Acknowledgements - Western Forestry Leadership Coalition

Federal/USFS/BIA ........................................................................................................................... 35Program Resources and Supportive Authorities ........................................................................... 35Community Forestry Program Funding through EAP ................................................................ 35Economic Action Programs Components ...................................................................................... 35Examples of Funded Projects ......................................................................................................... 36Stewardship Contracting and the USDA Forest Service .............................................................. 38Monroe Mountain Ecosystem Restoration Project—A Case Study ............................................................................. 41The National Fire Plan .................................................................................................................. 43Healthy Forests Initiative ............................................................................................................... 44Policy Development .......................................................................................................................... 44USDA Forest Products Laboratory ................................................................................................ 45USFS Research Stations .................................................................................................................. 47PART TWO: Capacity Building ................................................................................. 50THEME I: Social, or Communal .................................................................................................... 52Partnerships...... 52The Southern Utah Forest Products Association: A Case Study .................................................................................. 53Collaboration .... 56Communication & Networking ...................................................................................................... 57When Collaborative Processes are Exhausted by Delays: A Case Study ................................................................. 58Accountability and Public Support ................................................................................................ 61Multi-Party Monitoring ................................................................................................................... 62Cultural & Tribal Heritage ............................................................................................................. 65THEME II: Economic Components ............................................................................................... 69Small Business Orientation ............................................................................................................. 70Entrepreneurship in Community Forestry: Critical for Success ................................................ 71Marketing ......... 72Utilization .......... 73Product Development ...................................................................................................................... 74Mill Conversions .............................................................................................................................. 75Labor Force Development ............................................................................................................... 76New Technology 77THEME III: Ecology ....................................................................................................................... 79A Utilization and Restoration Connection ..................................................................................... 80Wildfire Mitigation .......................................................................................................................... 82Wildfire Mitigation and Community Stewardship in Ruidoso, New Mexico ............................. 83Adaptive Management ..................................................................................................................... 84Endnote ............. 87Bibliography ..... 88Website References ......................90

PrefaceThe focus of this report is to synthesize the “lessonslearned” from the five-year demonstration project,the Four Corners Sustainable Forests Partnership(FCSFP), which operated from 1999-2004 throughspecial funding through the US Forest Service’sEconomic Assistance Program and the NationalFire Plan. Our intent is to provide a comprehensiveinventory of the key ingredients of communitybased forest restoration, linking them throughtwo broad themes of resource support for capacitybuilding, and social, economic, and ecologicalimplementation processes.We want to portray how the key ingredientsare integrated, and are mutually supportive of eachother. We will do this through a combination ofdescribing the essential resources and practices ofcommunity forestry, and many actual examplesof work among the partners of the FCSFP. Ourintention is to create a picture of a work in progress,with its main ideas and challenges, and a storytold through the efforts and dedication of manyhundreds of active people, from community leaders,business owners, scientists, public land managers,and a wide array of technical and supportivepersons.While clearly this new work of communityforestry is an on-going process, a story as yet notfully told, it is timely to pause and reflect. Whilewe must continue to speak in terms of conceptsand dreams and supportive policies to pursue, wecan also begin to speak in terms of work, practice,and on-the-ground progress. This part of the storyneeds to be told in a clear manner, in a way thatpromotes further study and analysis, and peer-topeerlearning. Community forestry is, as Baker andKusel report (2003), “a social movement,” like otherevolutionary and healing processes in our history.As it matures in actual places, in communities andforests, it increasingly becomes something we canget our arms around, something tangible, with realachievements and immediate challenges.Community forestry, while filled with ideas,notions and a sense of what ought to be, is alsonow a set of real experiences. It is a complex andinterrelated array of resources, policies, practices,and most of all actual players whose large and smallcontributions sustain the immediate and long-termoutcomes of a new and hope-filled land stewardshipethic. The more familiar we can become withthe day-to-day situations, actions, successes andchallenges of this work, the better we will be able tocontinue to support and strengthen its practice andachievements.

Background and Context:The Foundations of Community Forestry andthe Four Corners Sustainable Forests PartnershipCommunity StoriesON MAY 3, 2004 AT ABOUT 4:00 P.M., GaryHarris stepped up to the control panel and startedthe engine on a new log debarker at the old StoneMill near a village known as Lower Frisco, south ofReserve, New Mexico. The old mill had been shutdown for about 14 years. Just beyond the debarkersat a new band saw, ready to be linked up.For more than 22 months the leadership ofthe Catron County Citizens Group (CCCG), withsupport from county government and many grantresources, has been working to reestablish a millingoperation at the old mill near Reserve. Bob Moore,a forester and executive director of the CCCG,anticipates being able to process about three-fivemillion board/feet of wood products per year—afar cry from the heyday of lumbering in this smallcommunity set in the midst of the Gila NationalForest.Nevertheless, this is the fulfillment of a dreamto reestablish a sustainable wood products economy,tailored to fit the forest-health needs of that region.The reestablishment of a moderate-size mill is thelatest of many steps taken by community leaders tomove beyond the social and economic chaos of the1990’s, fueled by a struggle between Catron Countygovernment and the U.S. Forest Service (Burns,2003).***********WALKING INTO THE LOG YARD ofIndigenous Community Enterprises (ICE) in thetown of Cameron, just 50 miles north of Flagstaff,Arizona (KenCairn, 2002), an energetic Navajoman, T.J. Nelson, approaches with a smile and a“What can I do for you?”For the next hour he explains how logs areprepared for the milling operation, which producesa high quality log home kit. Among the designsoffered by ICE are traditional octagonal, one roomhogans, an expanded two bedroom version of thehogan called the “Beedezah”, a Longhouse Chieftainmodel, and typical mountain cabins. As he leafsthrough a thick three-ring binder, T.J. explains thatthey have just completed several months of workon their marketing materials and that they have justbeen mailed to all of the community governments,or Chapter Houses, of the Navajo Nation.As he walks amidst the milling machinery, hepicks up a contoured piece of wood, shows howthe log is molded to create a “universal fit” wherethey join each other. He comments that he isleaving later that week to give a presentation to aNavajo community in eastern Arizona. With highoptimism, he talks about future jobs for residents ofthe local communities, the desire to begin buildingfurniture, and about providing firewood for theelderly who live nearby.FCSFP Capacity Building — 1

Overview of Community Forestry“There are three critical issues: Buildingtrust in the partnership and communitybased forestry, strengthening therelationship between the peopleand the agency, and gainingcommunity support.”(Brian Cottam, past executive director,Greater Flagstaff Forest Partnership,FCSFP Annual Meeting, 2001)Throughout the Four Corners Region (anarea comprising much of the states of Arizona,Colorado, New Mexico and Utah) stories such asthese increasingly occur. These are the communitystories that form the larger story of economicrevival and ecological renewal through restorationforestry. Together they make up the early chaptersor stages of a movement to rebuild a communitybasedforest products economy linked to improvedforest ecology. This movement is commonly calledcommunity forestry.In each individual story a bit of the larger storyof community forestry is being told. In some places2 — FCSFP Capacity BuildingT.J. Nelson,IndigenousCommunityEnterprises,Cameron,Arizonalumber mills are being revitalized to cut smallerdiameter wood coming from forest thinning orfuel reduction projects. Innovative wood products,such as laminated beams and animal bedding arebeing designed and manufactured. Electricity isbeing made from wood waste and stove pellets arebeing made from chips produced by a mechanicalharvester. An array of forest thinning and restorationprescriptions are being demonstrated and monitoredto discover the best ecological and silviculturalmethods for improving the health of the woods.This is a story of change and challenge.Clearly, in many, many respects, individualcommunity efforts are just beginning to build somestability within the broader community forestrymovement. Many of the activities are just a fewyears old, and therefore should be understood as theearly steps in building something new. Occasionallythey are building upon the few surviving remnantsof the era of industrial forestry, which began tocome apart in the mid 1970’s. But often they beginwith new technology, and certainly a major dose ofentrepreneurship and courage. This work withinsmall- and medium-size towns of the Four Cornersregion make for an intriguing, interwoven story, acomplex tapestry of discovery, emergence, initiative,and hope.We hope this report conveys what peopleinvolved with the Four Corners SustainableForests Partnership say about community forestryissues, and also how they understand communityand forest restoration efforts. Their stories pointtowards the future of community forestry. Theyare intimately familiar with specific aspects ofcommunity and forest restoration. In their mindsthey know what needs to be done to move thingsalong. They are concerned, caring people whobelieve they are doing something good and aretrying to integrate their business entrepreneurshipinto caring for the land. These are reasons why acareful examination of their work over the past fiveyears is very worthwhile.

Defining Community Forestry…Recently, community forestry hasbeen used to describe alliances formedamong traditional adversaries, suchas environmental groups and loggers,to address both conflicts over nationalforest management and local social andeconomic problems.As used here, communityforestry implies collaborative forestmanagement by a broad cross-sectionof local residents and land managers,the basic premise being that peopleliving in and near a forest should beinvolved in its management becausethey are most heavily affected by andmost likely to affect forest conditions.Many southwestern communities arenow organizing to address wildfirethreats, and community forestry effortsin the region are almost exclusivelyfocused on fuel reduction or ecologicalrestoration.(Moote 2003, in Friederici, ed., p335)The Four CornersSustainable Forests PartnershipWhile similar elements of community forestry havebeen occurring throughout the United States forthe past 10 years or so (through such organizationsas the Flathead Forest Partnership, SustainableNorthwest, the Hayfork Forestry Center, ApplegatePartnership, Quincy Library Group, and others),this story will be told from the perspective of theFour Corners Sustainable Forests Partnership,a regional effort initiated in 1997. Some of theinitiators of the FCSFP had begun work in theirlocal communities as early as 1993, seeing a needto construct an economically and ecologicallysustainable forestry process. They felt a need toshare and learn from each other and build a criticalmass of community, economic, and ecologicalmomentum.What emerged was a four-state collaboration ofstate forestry organizations, national forests, countyand tribal governments, small- and medium-sizebusinesses, and an array of non-profit corporationsto build capacity for engaging the contemporarychallenges of forest health. By 1999, whensubstantial federal funding was made available,this network of people and local communitypartnerships became known as the Four CornersSustainable Forests Partnership.Because of its geographic extent (see map) andthe wide variety of community, economic andecological projects, the Four Corners SustainableForests Partnership (FCSFP) provides anextraordinary and fertile ground for telling the storyof community forestry; its progress, opportunities,and challenges. This will be a story of manyendeavors undertaken within local communitiesand adjacent forests by an extraordinary variety ofpersons, businesses, organizations, and groups.As a whole, the story will offer a roadmap ofsorts to the broader process and movement ofcommunity and restoration forestry. Through anunderstanding of many of the individual pathwaysFCSFP Capacity Building — 3

and actions being taken by partners, colleagues, and folks onthe ground in the Four Corner’s region, a more detailed picturewill emerge of the successes and questions being experiencedin this relatively new work. It is this aggregate or whole picturethat we believe offers the greatest possibility of understandingthe complexity and integrative challenges of community-basedforestry.Lesson LearnedMuch of the progress or growthwithin community-based forestry stillcomes from a hands-on approach,with continually emerging solutionsdrawn from a broad spectrum oflearning.Lesson LearnedFCSFP members prefer the handsonapproach to learning. Some ofthe best learning can occur on site,out in the woods, or in someone’smill.Hands-on LearningAs we present a conceptual synthesis, a model of sorts, forcommunity-based forestry, along the way we will also describenumerous on-going activities. These activities will provide awell-grounded sense of the work of community forestry, someof its successes and directions, and a few suggestions for furtherexploration and application.Integrating stories of the actual work will enable us tounderscore an important aspect of restoration forestry at thisstage; that is, what might be termed “hands-on learning.”Indeed, over the past 10 years there has not been a set of firm, orwell-tested, practices for how communities, businesses, interestgroups, and land managers could become partners in a landstewardship process. While there have been very worthwhile,basic guides or principles offered (Gray, et al., and Baker andKusel, among others), much of the progress or growth withincommunity-based forestry still comes from a hands-on approach,with continually emerging solutions drawn from a broadspectrum of learning.Much of the work we will explore is bound within thehistorical, cultural and ecological contexts of the projectsthemselves, which is not to say that there are no universal themes;there are. Nevertheless, even today, much of the challenge ofcommunity-restoration forestry is to examine the current andhistorical situation of a particular social place and a specific forestlandscape, and then generate well-grounded action alternatives.We find people continually asking: What is the conditionof the forest ecosystem? Is it healthy or overgrown with “doghair “thickets? What values does the community hold for thesurrounding forestlands? Has the community economy changedpartially, or completely, from utilizing natural resources to onebased in “amenity growth,” where the forestlands are primarily ascenic backdrop or a place for outdoor recreation? Are there skillsand capacities for forest stewardship still remaining in the areaafter a sawmill has been closed for eight to 10 years?Questions such as these become the means whereby landmanagers, county commissioners, out of work woods workers,neighbors in fire prone urban-wildland zones, and manyother interests, have begun to establish a conversation about4 — FCSFP Capacity Building

(Source: Johnson, Marlin. Combining Social and Ecological Needson Forest Lands in the United States: A Global Perspective, p6.)Major Mill Closure Summary, Arizona and New Mexico, August 2003Mill Location Capacity Closure DateStone Forest Ind. Flagstaff 75 h1992Stone Forest Ind. Reserve 20 1992Duke City Lumber Cuba 25 1992Kaibab Forest Ind. Payson 12 1993Precision Pine Williams 10 1993Bates Lumber Albuquerque 22 1993Kaibab Forest Ind. Fredonia 65 1994Precision Pine Eager 8 1996Precision Pine Winslow 22 1998Stone Forest Ind. Eager 65 1998Vallecitos* Vallecitos 5 1998Stone Forest Ind. Snowflake 640 M Tons 1999Tri-Con Timber Cimarron 9 2000NE-I-GHI Lumber Milan 5 2001Rio Grande F. Pdcts Espanola 25 2003Closed Mills Total Capacity: 368 MMBF sawtimber plus pulp* This may not yet be a permanent closure.These data illustrate theloss of capacity within thewood products industrywithin New Mexico andArizona over the past decadeto process traditional woodproducts. When it comesto the wood processing andutilization needs relatedto restoration forestry,questions remain: Whatsort of capacity needs to beredeveloped? What formshould it take in terms ofscale and products? Whatsort of mix of large andsmall processing facilitieswill be needed? What levelof restoration is sustainableand can thus be integratedwith a predictable level ofsupply?FCSFP Capacity Building — 5

of concerted action that was needed to rebuildsignificant and sustainable forest stewardship wasno longer a viable option. For many communityleaders, local business owners, and forestershamstrung by legal gridlock, an ecological crisisexisted (Dahms, Cathy W. and Brian W. Geils(Technical Editors). An Assessment of ForestEcosystem Health in the Southwest. GeneralTechnical Report RM-GTR-295. Flagstaff, AZ:USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest andRange Experiment Station, Southwestern Region).Timber harvest levels on National Forest Systemlands in the Region 3-Southwest Region havebeen tracked since 1908. Harvest levels graduallyincreased through the 1950’s and, under sustainedyieldmanagement, remained relatively flat throughthe 1980’s:DECADE AVERAGE ANNUAL CUT(million board feet)1908-1910 401911-1920 761921-1930 871931-1940 981941-1950 1781951-1960 2751961-1970 3961971-1980 3751981-1990 402There has been a steady decline in the amount oftimber cut in the 1990’s. The timber cut in 1996was almost exclusively fuelwood:YEARANNUAL CUT(million board feet)1991 3341992 2911993 1901994 1151995 1001996 46The net annual growth rate of all size classes of sawtimber in the region, currently around 700 millionboard feet, is substantially greater than historicharvest levels (Johnson 1994).8 — FCSFP Capacity BuildingAn Opportunity for Synthesis—A Need forHopeCommunity forestry in the western US is about10 years old, 1994-2004. While this is not along time in some respects, it is timely to take alook at the progress. The FCSFP (1999-2004),as a regional and multi-faceted organization,offers a meaningful opportunity to develop acomprehensive perspective. As we examine thevarious community partnerships, their relationshipswith public land agencies, the breadth of work ineconomic development, forest ecology, and themutual learning occurring, there is an extraordinaryopportunity to produce a synthesis of communityforestry processes, issues and challenges. After 10years of effort within many regions of the UnitedStates, especially the western states where federalpublic land management is so significant, it istimely that we examine the strategic components ofprogress in community forestry.Even as we look at the progress, we aresimultaneously aware that many barriersconfront community forestry. Many people inthe movement—community leaders, partnershipmembers, small wood products operators, andpublic land managers—work energetically and voicegreat hope in a new approach to forest stewardship.They hold strong beliefs in an alternative approachthat will bring many perspectives and resourcestogether for sustainable forest renewal, based onsound principles of forests management and longtermcommunity health. Expectations for thisbalanced and sustainable community and ecologicalapproach are very high.And yet those who work consistently at thecenter of community forestry are also aware thatmany difficulties lie ahead, that much dependson a practical alignment of resources, leadership,authorities, and innovative knowledge. They knowthat a sustainable alignment of these factors has notyet occurred, and that in some respects it seems aways off in the future, still they work continuouslyin the hope that it can be achieved. Sustaining acommon theme and sense of hope in communitybased forest stewardship is in itself an on-goingneed.The other need is for a pragmatic look at theinner workings of community forestry. What are

