 Finding a Way Out of the Woods
by Craig Rawlings
Smallwood Utilization Network
a division of the Montana Community Development Corporation
 How a diverse grassroots group learned to resolve its conflicts, promote forest health, and work alongside a conservation district.
Peter Griessmann is a forester who works with both trees and logjams. Ideological logjams, that is.
Since August 2005, Griessmann has been the District Forester for the Stevens County Conservation District in eastern Washington State. Before moving to the district, he had worked for 15 years at the Forestry Extension of Washington State University
Peter was WSU’s Area Forester for Northeast Washington during the bloodiest years of the Timber Wars. The combat seemed to be dominated by extremists from both sides. What’s more, the Forest Service process, well intentioned as it was, seemed to amplify the disagreements. Its system of alternative plans “tended to build conflict into the process,” according to Peter. “By the time anything was proposed, the battle lines were already in place.”
A GROWING PROBLEM
While people were arguing, trees were dying. Timber production in the Colville National Forest had fallen to less than a quarter of its levels in the 80’s. Partly as a result, disease was sweeping through vast stands of overcrowded timber.
Griessmann thought he saw a way around the deadlock: Why not work out the conflicts first, then start the Forest Service process with a plan everyone can live with?
As it turned out, the same thought had occurred to others in the area. Before long they founded the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition (NEWFC). The group’s board of directors included the co-owner of a lumber mill and an officer of an environmental organization. Griessmann sat on the board as a representative of WSU’s extension service and also as an unofficial advisor.
The group was united in its initial goal: to reduce fuels in the area’s Wildland Urban Interface (WUI — pronounced “WOOee”). But its members were far from agreeing on how to get there. As Peter soon realized, seeking consensus was going to be hard. Just how hard was illustrated at a meeting in which a director stood up and screamed at a fellow board member for a full five minutes.
Obviously, this conflict-resolution group needed to resolve its own conflicts. As Griessmann recalls, the first step in that direction came with the appointment of Rick Brazell as Forest Supervisor of the Colville National Forest.
CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?
Brazell took on the role of impartial problem solver. One of his ideas was to bring in a group of facilitators. Guided by these professionals, the Coalition members evolved a method of agreeing to disagree so that the little sticking points wouldn’t stop the larger process. “Gradually,” says Griessmann, “the ‘us versus them’ mentality started to go away.”
The NEWFC worked out the remaining kinks by working through project proposals. One of their first was the Burnt Valley Stewardship Project, an innovative plan for reducing fuels around homes in a section of Stevens County. After a lively but relatively civil exchange of views, the Coalition created a document that showed how the project’s marketable timber could be used to pay for thinning.
One happy byproduct of that concept was a boost for the local economy. The Burnt Valley’s crowded lodgepoles and Doug firs had tight rings, which allowed the milled product to be classified as high-grade structural lumber. A local mill used a newly-acquired high-speed hew saw to mill the timber into two-by-fours and two-by-sixes, all of it highly marketable because it qualified for engineered applications like trusses and beams.
At about that time, the Stevens County Conservation District was adding forestry to its traditional focus on water quality. After all, 83% of the county’s 2500 square miles was forested, and of that forested land, 54% was private — and under increasing pressure from development.
Coincidentally, Peter Griessmann had been looking for a new challenge. He found it when Mark Curtis, the Stevens County District Administrator, hired him as the CD’s first District Forester. Peter stayed on with the Coalition, but traded in his board membership for a strictly advisory position.
A PRODUCTIVE RELATIONSHIP
Once on the District’s team, Peter took pains to persuade it to maintain a relationship with the Coalition. Fortunately for Peter, the Coalition was exhibiting increasingly grownup behavior. For instance, shortly after his job switch, the group’s two biggest antagonists actually boarded a plane together to lobby for a new project in Washington DC.
Griessmann also pointed out a big advantage the Coalition could provide to the Conservation District: As a 501(c)(3), the group could apply for grants that the District, in turn, could implement.
In fact, one of the Coalition’s latest projects is an innovative grant that would allow a team of group members to act as monitors for upcoming Forest Service projects. The team would provide simple reporting of technical facts, such as the species, size, and location of trees taken. As Griessmann explains, “That would help eliminate the cloud of suspicion that tends to result in protests and court cases and paralysis. Plus we could accumulate a credible knowledge base of what worked and didn’t work, so future plans could run more smoothly too.”
Recently the group celebrated its successes at an awards dinner. “It was kind of a ‘Kumbaya’ moment,” says Griessmann, chuckling. “We hadn’t tallied up all our accomplishments, but when someone did, we all looked at each other in surprise.”
But challenges remain. Peter points out that old-style, conflict-laden proposals are still inching their way through the Forest Service system. “And the Coalition needs to broaden its base even further,” he adds.
So does Griessmann’s experience lead him to any advice for other Conservation Districts? Well, first, it’s definitely worth it to champion a grassroots organization. By definition, a diverse citizens’ group will focus on both the economy and the environment, two key goals of Districts. Plus, remember that the group’s 501(c)(3) status allows it to apply for grants that your District can help implement. But have patience, too. And start small, with narrowly defined WUI projects — avoid hot button topics like roadless areas.
Ironically, the successes of the NEWFC are producing yet another challenge for Griessmann. Each new fuel reduction project results in even more new material that needs to find a market. The good news is, there’s lot of processing capability in Stevens County, including the mill that handled the Burnt Valley sale. (The county even has a chip-burning power generating plant.) The challenge lies in persuading all the plants that they can make money using locally produced materials.
But it’s all in a day’s work for a guy who’s used to breaking up logjams.
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