Conservation: From the Timber Wars to collaboration — Pt. 3

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

This article is Part 2 of the conclusion to a series of articles supported by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council and sponsored by Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness. Previous installments were published in the Feb. 2, Feb. 9, June 2, June 9 and Oct. 20 editions of the Reader. For more information on this series visit scotchmanpeaks.org. To read the entire series, visit sandpointreader.com and click on “Special Reports” on the left side of the homepage.

‘The Quincy Library Group got it all started’

Away from the headline-grabbing activist protests and court battles, resentment on the part of timber communities and political bluster of politicians, some things were quietly happening in the mid- to late-1990s that would help clear the way for greater collaboration. 

In the neutral space of the public library of Quincy, Calif., an initially small number of timber industry representatives, government officials and conservationists came together trying to find a path forward to allow timber harvests within spotted owl territory, while also putting in place policies and practices to protect or at least mitigate impacts to the habitat. 

Bumper sticker spotted on a truck in the late 1980s. Courtesy photo.

For Alan Harper, director of Forest Operations for the Idaho Forest Group, it was the aptly named Quincy Library Group that really kicked off the era of growing collaboration. And he would know — he was one of its original participants.

“I think the Quincy Library Group got it all started,” he said. “It was kind of a big thing. Before that you would never have gotten people from conservation and industry in one room together.”

Harper earned his bachelor’s degree in forest management from Humboldt State University in 1985 and went on to work laying out timber sales in northeastern California and overseeing the logging crews contracted to work on them. He went into business for himself writing forest management plans and contract logging in 1989. That put him in the perfect time and place to become involved in the Quincy Library Group.

“I can remember the bumper stickers on all the loggers’ trucks that said, ‘Due to the shortage of paper you can wipe your butt with a spotted owl,’” he said. “It was quagmired down to whatever the conservation groups wanted, they weren’t succeeding; the timber people weren’t getting what they needed to keep people employed and keep communities profitable.” 

After years of deliberation, the collaborative crafted the Quincy Library Group Forest Recovery and Economic Stability Act of 1997, which sought to establish a five-year program to protect spotted owl and riparian areas, as well as thin 40,000 to 60,000 acres per year in three California national forests to protect against fire. Critically, the group’s efforts would have removed 494,000 roadless acres from future road construction or logging. 

Though the Act made it through the House, it died in the Senate. However, the legislation broke ground for its time — if not by force of law, then in terms of public lands politics. 

In its Sept. 29, 1997 edition, High Country News carried a 5,626-word feature article on the QLG’s efforts under the headline, “The timber wars evolve into a divisive attempt at peace.” In that story, then-HCN Publisher Ed Marston neatly summarized the snarled conflict:

“If the timber struggle had been a declared war, industry would have sued for peace. But there was no one to surrender to. The timber wars are dispersed, without fixed goals. The industry wants all the forests it can get, and the environmentalists want all the forest protection they can get,” he wrote. 

Harper said the QLG’s greatest significance was in opening channels of dialogue that could cut through the rigidity of the various parties in the conflict.

“I don’t know if we actually resolved anything, but we started talking to each other,” he said. “I do know that for the couple of years that I was attending those meetings, at least we were talking civilly to each other, and I don’t think that there was any collaborative stuff taking place up in the Northwest prior to that.”

Though the Quincy Library Group represented a flash of collaboration, the conflict still had a ways to go before any attempt at peace — whether “divisive” or not — could succeed. Only two years after the introduction of the QLG’s Act, Seattle District Court Judge William Dwyer ruled in 1999 that the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management hadn’t held up their part of the Clinton-brokered bargain that required sweeping wildlife surveys on federal forests before granting logging permits in the old-growth forests of Washington, Oregon and northwest California.

For many, it looked like a step toward Dwyer’s previous ruling in 1991 that put a stop to any and all logging on 25 million acres of spotted owl habitat within federal jurisdiction. 

In an August 1999 front-page article, The New York Times reported that Dwyer’s decision indicated “the region’s timber wars are flaring up again.” 