its day-to-day operational components? Whatare the nuts and bolts that make it work? Beyondthe concepts of a new approach to forestry, suchas collaboration and sustainability, there is thereal work of creating a business, designing animplementable restoration project, buildingworking relationships with public land managers,developing community understanding and supportfor restoration ecology, while still making a living.The future success of community forestry is in itspractice, and the associated ability to learn fromthe process. Indeed many factors, such as landmanagement policies and resource conservationtheories, could and should become more supportiveof a new community stewardship ethic. Butauthentic success will result primarily from thehard-earned, best practices of many partners whoare willing to dedicate themselves to a new way ofdoing business in the woods, and learning together.Building Support for Community ForestryCreating sustainable community-public landalliances that result in real ecological improvementson the ground, put skilled and knowledgeableforest workers back in the woods, and adapts anew forest products industry towards increasedstewardship activities requires a major shift in socialand economic strategy. (See further descriptions ofchange in Burns, 2003, Keynote Address, FCSFPAnnual Meeting, Bryce Canyon, Utah.) In otherwords, if the current ecological restoration needsare going to be adequately addressed over the nextseveral decades, a much different forest stewardshipprocess will need to be established and nurtured.Business as usual can no longer be accepted. A newdirection in creating a stewardship orientation toforestry is required, whatever the scale or type ofwood processing developed in the future. Its successdepends on many interacting relationships, tasks,resources, and expectations that were not a part ofthe traditional wood harvesting and milling process.To construct this new community-oriented foreststewardship model will require many forms ofresource and institutional support and communityand economic capacity building.Historically, forestry has been a relativelystraight-forward, three-part commodityFaces of community forestry in the Four Cornersregion—Steve Gatewood, Greater Flagstaff ForestsPartnership executive director (pointing), KathrynMutz, Univ. of Colorado Law Center (background)and field-tour participants.development stream, with a resource (trees in thewoods), a traditional production process (a sawmill),an end product (lumber), led and implementedby a small number of key players and establishedroles and responsibilities, (foresters, loggers, sawmillowners). In contrast, at the outset, communityforestry involves a myriad of new expectations,uncertain economic outcomes, evolving ecologicalscience, risky investments, and limited publicconsensus. To negotiate this challenging complexityof development requires significant forms ofsupport, planning, redesign, and reinvestmentin terms of organizational commitment, capital,political leadership, and realignment of naturalresource management policy. Without a consistentand coordinated effort to form a broad basis ofsupport within local, state, regional and nationalprograms, networks, and institutions, much neededcapacity in community-based forestry will not beable to gain a solid foothold. A “consistent andcoordinated effort” cannot be achieved with mereannual appropriations and short-term policies, madewithin limited political contexts and visions. Theyrequire the sort of strategic thinking that one musthave in approaching any ecological problem andmost sustainable community endeavors. Presently,FCSFP Capacity Building — 9

we are seeing “limited victories.” The centralquestion is whether these can be accumulated intothe necessary momentum to bring about bothhealthy forests and stable communities.At a 2003 meeting of active participantsin community forestry, held at Hart Prairienear Flagstaff, Arizona, eight key barriers to“collaborative forestry” (another name forcommunity forestry) were identified:1. Inconsistent and unrealistic expectations ofcollaboration, and lack of criteria for measuringthe effectiveness of collaboration, lead to unfaircriticism of collaborative efforts, accusations offailure, and both participant and agency burnout.2. Government agency policies, proceduresand cultures limit their ability to engage incollaborative efforts.3. NEPA analyses, Endangered Species Actconsultations, appeals, and lawsuits can delayprojects for years and stop some altogether.4. Funding for forest restoration projects isinadequate and unreliable.5. Newer and more flexible contracting authoritiesare not well understood or consistently used.6. Collaborative forestry groups commonly lackfunding for day-to-day administration, capacitybuilding, project planning and administration,staff time, education, and monitoring.7. Intensive, local economic development is neededto build industrial capacity for forest restoration.8. There is a lack of commitment to and lack ofresources for monitoring.This list of eight “barriers” provides oneindication of the significant challenges to thebroader movement to construct a sustainablesupport system for new directions in forestry. Whilethey by and large point to the more institutional,regulatory, and administrative areas of supportneeded, they reflect as well the deeper social,economic, and cultural challenges that lie at theheart of the movement towards community forestry.10 — FCSFP Capacity BuildingThe USDA Forest Serviceand the State Foresters“A lot comes down to the chemistry amongpeople . . . people are talking to each other.Without the relationship you can’t do much.”(Abel Camerena, Deputy Regional Forester,R2 USFS, 2002)“The problem with EAP is that it is not afocused approach. FCSFP is not a shotgunapproach. It gives focus to forest health andsmall-diameter utilization.”(Kim Kostelnik, FCSFP New MexicoState Coordinator)During the late 1990’s, considerable ambiguityexisted among state foresters about hvariouscommunity assistance and development programsthat had been funded through State and PrivateForestry by the 1990 Farm Bill. Sometimes theseprograms are globally referred to as EAP (EconomicAssistance Programs), even though there aremany sub-components with different purposesand outcomes. Although perspectives varied bystate and region throughout the U.S., there wereconcerns that too much of the EAP funding wasbeing ear-marked by Congress, for instance throughthe Northwest Forest Plan, that projects werebeing funded that had little to do with forestryeven though some of the financial resources wereoriginally intended for recovery within communitiesthat had lost significant timber economies, and thatthe overall program had little to do with traditionalstate forestry organization objectives such as “foreststewardship, forest health, and urban forestry andfire” (see “findings” in NASF, 1998, pp10-11).In the Four Corners region, a discussionamong the state foresters, led especially by TobyMartinez in New Mexico, began to focus on howto concentrate EAP resources into a combined ruraldevelopment and forest restoration initiative. Thisregional conversation was bolstered by a NationalAssociation of State Foresters (NASF) “white paper,”(NASF, 1998), which sought to reframe the variousEAP funding mechanisms.First, the white paper, developed by theEconomic Action Committee, noted the need for

estructuring EAP into a strategy acceptable to moreNASF members:In a 1998 survey, the NASF Economic Action Committeediscovered that many State Foresters had becomefrustrated by their lack of understanding regardingfunding authorities; small and, often, heavily earmarkedbudgets; and limited State Forestry involvement, manyassociated with the overall implementation of the ForestService’s Economic Action Program strategy. In additionto the budget limitations, state statutory authority forState Foresters may not be complementary with the statestatutory authority for state economic development. Insome states, the Forest Service has been working withthe state economic development agency, rather than stateforestry agencies. The committee undertook the currentprogram review, of which this paper is a part, in an effortto clarify the NASF membership’s understanding ofthe current Economic Action Programs and to proposean improved structure which could better meet theexpectations of both the Forest Service and the StateForesters in building a nationwide strategy for the future(NASF, 1998, p2).Second, the white paper indicated some of thepotential outcomes of revamping the EAP:As a result of discussions conducted with StateForesters during the NASF survey process, it appearsthat sufficient concern exists about the efficacy of thecurrent Economic Action Programs to undertake aconcerted effort to examine program components. Suchan examination will allow for greater input from StateForesters regarding their needs from the state perspective,enhanced communication between Forest Service staffand state forestry staff regarding complementary goals andobjectives, a focusing of scarce resources to where they areneeded most, an increase in support for the program fromNASF members, and the development of a coordinatednational strategy for the EAP with the flexibility neededto meet the objectives of different regions of the country.Ultimately, a carefully designed program focused onforestry-related issues can result in more measurablesuccesses, which meet NASF core objectives, as well asForest Service goals. With full support from NASF andother cooperators around the country, the potential forthe program to attract a higher level of funding and trulybecome a nationwide program will be enhanced (NASF,1998, p10).And third, the NASF paper proposed a Forest-BasedEconomic Assistance Program (FBEA) that outlineda series of major themes, or components, thatshould be addressed.Components of an NASF InitiativeThe NASF Economic Action Committee proposedthe creation of a Forest-Based Economic AssistanceProgram (FBEA), which is linked to the keyprogram components of EAP, but emphasizesa financially stronger and complementary rolethrough Rural Development and FPC&R.The FBEA program area would be designed tostrengthen the components of EAP that to date havenot been supported or funded. FBEA efforts wouldfocus on the following needs and/or issues:1. Community Economic Development—Thisprogram component would provide technicalassistance and matching funds for locally initiatedand planned projects designed to stimulateimprovements in the economic or social well beingof rural communities through sustainable use andretention of forest resources2. Technology Transfer—This component wouldencourage and facilitate the wise, more efficientuse of forest resources to enhance economicdevelopment and stimulate better forestlandstewardship.3. Marketing—This program component wouldfocus on expanding domestic and internationalmarkets for forest products through informationassessment, identification of income producingopportunities, actions to achieve marketacceptance and development of marketingstrategies.4. Demonstration and Product Development—Thiscomponent would increase value-added forestproduct processing; reduce the environmentalimpact of harvesting and processing forestproducts; improve utilization of wood wastesand residues; and extend the useful life of forestproducts.Although these components were proposed by theEconomic Action Committee of the NASF, thetotal package of components was not fully agreedto by the entire association. Nevertheless, there wasagreement to endorse the state foresters in the FourCorners in their pursuit of an EAP congressionalearmark for a regional community forestrypartnership that would contain essentially the fourcomponents described above.Thus, from the very beginning, the FCSFPFCSFP Capacity Building — 11

new and traditional forms of ecological, community,and economic knowledge. The ideal of buildinghealthy communities, economies, and forests meansthere is work for everyone—for people with ideas,who want to work differently, create new visions,methods, authorities, and coalitions.In this part of the report, we will addressthe many forms of support that can be boughtto bear upon the transformation process. Theend result of the transformation process isincreased capacity within the social, economic,and ecological systems of forest stewardship andmanagement. The community forestry supportsystem includes additional or reallocated resourcesto build community based organizations, toensure communication that disseminates hands-onlearning, to enhance civic support, and provide thenecessary mandates for community stewardship ofpublic land resources. The scope and the complexityof the changes needed, at least at this early stage oftransformation and development, means that mostevery form of organization, jurisdictions, interests,resources, understandings, and guidelines needs tobe reframed and reintegrated in new ways, in orderto achieve the overall goals of forest stewardship andimprovement over the next 20-30 years.The FCSFP—The Integration of DiverseSupport Resources“The value of the FCSFP is that it created acoordinating group that earned the respect ofthe regional forester, and kept in touch withthe tribes, businesses, and communities.”(John Waconda, FCSFP-BIA Tribal Coordinator)On one level of analysis, the FCSFP can beunderstood as a working group or network thatmade available 5.5 million dollars of EAP andNational Fire Plan funding over a five-year period.While it accomplished this important task, it alsodrew together, or became the focus of, a series ofadditional resources, technical assistance efforts,programmatic mandates, and institutional support.Taken together these begin to establish a morecomprehensive support system required to address acomplex set of needs and objectives in communityrestoration forestry.In a very important sense, partnerships suchas the FCSFP become a functioning network thatconnects a community, business, or land manager toa large network of organizations, programs, publicpolicies, and development processes that supportthe work of community forestry. Let’s say you area small logging business or the city manager of arural community. Perhaps you are a forester on anational forest, or the chief of a rural volunteer firedepartment. You often find yourself caught up inmany confusing and challenging real-life situations:• You move to the state and simply need a few logsfor your new furniture business, but can’t get inthe forest to harvest them;• The old saw mill has been idle for the past eightyears and has become an eye sore to the citycouncil, and most of the former workers have leftthe region or retired;• The last four times you offered timber sales of 500to a 1000 acres, no one bid on them because theydon’t contain much in the way of commercialtimber. The sales require a lot of thinning of smalldiameter trees that have little value;• As you drive around you see homes and cabinsinterspersed in a dense canopy of trees, withnarrow connecting dirt roads where it wouldbe criminal to send a volunteer fire fighter in awildfire;• A study conducted in the watershed of thenational forest over 10 years ago showed the treedensity to be far above normal, making it proneto wildfire and disease, but you have no forestrystaff to conduct the necessary environmentalassessments to get approval to begin restorationwork;• The last logging business in the region left threeyears ago for the neighboring state where timberwas available on tribal lands and a private ranch;how do you get them back home to start theneeded forest restoration work?• Five years ago the community got a wake-upcall when a fire burned 37,000 acres of adjacentnational forest lands, costing the city millions ofdollars in lost economic activity;• Unable to obtain timber on the national forestas in years past, you decide to retire from the16 — FCSFP Capacity Building

department. You often find yourself caught up in many confusingand challenging real-life situations:• You move to the state and simply need a few logs for your newfurniture business, but can’t get in the forest to harvest them;• The old saw mill has been idle for the past eight years and hasbecome an eye sore to the city council, and most of the formerworkers have left the region or retired;• The last four times you offered timber sales of 500 to a 1000acres, no one bid on them because they don’t contain much inthe way of commercial timber. The sales require a lot of thinningof small diameter trees that have little value;• As you drive around you see homes and cabins interspersed in adense canopy of trees, with narrow connecting dirt roads whereit would be criminal to send a volunteer fire fighter in a wildfire;• A study conducted in the watershed of the national forest over10 years ago showed the tree density to be far above normal,making it prone to wildfire and disease, but you have no forestrystaff to conduct the necessary environmental assessments to getapproval to begin restoration work;• The last logging business in the region left three years ago forthe neighboring state where timber was available on tribal landsand a private ranch; how do you get them back home to start theneeded forest restoration work?• Five years ago the community got a wake-up call when a fireburned 37,000 acres of adjacent national forest lands, costing thecity millions of dollars in lost economic activity;• Unable to obtain timber on the national forest as in yearspast, you decide to retire from the logging business, lay off sixemployees, and sell your trucks, your wife is tired of beingverbally assaulted by people waving protest signs as you drive outof the woods;• A 74,000-acre fire on the national forest near your communitycost 44 million dollars to fight, saving over 330 homes, while 54were burned;• After years of research you publish a report that indicates thatover a million acres of federally managed forest lands requireextensive restoration, but will cost upwards of $1200 an acre tothin and reintroduce a natural fire pattern.Lesson LearnedA key ingredient to partnershipformation is an ability to gather andintegrate a wide range of resourcesthat can be become much moreeffective when connected andinterwoven.Lesson LearnedIn community forestry, activepartnerships are needed toestablish a sense of collaboration,social movement, and mutualaccomplishment. Individualbusinesses, communities, andforests can rarely be successfulacting alone.Each one of these situations actually existed in specificcommunities in the late 1990’s and the beginning of the twentyfirstcentury in the Four Corners region. If you were one of theindividuals, organizations, communities and land managersimmersed in these situations you were looking for some sort ofhelp, knowing full well that you could not solve the problemsby yourself, or through your town or fire district or forestryorganization alone. At these critical points, partnerships makeFCSFP Capacity Building — 17

a great deal of sense. At these points, you feel veryalone if you don’t have active partners.What a partnership offers is a network ofresources, information, capital, planning, peersupport, and common goals and methods.They offer a place to get started, assistance withidentifying and solving a problem, and partners toteam up with who can share in the challenge andthe reward of greater forest stewardship.Without additional supportive partners andresource, situations like those noted above becomeinsurmountable. As an individual you spin yourwheels. Unhealthy forests become catastrophictinderboxes. Forestry skills and capacities declineto a non-remedial level. Unless you work intandem with others who share your concerns, theproblems become even worse. If you are a resourcemanager on either public or private lands, youhave no one to turn to get the needed managementwork accomplished. If you are a fire chief, youreally know you need the cooperation of wholeneighborhoods of residents. Whether you are asmall businessperson, a mayor, a district ranger, oran ecological scientist, you realize more deeply thanever before that you need coalitions of other people,land management agencies, local governments,and policy makers to solve a pervasive problem ofdeclining forest health.Certainly not all at once, but over several yearsof project development in the FCSFP, a conceptualroad map began to be drawn. People began to seesome of the routes, the places they needed to go,the places where some help might be available,and what a given community or forest need to doto become an authentic partner. The individualpartners, organizations, businesses, governmentsand program leaders and managers began to see thebig pieces of a basic road map come together, eachwith key elements. The parts began to fit together.Individuals and organizations began to see theirrole and working relationships with others. Thepieces to the puzzle became clearer, although no lesschallenging to consistently and predictably obtainand integrate.And herein lies one of the critical lessons ofcommunity forestry. Community forestry todayremains an innovative enterprise, not a routine,institutionalized method. Even in 2004, it remainsan emerging social and ecological process. Whileits outlines and basic directions are becomingclear, it is not yet a politically accepted means offorest management. Even some of its fundamentalmethods, such as stewardship contracting andadaptive management, are still being developed andevaluated (see United States General AccountingOffice Report, June 2004, which addresses thepublic involvement aspect of implementingstewardship contracting; also, see Pinchot Institutereports listed on its website).All or many of these key elements shown inFigure 2 are essential to an integrated supportsystem, and are needed to build capacity forcommunity forestry stewardship. Depending onthe situation, most or many of these attributes areneeded. One could hypothesize that when all of thesupporting factors are in place and are operatingin an integrating manner, there will be a greaterlikelihood of stewardship capacity being achievedIn the second part of this report, we will delveinto the three major areas of capacity building:community partnerships, wood-product businessdevelopment, and restoration ecology. However,first let us examine in more detail the elements ofthe support systems needed to begin building thisnew capacity.A network of resources that support capacitybuilding efforts of communities and businesseswas integrated over the first years of the FCSFP.Resources include regional partnership developmentand various forms of organizational networking,funding through grants and loans, utilization andmarketing of wood products, and implementationof new programs and authorities in stewardshipcontracting and wildfire mitigation.Let us first take up the program areas of theFCSFP, which fall into four major areas:18 — FCSFP Capacity Building

