1. THE LEADER IN ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY NEWS
Old foes try cooperation in bid to revive rural economies, ecosystems
Natalie M. Henry, special to Greenwire
Published: Monday, October 10, 2005
This story first appeared in Thursday's edition of Land Letter.
WALLOWA-WHITMAN NATIONAL FOREST, Ore. -- Along a dusty road in the Wallowa Mountains, community
activist Diane Snyder points out a stand of Douglas firs that has recently been thinned to give fire-resistant
ponderosa pines that once dominated this area more room to grow.
"The impact of [overstory logging] along with decades of aggressive fire suppression and drought conditions
have converted our forested landscape," Snyder said. "Most of our forests now are dense and suppressed, a kid-
in-a-candy-shop experience for invading insects and catastrophic fires."
Snyder is trying to change that. She is one of many activists who has arisen from the ashes of so many Western
forest fires to push for sustainable, community-based forestry.
While traditional forestry has morphed Western forests into a less valuable, fire-prone landscape and
environmentalism has put millions of acres off-limits to logging, community foresters like Snyder seek a third way.
They are trying to bring traditionally hostile stakeholders together to revitalize local economies devastated by the
exodus of timber companies while improving degraded ecosystems.
Community forestry "is about diverse groups of people coming together at the ground level to find solutions to
solve the economic and ecological problems that they face, and those ecological and economic problems have
led to social problems," said Cassandra Moseley of the University of Oregon's Ecosystem Workforce Program.
"So, it's facing all three and solving all three at once."
Snyder, a Republican and fourth-generation rancher in Wallowa County, is executive director of a nonprofit group
called Wallowa Resources, which got its start in 1997 after years of economic downturn in the county. Blanket
appeals by two Oregon-based environmental groups against local timber sales and a declining timber market
forced all three of the county's mills to shut down in the mid-1990s.
"By 1994, there was nothing in terms of timber coming off the public lands," Snyder said.
That same year, fed up with Forest Service officials that locals increasingly saw as feckless, three-quarters of
Wallowa County voters voted against recognizing federal land ownership in their county. The mill closures also
led to resentment in the local community against environmental groups, with hostility coming to a head in 1995
when two environmentalists were burned in effigy by some residents.
Making conservation part of the rural economy
Wallowa Resources was launched as a way to bridge the divide and keep natural resources a part of Wallowa
County's economy. Now, a diverse group -- including Forest Service rangers, a private timberland owner, a
county commissioner, loggers, American Indians and even an environmentalist from the Hells Canyon
Preservation Council -- are working together to complete forest restoration and fuels reduction projects, noxious
weed removal efforts, and watershed assessments.
One mill has reopened, and Wallowa Resources has started its own facility to make posts and poles out of small
trees, which has added 35 jobs in a county that is home to less than 7,000 people.
Brett Brownscombe, conservation director for the Hells Canyon Preservation Council, said the move toward
community forestry in Wallowa County has led his group to file fewer appeals and lawsuits. "These communities
have been here since the 1800s and they're not going away," Brownscombe said. "It's time to find a way to mix
conservation and rural communities in a way that benefits both."
FORESTS:

2. Some of the foresters on the Wallowa-Whitman have also noticed a difference with the onset of community
forestry. Barbara Walker, a district ranger, said working with Wallowa Resources and the group they have
gathered has made for a smoother process when choosing and planning projects. "It's easier because you know
what people want and you can gear your proposals to that," Walker said.
Private groups like Wallowa Resources often serve to fill gaps in government funding for projects and personnel.
In the Northwest alone, the Forest Service has cut its staff by half in the last 15 years, from roughly 8,000
employees to 4,000.
And at least on the Wallowa-Whitman, Walker said, Wallowa Resources has done a better job than the Forest
Service of watershed assessments, data gathering and selecting contractors. "It's more bang for our buck," she
said. "We're getting a lot more done."
'I guess we're a movement'
The efforts in Wallowa County are just one example of dozens throughout the West. The beginnings of the
movement can be traced to at least the late 1980s, when the timber wars were wreaking havoc on rural
communities, especially those in spotted owl country.
"The environmental community and the timber industry were sort of shooting bullets at each other, but they kept
going through the bodies of our people and children before they got to the other side," said Lynn Jungwirth of
Hayfork, Calif., who helped start one of the earliest community forestry efforts. "The dominant system was
leaving us with broken forests and broken communities and neglected forests, so we just thought maybe it would
be OK to get together and talk about a different process."
Tired of seeing the community dwindle, Jungwirth and her husband launched the Watershed Research and
Training Center, which trains loggers and forest workers in different restoration and thinning work, mostly on the
Shasta-Trinity National Forest. The center also searches out markets for small-diameter timber and assesses
how to sustainably harvest valuable non-timber products, like medicinal herbs.
The Southwest has been another hotbed of community forestry, spurred primarily by legislation sponsored by
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) in 2000 that provided funding for collaborative, community-based efforts to thin his
state's overstocked pine forests. Bingaman's bill established the Collaborative Forest Restoration Program, a
pilot program that operates solely in New Mexico.
The program provides up to $360,000 to groups that propose a restoration program on public land -- not just
federal property -- that the Forest Service agrees will benefit the ecosystem. The program has granted $22
million so far for 75 projects involving more than 200 different organizations. Those groups have treated 15,000
acres and created 400 jobs.
While the program costs a pricey $1,400 per acre, the projects include training, feasibility studies for building
biomass plants and the use of small local businesses. The program chief, Walter Dunn, said those projects
represent investments that will continue to pay out in the future.
"I think there are a lot of people who said you will never be able to get these people in a room and get them to
agree to anything. Well, we've gotten them to agree on millions of dollars in restoration projects," Dunn said. As
part of Dunn's program, environmental groups that were frequent plaintiffs in lawsuits against the service are now
leading tours of the thinning and restoration projects they helped devise and implement.
A report to Congress is scheduled soon, and politicians in nearby Arizona are working to get a program like it
launched in their state.
Community forestry efforts have also been fueled by the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, which provides
funding to rural communities that collaboratively develop plans to protect their communities from wildfire. Many of
those efforts have incited regular meetings among diverse stakeholders who go from working with the Forest
Service on community wildfire plans to developing larger restoration and thinning projects on their local national
forests.
"Definitely it is growing," said Carol Daly of the Flathead Economic Policy Center in Montana, another community
forestry group. "When I first kind of thought I had discovered it in our local community, about 10 to 12 years ago,
we were only aware of a few very well-known organizations. But once we started working with other groups, then
we found that there are many groups around the country, and we started to recognize and find each other and

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see that yes, I guess we're a movement."
Natalie M. Henry is a Land Letter reporter based in Portland, Ore.
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