Partnership; COA=City of Ashland; JACK=Jackson County; JOSE=JosephineCounty; JSWCD=Jackson Soil and Water Conservation District; KBO=Klamath BirdObservatory; KSWILD=Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands; LRP=Lomakatsi Restoration Project;MBLM=Medford District Bureau of Land Management; NRCS=Natural Resource ConservationService; ODF=Oregon Department of Forestry; OSUEX=Oregon State University ExtensionService; OWEB=Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board; RRS=Rogue River-SiskiyouNational Forest; RVFC=Rogue Valley Fire Chiefs; SOFRC=Southern Oregon ForestRestoration Collaborative; SOU=Southern Oregon University; TNC=The Nature Conservancy;USFWS=US Fish and Wildlife Service; UW=University of Washington

Timeline 2004-2020 2010-2013 2004-2025 2019-2025 2017-2037Analyzed Ac 22,000 80,000 53,000 TBD 4,600,000Planned Trt Ac 7,600 890 16,600 77,800 1,100,000Funded Trt Ac 7,600 559 16,600 5,300 Developing

Organizations Partner TypeAP — Core — Participant ParticipantCOA Core — Core — SupportiveJACK — Core — — CoreJOSE — — — — CoreJSWCD — — Core Supportive —KBO Supportive Supportive Supportive Core ParticipantKSWILD Supportive Supportive Supportive — ParticipantLRP Core — Core Core CoreMBLM — Core Participant Core CoreNRCS Supportive Core Core Supportive ParticipantODF — Participant Supportive Core CoreOSU — Core — — —OSUEX Supportive Core Supportive Core CoreOWEB — — Core Core —RRS Core Participant Core Core CoreRVFC — — — Supportive SupportiveSOFRC Supportive Core Supportive Core CoreSOU Supportive Supportive Supportive — —TNC Core Participant Core Core CoreUSFWS Core Core Supportive Supportive CoreUW — Core — — —


Starker Lecture Series: CoquilleTribal Forestry; Seeing the Forestthrough a Cultural Lens, April 10,LaSells Stewart Center, Corvallis, OR.Contact: starkerlectures.forestry.oregon-state.edu/.

Slope Stability and LandslideManagement in the PacificNorthwest, April 11-12, Springfield, OR.Contact: WFCA.

Oregon SAF annual meeting,April 17-19, Boulder Falls Inn, Lebanon,OR. Contact: www.oregon-forestry.org/oregon.

Alaska SAF annual meeting,April 24-26, Anchorage, AK. Contact:Trevor Dobell-Carlsson, [email protected].

Forest Biomass and theBioeconomy, April 25, Vancouver, WA.Contact: WFCA.

World Forest Institute—2019Fellows Community Reception,April 25, Discovery Museum, WorldForestry Center, Portland, OR. Contact:www.worldforestry.org/event/.

2019 Scaling for Non-Scalers,April 30, Wilsonville, OR. Contact: WFCA.

The Hagenstein Lectures SpecialEvent—On Fire: A Conversationwith John Maclean, May 2, MillerHall, World Forestry Center, Portland, OR.Contact: www.hagensteinlectures.org/special-events.

Washington Farm ForestryAssociation annual meeting,May 2-4, Best Western Silverdale BeachHotel, Silverdale, WA. Contact:www.wafarmforestry.com.

Fundamentals and Best Practicesfor Forest Inventories, May 7,Olympia, WA. Contact: WFCA.

OSAF Foundation Fellows Luncheon,May 22, Forestry Club Cabin-PeavyArboretum. Contact: Melinda Olson,503-224-8046, [email protected].

CESCL Erosion and SedimentControl Lead Training, June 17-18,Portland, OR. Contact: NWETC.

Oregon Small WoodlandsAssociation annual meeting, June20-22, Corvallis, OR. Contact: OSWA,www.oswa.org/blog/oswa-annual-meet-ing-2019/.

Oregon SAF Foundation GolfTournament, July 19, Trysting Tree GolfCourse, Corvallis, OR. Contact: JessicaFitzmorris, [email protected].

Hagenstein Lectures—EmergingVoices in Forestry, Oct. 20, WorldForestry Center, Portland, OR. Contact:www.hagensteinlectures.org/.

SAF National Convention, Oct. 30-Nov. 3, Louisville, Kentucky. Contact:www.eforester.org/safconvention.

Calendar of Events

Contact InformationNWETC: Northwest EnvironmentalTraining Center, 1445 NW Mall St., Suite4, Issaquah, WA 98027, 425-270-3274,nwetc.org.