Figure 2Supporting SystemsOrganizational Processes • Public Mandates • Financial ResourcesREGIONALCommunication & NetworkingDemo Grant ProgramRevolving Loan FundTechnical Assistance, Marketing & UtilizationTOOLS & RESOURCESState Forest ServicesSmall Business Dev’tUniversity ResearchState-Level PartnershipsState, Tribal, & Private LandsSTATES/TRIBESFEDERAL/USFS/BIARegulatory AuthoritiesPolicy DevelopmentCommunity-Forestry ProgramsUSDA Forest Service Research & DevelopmentForest Products LabFederal LandsFCSFP Capacity Building — 19

A. Communication & Networking“When we get together to talk, I can see the bigpicture. Then you can find your place.”(Susan Snow, Southern Utah ForestProducts Assn., Torrey, Utah)Lesson LearnedWhile community forestrypartnerships need to evolve based onthe needs and resources within theirown region, several basic elementsor factors seem to be common:Communication and networking,capital reinvestment, various formsof technical assistance, and a varietyof ways to utilize and market the newproducts of restoration forestry.20 — FCSFP Capacity BuildingIn many respects, collaboration is communication and vice versa;and a major FCSFP role was to coordinate communication andnetworking among individuals, projects, and communities whowere limited in expertise, by remoteness of the community, andby poor communication networks or opportunities. This was soimportant in the minds of so many that it was recommendedin a progress assessment report to the FCSFP early on in itsexistence (Richard and Burns, August 2001). One desired, andrecommended, objective was to spread information and emergingknowledge quickly and efficiently by creating a communicationnetwork among local, state, and federal government agencies,NGO assistance providers, and private and academic researchorganizations, business community members, environmentalactivists, and others with a stake or interest, tied in closely withthe public relations campaign that was underway at the time.The FCSFP was in a position to provide an infrastructurefor information exchange that could in turn build greatercapacity for community forestry to grow regionally, while alsosupporting local applications. While effort was put into this,somewhat effectively, timely and relevant communication remainsa challenge. People continue to work in relative isolation acrossthe region. While methods and tools were usually applied at aregional level, much interaction occurred at local levels, as well.The latter often came in the form of education, oriented towardstechnical transfers, marketing assistance, and some business skillstraining. Communication at local levels seems to have improvedas people have cultivated stronger working relationships over timeand gained better understandings of common goals.Other information exchange activities included an annualworkshop for grant recipients, a media publicity campaign, fieldtours, an occasional newsletter, newspaper articles, and evaluationreports.Increasingly, since the FCSFP inception in 1999, a wealth ofinformation about community forestry amassed. Organizationshave emerged that are providing new knowledge related tothe attributes listed in this document (e.g., The EcologicalRestoration Institute at Northern Arizona University, the WoodCenter at Colorado State University, Jobs and BiodiversityCoalition in Silver City, New Mexico, Ruidoso Wildland-Urban Interface Working Group, etc.). All of these activitiesare contributing to the knowledge available to FCSFP partners.However, entrepreneurs are probably not interacting consistently

enough to enhance their businesses and on-thegrounddevelopment of community forestry. Thisis probably due to the fact that a more consistentstructure for communication is yet to be establishedat state and multi-county levels, but it is also due tothe nature of communication itself. It simply takestime for new knowledge to work its way to all levelsof the region.One of the original concerns of theparticipants of the Taos Roundtable was the lackof an educated citizenry about what communityforestry is and what it offers as an alternative tohistorical approaches of timber harvesting andcommunity development. To address this issue inpart, the FCSFP steering committee contractedwith a Colorado media consulting firm toenhance awareness and acceptance of the work ofcommunity forestry and the FCSFP in the newsmedia. Many media contacts were made, storiesappeared in newspapers, magazines and on theradio, and the FCSFP received heightened presencein media over about a two-year period. Duringthat time wildfires became a big news story andthe consultants began offering stories about theFCSFP as already addressing the issues of wildfiremitigation. Some debate took place over the efficacyof conducting a media contact and publicitycampaign, when the funds could have gone to otheruses. Some questioned whether publicity was, infact, education, or vice versa.Consultants held brief trainings for grantees,teaching them techniques for speaking withreporters and other news providers. The thinkingbehind this kind of educational information relatesto the continuing need to clarify to Americanswhat community forestry is and what it can meanfor rural economies and for the health of forests.Despite these and other efforts among many local,regional and national partnerships, we are notyet to a point where restoration forestry and thestewardship philosophy that drives it are commonlyunderstood among the general public.It is unclear how effective the campaign was inbuilding common understanding and acceptanceof community forestry, although interest has beenhigh among project representatives to see strongcommunication tools and methods made availableand every opportunity to network has been highlyvalued. Certainly to some degree it contributedsignificantly to raise awareness of community-basedforestry and the health of forests as one activityamong many others.FCSFP’s annual workshop was perhaps thenetworking activity most well-received by granteesas a chance to meet other grantees/business ownersfrom across the region. It was also a venue forexperts, researchers, and government and agencyrepresentatives to share their knowledge andpublicize their services. The annual workshopcontinues to be a popular tool and will probably berevived in some form at state levels after the FCSFPhas finished its work.A strong and effective component of the annualmeetings occurred when individual entrepreneurstold their stories. By doing this simple thing, thesignificance and potential of what they were doingcame through. The message has become “this is notindustrial forestry; this is a practice of stewardship.”The need to continue disseminating this messageremains. Who better to speak about it than thoseaverage people in rural communities leadinggrassroots efforts to revive an economy and discovernew relationships with the landscapes where theylive?Past evaluative reporting on the progressof FCSFP grantees lists characteristics ofcommunication and networking that are stillsignificant (Richard and Burns, August 2001, pp34-35). The assumption was made that regular,timely, long-term information exchanges betweenparticipants across the region would be an essentialand effective influence for advancing efforts. Andwhile it may not have been a well-planned strategy,there was a commitment to an identifiable processof communication through the newsletter, theannual meetings and the various workshops.FCSFP Capacity Building — 21

Lessons LearnedSome kind of infusion of capitalis needed to support communityforestry efforts. Debate Debateoccurs about where to placethe money—organizationaldevelopment, on-the-groundrestoration, equipment purchases,field staff—but the whole processneeds financial support to gaina foothold, especially during thetime needed to build a communityor regional partnership, andreestablish some of the basicharvesting and processinginfrastructure.B. Demonstration Grants Program“All along for the last 10-plus years, we have beensaying, we need the small diameter businesses, weneed the tools to do this. But until Four Comers, weweren’t saying, ‘Okay, we want you to do this, and herewe are going to help you take this risk. We are going toshare some of that risk with you.’ That’s again why theForest Service can’t do this. They continue to say, ‘we’regoing to do all this fuel thing, we’re going to do this andthat.’ But they not able to factor in the risk of privatebusiness and even communities in getting that done.”(Carla Harper, OCS interview,February 17, 2004)Funds made available through the congressional earmarkallowed the FCSFP steering committee, state foresters, and otherparticipants to better identify the region’s issues so that theycould design relevant programs. The FCSFP DemonstrationGrants Program played a critical, capacity-building role towardsconducting on-the-ground forest restoration. Grants funded avariety of activities associated with grantees’ goals, objectives,needs, and desires; all of which helped individual businesses andcommunities link to forest-based development. It is obvious thatsome sort of grant and/or loan program has been, and continuesFigure 3:(Source of data:FCSFP steeringcommittee, www.fourcornersforests.org and grantproposaldescriptions.Required matchingfunding, which isnot factored in here,was an additional25% of eachgrant. Categorieslisted represent theresearcher’s bestestimate of wherefunding for eachproject was utilizedand was based oninformation providedby FCSFP steeringcommittee and statecoordinators.)Product Dev't15%Communication2%Business Dev't6%FCSFP Grant Categories & Amounts (Best Estimates)Marketing8%TA3%Research6%Partnership Devt.4%Fire Mitigation3%Equipment37%Mill Conversion0%Forest Restoration8% Monitoring & Eval.3%Collaborative Process5%Partnership Devt.Collaborative ProcessForest RestorationBusiness Dev'tCommunicationProduct Dev'tMarketingTAEquipmentMill ConversionMonitoring & Eval.Fire MitigationResearch22 — FCSFP Capacity Building

to be, essential for building support for communitybasedforestry.The demonstration program formed the coreof support in developing essential componentsof partnership-based efforts, such as partnershiporganization, and marketing and utilization,as well as the other attributes. Past evaluationresearch (Burns and Richard, Oct. 2002) showsthat demonstration grants to recipients supported11 “attributes” that characterized the practicalcomponents of project activities and closely trackedwith the needs originally identified during and sincethe Taos Roundtable. Depending on the needs andcircumstances of each project, one or more of theattributes were identified as integrally significant tothe ability of the project to succeed. The attributesare:1. Partnership Organization2. Collaboration3. Economic Strategy4. Workforce and Training5. Technical Assistance6. Restoration Forestry7. Technology and Cost-Effectiveness8. Product Development9. Market Development and Marketing10. Information Exchange/Communication11. MonitoringVarious types of activities took place within eachattribute area. For example, training could includea business-plan or proposal-writing instructionthrough a county small-business developmentoffice. Technical transfers focused on new products,or value-adding to existing products, or fieldtours to see the results of a particular restorationprescription. Information exchange activities helpedlargely to improve interaction among differentparticipants in the partnership. This area was highon the list of successes of the FCSFP as viewedthrough the perspectives of grantees; as well-receivedas technical assistance.The FCSFP is premised on the idea thatpartnership organization creates a supportive,integrated environment for restoration forestryto occur. The demonstration grants program wascreated with the intention of funding multi-partyorganizations whose members worked togethertowards a common goal, such as on-the-groundrestoration projects. The steering committee quicklylearned that there was a multitude of possible typesof recipients within that framework. Members alsoquickly learned that actual in-woods restorationprojects proved to be difficult to achieve becauseobstacles to on-the-ground accomplishmentswere so great. What few groups did exist wereexperiencing problems at getting into the forestto harvest. Access to supply was, and continues tobe, viewed as problematic because communitiescontinued to depend on timber from nationalforests when the Forest Service was either reducingtimber sale offers, or no one could, or would, bidfor the sales that were offered.The industry, too, had declined to the pointat which many regions had very few or no forestworkers to do the job. The science of restorationecology was still relatively new and even lessunderstood by a critical mass of people to actuallyattempt a restoration prescription. Also, there weredebates over what were the best prescriptions. Fewhad been tested. Therefore, the committee had totake a step back and consider different strategies.One was to do what they could to keep the existingtimber industry in rural communities afloat.“[The industry] was like a trauma ward, whenyou look at the bleeding and not at the patient,” oneperson said in retrospect.While alternatives were suggested for howgrant funds could be allocated, the decision wasmade to place substantial support in the handsof business entrepreneurs. This was done incontrast to providing funding to whole partnershiporganizations, which the committee also supported.New Mexico state FCSFP representative KimKostelnik said, “We funded single businessesbecause there was a need. Eventually, we didcome round to stipulating participation insome community-based partnership effort, butcollaboration didn’t become a big part until WUI(wildland-urban interface) money (National FirePlan) came along. The essential point to note is thatgrant funding clearly supported development ofone or more of the 11 attributes that were necessaryin order to advance whether it went to partnerFCSFP Capacity Building — 23

Relative to the use of EAP funding, do you thinkthis approach to a concentrated or regionalmodel is preferable over direct funding throughthe traditional USFS grants and contractsmechanisms?“Yes, I do. There are past instances of usingEAP as “ feel good” types of projects. Somedon’t have a real strategic focus. Whereaswith FCSFP model or a regional approach,you have focus. There’s real purpose here(in the Partnership). And the money is farmore important to be used to help solve theseecological and community problems, forestrestoration, than it is to buy a sign for the town.…That’s not the purpose of this program. Thatonly allows the critics to become more vocaland have more ammunition. In this day and ageof tough budget decisions, any discouragingword throws a program out. We’re not ableto defend it. If we don’t have all the NASFbehind us, we’re not going to get it funded.”(Bob Dettmann, Region 2 USFS, regional ruralcommunity assistance coordinator)“I don’t see the need for big money forpartnership development, because if acommunity sees a need they will get togetherwhether they have money or not. Withcommitment from agencies, funding individualsto implement projects will help get it done.We didn’t have a lot going on in Ruidosountil [SBS, Inc.] had funding. Then the WUI(Wildland-Urban Interface) came in to play arole and things took off. Bill Greenwood (inEagar, AZ.) got the Walker Brothers, and othersgot interested. This forced the Forest Serviceto get NEPA on the shelf and so it goes roundand round. One thing leads to another.”(Kim Kostelnik, NM Energy, Minerals, and NaturalResources Division)“The two factors that will lead to successare the human and industrial capacityto treat the land and leadership withinthe land management agencies.”(Toby Martinez, New Mexico State Forester)organizations or to individual businesses.“There is value in having financial support forpartnerships, organizations that have a good handleon what they’re trying to accomplish,” said DaveSchen. “[while]…agencies can bear some of thecosts, in our situation you’re asking private sectorpeople to participate, so there needs for money tosupport them (personal communication, spring2004).” One key community member of theFCSFP pointed out that the demonstration grantsbrought a new “cooperative approach to work onpublic lands.” The grants increased opportunitiesfor “ communication and transfer of knowledge”in addition to supporting new equipment forbusinesses and partnerships.The pivotal event that stimulated the FCSFPsteering committee to fund equipment purchasesrather than overall organizational development wasthe National Fire Plan authority that allowed theFCSFP to use some funds for equipment purchases.But, also, industry people influenced the FCSFPto fund grants for the purchase of equipment.Many businesses said they needed capital to investin equipment to step up production, improveefficiency, or manufacture a new product or existingproduct that they didn’t have the ability to make atthe time.”“We didn’t see tons of ideas in terms of newproducts and utilizing pine, aspen, etc.,” Schensaid. “When we got the extra funding from NFPto start the RLF (Revolving Loan Fund) along witha different mix of EAP money, we reacted to whatour constituents were asking [i.e., fund equipmentpurchases].”C. Revolving Loan FundThe Four Corners Sustainable Forests Partnershipcreated its Revolving Loan Fund to help forestproductsbusiness owners acquire much neededcapital. Along with gaining access to small-diametertimber and wood-product markets, and receivingtechnical assistance, industry people often placedcapital high on the list of needs, particularly forpurchasing equipment.In November 2000, the Rocky MountainHome-Based Business Association proposed aprogram to provide capital lending for the retention,24 — FCSFP Capacity Building

creation, and expansion of forest-based businesses in the FourCorners region. In March 2001, Four Corners SustainableForests Partnership representatives met with Revolving LoanFund Administrators from Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, andUtah to discuss the Partnership’s proposed Revolving Loan Fundprogram. Shortly afterwards, the administrators agreed to includethe program in their existing programs. Formal guidelines,policies, and eligibility criteria were developed by June 2001and applicants were solicited and screened by that fall. Duringspring 2002, the majority of loans were awarded to the qualifyingapplicants. Each Four Corners state’s RLF administrator received$125,000, who in turn awarded amounts between $5,000 and$80,000.The Revolving Loan Fund complemented capital availablethrough the FCSFP Demonstration Grants Program, which hasemphasized community-based collaboration and restorationforestry that occurs through multi-party partnership andcooperation. A significant characteristic of the RLF is that it wasdeveloped utilizing existing structures. Many FCSFP participantsexpressed that the reinvestment potential offered by a loanprogram has more potential than a grant program.D. Technical Assistance and Utilization and MarketingTechnical assistance is a supporting activity (left columnof conceptual framework) to the capacity building andimplementation that occurs (right side of column). By providingregional resources to local projects, the ability to see momentumat local levels is enhanced. This all seems obvious, of course; butachieving it hinges on a clear and shared understanding of wherethose resources are best put to use, who needs and can benefitmost completely from them. Only then do things fall into place.The wood industry that is responding to the needs of forestrestoration is filled with new ideas, processing equipment,and products. Old tools and production methods typicallycannot be used in the same old ways with huge volumes ofsmall trees, brush and limbs, bark and sawdust. Early on, theFCSFP steering committee hired a staff extension foresterhoused with the Colorado State Forest Service who providedindividualized technical assistance to forest-based enterprisesthroughout the Four Corners (Tim Reader). Topic areas included:efficiency studies, business planning, engineering, equipmentexperimentation, mill conversion, and technology transfer.Occasional topical workshops were held when common regionalneeds were identified. The first such workshop was held on wooddrying technologies in February 2001. Reader also organizedspecific consultation for individual businesses when requested.Technical assistance expanded in late 2001 to includeCase In PointIn Colorado, Region 9 EconomicDevelopment in Durango runs thatstate’s revolving loan fund program.Region 9 establishes and confirmsapplicant financial and credit worthinessfor participation in the RLF program infive counties. Applications are rated witha cumulative numerical score based onhow well the applications meet five RLFobjectives:1. Business Retention: Operationalcapacity to implement andaccomplish forest health,restoration, and fuel reductiontreatments on public, private, andstate lands.2. Business Expansion: Capacityto develop new product lines andmarkets specifically utilizing smalldiameter timber resources.3. Rural Community Stability:Recognizes the importance ofthe applicants business to ruralcommunity economic stabilityand/or revitalization.4. Operational Reputation andExperience: Qualitativeassessment of applicantreputation and experience basedon work history with federal andstate forestry officials.5. Program Promotion and Publicity:Potential for success, andreceptiveness towards publicityand promotional efforts of theRLF program.As with all four states, the Coloradoprogram began (March 22, 2002) with$125,000 to lend. As of spring 2004,nine loans had been made in Colorado,totaling $145,000. There were eightoutstanding accounts with a remainingbalance of $96,000. For three of theloans, another $70,000 were leveragedutilizing other loan programs availablethrough Region 9. Another separateloan from a bank for $120,000 wasmade in conjunction with one of theseloans, meaning a total of $190,000was leveraged. To-date no losses haveincurred, however one loan was indefault for $7,900 on an original sum of$10,000.FCSFP Capacity Building — 25

