A Deeper Dive Into Collaboratives…

“A structured manner in which a collection of people with diverse interests share knowledge, ideas, and resources while working together in an inclusive and cooperative manner toward a common purpose.”

— The Forest Service defines collaboration (36 CFR 219.19)

“In court, pricey lawyers from the city try to answer the question: whose life is more endangered, the spotted owl's or the logger's? Victims of mutual incompatibility, both owl and logger are disappearing in Oregon, a state that once had enough standing timber to rebuild every house in America.”

Timothy Egan

Beginning in the early 90’s, in the timber capital of America - the PNW - tensions began rising between conservation groups and timber industry members. The subject of these conflicts was the Forest Service’s public land management, but to put it more simply - trees. Should we cut them? Leave them for habitat? Manage their growth and succession? Plant more of them? The series of conflicts that arose after that tension came to a head was nicknamed “The Timber Wars”. Both slides were arguing passionately, in and out of court rooms, on logging roads, in town halls, and at public rallies. Many loggers’ livelihoods were at risk, which made them distrustful of urban communities and wildlife biologists. They had created homes and families around the timber economy, and it had treated them well until then, and while the environmentalists’ efforts were aimed at saving old growth forests, the impacts of their work would ripple through many species and organisms. Tensions between the groups rose until the conflicts escalated to a level of civil disobedience that forced the federal government to take action. President Clinton then ordered his staff to create a compromise, and 60 days later the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) was born.

Collaboration would be necessary moving forward, as representation and checklists were necessary from both parties on any given project on the forest. While collaboratives are not the final decision makers on the projects that happen on federal land (that power still resides with the Forest Service, and all projects are subject to the NEPA process regardless of their source), they do provide project suggestions, and can aid in the beginning stages. In addition to suggesting projects, during the NEPA process, where the Forest Service may come in short handed, the collaboratives can step in and use their networks to come up with the supplemental resources. For example, the Darrington Collaborative uses its relationship with local nonprofit Glacier Peak Institute, to get youth in the area experience in forestry by lending a hand with stream typing for up-coming projects. The Forest Service also recognizes the impact that collaboratives have on the rural communities built around timber economies, and the power of trust when working with what can be such a volatile topic.

There are 8 forest collaboratives in Washington State, with the Darrington Collaborative working to help manage the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. Currently the Forest Service has a plan to move North into the Mt. Baker district and has asked the Collaborative to expand North so that we can aid in their project efforts there as well. We are hard at work expanding our stakeholder membership to make sure we can best serve the needs of our forest.

Contractors

However, a collaborative may hire private contractors or consultants to assist the Forest Service with a layout, prescriptions and other aspects of projects designed by the collaborative and, if the collaborative supports it, assist the USFS with capacity on other USFS projects as well.

The contractor we’ve hired for the Darrington collaborative, forester Derek Churchill of Stewardship Forestry, will also be working with the collaborative and the USFS to identify and design pilot projects for this collaborative this fiscal year.

This added capacity to the USFS and the broad support around new projects will increase the timber volume coming off the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest (MBS)in the Darrington Ranger District

NOTE: Neither the Collaborative nor our contractor will do the actual logging. Any sales the collaborative put forward must still go through the normal USFS NEPA and bidding process and the USFS offers each sale under the normal bidding process.

Stewardship

The other benefit of the collaborative is that we will focus on Stewardship sales, a special type of sale classification that can only be used if there is collaborative support demonstrated behind the sale.

Stewardship sales allow all the receipts from a timber sale to stay on the MBS, instead of sent to the Treasury as it otherwise would be.

Therefore, Stewardship sales provide additional funding for the MBS to invest in the local forest.

The profits from a Stewardship sale are then invested in a non-harvest related restoration project that must be identified at the front-end of the sale planning process, and undergoes the same NEPA review as the sale itself, during the NEPA process for the sale.

Our collaborative will be designing non-harvest aquatic restoration Stewardship projects in the Darrington area to improve local water quality and salmon habitat as a component of habitat restoration thinning sales we propose.

Generally speaking, the types of timber sales our collaborative will be proposing are simply additional habitat restoration “thinning” of dense second-growth stands in old plantations (clear cuts), to accelerate their transition into more complex forest habitat with old-growth characteristics, entirely under the existing guidelines of the Northwest Forest Plan.