‘Sufficiently included’

By the turn of the 21st century, few in industry, government or conservation were interested in seeing the region’s timber wars flare up again. Both industry and government feared continuing courtroom battles. Meanwhile, as Idaho Conservation League North Idaho Director Brad Smith said, conservation groups had “spent their political capital fighting the Timber Wars.”

The years of conflict — and the sense of weariness with it — came through in a Dec. 21, 1999 article from the Associated Press, reprinted in the Bonner County Daily Bee, on the decision by Dwyer to approve a settlement in the lawsuit brought by environmental groups earlier in the year “that halted enough logging to build a small city — but the larger fight is far from over.”

The AP reported that environmentalists promised to “aggressively push the Clinton administration to protect more ancient forests in the Pacific Northwest,” while, “Timber industry officials, who are skeptical the settlement solves anything, say they will try to make sure the stalled sales are released sometime next year.”

At the same time, the Clinton White House “acknowledged that timber battles will continue but said the approval … [by Dwyer] was a victory for the Northwest Forest Plan.”

Ultimately, in his six-page opinion, Dwyer dismissed the suit — brought by 13 environmental groups — finding that “each side made ‘substantial concessions’ in the deal.”

Those “substantial concessions” included the requirement of the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to study about 80 rare species potentially affected by logging on public lands, though removed nine species from the list because they were “more common than previously thought”

What’s more, the agencies were allowed to suspend surveying for 13 more “hard-to-find species if they are not discovered after one year.”

These were the “slugs and bugs” to which University of Idaho Professor Emeritus Jay O’Laughlin referred when he described the species monitoring program that came out of the Northwest Forest Plan, and the protection of which animated much of the conflict surrounding what came popularly to be known as the Timber Wars.

As with many compromises, no party was entirely happy with the outcome. The AP article stated that environmental groups were displeased with the settlement and an attendant amendment to the Northwest Forest Plan, which they said would open the way for the cutting of 1.1 million acres of old-growth tree stands. 

“That’s unacceptable to us,” the AP quoted Oregon Natural Resources representative Doug Heiken, whose group prompted the suit.

“It was very disappointing,” the AP quoted Northwest Forestry Association President Jim Geisinger, doubting that even with the “major concessions” timber sales would be released by the fall of 2000, noting that the feds had not succeeded in completing their surveys during the previous five years.

“It’s a defeat for the Northwest Forest Plan — it’s certainly a defeat for people who were counting on these timber sales,” he added.

In summary, the AP wrote that the Northwest Forest Plan intended “to settle the timber wars over the threatened spotted owl, broadly dictates the level of logging and other activities on Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management land in western Washington, western Oregon and northern California. 

“The plan is supposed to ensure environmental protections in the region while allowing a minimal level of logging.”

Yet, the AP reported, “Dwyer handed a major defeat to the timber industry officials, who had intervened in the lawsuit and had asked the judge to reject the settlement. The judge turned back arguments that the settlement will hurt the industry and will not free up any sales.

“Dwyer also rejected industry officials’ claims that they were locked out of settlement talks, saying instead they were ‘sufficiently included.’”

As the hot phase of the Timber Wars moved from protests in the woods to the cold phase of the courtroom, many of the players felt the conflict had to give way.

“Both sides recognized and realized that neither were getting anywhere, and so I think a legacy is the recognition that with the right people in the room who are willing to put everything on the table and civilly discuss what the needs on the landscape are and try to figure out a way forward, that we have some wins,” said Shawn Keough, who has spent decades in the timber industry — today serving as executive director of the Associated Logging Contractors — and began a 20-year stint as Idaho Legislative District 1 senator in 1996, retiring in 2016 as the longest-serving female senator in Idaho history.

Asked to identify a “moment” of collaboration amid the so-called “Timber Wars,” Keough said, “it was right around the early 2000s,” though, “I think originally it was very skeptically greeted by both sides as just a ploy.”