Lesson LearnedThings an agency can do to supportcapacity building: 1) Identify theneeds of entrepreneurs and helpthem; 2) Put on financial andtechnical assistance workshops,with venture capitalists and smallbusiness-developmentcouncilrepresentatives.Technical Assistance ResourcesTA publications available from ColoradoState Forest Service Forest ProductsExtension Specialist, Tim Reader• Manufacturing and Marketing ofWood Caskets Made from PalletGrade Aspen Lumber, Dec.1998.• Composting with Wood Wasterand Municipal Biosolids, Nov.1998• Wood Product Conversion StudyParts I and II, Sept. 1998 andNov. 1998• A Survey of Montezuma CountyForest Products RelatedBusinesses and Mill ResidueAssessment, July 1998• Dip-diffusion Treatment ofWood: A value-added optionfor Four Corners’ forest productmanufacturers, Nov. 200026 — FCSFP Capacity Buildingmarketing assistance to willing businesses in order to better assistthem with small diameter timber products market identificationand entry. Many rural community people lack the resources,skills, and funding to address marketing, which many believedcould aid in becoming sustainable. Businesses were askingfor help with such things as preparing a brochure, developingwebsites, and developing marketing plans. A marketing specialist,Carolyn Dunmire, was contracted to assist those businessesrequesting help by focusing small amounts of technical assistance,financial resources, and staff time through a sort of mini-grantprogram. The degree to which this assistance was beneficial is notclear in terms of increased product sales and service contracts, butthe effort continues to link the timber business to the markets.The economics of working with low-value wood requiresa high level of technical problem solving, a level not availableconsistently throughout the Four Corners Region. MostFCSFP projects received some form and degree of technicalassistance; however, ample available technical assistance reachedsome projects, while other communities and projects receivedlittle. Past evaluation research of FCSFP projects found thatwhile projects received a wide range of technical assistance, theavailability overall of assistance was rated less than adequateduring 2000. Over time, however, efforts to improve technicalassistance showed progress as the kinds of needed assistancewere identified. Nevertheless, some obstacles remained. Thiswas due in part to a shortage in specific kinds of assistance,or the knowledge needed, available to some projects that weredistributed at some distance throughout a large geographicregion. In all cases, there was substantial benefit from having atechnical assistance component in the economic revitalizationand forest restoration framework.The kind of assistance needed by a project or initiativedepends upon where the project or community is in itsdevelopment, and on the ability of project leaders and assistanceproviders to recognize what those needs are. Early on in theirdevelopment, projects needed organizational- and partnershipdevelopmentexpertise. Those deeply involved in actual forestrestoration need ecological, silvicultural, and harvestingcapacities. Much depends on where the project is geographicallylocated; for example, near or far from a university technicalassistance center or other entity.Discussion with a number of project participants broughtout areas in which they believed technical assistance isneeded, including continued product development, businessadministration and development, market development,marketing/advertising, and workforce training.Remoteness of some rural communities from technicalassistance providers hampered achieving consistency; e.g.,research knowledge is not reaching the more remote, less-funded

community-based efforts in a timely manner. In addition, a lackof awareness has existed on the part of some community-levelparticipants of the kinds of assistance that are available, whereto find them, and how to contact and contract with them. Justgiving them the information they need to do these things wouldmake a huge difference in their progress.Often, local areas lack their own knowledgeable experts;for example, millwrights for infrastructure-building activities,such as retooling defunct mills for handling new materials, andecologists for understanding local forest histories and structures.A few projects have had built-in technical assistance from its ownmembers, such as the Greater Flagstaff Forests Partnership, whichhas partners with expertise, or who are associated with serviceorientedorganizations.There is a need for technical assistance that is not onlysensitive to local identities and autonomies. Yet, the remoteness ofsome rural communities and technical assistance providers fromeach other hampers assistance development. One resolution forachieving regular, continual opportunities, if the TA source is notlocated in the community in need, is for TA providers to spendmore time in the communities that they are assisting.Tracking and Linking Technical Assistance ResourcesCommunities and projects need help with “technical” issues andquestions. And, if you look around a little bit, there are a lot ofanswers available. So what’s the big deal? Let’s get to work!In Catron County, a house log company has a pile of sawdustthat might be utilized. At Jemez Pueblo, there is a questionabout whether to buy a medium- or large-sized sawmill. InEscalante, Utah, the partnership wants to find out what volumesof raw materials will be needed to make an existing, technicallyadvanced, portable sawmill economically sustainable. In CatronCounty, there are concerns about how to implement a proposedsilvicultural prescription, while at the same time maintaining abroad agreement established among community interests.The typical way to get plugged into the technical assistance(TA) network is to call your state or tribal coordinator, orget in touch with Tim Reader, the marketing and utilizationspecialist with Colorado State Forest Service, located in Durango,Colorado. Behind and around Tim is a significant list ofother resources. Jerry Payne with the USFS Region 3 office inAlbuquerque has a wealth of information about biomass energy.Kurt Mackes and Dennis Lynch, with the forestry program atColorado State University have inventoried all the potential woodproducts in Colorado, their volumes, uses, and sources of supply.Dr. Mackes has also studied using wood fiber in producingconcrete and for animal bedding. Denny has completed overLessons LearnedThe ultimate goal of technicalassistance to keep in mind is toachieve locally self-sustainingoperations.Lessons LearnedThe economics of working with lowvalue wood requires a high level oftechnical problem solving, a level notavailable consistently throughout theFour Corners Region.FCSFP Capacity Building — 27

a half a dozen comparative cases of harvestingcosts and techniques in different forest situationsin Colorado. In Denver, McNeil Technologies isidentifying and evaluating as many ways as possibleto utilize biomass for power generation.Carolyn Dunmire, working out of the Cortez,Colorado area, provided an assortment of woodproduct marketing tools and techniques on a quickturn around basis.Since the community projects and businesseshave an array of TA questions, and a significantinvestment has been made in resources, the mainquestion is how best to link them up. For the mostpart the current arrangement works pretty well.People make TA requests. Tim or Carol get aroundto seeing them as quickly as possible. Tim puts ona workshop or two a year. They have been wellattendedtraining events on air-drying or using dipdiffusiontechniques to chemically treat a post andpole product. What could be better?What seems to be needed is a better way forthe variety of technical assistance resources to worktogether more closely. What would this look like? Itwould simply be a way for Tim, Jerry, Denny, Kurt,Carolyn, and any relevant others to meet regularly,compare notes, review requests for assistance,and propose an integrated training and workshopschedule for the coming year. This would probablymake good sense for the region as a whole.States/Tribes“In response to their mission, the state forestorganization’s role is the delivery of stateand private forestry programs. Workingwith communities is part of their mission,working with landowners and communities,providing forestry technical assistance. Theyunderstand the utilization and marketingpiece, which is what the FCSFP is reallyabout. It’s a natural fit for state forestry.It is an important and unique role”(Bob Dettmann, OCS Interview 3/16/04, Durango)Within the FCSFP model both states and tribeshave played key partner roles. As importantjurisdictions they provide auspices and authorityfor resource management and community forestry,“States understand better the role of S&PF withcommunities and can play that role better. It is difficultfor communities to understand this role. State forestryorganizations are in a better bargaining position tocarry out the community forestry role.”(Joel Frandsen, Utah State Forester (left),speaking with Linda Linn and Dell LeFevre)bringing to the table special niches of forestresources, knowledge, and vision.State Forest Services“State forestry has tremendous authoritiesto get things done. We don’t need newauthorities. We need to work more insidethe community. There is an immediateneed so there will be no more Ruidoso’s.”(Kirk Rowdabaugh, Arizona State Forester,referring to recent catastrophic wildfires)As has already been mentioned, the state forestservice organizations in the Four Corners states,Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah,have played a significant role in initiating anddeveloping the FCSFP. The involvement of stateforest organizations (SFOs) is somewhat unique inthe make up of community forestry partnershipsthroughout the western United Sates, and thisis clearly an important addition. State forestryorganizations can play specific roles in working withthe private business or entrepreneurial sector. Forexample, they can be very proactive in supportingthe development of wood products businesses,28 — FCSFP Capacity Building

in developing wood utilization and marketingprograms, and in building networks betweenfederal, state and community institutions.In one sense, SFOs provide a key bridgebuilding function between public and privateentities. The oft-mentioned goal of establishingpublic-private partnerships to solve large-scaleproblems is one that fits well within the purviewof SFOs. State foresters can take a broad statewideperspective, linking business enterprise developmentand public land management needs across a broadercommercial and political landscape. Whereas theUS Forest Service may, by virtue of regulations orinternal cultural tendencies, be focused on landsunder their jurisdiction, the state forester has awell-accepted role and responsibility to work withprivate property owners and businesses, to focuson treatments, utilization, and marketing of forestproducts, and to provide community assistancethrough a variety of educational, programmatic, andresearch products.Nowhere is this clearer than on the issueof catastrophic wildfire mitigation. SFOs havea specific responsibility to work with privatelandowners and communities that fall with inthe wildland-urban interface (WUI). As is madeclear by the mandates within the National FirePlan, collaboration across multiple jurisdictionsis imperative if wildfire mitigation is going to besuccessful. Working with public managers and localcommunities to collaboratively focus fuel treatmentsin a cross-jurisdictional framework is a primarymeasure of success. Additionally, joint efforts needto be made in fire prevention education, communitywildfire protection planning, and in the utilizationof wood materials removed from the WUI.Within the FCSFP, a variety of roles have beenplayed by the SFOs to one degree or another,including statewide forest health assessments, millretention, and assisting communities in planningand fuel reduction (through the National Fire Plan).Underlying these specific actions is the opportunitythat state foresters have as significant advocates forcommunity forestry within the programs of Stateand Private Forestry of the USDA Forest Service.This is a bridging and networking role that fitsuniquely within the program mandates and thecross-boundary perspectives of SFOs.In the FCSFP, state foresters have playedleadership, organizing, and fiscal managementroles. Together the four state foresters formedan Oversight Committee to govern and guidethe Partnership. The New Mexico SFO (Energy,Minerals, and Natural Resources Division; orEMNRD) provided the administrative contractingauthority for all of the funding received throughEAP of the USFS, managing all of the grants andcontracts made to communities and businessesover the five years of the funding authorization.The Colorado SFO provided the administrativestructure for the regional marketing and utilizationspecialist, who worked out of Durango, Colorado.A staff member of the Arizona SFO sat on theFCSFP Steering Committee, which providedon-going guidance on program developmentand implementation. Two of the FCSFP statecoordinators, in Utah and New Mexico, were stateforest employees. Additionally, a BIA liaison, JohnWaconda, represented tribes in the region as amember of the steering committee and acted as agrant coordinator for tribal funding proposals.In a variety of ways all of the state forestersprovided political advocacy for the causes ofcommunity forestry through the NationalAssociation of State Foresters (NASF), stategovernment, and through dialogue withrepresentatives of the federal land managementagencies. The examples which they provided havedemonstrated the important and unique role tobe played in community forestry by professionalforestry leadership at the state level, especially withregard to private-public partnership development.“But once the state foresters get a budgetfrom EAP and they start to develop a program,then all five of our SF’s (in USFS-Region 2)would stand up and say, ‘EAP, you bet.’ Theygot a piece of the action. Many of these otherstates, they didn’t have a piece of the action.All they saw was that under a constrainedbudget, $25 million of EAP funding, was goingsome place to the interlopers and not partof their program. But once they get a pieceof it--of the action-- and start to develop aprogram, and see the results and see thepositive part of it, then they start to becomesupportive. And that’s not rocket science.”(Bob Dettmann, March 2004)FCSFP Capacity Building — 29

Small Business DevelopmentWe have to do a better job of linking upour people to the resources that are there,whether they are local or regional. That’s theneed. People have the resources out there.So we have to be diligent in politely bashingdown their door. …If the guy is an expert indeveloping business plans, and a wood workerneeds some direction, I need to go make thatguy come help him. …Who really has the toolsand how can I fit them in for our needs here?(Brain Cottam, former coordinatorof the Greater Flagstaff Forest Partnership,interviewed March, 2004)Most rural community businesses in the timberindustry had little or no experience at systematic,organized business development. Even a businessplan was a foreign concept for many. However, tothe advantage of the FCSFP model of communitybasedefforts, small business development supportservices can come from existing sources; nothingnew has to be created to meet the need. Regularstate programs, such as those activated through theRevolving Loan Fund, can provide needed services.Resource, Conservation and Development Districts(RC&D), county economic development councils,community colleges, and others are already involvedin some areas. Enhancing their role is one clearopportunity awaiting attention. They are alreadypart of the infrastructure.A number of community-based service providershave been involved in supporting businessesassociated with the FCSFP. They include PioneerCommunity College in northeastern Arizona,small-business development consultants RandyJohnson and Dawn Gardner out of Colorado StateUniversity, Region 9 Economic DevelopmentDistrict in Durango, Colorado, Grant CountyEconomic Development Council in Silver City NewMexico, Wayne County Development Council insouth-central Utah, and Southern Utah UniversityEconomic Development Office in Cedar City.University-Based Research and Applications“We do need a strong tie to universities; onerole is unbiased monitoring and evaluation.It has more credibility, like the work Rommeand Lynch did…it was all credible…and alsouniversities can help in facilitation…Workingwith universities is a way to rectify conflictingdata. Getting the hard numbers together…sothe communities aren’t learning the samelessons over and over again. The universityhelps us sort that stuff out. The national labsfill that role, too. I would have to place theForest Products Lab in that category also.”(Bob Dettmann, OCS InterviewMarch 16, 2004, Durango).“Especially when you are diving into the dark,somebody’s got to have some kind of lightthat they can shine on certain things that havepromise and that are credible and have somesort of discipline behind them, some sciencebehind it, so you are anchored in that. Thatgoes for the ecological work, as well as theeconomic and various forest products, thetechnical side. It’s absolutely a strong piece.”(Bob Dettmann, OCS InterviewMarch 16, 2004, Durango)Because of the need for advanced technology andthe latest in scientific knowledge, it is obviouslyhelpful to have university researchers as partnersin community forestry. For over a decade, theecological and natural fire regime work of BillRomme, Wally Covington, Steven Pyne, andothers have been utilized to explain the crisis insouthwestern ponderosa pine forests (see a recentsummary of these perspectives in Friederici, Peter,editor, 2003, Ecological Restoration of SouthwesternPonderosa Pine Forests. Flagstaff: ERI). Theseresearch efforts establish the ecological needs foractive management of stand densities in muchof the ponderosa pine forest of the Four Cornersregion.Important work has also been completed byDr. Dennis Lynch on the economics of forestthinning and product utilization, in particular onthe Ponderosa Pine Restoration Partnership sites30 — FCSFP Capacity Building