WFCA: Western Forestry andConservation Association, 4033 SWCanyon Rd., Portland, OR 97221, 503-226-4562, [email protected],www.westernforestry.org.

Send calendar items to the editor [email protected].

We Remember

Wilbur Wolf1937-2019

Wilbur E. Wolf, Jr., husband, father,grandfather, patriot, soldier, captain,armor officer and aviator, forester, farmer,public servant, mentor, and friend passedaway. He was born on August 26, 1937, inYork, Penn., the son of the late Wilbur E.Wolf, Sr. and Hazel Woodring Wolf. He issurvived by his wife of 58 years, MargaretSmyers Wolf, his four children, and 12grandchildren.

On January 4, in a pasture on the familyfarm near where his old deer stand stood,he and an also aging ash tree engaged inbattle. And, on that hillside, in the end,joined as one, they both died an honorabledeath.

From their beginnings, as a child and asa young sapling, to their ends, as a distin-guished elder and a mature tree, theirs wasa life well lived. In lieu of flowers, the familywelcomes well-wishers, friends, and com-rades to contribute to organizations thatWilbur held dear: Pennsylvania WoundedWarriors (www.pawoundedwarriors.org/),The Ruffed Grouse Society (www.ruffed-grousesociety.org/), and The Big SpringBulldog Education Foundation(www.bigspringbulldogfoundation.org/). ◆

Connecting Forest Landowners withSeedlings, Services and Contractors

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BY DUANE VAAGEN

Editor’s note: This article was origi-nally published in 193 Million Acres:Toward a Healthier and More ResilientUS Forest Service, a book published bySAF in 2018. The book, edited byForestry Source editor Steve Wilent, isavailable in the SAF Store, www.efor-ester.org/store.

suppose it is only fair that a lum-berman’s voice should be among the

many that fill the pages of this fasci-nating book. Still, I was pleasantly sur-prised when Society of AmericanForesters editor, Steve Wilent, askedme to submit an essay.

I am not an SAF member, but help-ing the US Forest Service find innova-tive ways to restore natural resiliencyin western national forests is vital tothe future of our third generation,family-owned company—VaagenBrothers Lumber Company, Colville,Washington—and to the futures of therural communities of northeastWashington.

Over the last 15 years or 20 years, Ihave probably devoted more time to

helping build up forest stakeholdercollaborative capacity than any otherlumberman in the nation. I did itbecause nothing else was working,and nothing else has done more toease the log shortage our family hasendured for 15 years.

Many of my sawmilling colleaguesthink I’m wasting my time, but I don’t.The old New England Town Hall meet-ing format—the backbone of ourdemocracy—still works. In fact, itsappeal is growing among forestry’sadvocates for one very significant rea-son: the process—what we call collab-oration—reduces the risk of litigationby increasing citizen-stakeholder par-ticipation in the management of ourpublicly-owned national forests.

Our company’s strong support forcollaboratives that represent thebroadest possible cross-sections ofvalues found in northeast Washingtoncommunities honors commitmentsmade by my father and his brotherwhen they founded Vaagen Brothers in1952. We are deeply rooted in at least adozen rural timber and farming com-munities in Stevens, Pend Oreille, andFerry counties. We employ about 225workers in two mills in northeast

Washington. Our main mill is atColville in Stevens County. We alsooperate a HewSaw single-pass millingmachine at Usk in Pend OreilleCounty. For years, we owned mills atRepublic in Ferry County, and Ione inPend Oreille County, but lingeringuncertainty with federal log suppliesforced us to close the mills severalyears ago.

Many of our employees have beenwith us for more than 30 years. Wehave seen one another through manyups and downs, both economic andpersonal. That’s what families do forone another. From experience, I cantell you that replacing a mill that burnsdown is easy compared to the chal-lenges that go with hiring and traininga top-quality work force, so we workhard to retain our employees.

The 1.1 million-acre ColvilleNational Forest is the geographic andeconomic backbone of northeastWashington’s rural communities, anda major source of logs for our mill. Butits value to us extends far beyond thatof its standing timber. It is our primarysource of drinking water and our year-round outdoor playground. We hunt,fish, hike, camp, ski, snowshoe, snow-mobile, and ride horseback through itsrugged beauty.

Our Northeast Washington ForestCoalition, which includes collaborativestakeholders who advocate for moreWilderness as well as those who advo-cate for more active forest manage-ment, believes that between 500,000and 600,000 acres of the Colville is well-suited to a mix of forest managementobjectives, including timber productionand the restoration of natural resiliencyin stands that hold too many trees forthe carrying capacity of the land.