She added: “At the time I described collaboration as getting people together into the room and beating them down — and that’s not obviously physically — until they wanted to get out of the room so badly they found something they could agree on. Because it was pretty painful to bring divergent interests to the table and try to facilitate through that, moderate that, and try to figure out if there’s any common ground at all. Those are pretty painful discussions to have. Not everybody bought in and not everybody buys in today.”

‘Turning point’

Idaho Conservation League pre-dated the “Timber Wars” proper, having been founded as a 501(c)(3) in 1973 and serving as a key player in the establishment of the 2.3 million-acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. During the 1980s, ICL was involved in passage of the Idaho Clean Lakes and Water Quality Act and had a hand in the Idaho Forest Practices Act in the ’90s, which gave the organization a seat at the table during the era of the “Timber Wars.” 

“I think all sides realized [that conflict] wasn’t a sustainable business model for anyone, and they realized that they were more likely to achieve their goals by working together,” said Brad Smith, who has worked 16 years with the ICL.

In the first decade of the 2000s, ICL participated in collaborative efforts to pass the Idaho Roadless Rule in 2008 and the Owyhee Canyonlands Wilderness Bill in 2009 — the latter which resulted in the Owyhees Public Management Act, setting aside about 500,000 acres of wilderness in southwest Idaho.

Smith called the Owyhee Initiative a “turning point” for collaboration in Idaho.

Though it had more to do with cattle grazing and mining than timber, “It was a collaborative model exported to the rest of the state,” he said. “Today we’re seeing collaboration used as a tool for many types of environmental issues.”

Roughly contemporaneous with the Owyhee Initiative, the Idaho Roadless Rule in 2008 helped clear the way for many of the collaborations to follow. The Idaho-specific legislation came about with the support of then-President George W. Bush, then-Gov. Otter, Idaho Republican Sen. Jim Risch, ICL, Trout Unlimited and others, and — according to the U.S. Forest Service — established five “management themes” for 9 million acres of designated roadless areas in the state, described as “Wild Land Recreation; Primitive; Special Areas of Historic and Tribal Significance; Backcountry/Restoration; and General Forest, Rangeland and Grassland.”

Jonathan Oppenheimer, director of external relations for the Idaho Conservation League in Boise, said the Roadless Rule “provide[ed] the necessary space to have discussions about timber without a continuing battle over whether and how to develop the pristine undeveloped forests that make up about 50% of Idaho’s National Forest lands. …

“By setting aside the roadless issue — for the most part — it helped foster collaborative efforts and allow the space for improved dialogue,”  he added.

It was also during that period from 2008-2009 that Alan Harper got involved with the Panhandle Forest Collaborative, which continues to bring together conservation groups, members of the timber industry and government officials to manage forestlands in North Idaho.

A forest collaboration group in action. This meeting of the Panhandle Collaborative Group took place in 2016. Courtesy photo.

Harper came to the Gem State from California in 2000, working as resource manager for Riley Creek Lumber. He later joined Idaho Forest Group, which represents the second-largest purchaser of federal timber in the United States.

The Panhandle Forest Collaborative got going with conversations between the Idaho Conservation League and IFG, after a similar effort fell apart a few years earlier amid lawsuits filed by some of the members — despite assurances that any potential legal action would first be discussed by the group.  

That second attempt included IFG, ICL, Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness and the Lands Council, and — most critical to its success — enjoyed a higher level of trust.

“The good thing was we all knew each other from other collaboratives we’d tried before. At that point, we were all friends,” Harper said. “We knew we would not always agree, but I know that they would never back-stab me and they would listen.”

Among the key collaboration points, according to Harper, were industry’s desire to access federal and state timber, and conservation groups’ interest in getting certain areas protected in perpetuity. 

“What really brought those groups to the table was they knew they’re never going to get any wilderness designated in North Idaho without the support of timber,” he said. 

On the other hand, for timber sales to go ahead — much less be profitable — the industry learned that it was imperative to “try to find an answer before you had to sue,” Harper added. “That was why we thought, ‘We have to get back into this.’”