“My work is building capacityby building bridges fromthe stump to the consumer,thinking backwards from theproduct to the woods. It’sabout reverse engineeringand it’s coaching.”Herb Hopper,Arizona FCSFPState CoordinatorLessons LearnedIncreased sharing and interactionamong the community partnership,business projects and agencies,such as the USDA Forest Service,has proved productive.on the San Juan National Forest in Southwest Colorado (Lynchet al 1998). Dr. Kurt Mackes has continued the work begun byLynch, looking at harvesting cost comparisons on about a halfa dozen sites in Colorado that possess different stand structures,and therefore, different product volumes and harvesting costs.Mackes has also expanded his work, focusing on the woodscience applications and testing of various existing and newproducts, suggesting potential manufacturing and marketabilitypossibilities. In product utilization, for example, the use ofwoody biomass for animal bedding to reduce mortality, and as asupplement to concrete manufacturing. Recently, he has begunwork on biomass utilization in power and heat generation.Other university-based research is occurring through theGreater Flagstaff Forest Partnership (GFFP), utilizing studentsand professors at the Northern Arizona University School ofForestry and the Ecological Restoration Institute, headed by Dr.Wally Covington. A recent partnership update (January 2004indicates that over 95 research processes are underway with regardto a variety of treatment prescriptions and their biological andterrestrial effects within the GFFP project boundaries.Even with these successes, the need for scientific and researchassistance is considerable. With basically two university-basedforestry research centers in the Four Corners region, located inFort Collins, Colorado and Flagstaff Arizona, the challenges ofcovering a large geographic region are enormous. On-going workis needed to address maximizing harvesting techniques, largescalelandscape restoration prescriptions, restoration economics,and community collaboration methods, among others. Alliancesand partnerships need to be created with the USFS-ForestProducts Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin and through variousFCSFP Capacity Building — 31

USFS Research Stations to identify research and technologydevelopment needs (more will be said about these partnerships ina later section on US Forest Service Research Stations).Throughout the FCSFP there is a continuing need tocollaboratively establish an on-going applied research agendathat meets the needs of local communities, businesses, harvesters,and land managers. Formal task groups and informal networkingneed to be increased to ensure that research is being focused onthe practical needs of community forest practitioners.Lesson LearnedSub-regional or state-levelcommunity forestry partnershipscan be very highly effectiveas integrating and supportiveorganizations when they focus onan appropriate geographic scalewhere a critical mass of community,economic, and ecological needsand opportunities are present.State-Level PartnershipsSet along Interstate 40, one hundred miles north of the pineforest of the Mogollon Rim, Holbrook, Arizona is an unlikelyplace to locate the communications center of the ArizonaSustainable Forests Partnership (ASFP). However, this is theheadquarters of the Little Colorado Resource and ConservationDistrict (LC RC&D). For many years, the Little ColoradoRC&D has provided assistance to local communities towardsbuilding sustainable forest products economies. A principleexample of this was the “Small Diameter Action Team,” of theLC RC&D, which arranged a study by Richard Mirth fromthe Engineering School at NAU in the mid 1990’s. The studyshowed that a “phenomenal amount of material” needed to comeoff of the forest, specifically that that over a 30-year period,more wood needed to be removed than was cut when the pulpmill was operating at Snowflake (personal conversation with BillGreenwood, Town Manager, Eagar, Arizona).This began a dialogue, which led to a process oforganizational development that has produced a high levelof collaboration among a wide range of businesses, localgovernments, federal land managers, and state agencies, includingthe Arizona governor’s office. After approximately 10 years ofstudy and networking, the ASFP has evolved into a multi-facetedcommunity forestry organization. It is an excellent example of asub-regional, or state-level, coalition. Within a radius of 100-125miles in northeastern Arizona, there is a concentration of human,community, and natural resources that facilitates the creationof an active collation of community forestry members. Fromits objectives listed below, one can gain a perspective about thestrategic and integrated orientation of the ASFP.Objectives• Respond to changes in forest products industry in Arizona,addressing forest restoration activities decreasing the risk ofcatastrophic wildfire and offering solutions for the promotion ofsmall-diameter timber harvesting and subsequent products.• Assist individuals and businesses, that previously relied upon32 — FCSFP Capacity Building

large industry, to identify products and marketsthat utilize existing machinery, equipment andhuman capital in order to increase economicviability.• Transition existing forest products industryleaders toward vertically integrated, ecologicallysustainable forest management and industryrelationship.• Evaluate the feasibility of revitalizing closedsawmill facilities for the purpose of developing aninnovative forest products industry, supported bya procurement cooperative, and a resource sortingfacility and development center.• Enable communities to enhance “capacitybuilding” strategies that encourage diversificationof the existing economic base, providingsustainable solutions to employment andenvironmental issues.Another indication of the strategic perspective takenby the ASFP is the Arizona Industries of the Future(draft) proposal recently formulated, which includesthe following key objectives:• Create an advocacy group that promotes theArizona forest and forest products industry, whileconcurrently communicating to the public onissues such as forest ecosystem health and themerits of purchasing Arizona wood products.• Create government and financial incentives forprivate businesses to expand current sustainableforest and wood products, and develop emergingtechnologies in the forest products industry.• Assist forest practitioners, wood processorsand manufacturers to purchase equipment,expand production and conduct manufacturingassessments, all designed to build long-termsustainment into their efforts.• Create a research and development programto develop and test improved manufacturingprocesses and equipment to produce cost-effective,value-added goods from forest restorationmaterials.The ASFP is one of the best examples of a statelevel,or sub-regional, coalition to improveopportunities in restoration forestry, because of itsmulti-faceted and broad membership approach.It includes a diversity of partners from stategovernment, to local counties, small wood productsbusinesses, university cooperative extension, and aSmall Business Development Center at NorthlandPioneer College. It has the benefit of a strongworking relationship with a national forest, theApache-Sitgreaves based in Springerville, Arizona.Within a radius of about 100 miles, there aresmall and large saw mills (Reidhead and the FortApache Tribal Mill) and a variety of wood productsenterprises, (Universal Laminators, Forest EnergyCorporation, Mountaintop Wood Products, and anassociation with Arizona Public Service to produceenergy from biomass waste materials), all of whomproduce an integrated stream of products such aslaminated beams, cabinetry, house logs, traditionalsaw timber, and wood stove pellets (see additionalinformation about wood products under theutilization and marketing section of Part II below).Key to the success of the ASFP is the dynamicsand networking that have been created by a criticalmass of partners working together at an appropriategeographic scale. While the partnerships interactswith other organizations and agencies from theArizona governor’s office to the Greater FlagstaffForests Partnership, the Prescott Area WildlandUrban Interface Commission, and the NaturalResources Working Group (active in the BlueRidge Demonstration Project near Pinetop), it isable to prioritize its attention on building a socialand economic infrastructure for community-basedrestoration forestry in northeastern Arizona.Part of the momentum of the ASFP can beattributed to the recent development of a long-termstewardship contract, entitled the White MountainStewardship Project (see Apache-Sitgreaves NationalForest website). This contract has just recentlybeen awarded to two businesses, Rob Davis ofForest Energy in Show low, and the Walker Bros.in Eagar, Arizona. Together they have formed alimited liability corporation, Forest Futures. Alongwith some hazard-tree salvage work resulting fromthe Rodeo-Chediski Fire in 2002, the new longtermstewardship promises to bring much neededsustained access to raw materials in this region.FCSFP Capacity Building — 33

Tribal, State & Private LandsThe case being made for community-based forestrestoration is not exclusive to federal lands. In fact,tribal, state, and private lands often are makingstrides not yet occurring on federal land. Thismulti-jurisdictional diversity of land ownership isan important ingredient in the context of providingresources and support to community-forestryefforts. This diversification of access to forests iscreating a number of opportunities. One area ofparticularly strong opportunity obviously is firemitigation and several federal authorities to supportcommunity forestry: the Health Forest RestorationAct, Healthy Forests Initiative, National Fire Plan,Stewardship Contracting, and the Tribal ForestRestoration Act signed into law by the president inJuly 2004.Harvests and treatments on private land aredeveloping a record of outcomes from which newknowledge may be gained about effects of smalldiameterharvests related to wildfire, rehabilitation,regeneration, succession, and wildlife habitat comeback.On some tribal land, for example, the FortApache Reservation, a decades-long history oftimber harvests have produced healthier treesthat in turn produce better quality lumber. Somuch so, that the Zuni Furniture Enterprisebuys lumber from Fort Apache for crafting theirprize-winning furniture. As Sterling Tipton, ZuniFurniture Enterprise director says, they can’t findthe kind of quality timber they need in their ownneighborhood.The quality of Fort Apache timber is evidenceof the results of thinning out overstocked forests,whatever the ownership. Some results are alreadyshowing up on private lands, since increasingharvesting has been occurring in response to wildfirethreats. It is almost common knowledge thatalthough we hear on the news that so many homeswere lost to wildfires, many were also saved becausethe owners had conducted defensible space thinningbefore the fires struck.The success can be attributed to state forestersinteracting with private landowners to plan andconduct defensible space treatments. One areareporting notable progress is the seven-countyregion of south-central New Mexico where theforestry division of the state’s natural resourcesdivision works with private landowners to conductwildfire mitigation. Forester Barbara Luna reportsconsiderable progress in fire mitigation on privateland, as well as some momentum in fuels reductionon public land in the wildland-urban interface zone.She reports that they are improving the ways ofworking with private land owners, as well as actualfire mitigation treatments.“In my 20-year career, I’ve never seen anythingso successful,” Luna said. She attributed much towildland fires that have struck the area in recentyears for motivating people to participate in theRuidoso Wildland-Urban Working Group. Thegroup has about 80 members, including federal,state, municipal, and private individuals. She creditsthe group’s longevity to funding, such as that fromthe Four Corners Sustainable Forests Partnership.Ms. Luna said that the greatest opportunity tobuild capacity, or to take advantage of what capacityexists right now, is related to the utilization of smalldiameter timber between Sherry Barrow Strategies,Inc. in Glencoe, and Sierra Contracting in RuidosoDowns. These entrepreneurial businesses are majoravenues for disposing of low-value material removedfrom private and public. They are the endpoints forproduct development crucial to the success of forestrestoration and fuels reduction efforts.Both still need subsidizing, Luna said; but theMescalero Apache Forest Products Mill has agreedto send more raw material from reservation harveststo SBS, Inc., which has had difficulties findingenough supply to meet current consumer demand.“When you look at the stocking levels that needto be addressed, EMNRD (Energy, Mineral, andNatural Resources Division) and the BIA are theonly two entities making on-the-ground progress. .. . Everybody (EMNRD, BIA, USFS) is not doingthe same kind of treatments, but at least we’re alldoing treatment.”34 — FCSFP Capacity Building

“There’s hope for change. There’s potential to makeit happen. It’s a scary thing, too. The whole thing canunravel. That’s why the Forest Service writes thecontract the way they do. What if there is a change inadministration and they say they don’t want a 10-yearcontract. That’s part of the difficulty the Forest Serviceis experiencing. Cancellation of a contract comes rightout of their budget. That’s their side of the story. Theyhave vulnerability. It’s not just that they don’t understandthe industry; they have their headaches, too.”(Ray Wrobley, SEC, Inc, Sedona, AZ, spring 2004)291. 10.672, Rural Development, Forestry, andCommunities (Rural Development ThroughForestry). The objectives of this authorization are“to help rural areas analyze and assess forest resourceopportunities, maximize local economic potentialthrough market development and expansion, anddiversify communities’ economic base” throughproject grants.“Funding may be allocated for such thingsas technical assistance, training and education,equipment, marketing, and all costs associatedwith making these services available to tribalnations, state and federal agencies, state foresters,local governments, not-for-profit organizations,and others who are extending services to ruralcommunities.”Funds obligated by Congress in recent yearshave been: Grants—FY 02 $5,445,000; FY 03 est.$4,692,000; and FY 04 est. $6,057,000. Additionalfunds have been obligated through congressionalearmarks to communities associated with the PacificNorthwest Forest Plan, and to other programs suchas the Four Corners Sustainable Forests Partnership.It was in part because some State and PrivateForestry leaders envisioned a greater linkage betweenEAP and rural development through forestry that anon-going debate has ensued through the NASF.During the FCSFP’s implementation, itsleadership provided the NASF’s Economic ActionCommittee a proposal to focus EAP on objectivessimilar to the Four Corner’s model, which containedthe following outline of “desired results”:• Programs that meet strategically focused needs ona regional basis would typify the desired futurestate of this model.• Economic action programs would be recognized asserving as a critical tool for helping resolve naturalresource problems on a long-term sustainablebasis.• Sustainability would be based on balancing forestresource needs with community and industrycapacity.• Strategically located demonstration projectswould lead to sustainable businesses. Sustainablebusinesses would lead to the creation ofinterconnected support businesses.• The volume of material processed would increaseto the point that forest resource needs would bemet on a sustainable basis.• This approach includes identification andevaluation of successes that other regional areasthat have similar problems can replicate (Source:Four Corners Sustainable Forests Partnership,Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah,“Forest Based Economic Action Model,” undated).It is interesting to note that the USDA ForestService website, which explains the use of “ruralassistance through forestry program—10.672—usesthe following examples of grants having been made,the majority of which were made through theFCSFP:Examples of Funded ProjectsIn fiscal year 1999-2000, Catron County CitizensGroup, in New Mexico, developed a forestrestoration plan for the Negrito Ecosystem, created alocal Economic Development plan, and established36 — FCSFP Capacity Building

a log sort yard and business incubator. New MexicoState University Advanced Manufacturing Center,NM, assisted P&M Signs of Mountainair in thedesign and construction of prototype equipmentfor producing juniper/plastic composite materialsto be used in construction and sign applications.Painted Sky RC&D, CO, worked with DeltaTimber to conduct an economic feasibility testwith 4X4-inch width materials for end and edgegluing into wider and longer materials suitable formanufacture of furniture and cabinets. Utah StateRural Development Council, UT, worked withthe Southern Utah Forest Products Association tobuild skills and cooperative marketing strategiesfor producers of value-added small diameter woodproducts, as well as to make connections to regional,national, and international markets. Office ofCommunity Services, Fort Lewis College (regional),is developing an evaluation program for FourCorners Partnership projects in forestry in order todescribe and assess project outcomes. WashingtonDepartment of Natural Resources and theWashington Hardwoods Commission are workingto establish policies for conservation of the state’shardwood resources. The secondary wood productsindustry in Oregon was surveyed to determine whatspecific types of training were needed to assist inimproving industry-worker skills and education,leading to development of curricula later offeredby the state’s community college system. Overall,1,500 communities and 1,000 organizations assistedin fiscal year 1997; 2,400 communities and 1,200organizations assisted in fiscal year 1998; ahnd2,200 communities and 1,000 organizations assistedin fiscal year 1999.The FCSFP Demonstration Grants Programhas been described as a significant improvementover the USDA Forest Service’s Economic ActionProgram. The demo program improved upon EAP,because “it focused on providing funding in orderto diversify rural economies” (Dave Schen, personalinterview, Spring 2004). The EAP focused, rather,on natural resources, specifically forestry. The demoprogram went out to communities at a differentlevel, giving business a more direct line of access tohelp them.Traditionally, what little money EAP had wasspread thinly among recipients and often used forthe so-called “feel good things.” EAP funds wereCase in PointThe A-Bar-S stewardship-contracting project beingdesigned during 2004 on the Apache SitgreavesNational Forest is the largest stewardship contractingeffort to date. Once established, it will involveharvesting materials 5-9 inches in diameter from150,000 acres of national forest. Forest Service effortsto design the project to fits the needs and objectivesof potential bidders, as well as meet its own goals,have been described as somewhat complex. Theagency has revised the contract text in response tofeedback from potential contractors. Some of thedifficulty has been described as lack of understandingamong both the Forest Service and private industry ofeach other’s needs, which entail a range of concerns,including: scale, bonding, and achieving multi-partyunderstanding of stewardship principles. The scaleissue has advocates for both large- and small-scaleharvesting, depending on the level of interest ofindividuals involved in a given locality and their abilityto organize a project.That ability is constrained by infrastructure,presence of industry, willingness and preparedness ofthe Forest Service and local industry, to name a fewthings. For example, Louisiana Pacific was consideringa bid for the A-Bar-S contract, but reportedly has saidthat 150,000 acres was not enough to support one ofits strand-board plants.As of spring 2004, the Forest Service wasrequiring a bonding of contractors that few, or none,are capable of, or interested in, supporting. “Retention”has been suggested as an alternative, rather thanbonding, which places the burden on the contractor.Retention would allow the Forest Service to retain 10%of contractor payments for liability protection.“It’s a learning process,” said Ray Wrobley, withSEC, Inc. in Sedona, AZ. “There’s no question theworld is changing. It’s exciting that we are beginning tosee things change.”The requirement of long-term commitment andto the demand for multiple areas of expertise makesstewardship contracting challenging in the mindsof many private industry people. Most contractorsare single-area experts, highly specialized, and arereluctant to take on responsibility for stewardshipactivities for which they have little or no experience,and when most of the liability falls on them. Pilots havenever received bids because of this.“You need to be sort of a ‘general contractor’ tocapitalize on stewardship contracting,” Wrobley said,echoing others. “People need to see someone go outand take the chance first. If he is successful, or even ifhe isn’t, they might see where it can go and someonemight try it themselves.”FCSFP Capacity Building — 37