Given our mix of shade tolerant andintolerant conifer species, and otherconsiderations, including soil quality,elevation, aspect, slope, and rainfall,the Colville lends itself to perpetualthinning on a 50-year rotation, mean-ing that in Year 51, we’ll be back thin-ning the same forest we thinned 50years ago. Our mills at Colville and Uskare designed to process the types ofsmall diameter trees that these perpet-ual thinnings will yield. Logs with four-inch tops are routine for us. What wecannot mill as lumber, we sell in chip

Collaboration: A Work in Progress

I

form to pulp mills or as biomass usedby wood-to-energy producers. Nothingis wasted, and more thinning couldeasily be done.

Sustainable: In perpetuity

My own back-of-the-envelope esti-mate is that about one-third of theColville could be actively managed inperpetuity, another third could be man-aged with a lighter touch—again in per-petuity —and the remaining third oughtto be left alone, and maybe even addedto the nation’s Wilderness system.

Our collaborative group wants tosee more Wilderness acres designatedon the Colville, but they also want tosee a significant increase in the paceand scale of collaborative restorationwork. The Colville has about 250,000acres of overstocked and beetle-infest-ed trees. These trees have already beendamaged by large fires and are moresusceptible to insects and diseases.They are ready to burn, and will burnif the Forest Service cannot find waysto move beyond its current pace oftreating 4,000 acres per year.

Our collaborative has recommendedthat between 15,000 and 20,000 acresbe treated annually. Fortunately, we stillhave the skill sets and capacity neces-sary to harvest, process, and market theadded volume. In Colorado, NewMexico, Utah, and Arizona, such infra-structure no longer exists.

Our family’s capital investments insmall-diameter milling technologieshave given us a very good grounding

in managing thinning costs. Fromexperience, we know that most of thework needed on the Colville NationalForest will generate about $750 peracre that could be reinvested in morerestoration activity—at the countylevel. The point is that, contrary towhat you may have heard, the costsassociated with restoring naturalresiliency need not be borne by tax-payers. We have the capacity to treatmore acres within our working circles.

The key to turning money-losingprojects into revenue-neutral projectslies in selectively removing a few largertrees from each project to cover theadded planning and restoration costs.The alternative is to purposefully allowthese trees to burn in stand-replacingwildfires, then hand taxpayers the fire-fighting bill. Why would we do thiswhen we have the knowledge andtools needed to restore natural

resiliency before wildfires strike?Thinning overstocked forests isn’t a

new idea. The Forest Service conduct-ed its first experimental thinnings atthe Fort Valley Experimental Station innorthern Arizona more than 100 yearsago. The work continues to the presentday and is well documented inresearch reports and repeat photogra-phy. Similar demonstration projectscan be found in every western state.

By volume, 44 percent of the annualgross growth on the Colville dies thatsame year. If these were your trees thatyou had planted and paid for, howmuch mortality would you be willingto accept? Think about it. EveryAmerican owns a share of this forest. Isa 44 percent annual loss in growthacceptable?

You might be surprised to learn thatthe Colville is in better condition thanany other national forest east of theWashington Cascades. On theseforests, cumulative net growth is aminus 58.253 million cubic feet annu-ally. Mortality (327.2 million cubic feet)exceeds gross growth (268.95 millioncubic feet) by 58.253 million cubic feet.No private landowner could everaccept such a loss, yet our countrydoes. Why?

The latest estimate is that about 80million acres (125,000 square miles) ofwestern national forestland are inCondition Class 2 or 3, meaning it isready to burn or soon will be. (Forests inCondition Class 1 are generally healthy).

This is an area almost twice the sizeof the entire state of Washington. Whyon earth do our national forest share-holders—that’s all 324 million of us UScitizens—accept this loss? I don’t



Thinned vs. unthinned on the A-Z project. PHOTO COURTESY OF VAAGEN BROS.

understand it.Some western national forests are

doomed because the mills that onceprovided commercially viable marketsfor timber are gone. About 700 millshave closed for good over the last 30years, which is in large part a result ofthe federal government’s decision toshutter the timber sale program it builtup following World War II.

The old federal timber sale programhas gone the way of our society’s ever-shifting felt necessities. We value differ-ent things today than we did in the post-war years. Aesthetic—some say spiritu-al—values now trump timber produc-tion in the West’s national forests. That’sfine, but these values are now being lostin stand-replacing wildfires.