‘To find a path forward’

It’s human nature to seek simplicity. We like our narratives tidy — especially when they inform a historical understanding of the present. The story of “conservation: from the Timber Wars to collaboration” is not clear cut. It is composed of clashes and fixes, which create other conflicts that require new fixes and open further fronts of potential conflict. We are not yet fully to a place where collaboration solves all problems, and not everyone buys into the process. The term itself is loaded, according to activists — retired or not — like Gary Macfarlane, who spent 30 years fighting to protect sensitive landscapes from exploitation. Some still fight the results of collaborative efforts. 

That said, the conversations surrounding public land management are more nuanced, deliberative and less litigious than they have been in recent history. With collaboration there is stronger and more widespread support for both conservation and responsible timber projects and, for whatever criticisms may be leveled at it, the process is seen by those engaged with it as far more preferable than gridlock.

One telling example: the Idaho Forest Restoration Partnership, which is described as “a network of collaboration,” focused on encouraging active management of public forests to support both the health of those landscapes and the industry that relies on them. And its membership underscores the degree to which formerly divergent groups have come together: Trout Unlimited, Idaho Conservation League, Riley Stegner and Associates, the Nature Conservancy in Idaho and Society of American Foresters.

Does that mean they’re doing a good job on the ground? Again, that depends on who you ask.   

For Keough, it’s an ongoing evolution of interest groups and their relative ability to see across immediate aims for a perceived long-term benefit.

“It’s trying to figure out how to find common ground and accomplish work that both sides could identify as needed. It was a growing process and quite a bit of angst between then and where we are today,” she said. “And to be fair, we’re still fighting lawsuits by environmental groups. And every once in a while the timber folks throw in a lawsuit of their own, to be completely honest. … We are seeing work done and I think that’s a good legacy that’s come from that. We still have, from my perspective, environmental folks who just do not want to see one tree cut ever and let nature take its course. And we’re still seeing lawsuits on i’s dotted and t’s crossed and that’s discomforting, especially from my perspective obviously. … It’s a constant evolution of discussion and a constant changing of our community here.”

Jay O’Laughlin, the professor emeritus of forestry at the University of Idaho, describes the past 30 to 40 years since the “Timber Wars” as arriving finally at “an uneasy peace.”

“And that is through public involvement,” he said. “To be meaningful, public involvement [is] anybody who wants to have something to say about how these forests should be managed is to be included in the process, so as a result there’s been a great scratching of heads on, ‘Well, how do we do that?’ and the peace that has come about has been through people sitting down and talking to each other about how these forests that we all love but for different reasons, how they should be managed.”

Macfarlane is far less sanguine.

“A lot of things that conservationists have been saying for a long time are coming true,” charting the conservation movement’s trajectory as one of increasing professionalization that has turned “collaboration” into “Orwellian doublespeak” that serves industry far more than its purported conservation aims.

“It was very grassroots-y back then,” he said of Cove-Mallard, where the most vigorous clashes in Idaho’s front of the Timber Wars took place. “I think it was in the ’80s when the professionalism increased quite a bit, though it existed prior to that.”

Rather, Macfarlane said “elites define the terms of debate” surrounding public lands management today, making necessary processes like environmental reviews “pro forma” in the decision-making process.

“De facto decisions are made in that collaborative process, and then the public has their chance [to comment] and it’s a pro forma exercise,” he said. “That’s to me what makes it objectionable. It’s very anti-democratic and that’s why I call it a form of neoliberalism.” 

Putting a final peg on it, Macfarlane said, “I’m not being optimistic here; we’re in a bad situation, as things are.” 

Adam Sowards, an environmental historian and director of the Pacific Northwest Studies Program at the University of Idaho, looks at the state of political play from the 1980s to the present and also feels less than optimistic about how partisanship has come to bear on public lands, and what it means for the notion of “collaboration” as an engine of “conservation.”