Case in PointStewardship contracting is probablyan important opportunity for the ForestService to play a role in communityand forest restoration in the long term.While few substantial examples ofstewardship contracting are taking placein association with FCSFP projects,other parts of the country do have arecord of accomplishment that can beexamined for transferability (see www.thewatershedcenter.org/stewpilot/. Forexample, the framework for the SiuslawBasin Rehabilitation Stewardshipproject, located on the Mapleton RangerDistrict of the Siuslaw NF offers anexample of how stewardship contractingcould be approached. Its website listsand describes: Purpose; Goals andObjectives (social, economic, socialand administrative); Authorities BeingTested; Accomplishments; Multi-partyMonitoring; and a Business Plan.Thirteen projects are described in thewebsite. Most have developed detailedplans that frame activities. What issignificant is how specific and traceablethe goals and objectives are.The section Authorities BeingTested offers an environment in whicha Forest Service role can be examinedand explored. Multi-party Monitoring,while not an authority per se, is anotherarea of participation for which the ForestService may be best suited to play arole in implementing. The agency maybe an important facilitator of multi-partymonitoring, which quickly becomescomplex and intricate. The sheernumber of items that can be monitoredis vast, such as those suggested in theGuidebook for Multiparty Monitoringfor Sustainable Natural ResourceManagement (Collaborative ForestRestoration Program Jan. 2004; http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/spf/cfrp/monitoring/).historically given to local governments, which may or may nothave reached businesses that could produce on-the-groundresults. In contrast, the FCSFP Demonstration Grants Programsought to help to create jobs through sustainable restorationforestry. Although the goal was to produce more jobs thanactually seen to date, the FCSFP program has benefited forestbasedbusinesses and communities by helping to sustain someindustry and allowing opportunities to get newly groundedin new industry building activities such as restoration and firemitigation in the wildland-urban interface (WUI).Stewardship Contractingand the USDA Forest Service“In stewardship contracting I’m continually frustrated. Theystill don’t really understand what it takes for a businessto do the kind of work they want done. And the kind ofthe personal risk … Nobody that is within an agencyever has to take the personal risk. We help the federalgovernment share the risk with the businesses, thepeople that we have asked to take on this challenge.”(Carla Harper, OCS interview, February 17, 2004).Stewardship contract is a relatively new authority in the “toolkit”of restoration and community forestry. After several years ofimplementation, perspectives vary about its successes andchallenges. It was officially authorized by Congress in 2003-04following five years of pilot testing of the concept. For some,this authority creates innovative opportunity for gaining accessto timber on national forest land, as well as a new method andincentive to improve the relationship communities have withforests.The Forest Service and BLM historically have contractedfor services, such as road maintenance and forest thinning. Theyalso contract to sell forest resources such as timber or firewood.Traditionally, these contracts have been carried out separately—service contracts have generally been funded from the agencies’budget, while timber was sold through private purchasers.The Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency SupplementalAppropriations Act of 1999 authorized the Forest Serviceto combine these contracting mechanisms by entering into“stewardship end results contracts.” This allows the agency to usethe value of forest products sold to offset the cost of contractedservices. Under such “goods-for-services” contracts, the ForestService may pay for thinning operations by using the proceedsfrom any commercial timber removed as part of the project(GAO 1999). The full list of authorities follows:38 — FCSFP Capacity Building

• Goods for services allows the agency to use thevalue of commercial products, such as timber,to offset the cost of services received, suchas thinning, stream improvement, and otheractivities.• Designation by description or prescriptionallows the agency to conduct a timber harvest byproviding the contractor with a description of thedesired end result of the harvest. For example, theForest Service might require that all ponderosapine less than 10 inches in diameter be harvested.Ordinarily, cutting any standing tree before theForest Service employee has marked or otherwisedesignated it for cutting is prohibited.• Multiyear contracting allows the agency to enterinto stewardship contracts of up to 10 years inlength.• Retention of receipts allows the agency to retainreceipts generated from the sale of commercialproducts removed through stewardship (GAO1999, p5).It was reported during spring of 2004 that 68of 77 Forest Service pilot projects were operating,generally focusing on removing vegetation. ForestService staff reported that as of September 2003,nine pilot projects had been completed; i.e., allcontracts associated with these projects werecompleted (GAO 2004, p9). About 13,800 acreshad been treated and it was expected about 172,000more would be treated.The smallest project was 3.6 acres and thelargest 20,000. The mean project size was 2,600acres. Slightly more than half involved fewer than1,000 acres, and about 10 percent exceeded 10,000acres (GAO 2004, p19).The cited GAO report says that manyagency officials believe collaboration enhancesproject effectiveness and provides other benefits.Project managers cited a variety of benefits fromcommunity involvement, including improvedproject design and implementation, better linesof communication with the public, and enhancedpublic trust in the agencies. Several said they valuedthe project monitoring teams’ expertise and input,and some noted improvements to their project as aresult of team and other community input (GAO2004, p39).As many involved people know, stewardshipcontracting is more than removing a percentageof large timber, or “saw logs,” to make itprofitable enough to remove the less-valuable,more problematic small-diameter as a service torestoration objectives. It is also more than simplymaking a supply of timber available to privatecontractors as a tool to work towards thoseobjectives and the economic objectives of businessesand rural communities. The contracting part,while being difficult to develop in ways that theForest Service is comfortable with, is where manywithin the agency seem to feel most comfortable indeveloping. However, the “stewardship” componentis the concept more difficult to innovate. The goodthing is that there is a trend towards understandinghow stewardship could be shaped, based primarilyon the hands-on learning taking place throughcommunity-based efforts to evolve a new practice ofstewardship of forests and communities.Eight of the original 28 stewardship contractingpilot projects granted to the U.S. Forest Service(USFS) in 1999 are located throughout the FourCorners states. New contracting authorities that theUSFS was asked to test include:• The exchange of good for services• The retention of receipts• The awarding of contracts based on a “best value”basis• The designation of timber for cutting byprescription or description• Multi-year contractsThe expressed intent of the stewardshipcontracting pilot program was: 1) to help achieveland management goals on the national forests,and 2) to help meet the needs of local and ruralcommunities. As such, communities and forestpartnerships throughout the Four Corners haveoptimistically watched and often participated withthe evolution of both the respective pilot projectsand stewardship contracting program as a whole.One of these pilots, the Grand CanyonStewardship Project, more commonly known asthe Greater Flagstaff Forests Partnership (GFFP), islocated on the Coconino NF in northern Arizona.Various stewardship contracting authorities, oftenin concert with National Fire Plan initiativesand funding, have been utilized to restore theFCSFP Capacity Building — 39

ponderosa pine forest ecosystem and reduce thethreat of catastrophic wildfire in the FlagstaffWildland/Urban Interface. Learning the intricaciesof stewardship contracting—an amalgam of bothtraditional timber contracting and common servicecontracting, for services such as road maintenance,forest thinning or other activities—has rarelybeen a smooth process for the pilot projects. TheGFFP, with its strong community collaborationand elaborate long-term strategy for working inthe Flagstaff WUI, has been successful in testingand implementing the majority of stewardshipcontracting authorities. While certainly not aseamless progression, with guidance by both agencyand public participants knowledgeable aboutstewardship contracting regulations, intent andavailable authorities, the GFFP has steadily usedthese new tools to effectively pursue its goals.Nearly all the pilot locations, including theGFFP, have struggled to learn the proper use of andbenefits from stewardship contract authorities. Oneof the most glaring challenges faced by the programhas been the ongoing inability of agency contractingofficers to reconcile the distinct timber and servicecontracting mechanisms. This gap was overcomein Flagstaff with diligent communication betweenthe timber and service contract staff, which often donot interact in normal FS operations, and guidancefrom the few stewardship contracting specialistswithin the agency. It was, however, the non-profitGFFP that created the first stewardship contract inFlagstaff and was often responsible for encouragingand guiding the FS to follow suit in subsequentPartnership projects.Indeed, this lack of internal agency guidance,especially on the contracting particulars forprocurement and service contracts, has been aconsistent nationwide dilemma, sometimes to thepoint of scuttling otherwise legitimate projects.In recent years, the FS, responding to repeatedrequests, has proactively begun to provide thenecessary direction to placate contracting officers.The agency and other organizations involved instewardship contracting are also now providingtrainings and tools so that local initiative inproject planning and decision-making on contractparticulars can effectively proceed.As the Flagstaff experience suggests, localcapacity has often been critical for the success of40 — FCSFP Capacity Buildingmany of the original pilot projects. Communitycollaboration is an expressed intent of the program.Without consistent and ongoing communityengagement the ultimate value of stewardshipcontracting for practitioners—increased opportunityfor work in the woods—can not be realized. TheFS, while mandated through NEPA and otherregulations to communicate and even cooperatewith the public, has, in many locations, not yetdeveloped the understanding or skills to effectivelycollaborate. Collaboration and the development oftrusting personal and organizational relationshipstake time to cultivate. If stewardship contractingis to reach its full potential--achieving landmanagement goals on the national forests while alsomeeting the needs of local and rural communities--all partners, particularly the FS, which has lostmuch of the public’s confidence, must consistentlypursue community collaboration. The agency, dueto a recently-released GAO report critical of the FSfor a lack of community involvement in stewardshipcontracting projects, is seeking to provide moreinternal guidance on community participation andcollaboration.In 2003, stewardship contracting authority, withsome changes to the initial direction of the pilotprogram, was extended nationwide to both the FSand Bureau of Land Management. Members ofthe Southwest Stewardship Contracting RegionalEvaluation Team, one of numerous nation-widemonitoring teams charged with assessing theprogress of the initial pilot program, had mixedfeelings about this development. The new toolto meet the needs of rural communities andmore efficiently implement land managementprojects was welcome. On the other hand, theteam also realized that the monitoring results ofthe pilot round had not yet been fully analyzedand reported back to congress before blanketauthority was granted. This rightfully concernedmany monitoring team participants as well asothers throughout the country intently watchingstewardship contracting develop.With stewardship contracting having bothdevout critics and impassioned supporters,members of the Southwest Regional MonitoringTeam realized that a definitive assessment couldcertainly not yet be made. The short duration ofthe pilot program and the fact that the regional

monitoring teams are being disbanded in late 2004led to an incomplete evaluation. Administrativeand implementation trends of utilizing stewardshipcontracting authorities, some of which are listedhere, have been recognized and are being addressed.Nevertheless, the unfinished analysis might suggesttwo very different perspectives about the currentstate of the stewardship contract program: somemight see the new authorities as an end, themselves,and simply having them in the proverbial toolboxis good enough; practitioners and forest-dependentcommunities recognize something completelydifferent—stewardship contracting is a means tocommunity stability—and not agree at all thatstewardship projects, as they are currently beingproposed and even implemented, are any morevaluable than the Forest Service’s traditionaltimber sales and other ways of doing business.Consequently, the ultimate effectiveness andutilization of stewardship contracting—on theground—has yet to come into focus.Monroe Mountain Ecosystem Restoration Project—A Case StudyBy Brian CottamThe Monroe Mountain Ecosystem Restoration Project (MMERP) is located on Monroe Mountain onthe Fishlake National Forest, Richfield Ranger District. Part of central Utah’s high plateau backbone,Monroe Mountain rises above the alfalfa-sowed valley floors to be seen from miles in every direction. Theapproximately 50,000 acre project area, ranging in elevation from 8,800 feet on the western boundaryto just over 11,000 feet at the north end’s Monument Peak, overlooks rural Sevier and Piute Counties insouth-central Utah.MMERP was a result of a 1995 Forest Service area analysis documenting that the mountain’s ecosystemswere not in a desirable condition as described in the Fishlake Forest Plan. In 1997, the Fishlake beganplanning for Monroe Mountain, identified by the Forest as a priority area for ecosystem restoration. Specificobjectives for the project include aspen and grassland ecosystem abundance restoration (vast tracts ofaspen forest—now rapidly diminishing—have been a defining component of Monroe’s varied ecosystems);improve watershed and riparian conditions (numerous waterways provide for the small communitiessurrounding the entire plateau); reduce wildfire, insect and disease risk (the major portion of the 1,330acre Oldroyd Fire in July 2000 was within the boundaries of MMERP treatment areas, while epidemicoutbreaks of spruce beetle are a growing threat to the Forest), and provide work and wood products for localcommunities and businesses. This last objective was a direct result of MMERP being selected as one of theoriginal 28 pilot projects for new stewardship contracting authorities.The project team, under the leadership of Don Okerlund, has taken their responsibility for publicinvolvement within the stewardship contracting process seriously. Beginning in 1997 and continuingthrough today several field tours and public meetings have been provided. These gatherings have beenbeneficial in helping local communities and potential project partners better understand stewardshipcontracting, the differences from traditional contract methods, and how the new authorities will be utilizedin this project.With public outreach and participation well underway, the Forest issued the Notice of Intent to preparean EIS in early 1999. The Draft EIS was released in September 1999 with the Final EIS coming in June2000. Numerous changes, particularly in regards to the ultimate size of the treatment areas (thinning andsagebrush treatments specifically), were made during this time due to public input and the uncertaintyof inventoried roadless areas found throughout the project area. Public participation from local interestsremained active, though, even as the potential treatment areas continuously dwindled in the face of constantpressure from supporters of no management.Former Fishlake Forest Supervisor Rob Mrowka, an advocate for and strong believer in communityFCSFP Capacity Building — 41

collaboration (see Thousand Lake Community Forestry Initiative sidebar) and the potential for stewardshipcontracting, signed the Record of Decision to proceed with the project in December 2000. Local businessespotentially interested in bidding on the contract believed that, after five years since initial analysis and threesince public discussion began, restoration work would begin on Monroe Mountain in the summer of 2001.Community groups such as the Southern Utah Forest Products Association (SUFPA) and nearbysawmills including Escalante’s Utah Forest Products and Stoltze Aspen Mill in Sigurd--at the northern base ofMonroe Mountain--were excited about the prospects of implementing the project after years of collaborationwith the agency through the stewardship contracting process. The proposed multi-phase MMERP would beone means for providing raw material stability and long-term work—including conifer and aspen thinningand removal, sagebrush treatments, fence construction, road improvements and decommissioning, and treeplanting—for woods workers and the remaining few sawmills in south-central Utah. Combined with thepotential for the Thousand Lake Initiative and other, more traditional, Forest Service projects, the outlookwas cautiously optimistic.It’s now June 2004, three years since this high point of optimism. SUFPA is simply a shell of its formerself and currently in the process of dissolving (see related sidebar), Utah Forest Products no longer exists,though Skyline Forest Resources has taken its place in Escalante, and Stoltze Aspen Mill, specifically designedto assist in the utilization of Utah aspen, could no longer wait for raw material and shut down in late 2001.MMERP has undergone three appeals by the Utah Environmental Congress in Salt Lake City, the currentiteration to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, one misguided attempt at contracting the project in thesummer of 2003 in which no bidders were found, and the loss of much of Utah’s sawmill capacity in theinterim, and implementation has not yet begun.After the second appeal and motion for stay at the District Court level was denied--to be immediatelyfollowed by the appeal to the Circuit Court--the Fishlake positively worked with remaining potential projectbidders to ensure the service elements of the contract would be more understandable and that the restorationproject would be economically feasible. While still awaiting the decision of the Circuit Court, the Fishlakere-released the MMERP solicitation, hoping to award the contract, receive another favorable decision fromthe courts, and begin implementing the project this summer. In a sadly ironic twist, the very day before thebidder’s informational meeting and field tour on June 24th, the Circuit Court ruled against the Fishlake andsent the case back to the District Court. Don Okerlund received word the morning of the bidder’s meeting.MMERP appeal issues have always centered on roadless and Management Indicator Species (MIS) andin this instance the District Court overruled the Circuit Court’s interpretation of Fishlake and MMERPMIS. The Forest must now provide the quantitative MIS data deemed to be lacking in the EIS and requiredby the Fishlake Forest Plan before the project can proceed. Along with Utah interests, operators had comefrom as far as Colorado for the June 24th bidder’s meeting. They went home that morning experiencing thefrustration so many connected to MMERP over the years have continually felt as this project has endured fitsand starts.Okerlund, as he has steadfastly done since the late 90s, ensured those attending the bidder’s meeting thatthe project would proceed once the Forest provides the necessary MIS data. But as one of the few originalstewardship contracting pilot projects to not yet arrive at implementation, there is creeping doubt, among allpartners, that the restoration work will ever occur. There are many possible reasons MMERP is continuouslystalled: faulty Forest Service planning and documentation; no-management activist strategies that havetargeted MMERP; lengthy terms between court decisions; even partners’ dwindling active participation anddissolving vocal support for the project, leaving the agency to defend the project on their own, is a legitimateculprit. Whatever the reasons, and they are multiple, the promises of stewardship contracting, so apparentand possible in other locations throughout the Four Corners region, has yet to be experienced in Utah.42 — FCSFP Capacity Building