Increasing the capacity ofcollaboratives

Many conservationists now supportthinning and prescribed fire as toolsfor restoring natural resiliency. Andthis is why our company has, for thelast 15 years, actively supportedincreasing forest collaborative capacityin the West. Unfortunately, collabora-tives cannot by themselves circumventconfusing and often conflicting federalenvironmental laws that—thanks toabuses of the Equal Access to JusticeAct (EAJA)—have become fertileground for lawyers representinggroups that oppose efforts to restoreforests. In effect, EAJA hands taxpayersthe bill for environmental litigation.What was Congress thinking?

Only Congress can guide the collab-

oratives through the legal minefield ithas created. House and Senate mem-bers appear to be taking the first nec-essary steps within the framework ofthe Resilient Federal Forests Act of2017, which requires litigants to cometo the collaborative table with theirown restoration proposals. Simply say-ing “no” will no longer be sufficientreason to shelve restoration projectsthat are often years in the making.

There is no way of knowing if thisprovision of the act will survive theHouse-Senate reconciliation process,which will occur well ahead of thepublication of this book, but if it does,arbitration panels will decide whichforest restoration proposal most close-ly matches respective national forestplanning documents.

Removing the litigation threat is crit-ical to the continuing success of theWest’s collaborative groups, because,without viable markets for small diame-ter trees that we and a few others pro-vide, restoring natural resiliency is nei-ther affordable nor possible. As a friendbluntly observed a few years ago, “Nomill, no market, no forest.”

The current situation in centralWashington is a perfect example of theharm litigation has done. The NatureConservancy is trying to find invest-ment partners with whom it can joinin the construction and operation of asawmill that would process small-diameter timber thinned from nearbyoverstocked national forests. Despitetwo years of looking, not a single part-ner has stepped forward, nor will oneuntil the $100 million constructioncost can be paired with an uninter-ruptible supply of federal timber suffi-cient to amortize all costs over a 20-year period. No such supply arrange-ment is possible so long as the threatof litigation remains.

Our company is very interested inThe Nature Conservancy’s centralWashington sawmill proposal. We knowthe organization well and think highly

of their work in forest conservation, butthere is no way we would invest ourfamily’s capital in such an uncertainpolitical climate. Again, short of a guar-anteed supply of timber sufficient toamortize the investment, no investorcan successfully step forward.

To restore lost investor confidence,we are told conservationists are consid-ering a super-sized A-to-Z project simi-lar to the one we pioneered on theColville National Forest. Instead of theForest Service conducting the environ-mental analysis as required by theNational Environmental Policy Act(NEPA), Vaagen Bros. engaged a privatecontractor to conduct the analysis andthen write an environmental assessment(EA) for the proposed project. But asuper-sized project—with its super-sizedEnvironmental Impact Statement—would cost millions of dollars.

It is common knowledge that wefunded the A-to-Z EnvironmentalImpact Statement, including the cost ofhaving Cramer Fish Sciences preparethe necessary documents under ForestService direction. Completing therequired documentation took a fractionof the time and money the ForestService commits—and we followed thesame exacting rules they follow.

One might fairly ask why we wereable to complete the process in lesstime and at a lower cost. One answer isthat the federal government generallycan’t do anything as cheaply or effi-ciently as the private sector. But themain reason was that our researcherswere not interrupted by a wildfire sea-son or redirected to some other projectthat was suddenly deemed moreimportant. Nor were we demoralizedby the prospect of appeals or litigation.Many in the Forest Service have lostthe courage of their own convictionsand are no longer willing to use theregulatory tools Congress has providedin hopes of speeding work on collabo-ratively designed projects. Yet severalrecent federal court rulings have


FOREST RESOURCES TECHNOLOGYSAF Accredited • http://cocc.edu/programs/forestry

Ron Boldenow, Ph.D., C.F., ForestryRebecca Franklin, Ph.D., DendrochronologyBret Michalski, M.S., Wildlife Science

E-mail: [email protected] (541) 383-7756

CENTRAL OREGON COMMUNITY COLLEGE Bend, Oregon

Editor’s Note: To keep SAF membersinformed of state society policy activities,Policy Scoreboard is a regular feature in theWestern Forester. The intent is to provide abrief explanation of the policy activity—you are encouraged to follow up with thelisted contact person for detailed informa-tion.