Casting back to Idaho U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage, he made the connection between her rhetoric merging public lands policy with boogeymen like clandestine federal “black helicopters” patrolling the countryside and the old John Birch Society hobbyhorse of the United Nations grabbing up U.S. citizens’ property as “foreshadowing of what was to come.” 

Specifically, incidents like the Bundy family-led Bunkerville and Malheur standoffs — in Nevada in 2014 and eastern Oregon in 2016, respectively — illustrate the virulence with which some Westerners push back against federal ownership and management of public lands, much preferring conflict to collaboration.

“That sort of conspiracy theory thinking and all of these things coming together — public lands, the militia having to fight against the federal government — all of this stuff is connected,” Sowards said.

And to disabuse anyone of the notion that this is “history,” Ammon Bundy — who played a leading role in both armed incidents — unsuccessfully mounted an independent run for Idaho governor in the Nov. 8, 2022 midterm election, and Scott Herndon, who was elected to the Idaho Senate from Legislative District 1 in the same election, has made selling off public lands to private interests a central plank in his platform.

Sowards rooted much of the present ultra-conservative ideology surrounding public lands — namely that they should be “returned” via a dubious claim of ownership to individual states — as a twisting of the upswell of rights claims fronted by historically marginalized groups in the 1960s and ’70s into the preeminence of property, whether public or private.

“That rights language then gets co-opted in the ’80s and ’90s, especially around property rights, and the way jurisprudence fell toward rights rather than the public good shaped how the New Right in the Reagan years and after articulated some of its claims,” he said. “In any discussion of property rights [today] you would recognize that.”

Even Harper, who considers himself “a very right-leaning person” said “we’re as extreme on two ends of the stick as we’ve ever been” and dismissed the push to privatize public land — which would be an end to collaboration altogether — as the result of a small-yet-loud group of individuals being “whipped into a frenzy by our fine politicians. I don’t think that they really think about the big picture.” 

“I can definitely be in the middle on conservation, because we need to have a balance, which is why I’ve always supported the collaborative process,” he added, noting that while he’s discouraged to see a recent uptick in litigation against timber sales — frequently initiated by groups from out of the area and uninvolved in local collaboratives — he’s encouraged to see timber companies doing things like putting acreage into conservation easements.

“That land is going to be growing trees forever — wildlife, timber and water, forever,” he said. “You look at that and I think the industry has moved a long way toward thinking about conservation.”

That’s also apparent in Harper’s own career trajectory — starting out in the timber industry 35 years ago, participating in the Quincy Library Group, helping form the Panhandle Forest Collaborative and, now, serving on the board of the Idaho Conservation League.

“That blows a lot of people’s minds,” he said. “To do that [be a part of the second-biggest buyer of federal timber in the country] and also be able to get along with the staff and the board of a conservation group, I think, speaks a lot to where we’ve come.”

And looking back to the “cut-and-run” days of the early 20th century, to the burgeoning conservation and wilderness ethos of the late-1920s, 1930s and early-’40s, to the “run-to-cut” boomtimes of the post-World War II era to the bitter conflicts of the Timber Wars period of the 1980s and ’90s, it is clear that thinking about how — and even whether — to manage public lands has evolved in dramatic ways. As has the notion of “collaboration.”

“Collaboration is not the goal. It is a tool, and it only works as a tool if you have all the nuts and bolts,” said Brad Smith, of the Idaho Conservation League.

Keough agreed, noting that the Timber Wars haven’t really ended, they’ve just shifted into other arenas, including recreation, forest fuels reduction and others — all potential future battlelines in the ongoing and vitally important history of how Americans seek to steward their land.

Yet, she said, “Collaboration has become a great tool, and good people on all sides of the spectrum across Idaho — and across other places, as well — get around the proverbial table and look on the ground at specific projects and try to see if they can work through something. They recognize what the need might be and work to find a path forward.”

This is Part 2 of a two-part article. For more information on this series, visit scotchmanpeaks.org. To find previous installments, visit sandpointreader.com.