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INTRODUCTION
Recently, in testimony before Congress, former Forest Service Chief, Jack Ward Thomas complained that the Forest Service was suffering from "analysis paralysis," the inability of forest managers to implement active management projects in a timely fashion due to burdensome environmental regulations and lengthy public processes. In the public policy literature, "analysis paralysis" is a concept referring to an overload of data that makes it difficult to analyze and reach decisions. As many previous speakers have stated, we could always use more data--we need more data. The real problem that Chief Thomas was raising was not an overload of data, but rather, an overload of controversy and conflict.
As Lyle Laverty noted in his keynote address to this conference, this comes from competing, conflicting, changing social values and demands that the Forest Service and other federal agencies have been slow to acknowledge, understand, and adapt. Mr. Laverty also mentioned that we need to restore public confidence and trust in resource professionals as a vital step in planning and implementing fuels reduction and fire restoration projects.
I would argue that before we can even get to some conditional agreements over the proper place or appropriate time for treatments, we need to address the presence of growing controversy and conflict over the very definition, meanings, methods and goals of ecological restoration. Given that the "endpoint" of ecological restoration is currently undefined and largely open-ended, I would argue that the process of formulating fuels reduction and forest restoration projects is perhaps more important at this juncture than the actual "products" of those restoration projects.
It is critical that we pay attention to the human dimension of fire management and the sociopolitical and cultural processes of creating a social consensus for doing ecological restoration. Could I please have a show of hands, how many fire sociologists are in the room? [no hands raised] This is very telling, for notions about what is "proper" and "appropriate" are inherently laden with human values, bias, and opinion, and have as much to do with sociological as ecological criteria. I credit the conference organizers for hosting this panel of speakers addressing social issues in fire, fuels, and restoration.
The following story, in brief, is about the efforts of a progressive District Ranger and a local community to work through controversy and develop a collaborative relationship that enabled the agency to begin implementing a fire restoration-oriented fuels reduction project that has the strong support and involvement of the local community, and I believe embodies many of the values and goals of the conservation community at large.
THE HAZRED PROJECT
In 1996, the Ashland Ranger District of the Rogue River National Forest in Oregon proposed the HazRed Timber Sale Project (HazRed was short-hand for hazard reduction). The purpose and need for the Project was to expand an existing shaded fuelbreak system along a ridgeline in the middle of the municipal watershed for the city of Ashland. The first implementation action would be a timber sale to do overstory removal in order to reduce the risk of crownfire spread, increase the penetration of fire retardant, and allow safe deployment and evacuation of firefighters.
The Ashland Watershed is a place where commercial logging is highly controversial because it is:
a) comprised of steep slopes and highly erosive soils where logging has been highly regulated (but not prohibited) since 1929;
b) is a key LSR under the Northwest Forest Plan (it is the migratory crossroads for spotted owl populations in the Cascades, Klamath, and Coastal mountain ranges);
c) is the scenic backdrop affectionately called by local residents "the forest at Ashland's doorstep" and is prized for its non-motorized recreational uses.
d) Ashland is a relatively wealthy, educated, liberal community that supports a number of nonprofit forest conservation organizations.
But, it is a fire-dependent ecosystem with a frequent fire regime that currently has high fire risk and high fuel hazards from the past century of fire exclusion, and thus merits some kind of fuels treatment and restoration work.
Time does not permit me to go into details about the prescriptions for the HazRed project, but the community "freaked out" when they saw the results of the timber marking crew: over 8,000 trees over 20 inches DBH marked for cutting, including a couple rare 6 foot DBH sugar pines. The community felt that HazRed was essentially a timber sale functioning as a "Trojan Horse" to set the precedent for commercial logging in an improper place using fuels reduction as an illegitimate excuse.
Many of public's criticisms against the HazRed Project routinely appear in responses to other fuelbreak, fuels reduction, and forest restoration projects all over the West, and thus, I believe are generalizable to some of the "paralyses" that many of you are currently facing. Let me briefly list these arguments:
a) The need for a broader range of alternatives that use only non-commercial prescribed burning and manual brush-cutting, with no overstory tree removal.
b) The need to analyze the cumulative impacts of fire suppression actions within fuelbreaks (e.g. dozerlines, retardant chemicals, tree felling, fire operations). It is not enough to analyze the impacts of soil erosion from skidding logs; you need to analyze the soil erosion caused by dozerline construction from past fire suppression actions (in the case of fire salvage projects) or the dozerlines from future fire suppression actions (in the case of fuelbreak projects).
c) The need to prioritize protection of life and property, and focus treatments in the Wildland/Urban Interface (WUI) Zone, before logging in unroaded wildlands.
d) The need to implement the Federal Wildland Fire Policy and develop a restoration-oriented Fire Management Plan before moving ahead with specific fire/fuels management projects.
e) The need to ensure proper, effective fuelbreak maintenance
(existing fuelbreaks in the HazRed area were choked with small trees, brush, and slash).
Being sensitive to these criticisms and the community's alarm over what was perceived as excessive logging, the District Ranger personally walked the units with her staff and demarked over 4,000 trees originally slated for removal. The Environmental Assessment was substantially revised, and a new alternative was selected with slightly less logging planned. Regardless, the object and methods of the Project remained the same--to construct a fuelbreak with commercial logging--and the HazRed timber sale was stopped by administrative appeal in 1998 (two years after the original scoping period).