OSAF Approves UpdatedPosition Statement on ActiveManagement to Achieve andMaintain Active Forests. At theFebruary 2, 2019, OSAF ExecutiveCommittee Meeting in Troutdale, anupdated version of our position state-ment entitled “Active Management toAchieve and Maintain Active Forests”was approved by the ExCom. Onlyminor changes were made to the exist-ing position. The core position statesthat OSAF “supports active forest man-agement prescribed by professionalforesters to achieve and maintainhealthy public and private forests, con-sistent with land management objec-tives. To accomplish this, a wide range ofproven forest management strategiesand tools must be available to forestryprofessionals. These include carefullyplanned uses of forest thinning (some-times removing trees over a wide rangeof sizes and ages), approved chemicals(e.g., fertilizers and pesticides), pre-scribed burning, sanitation and salvageof designated dead and dying trees,regeneration harvesting (e.g., clearcut-ting, shelterwood, selection) and mixedspecies planting as appropriate. Manyfederal forests in Oregon now have anespecially acute and long-term need foractive management that will requirediverse strategies and tools, includingroad access and administrative flexibili-ty to effectively expand and maintainsuch management. Broad benefits, fromwildlife to recreation to forest products,can be achieved and sustained throughactive management on public andprivate forestlands.” The updatedstatement can be found at: www.ore-gon.forestry.org/oregon/policy/general.Contact: Mark Buckbee, OSAF Policyco-chair, [email protected]. ◆

favored the Forest Service. My guess isthat judges admire what they see inthis uniquely American problem-solv-ing tool we call collaboration.

Where strong leadership exists atthe regional and supervisory levels,the Forest Service is moving beyond itsfear of being sued by serial litigators. Icredit the collaboratives with helpingrestore the agency’s faith in its ownability to do good, legally defensiblework. The spirit and intent of theseprojects underscores our nation’s con-servation ethic, the necessity of citizenresolve, and a “can do” attitude thathas been missing from federal forestmanagement for too long.

Communities at the core

We still have some hurdles to crossconcerning wildfire suppression fund-ing, post-fire timber salvage harvesting,“green” timber sales, future Wildernessdesignations, and funding for rural tim-ber towns devastated by the collapse ofthe old federal timber sale program.These towns are surrounded by nation-al forests. They can’t reinvent them-selves in some new and dramaticallydifferent likeness. They are what theyare: old timber, mining, and farmtowns. Amazon won’t be building itsnew campus in Kettle Falls or Ione, andNew York’s Metropolitan Opera won’tbe moving to Colville anytime soon.

But these communities have some-thing in them that you won’t find inNew York, Seattle, or any other metro-politan area in our country: peoplewho know how to care for forests.Some are professionally-trainedforesters, biologists or engineers, butmany of our neighbors know whatthey know because they’ve lived inforests all their lives. They are hands-on people with generational knowl-edge who know how to get thingsdone. They work with nature every dayof their lives. They are the heart andsoul of northeast Washington.

Who better to help the ForestService care for the Colville NationalForest than the people who live in itand depend on it for their every useand necessity? It belongs as much tothem as it does to every American.They are the rural links in a humanchain that stretches south to Spokaneand west to Seattle and Portland.

There are countless thousands of us

who are, in one way or another, social-ly, spiritually, culturally, or economical-ly dependent on the wellbeing of theColville National Forest: Wildernessadvocates, hunters, loggers, fishers,sawmill workers, conservationists,native Americans, snowmobilers, retailmerchants, school teachers, electedofficials, hikers, campers, skiers—andlumbermen, like me.

It has taken us years to really get toknow one another, but we’ve perse-vered in our shared belief that wecould accomplish more by workingtogether than we could by going ourseparate ways. And we have, mainly bybeing patient and respectful of oneanother’s differing points of view.

We don’t always immediately agreeon the finer points, but we do standon common ground and we are com-mitted to helping the Forest Servicefind ways to treat more acres annually.Coalescing change in a centralizedbureaucracy as large as the ForestService isn’t easy. The decision-makingprocess is slowly migrating to the locallevel, where it belongs, but restoringresiliency in our national forestsrequires that we also restore publicconfidence in the whole idea thatmanaging forests is a better optionthan watching them burn.

Big wildfires provide teachablemoments, but as soon as the smokeclears, the news media and public loseinterest. Out of sight, out of mind.That’s the bad news. The good news isthat the collaborative piece of thisstory—the human-interest element—isn’t dying between wildfire seasons.Even the most hardened journalistsseem to see collaboration for what itis: a forum open to anyone who sharesour interest in protecting our nationalforest heritage. We remain a work inprogress, but we have come a long,long way in 15 persistent years. ◆

Duane Vaagen is a third-generationNortheast Washington lumberman. Hisgrandfather operated portable cedarmills before and during World War II.His father, Bert, and uncle, Bud, startedVaagen Brothers Lumber Company in1952. Today, Vaagen Brothers ownsmills in Colville and Usk, Washington,and Midway, British Columbia.


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