The Quincy Library group - ecosystem management plan for the national forests in Plumas, Lassen and Tahoe, California

American Forests, Jan-Feb, 1995 by Jane Braxton Little

POSTED:

No clearcutting on U.S. Forest Service land. No logging or grazing near streams. Timber processed at local mills. By mutual decree of loggers and environmentalists.

IF THE "POSTED" sign at right sounds like a scene from The Peaceable Kingdom, come to the Feather River watershed in northeastern California. A five-year experiment proposed for three national forests there could not only change the way the U.S. Forest Service manages its natural resources--it could also change who's in charge.

Members of a rag-tag group that developed the plan for the Plumas, Lassen, and Tahoe national forests say it uses common sense to achieve obvious goals: healthy forests and healthy small-town economies through time. Instead of harvesting timber to meet mandated targets, they propose managing the forest by a network of watersheds. And in place of land-use decisions made by bureaucrats in offices without windows in Washington, DC, local leaders will sit in judgment on local federal resources.

"Once we assume responsibility for the national forests in our own backyards, neither they nor we will ever be the same," says Michael B. Jackson, a Quincy environmental attorney.

If it works, the Clinton Administration will have a model for the grassroots ecosystem management the President has challenged rural communities to create. And beleaguered Forest Service officials could begin to reclaim their reputation as prudent managers of the nation's forest resources.

"None of us has ever done this before, and I'm sure we'll make mistakes," says Plumas County, California, Supervisor Bill Coates, "but I'd rather go down fighting than watching. We're trying to take the future in our own hands."

The plan for 2.5 million acres of prime timber land between Lake Tahoe and Lassen National Park has its roots in unpopular past decisions made by the Forest Service. After decades of controversial logging on national forests throughout the West, dramatic reductions in federal timber volumes were prompted by lawsuits, court orders, and a shift in public attitudes. On the Plumas National Forest, a historic leader among forests in California, the 1980s' 200 million-board-foot average dropped to around 50 million board-feet in 1994. The estimated harvest for 1995 is 28 million board-feet.

Coates, owner of a Quincy tire shop, looked at the economic future heading toward the rural towns he represents and saw nothing but loss--for his community as well as for Sierra Pacific Industries, the lumber company that dominates Plumas and Lassen counties and has supported Coates throughout his political career. The trend for timber-dependent communities was bad enough, but in 1993 it worsened with an interim Forest Service plan designed to keep the California spotted owl from suffering the fate of its northern cousin--becoming listed as endangered. Former Pacific Southwest Regional Forester Ron Stewart's guidelines banned the logging of trees more than 30 inches in diameter.

"Our small towns were already endangered," says Coates. "This was going to wipe them out."

If history had repeated itself, Coates would have girded up for yet another battle with both the Forest Service and local environmentalists. Instead, he walked directly into enemy territory--Jackson's law office. With him was Tom Nelson, a Sierra Pacific Industries forester and member of the California Board of Foresters. Among environmentalists, Coates is known as a do-or-die timber advocate and Nelson is characterized as a "snake in the Garden of Eden: smart, charming, and lethal."

Jackson is a self-described "environmental wacko." He has used his mouth and lawyer's license to sue local, state, and federal agencies over resource abuses. Jackson and Coates had been warring for 15 years in an owls-versus-jobs fight that polarized their community and made them confirmed political foes.

But this time Jackson shared Coates' fears--the effect on their community's future. Both have watched the life drain out of similar towns in Washington and Oregon in tragic cycles of disappearing jobs, failing businesses, arguments, alcohol, and abuse. "Not in my backyard," says Jackson. "These people are my neighbors. My heart doesn't bleed for Sierra Pacific Industries, but it bleeds for the folks getting $12 an hour who do not have alternatives for work."

So the enemies began meeting in private. Coates and Nelson gathered a group of timber-industry spokesmen who knew that the national-forest free-for-all was over. Jackson collected local anglers, tree-huggers, and mainstream environmentalists, and the hostile camps launched a series of edgy, tense discussions. They called themselves the Quincy Library Group after the only neutral gathering ground they could agree upon.

At first they had little in common beyond their mutual belief that U.S. Forest Service management has failed both the environment and local communities. Gradually they developed a plan to replace clearcutting on national forests with single-tree and group-selection logging. Most of the felled trees would be sent to local mills under Sustained Yield Unit legislation designed to protect both direct and indirect timber-dependent jobs. The plan also places strict limits on activities near streams, and it does not intrude on around 500,000 roadless acres environmentalists have battled to protect.