THE ASHLAND WATERSHED PROTECTION PROJECT
The District Ranger decided to go back to the drawing board and conduct an Environmental Impact Statement EIS to address many of the public's criticisms of HazRed, renaming the project as the Ashland Watershed Protection Project. Prior to the release of the Draft EIS, the Ranger asked a local peace group affiliated with the Fellowship of Reconciliation to host a series of "community dialogue meetings" in order to reduce some of the tension that had flared up in the community over HazRed. The Ranger participated in these face-to-face meetings attended by up to 100 people at times, sitting in a circle, sharing perspectives and working towards common understandings about how best to protect the community and restore the Watershed.
Out of this process, a diversity of residents formed the "Ashland Watershed Stewardship Alliance," and held meetings twice a week for the next six months working through the Draft EIS. The Alliance was not just a group of "eco-freaks," but included representatives from the Mayor's office, small business owners, forest workers, members of the Society for American Foresters, environmental activists, and other concerned citizens.
The Ranger extended the comment period to a full 90 days on the Draft EIS, and hosted public "learning meetings" to dialogue face-to-face with the public. Citizens were even allowed to check out keys to the locked Forest Service gates in order to walk through proposed treatment units.
The Alliance produced a 95 page proposal during the public comment period, and this became the basis for the development of a new alternative for the Final EIS that in modified version became the Record of Decision.
RECORD OF DECISION
The Record of Decision for the Ashland Watershed Protection Project embodies many of the values and concerns voiced by the conservation community regarding fuels reduction for fire restoration projects, and could be a model to emulate. The most important feature and innovation of the Project is its Phased Implementation. The Project will begin by using manual treatments (e.g. brush cutting, pile and swamper burning) directly within the WUI zone and in areas within the interior proposed for prescribed underburning. This will be followed by prescribed underburning in area-wide treatments in suitable and manually pre-treated areas. Finally, fuelbreak maintenance will occur and this may involve some overstory tree removal, but a 17 inch diameter cap will be imposed on trees marked for removal.
Multi-party implementation and effectiveness monitoring will occur during and immediately following each phase of the Project before continuing with the next phase; thus, monitoring is guaranteed as something internal or integral to implementation of the project. The Ashland Watershed Protection Project is estimated to take from 8-12 years to complete all the phases, but the community feels that implementation of the actions will occur at the proper places and at the appropriate times. Multiple light entries are the desired method for reducing fuels and restoring fire.
LESSONS LEARNED
There are a number of valuable lessons that were learned during this prolonged process that should be shared to help move forward other projects with a collaborative process:
a) The District Ranger acknowledged the controversy over the commercial timber sale, and deferred the timber sale portion of the Project as the last phase of the project. Routinely, commercial timber extraction is the first action in management projects, and sometimes the authentic restoration actions fail to be completed--many times even slash treatment does not get completed. This deferral of the timber sale is working to restore public trust that hazardous fuels reduction, restoration treatments, and monitoring will in fact be done.
b) The Ranger worked with community leaders and organizations to foster ongoing communication forums and collaborative processes that tapped into the knowledge and skill base of the community. The local knowledge was not simply "documented" for the sake of NEPA compliance, but in fact was utilized in the very decision of the project and its implementation plan. This is functioning to actually give the community personal ownership and investment in implementing the project.
c) In a plug for workforce diversity, perhaps the fact that the District Ranger is a woman whose educational background was in sociology and professional experience was in communication instead of traditional forestry explains her success at working with the local community to develop a project that has united instead of divided the community with the agency.
CONCLUSION
Because the Ashland Watershed Protection Project receives widespread community support--including the support of environmental activists--it is receiving priority funding from the National Fire Plan. The legacy of the Project remains a matter of perspective, however. To some high-level Forest Service officials, the Project is an embarassment because:
a) it took six years from scoping to reach a decision document, and will take another 8-12 years to complete;
b) the timber sale was deferred for several years, and may never occur if further analysis determines it is not necessary;
c) and the collaborations and concessions to the community symbolized an erosion of managerial power.
To the Ashland Community, though, the Project represents an incredible success in terms of the agency "caring for the land and serving people." A fire restoration-oriented fuels reduction project using active management techniques is actually going forward with the full support and active involvement of the local community--how many of you envy this situation?
Of course, the "burning issue" on many or your minds is likely: how will this project be funded without a commercial timber sale? Thankfully, the Hazardous Fuels Reduction fund from the National Fire Plan comes at the right time to fund the non-commercial treatments. As well, he Ashland Watershed Stewardship Alliance is considering forming its own nonprofit corporation in order to bid on service contracts and solicit grants and donations to help pay the costs of treatments. Finally, the Ranger is helping to organize community volunteer days for Boy Scouts, students, and other groups to help cut and pile brush in the WUI Zone.
In talking about the use of citizen volunteers to implement projects, I’ve encountered some agency officials who scoff at the idea. But, I believe this kind of initiative has great promise--whereas whole communities and schools used to volunteer to plant trees in the wake of the Tillamook Fires in Oregon in the 1940s, this same civic spirit and energy of youth could be tapped to do the righteous hard manual labor of hazardous fuels reduction and forest restoration treatments. And, this effort is strategic in helping to cultivate a restoration culture, beginning with our nation’s youth.
The perceived erosion of managerial power is actually an increase in the Rangers' personal authority and the agency's credibility in the eyes of the local community. Finally, despite the prolonged and difficult process, the Ashland Watershed Protection Project is evidence that the NEPA process actually works when managers are open-minded and take the community’s concerns to heart.
So, in this place at this time the Forest Service has moved beyond analysis paralysis towards restoration implementation by a process of communication collaboration building unity between the agency and community.
Thank you very much. |