“The policy formation role needsto be played at the local level. Wethink because it is federal funding,we ought to have influence there,but perhaps we should focus on thelocal level and then let that bubbleup. It’s a much, smaller, easier rockto push around, and you end updeveloping relationships with countycommissioners, and town councils andthose type of people, and you honortheir role that way.”(Bob Dettmann,March 2004)The National Fire Plan“The Secretaries should also work with theGovernors on a long-term strategy to deal withthe wildland fire and hazardous fuels situation,as well as the needs for habitat restorationand rehabilitation in the Nation. The managersexpect that a collaborative structure, with theStates and local governments as full partners,will be the most efficient and effective wayof implementing a long-term program.The managers are very concerned that theagencies need to work closely with the affectedStates, including Governors, county official,and other citizens. Successful implementationof this program will require close collaborationamong citizens and governments at all levels...The managers direct the Secretaries to engageGovernors in a collaborative structure tocooperatively develop a coordinated, Nationalten-year comprehensive strategy with theStates as full partners in the planning, decisionmaking,and implementation of the plan.Key decisions should be made at local levels”(Conference Report for the Fiscal Year 2001Interior and Related Agencies AppropriationsAct [Public Law 106-291]).The National Fire Plan helped us focus ourconversations. It took us out of the esotericrealm of restoration to what are the needsof this community. First and foremost, it is toprotect it from catastrophic wildfire. . . . TheNational Fire Plan helped us actually do it.(Brain Cottam, former coordinatorGreater Flagstaff Forest Partnership,March 2004)The appeal of the National Fire Plan, officiallyoutlined in the “10-Year Comprehensive StrategyImplementation Plan,” is how effective a tool it hasbeen in implementing on-the-ground projects in thewildland-urban interface where fire risks threatenproperty and lives. Few other congressional lawshave been so successful at getting funding to localareas where a network of local, state, and federalinstitutions, academic researchers, and commercialindustry businesses were organizationally preparedto take advantage of the boost NFP funding offered.FCSFP Capacity Building — 43

One driving force was the requirement ofcollaboration across jurisdictional boundaries. Twokey Congressional directives that: “The Secretariesof the Interior and Agriculture and the Governorsjointly develop a long-term national strategy toaddress the wildland fire and hazardous fuelssituation and the needs for habitat restorationand rehabilitation; and The strategy should bedeveloped with “ ‘close collaboration among citizensand governments at all levels.’” The Four CornersSustainable Forests Partnership was in an excellentposition to capitalize on this authoritative guidance,because so much of the collaborative infrastructureneeded to achieve it was already activated in theregion where a history of collaborative interactionalready existed; not only through the FCSFP, butthrough local and regional efforts that preceded theFCSFP.Also making so much possible was the fact thatthe implementation strategy was endorsed by majoragencies and institutions, including: Departmentsof Agriculture and Interior, Western Governors’Association, National Association of StateForesters, National Association of Counties, andthe Intertribal Timber Council. These key factorsdemonstrate a powerful model for future successesand for identifying what works in the organizationaldevelopment of large-scale social, economic, andecological efforts such as community-forestry.Healthy Forests InitiativeThe Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HR 1904,H. Rpt. 108-386, PL 108-148), signed into lawDec. 3, 2003, calls for two provisions importantto communities and businesses: local collaborationthrough the development of community wildfireprotection plans, and multiparty monitoring.Multiparty monitoring processes measure not onlyecological, but also, social and economic effects, andinclude different stakeholders. The intention of theHealthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA), informallyknown as the Healthy Forests Initiative, is toreduce wildfire risks by reducing threats in wildfireproneareas. Currently, no funding is available;however, the “potential” is offered. This gives someresources to pay for thinning costs. The act alsocarries a mandate, more or less, for communitycollaboration, which will increase the need forpartnerships and increased community capacities.Informants say that it is too early to tell ifHFRA will benefit community forestry. If thecommunity assistance piece is ever funded, it couldbe an important part of the picture. It authorizes$760 million annually to clear fire fuels from 20million acres of federal forest lands. It restrictsenvironmental analysis, administrative appeals andlawsuits in order to speed approval of projects toremove dead and dying trees, brush and debris thatcould fuel catastrophic wildfires.The administration on March 3, 2004 issued an“Interim Field Guide for Implementing the HealthyForests Initiative and Healthy Forests RestorationAct,” announcing that hazardous fuels removalprojects would qualify more quickly under theNational Environmental Policy Act if they occurred:near at-risk communities in the wildland-urbaninterface; in high-risk municipal watersheds; in areasthat provided habitat for threatened and endangeredspecies; or in areas that were susceptible to insectinfestation or disease epidemics.Policy Development“We appreciate the “best value contracting”provisions in stewardship contracting, whichallow the agencies to consider factorsother than low bid. Being a local businesswith a good record of quality performancewould give us a better chance at winninga project. As it stands, timber sales areawarded to the high bid and servicecontracts are awarded to the lowest bid.”(Cassandra Doyon, Testimony toCcongressional sub-committee,2/04/04)There is often a question about how muchinvestment community-based forestry partnershipsshould make in advocating or forming landmanagement policies. Should they defer this roleto other groups, such as the National Networkof Forest Practitioners, the Society of AmericanForesters, the Communities Committee of theSeventh American Forest Congress, the National44 — FCSFP Capacity Building

Association of State Foresters, or others? With anetwork as large as the Four Corners SustainableForests Partnership was formed, the sheermultiplicity of partners, and jurisdictions makesthis a difficult question to answer. Can many typesof partners find a common message and speak withone voice? Not as easily as one might think.“The policy formation role needs to be playedat the local level. We think because it is federalfunding, we ought to have influence there, butperhaps we should focus on the local level andthen let that bubble up. It’s a much, smaller, easierrock to push around, and you end up developingrelationships with county commissioners, andtown councils and those type of people, and youhonor their role that way” (Bob Dettmann, OCSInterview, March 16, 2004).The FCSFP did not often take a formal roleas single entity in recommending national policychanges. As Kim Kostelnik has said, “We wereeffective by giving communities the skills andthey can do policy on their own.” Indeed, sometestimony to congressional committees and staffwas given by grantees, and issues were addressedthrough the National Associated of State Forestersby suggesting a general framework for integratingcommunity forestry and rural development. Withinsome jurisdictions, for example in the state ofArizona, the Arizona Sustainable Forests Partnershiphas been active in working with the Governor’sForest Health/Fire Plan Advisory Committee on arange of healthy forest and wildfire issues.The FCSFP has not taken policy positionspurposely. However, the demonstration grantsprogram of the FCSFP created numerous initiativesand projects, the results of which could beutilize by a variety of policy developers in theirdecision-making strategies. The FCSFP statecoordinators and steering committee provideda means for communicating lessons learned topolicy and leadership audiences. To assist with thiscommunication process a number of annual andperiodic newsletters and reports were prepared,including a summary report known internallyas the Transition Plan, entitled The Four CornersSustainable Forests Partnership: A Summary of LessonsLearned and Recommendations for StrengtheningPartnerships and Building Capacity in Communities1999-2003. (2003, Office of Community Services,“Chipcrete” currently being developed by Gordon Westat Gila WoodNet and Santa Clara Woodworks withassistance from the Forest Products Lab.Fort Lewis College). In essence the FCSFP becameinvolved in policy formation primarily throughactive demonstration of working projects incommunity forestry, sharing successful innovationsin ecological stewardship and rural economicdevelopment.USDA Forest Products LaboratorySince the early days of the partnership, a numberof FCSFP, partners have sought resources at theUSDA Forest Products Laboratory in Madison,Wisconsin for getting ideas and for developingproducts. Probably the first instance of this waswhen Tim Reader and members of the MaderaWood Products Cooperative in Vallecitos, NewMexico discovered files in the Lab’s voluminousdatabase describing products that potentially couldbe applicable in their project. Tim Reader, whowas contracted through the Colorado State ForestService to provide regional technical assistance torecipients of funding through the DemonstrationGrants Program, found a paper describing a longforgotten,simple dip-diffusion process for treatingtimber. He thought it might work for post and polesmade from small-diameter. It might add value tosmall diameter that would be affordable and couldbe achieved locally and hands-on.The dip diffusion wood treatment effort, whicheventually saw little advancement due to EPArules, was an outshoot of Reader simply searchingproduct development stories from the past on theForest Products Lab database. “There are hundredsFCSFP Capacity Building — 45

of other product stories archived in the files, butno one is searching them to find any that might fittoday’s needs,” Reader said.Load-bearing strength testing of constructionquality timber has been a common interfacebetween Lab researchers and DemonstrationGrant Program recipients. The process seems to beslow and results have not been conclusive, but anatmosphere of entrepreneurship is strong and thoseinvolved continue to test new ideas and products.Another potential improvement is the use of logsort yards as a method for better managing smallerlogs. From a presentation by Susan LeVan-Greenand Rusty Dramm of the Forest Products Lab, itis shown that log sort yards can be instrumental inaccomplishing the following objectives:• Concentrate merchandise, and sort logs for highervalue• Market multiple log products• May include some log products and value-addedoperations• Supply a more desirable log mix to wood usingfirmsIn addition to explaining the fundamentalconcepts of log-sort yards, Forest Lab Staff have thecapability of assisting in the practical and efficientlay-out of a yard to reduce costs of operations forscaling and grading.While the USFS Forest Products is anoutstanding source of technical and economicinformation, new product ideas, and assistancewith operational transformation to utilize smalldiameter materials, there is always the challengeof accessing these resources by a small business orpartnership in a distant part of the country. Thishas been overcome to a degree by coordinatingand communicating through a larger regionalpartnership, the FCSFP, in order to host technicalassistance events, such as the workshop on sawmillconversions being conducted in late 2004 by TimReader and Rusty Dramm.Another challenge has been the retiring oflab employees with experience and institutionalmemory. If there were morefinancial resourcesavailable for technical assistance, then people likeTim Reader at the Colorado Wood Utilization46 — FCSFP Capacity BuildingA test batch of logs in a dip-diffusion trough soakingin a chemical bath of boric acid in Vallecitos, NewMexico. The idea came from browsing the ForestProducts Lab database during the Four CornersSustainable Forests Partnership first year.and Marketing Center, or Gordon West at GilaWoodNet in Silver City, New Mexico, couldcontract with retirees from the Lab to continueworking with the efforts. One such retiree, GeorgeHarpole, relocated to the Westslope of Coloradoand has been providing assistance to FCSFPpartners. A concerted effort to share new harvestingmethodologies, obtaining a variety of products fromsmaller diameter logs in an integrated manner, andapplying new technologies to product developmentwould be of significant assistance to communityforestry in the Four Corners region. Within thisregional framework, the USFS Products Lab couldmaximize its technical assistance role by linkingwith stewardship projects, groups of small woodproducts businesses, state forestry organizations,and other entrepreneurial assistance entities, such asthe Department of Energy’s Industries of the Future(IOF) initiatives. All four of the states involved inthe FCSFP, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, andUtah have IOF programs, most often located in

the governor’s energy program of each state. (Seenational website: http://www.oit.doe.gov/industries.shtml.)USFS Research StationsThe Research and Development Program of the USForest Service has more than 1000 employees. Manyof these persons work throughout the United Statesthrough a series of research stations; for example,the Pacific Northwest, the North Central, andSouthern Research Stations. While these centershave their own special research programs, someof which have national goals and objectives, theyalso focus many of their resources on the forestresource and management issues within the regionsurrounding their location. The stations have theirown employed staff and also work with cooperatorsthrough agreements to undertake research onspecific topics such as insects and disease, ecologicalhealth improvement, fire behavior, marketing andutilization, among many others. Within the regionof the Four Corners Sustainable Forest Partnership,the primary entity is the Rocky Mountain ResearchStation (RMRS, with its main headquarters inFort Collins, Colorado, and sub-units at Flagstaff,Arizona and Albuquerque, New Mexico.)While the examples in the table on the nextpage illustrate the kinds of research activitythat are and can be of assistance to communityforestry, it often is the case that this work is notwell communicated. The work at the USFSresearch stations is not exempted from the problemof disseminating relevant research findings topractitioners. In the area of community forestrythis can be a very serious concern when linkagesand networks are not created within either theorganization or among local practitioners. Somesuccess was achieved among cooperators and staffof the Rock Mountain Research Station, forestryfaculty and students at Northern Arizona University,through on-going research and monitoring activitieswith the Greater Flagstaff Forest Partnership(GFFP). Numerous opportunities were createdthrough research funding by the Research Station,the availability of research staff, the proximity ofrestoration demonstration projects on the CoconinoNational Forest, and significant local partnershipcapacity through the GFFP to coordinate appliedresearch efforts. A detailed listing of these efforts isavailable through the GFFP at http://www.GFFP.org.Even where physical proximity to US ForestService Research Station offices is reasonablyclose, there is a need for researchers to reach outto community forestry projects to make appliedresearch available. Such an effort could assist indeveloping a well-grounded research program,and enhance the dissemination component ofmany of the station programs. Opportunities fora stronger partnership between community forestpractitioners and applied researchers exist in theareas of alternative restoration prescriptions, wildfiremitigation and post-fire effects, and the economicsof ecosystem improvement. It would not beunreasonable to consider a USDA national initiativein community forestry research, undertaken under aparticipatory research framework.Recent work by Drs. Dennis Becker, DebraLarsen and others is an example of Research Stationwork that holds considerable promise for assistingcommunity forestry projects in appropriatelyestimating costs of wood fiber production, andthereby generating more feasible and sustainableeconomic enterprises. The Becker, et al estimator,which focuses on Southwest Ponderosa Pine, isbased on a series of cost and revenue models thatallow the user to input their information for laborcosts, types of machinery used, hauling distances,depreciation, insurance, profit, and a variety ofpotential products and markets. The user startswith inputting in depth information about the acresto be harvested or treated, log volumes and sizes,and the efficiencies to which these materials canbe processed into specific products. Their workwill appear in a forthcoming publication from thePacific Northwest Research Station, GTR-623.FCSFP Capacity Building — 47

The USFS Research and Development Programs, in particular through its research stations, offer an arrayof resources to assist with studies of silvicultural conditions, disease risk, post-fire effects, fuel treatmentmethods, and ecosystem restoration. The Rocky Mountain Station through it Flagstaff unit, for instance, isworking on numerous projects, including those listed below.Agreement No. Title Cooperator PI End DateRMRS98126JV Opportunities For Funding Wildland- NAU Larson/ 08/05/03Urban Interface Fuels Reduction ProgramsMirthRMRS98159JVRMRS98180JVRMRS99094JVRMRS99158JV00-JV-11221615-10801-JV-11221615-23302-JV-11221615-03903-JV-11221615-15303-JV-11221615-29003-IA-11221615-30904-MU-11221615-147A Cost Analysis Of Wildland-UrbanInterface Forest Management Treatments InThe Southwestern Ponderosa Pine TypeVegetation Response To RestorationAnd Prescribed Burning Treatments InSoutheastern Arizona And SouthwesternNew MexicoUsing Group Selection, Multi-AgedManagement Practices To Enhance The UseOf Prescribed Fire In The SouthwestFire In The Wildland-Urban Interface: ALandscape Modeling ApproachVegetation Response to Fire and FiresSurrogate Treatments in the Jemez Mtns,NMInventory and Classification of WildfireOccurrence in Treated versus UntreatedForest Stands on Southwestern NationalForestsA Research Agenda For UnderstandingBehavioral And Economic ResponsesTo Forest Restoration Programs In TheSouthwestRelation of Stand Structure and Fire Effectson the Rodeo-Chediski FireEffects and Interactions of MechanicalTreatments and Fire on Forest VegetationDynamicsMonitoring Vegetation Response ToRestoration And Prescribed BurningTreatments In Southeastern Arizona AndSouthwestern New MexicoForest Ecosystem Restoration and FuelsManagement in the Greater Flagstaff,Arizona RegionNAUMalpaiBorderlandsGroupFox,Daugherty04/30/02Miller 06/30/03NAU Bailey 05/30/04NAU Fule 12/31/02Stephen F.Austin StateUniversityNewMexicoStateUniversityUniversityOf NewMexicoOswald 05/22/05Fernald/FowlerBerrens/McKee01/31/0506/30/04NAU Fule 05/31/06NAU Bailey 09/30/06MalpaiBorderlandsGroupGreaterFlagstaffForestsPartnershipMcDonald 10/30/04Kolb,Gatewood03/01/0948 — FCSFP Capacity Building

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PART TWO: Capacity BuildingImplementation •Community Support • Timber Products IndustryProject Strengths • Action StrategiesBecause relationships are so strained, it’s going to take time, possibly even years, to simply learnhow to communicate effectively, work together in a productive manner, and build the trust necessaryto actually put something on the ground, which is where people really get hesitant. If we can allbegin to understand this in advance, and realize there will be this period of communication andtrust building before we can really start to break barriers down and eliminate positions and addressthe needs of the partners, I think we can be much more successful in our collaborative efforts.(Brian Cottam, former coordinator of the Greater Flagstaff Forest Partnership, interviewed March, 2004)In this part of the report, we identify anddescribe a set of capacities or attributes thatcreate success in action or implementation.Previously, we have inventoried the “supportive”factors needed to encourage, enhance, reinforce, orsustain community forestry (CF). Now the focuswill be on ingredients of community forestry onthe ground--in communities and in the woods.While speaking of these as action attributes, orimplementation factors, there is an obvious tie backto the support system, because the discussion upuntil now has been about the necessary infusionof resources to establish a sustainable communitybasedstewardship program.For many years, the action components of CFhave been generally divided into three areas. TobyMartinez, the New Mexico State Forester at thetime of the development of the FCSFP, and oneits strongest advocates, called this “the three leggedstool.” In essence, there is fairly wide agreement thatthe three basic components to community basedforestry are: social, or community; economic; andecological.Furthermore, there is a belief that these three“capacities” need to exist in some sort of relativebalance; in other words, they need to be integrated.If the balance or integration does not exist andone of the elements is over-weighted or out ofbalance, then it can operate to the detriment ofthe other two components. For instance, if theeconomy becomes a very high, or perhaps excessive,priority, then gaining employment or industrialdevelopment might be pursued to such an extentas to neglect sustainable ecological or ecosystemgoals. Conversely, if ecological goals are pursued tothe neglect of economic feasibility, then getting theactual work accomplished will many times, if notalways, be prevented. And finally, it is the social, orcommunal, partnerships and relationships that areneeded with an appropriate degree of cooperation toguide the economic-ecological integration process.If the social becomes too dominant, the work on the50 — FCSFP Capacity Building

ground could suffer from endless conversation. If itbecomes too weak, leadership is not available, noris social diversity, advocacy, and accountability tocommunity values and visions.So, the key among the three major componentsof CF—community, economy, and ecology--isthat they be constructed and sustained in somedegree of appropriate equilibrium and integration.Constructing these cooperative or collaborativesystems within specific regional or geographicareas is extremely challenging. The history ofrelationships, cultural values, and recent events allplay a role in creating opportunities and barriersto success. Both aid and diminish the balance andintegration of the three components at variousstages of capacity building. Therefore, thereis no single answer or road map for successfulimplementation of CF. Rather, there are basicattributes and principles that must be developedand followed within the relative constraints andassets of a given setting. This requires a great dealof interpretation, assessment, knowledge sharing,learning, and working with “creative tension,” allthe while keeping an eye on accomplishing feasibleand sustainable work.Figure 4Capacity BuildingImplementation • Community Support • Timber ProductsIndustry • Project Strengths • Action StrategiesCOMMUNITY/ORGANIZATIONALCollaborationCommunication & NetworkingAccountabilityMulti-Party MonitoringCultural & Tribal HeritagePARTNERSHIPSSMALL BUSINESSBusiness EntrepreneurshipMarketingUtilizationMill ConversionsLabor Force DevelopmentNew TechnologyProduct DevelopmentFOREST RESTORATIONPublic SupportRestoration EcologyWildfire MitigationAdaptive ManagementIMPLEMENTATIONFCSFP Capacity Building — 51

THEME I: Social, or CommunalThis first component includes the organizational, collaborative, and communication capacities needed toguide and integrate a community forestry stewardship effort.PartnershipsOne of the primary themes of community forestryis its basis in some form of locally governedpartnership viewed as a formal or semi-formalorganization. The organizational nature of thesepartnerships is quite variable, often reflecting thecharacter and available resources of the communityor the history of natural resource utilizationand related events in the area. For instance, ifthe community is quite small and isolated, themembers might be individuals who simply have aninterest in the community’s future or well being,who represent its heritage and traditions, andwhose interests might lean towards traditional orindigenous uses of wood products. An example ofthis type of partnership might be Las Humanas,which is rooted in the Hispanic Land Grants inManzano Mountains of central New Mexico. Here,the ambition in communities is to renew historicalland use ties through partnership with the USForest Service and local state parks as they work tocreate new jobs through a thinning and restorationbusiness development and educate the residents andyoung people about the future possibilities.Another example is the Catron County CitizensGroup (CCCG) in west-central New Mexico. Itsroots go back to the significant conflicts betweencounty government and the Gila National Forestover who would control the uses of the federalforest lands. When the conflict began to affectthe social balance and health of the community, apartnership was energized by a local doctor and achurch minister. In time county officials, USFS, andbusiness representatives joined the partnership. Buteven to this day, the CCCG operates through open,public, monthly meetings, maintains an interestin youth development through operating a Youth52 — FCSFP Capacity BuildingConservation Corps, and stresses local employmentand training of wood workers over seeking highlevels of timber volumes.In northern Arizona, the Greater FlagstaffForests Partnership was initiated in part as a resultof wildfires in the wildland-urban interface. Becauseprimary leadership came initially from the GrandCanyon Trust, a land conservation organization, andthe Forestry School of the University of NorthernArizona, much of the work of the partnership isoriented towards demonstrating and testing a widevariety of restoration prescriptions. A recent updatefrom the GFFP in part reads: “The Partnership iscommitted to researching and monitoring the keyecological, economic, and social impacts and issuesassociated with landscape-scale restoration. ThePartnership’s first 10,000-acre project at Fort Valleyincludes a $500,000 ecosystem research budget andover 20 on-going studies.”This strong of a commitment to restorationdemonstration and monitoring can best occur inan environment where those scientific and researchresources are available.Other coalitions and partnerships, such as onesin Ruidoso and Silver City, New Mexico, Torrey,Utah, or eastern Arizona, reflect interests andcapabilities in wildfire mitigation, or wood productsmanufacturing, or using advanced technologyin forest thinning and restoration. The primaryorientation of each community or partnershipcan vary considerably, often depending on recentrelations with adjacent public lands, whether asawmill has closed in the past decade, when the lastwildfire threatened the region, or the evolution ofthe community away from an economy linked toforest product utilization. The differences can affectthe nature and progress of community forestry to

a degree, but what matters most is that there is anorganized voice capable of speaking in a trustworthyway about the values and beliefs of the surroundingcommunity.A trusted community coalition that can speakclearly about the social, economic, and ecologicalvalues and visions of a given place or extendedlandscape offers many important factors: supportfor forest restoration, advice on an acceptable levelsof economic revitalization, advocacy for wildfiremitigation and fuel treatment projects, and amediating political forum to appropriately balanceconservation and resource management goals andmethods. It matters less that there is a variety ofpartnerships or that they differ in composition andstructure. They can be made up of agencies andorganizations, individual community members, orelected officials non-profits, or small businesses.These differences may merely reflect the nature ofthe community, its rate of urbanization or socialchange, or the state of the local ecosystem. Whatmatters most is a long-term commitment to landstewardship and the capacity to actively engage theneeded resources in this endeavor.The Southern Utah Forest Products Association: A Case StudyAn Argument for Greater Attention to Organizational SustainabilityBy Brian CottamAs a wood products cooperative of third and fourth generation forest and wood workers, the Southern UtahForest Products Association (SUFPA) became an important local industry resource and recognized symbolfor sustainable, community-based forestry in Utah and beyond. Centered in Wayne County in south-centralUtah, SUFPA sought to pioneer and develop new techniques and strategies for accessing restoration workand timber supply in surrounding national forests. To complement this effort, the cooperative also workedto identify new market opportunities for low-value forest restoration byproducts and value-added finishedwood products.Traditional agricultural industries, including forestry, formed the economic backbone of the many smallcommunities that have persisted in Wayne and neighboring Garfield County. However, when confrontedwith many of the same challenges the FCSFP was created to address, several of the once-numerous small,family-owned sawmills were idled, and loggers, unable to compete for increasingly larger and, thereby, moreexpensive U.S. Forest Service (FS) timber sales, were forced to find other work elsewhere. In 1995, theremaining loggers and sawmill operators in this area were successfully convened by Panoramaland RC&Dand the Utah Department of Community and Economic Development. They all met to jointly consider themounting challenges that were effectively eliminating this long-standing, local industry. SUFPA, from itsinception, focused on two prevailing notions. First, local operators were increasingly unable to compete forFS timber sales; typically, the volume was too large and the minimum bid price too high. Second, timberproduced from this region—traditionally milled into mining supports for nearby coal mines—was of lowand diminishing value.With government and private sector partners, the loose-knit association began to analyze potential newvalue-added market opportunities. Their findings identified several emerging markets for the wood typesavailable in the surrounding forests (principally Engelman spruce, sub-alpine fir, quaking aspen, and a verylimited amount of ponderosa pine). Unfortunately, the scale of the identified markets was significantlylarger than any one operator could serve. Furthermore, meeting the requirements for these markets requireda commitment of capital resources and technical expertise greater than any one operator could likely access,particularly with uncertain supply scenarios being the norm.FCSFP Capacity Building — 53

Throughout the mid to late 1990s, members of SUFPA met several times to consider a realisticresponse to the opportunities identified in their initial research and to outline a broad set of strategies andorganizational principles. From this, an eloquent statement of purpose, mission statement and well-definedassociation goals and objectives were developed. With the consistent support of its partners, SUFPA createdthe Southern Utah Forest Products Resource Center as an integral part of the cooperative effort. TheResource Center, among other activities, provided the staffing and technical assistance necessary for SUFPAbusinesses to access both a sustainable supply of timber and successfully negotiate nontraditional, highervalue markets.SUFPA was formally incorporated as an agricultural cooperative in late 1998. In 1999, the FCSFP,through their first round of community demonstration grants, allowed the cooperative to hire its firstexecutive director, whose focus it was to effectively build the organizational capacity of the co-op. Acomplementary graduate thesis provided the organizational blueprint necessary to pursue SUFPA’sgroundbreaking path as a forest products cooperative. SUFPA was unique from other forestry co-opsscattered throughout the country in which members owned their own woodlands and, thereby, their rawmaterial. SUFPA, in contrast, was comprised of a fully integrated sampling of southern Utah’s communityforestry industry—from logger to wood craftspeople—focusing primarily on raw material and service workfrom nearby national forest lands.SUFPA was positioned to successfully address its two major concerns of raw material supply and thecreation and marketing of value-added wood products. Discussions were on-going with both the Dixieand Fishlake NFs concerning sustainable, appropriately-scaled access to and projects in surrounding forests.Before long, planning for possible forest restoration and stewardship contracts, which were just then cominginto vogue, also began to occur. The Fishlake NF particularly responded with the Monroe MountainEcosystem Restoration Project (one of the original 28 stewardship contract pilot projects) and the ThousandLake Community Forestry Initiative, especially convened for SUFPA’s sake. SUFPA also embarked, withthe assistance of the Utah Rural Development Council, on a multi-faceted business outreach and associatedmarketing campaign to potential co-op members. This campaign also included a concerted program ofnew product development, placement and marketing for SUFPA members. At the start of the new century,SUFPA relocated its Resource Center and reopened the office alongside its first retail outlet on the MainStreet of Torrey, the gateway to Capitol Reef National Park.SUFPA was a cooperative, community forestry experiment without equal in the entire country, notjust the Four Corners region, and was gaining recognition as a model for a practical, grassroots approachto responsible, community-based forest management. Its future was promising as coffers were full, withoperating and program funds readily flowing towards the positive progress of the cooperative. Stewardshipwork and wood supply was being planned on nearby federal and state lands, with the cooperative structureallowing for creative solutions that plagued each business individually. And with the retail store and resourcecenter in operation on the busiest street in Wayne County, membership was strong, growing and active.SUFPA was on the verge of meeting all of its original goals and objectives while positioning itself for evengreater accomplishments of cooperatively owned equipment, stewardship contract management and branchesof the retail store. All of this was being contemplated within the framework of a long-term strategic plan thatwould replace grant funding with internally generated capital, exactly how a formal cooperative should beoperated.This promise and potential was not realized, though, as three years hence SUFPA is in the midst offinalizing its organizational and legal dissolution. Identifying and understanding potential reasons forthis situation can provide valuable lessons for other community forestry partnerships. Certainly it was acombination of factors that led to the current circumstance, but a rapid turnover in both staff and then theco-op’s board of directors led to:54 — FCSFP Capacity Building

• Disagreement between staff and board, and among the board, in organizational and management direction,including vision, mission, goals and programming.• Diminishing and ineffective communication between staff and board, and among the board.• A lack of adherence to governing documents, such as statement of purpose, mission statement and bylaws.• A lack of knowledge and skills for cooperative, business and, ultimately, non-profit management (SUFPAultimately changed its legal incorporation and business structure from a cooperative to non-profit status).• A lack of internal fiscal knowledge, oversight and responsibility• Shifts in programming and related projects, and the use of funds for projects not otherwise approved.• Inadequate reporting to funders and other corporate governing entities.• Diminished participation and oversight by fiscal agents and funders.• Growing unwillingness on the part of staff and board to accept external input and direction from partners andothers.• Dwindling participation from association members.Undoubtedly, these are all pitfalls that could confront any organization. But in the case of SUFPA,and potentially other forestry partnerships, the possibility for occurrence and the resulting effects weremagnified as those in positions of authority were often more inclined for work in the forests, as opposed tothe boardroom. Moreover, in a rural area such as Wayne County staffing needs were also difficult to meet,particularly for a complex cooperative business model. The necessary knowledge, skills and abilities were noteasily come by and staff and board turnover removed some of the organizational capacity SUFPA developedearly on. These inherent challenges, therefore, suggest more attention to the hazards listed above and greaterdiligence to avoid them would be required.This steady organizational attention is also the case for a community organization’s partners and teamof resource providers. As these various support agencies, which FCSFP has actively encouraged to bemore involved, are often more accustomed to the paperwork and bureaucracy intrinsic to organizationaldevelopment and maintenance it is their proper role to offer this administrative oversight and assistance.Particularly when public funds are involved, this guidance should be provided and relationship preservedeven when it may seem burdensome or the community recipient is unreceptive. This support is theirappropriate professional role and often obligation—as in the case of fiscal agents—and neglecting thisresponsibility is unacceptable.A great deal can be learned from SUFPA: from its many early struggles and successes, to itsgroundbreaking cooperative structure and programming, as well as from its untimely conclusion andthe factors that led to this end. These varied experiences and associated lessons can provide constructiveguidance for existing and future partnerships and associations. Community forestry throughout theregion will only grow if there is a continually informed effort to emulate and implement the many sharedaccomplishments and successes while striving to avoid the pitfalls and trials that can plague any organization.FCSFP Capacity Building — 55

CollaborationCase in PointEach community and FCSFPparticipants demonstrate their ownparticular expressions of collaboration.In Silver City, members of the Jobsand Biodiversity Coalition are bringingtheir diverse values and backgroundstogether to achieve the commonlyshared goal of a demonstration harvestat the Millsite on the Gila NationalForest near Silver City. The fivemembercoalition has gradually movedtowards implementing restorationharvest prescriptions on 800 acresof the 1,200-acre area during thepast three to four years. They saythe manner in which they have built atrusting relationship with each other hasmade on-the-ground progress possible.The real requirement for success,say Gordon West and Gerry Engel, isthe “local” collaboration, which theydescribe as a “creative and flexiblebusiness relationship.” However, thatcollaboration is made stronger bythe involvement of partners beyondthe local area. The role of the ForestService’s hierarchy of command iscrucial in the ability of their communityforestry effort to advance. While thedistrict ranger, Gerry Engel, is theForest Service’s main communitycontact, the forest supervisor andregional forester, who are less involved,need to be involved in a regular, steadymanner to ensure success.While direct benefits may sometimes be hard toidentify or describe, there is always some growthresulting from associating with others in a similarpursuit. I personally believe that learning aboutothers with the intention of collaboration is far betterthan finding weaknesses in order to compete.”(Gordon West, Gila WoodNet,Silver City, NM)I believe collaboration is really working out thedetails together and jointly sharing responsibility.(Brain Cottam, former coordinatorGreater Flagstaff Forest Partnership,March, 2004)The process of collaboration is one of the more challengingaspects of community-based or restoration forestry. Whileeveryone believes collaboration is essential to ultimate success inmaintaining partnerships and building a stewardship program,it is based on a number of capacities that are sometimes in shortsupply. Those capacities are openness, trust, relationship building,and an attitude of cooperation. Maintaining these capacitiesrequires attitudes and skills that have often been diminished byyears of conflict, continued project delays, last minute appeals,and growing impatience with the looming crisis in the woods.Collaboration is continuous. It can’t be accomplished in amoment and then forgotten. Collaboration is about on-goinglearning, understanding different perspectives, finding enoughcommon ground to keep the partnership moving forward.Consistent dialogue and working side by side appears to buildrelationships among folks that pay worthwhile dividends. But oneor two bad experiences can cause people to come to the oppositeconclusion.Steve Yaddoff, USForest Service,updating participantson congressional budgetprocess during the2003 annual meeting.56 — FCSFP Capacity Building

Lesson LearnedThe nature and structure ofcommunity-forestry partnershipsare very diverse. How they areorganized is often a reflection of theimmediate community situation andhistory. What matters most is thatthey present the authentic valuesof the community about forestresources and stewardship.(left-right) Brian Cottam, John Hinz, Rqy Wrobley and Tim ReaderWillingness and understanding are evidence of the capacityto collaborate and progress. Developing new relationships is ameasurable category that should be considered in assessing theability of organizations to grow and succeed.Communication & NetworkingDemonstration grant recipients often cited communicationas the most important element necessary for their ultimatesuccess, even while they followed up saying that it was perhapsone of the most elusive to develop into an effective, consistentaction over the long-term. This difficulty is due to a number ofreasons, including: the cost of attending meetings; the distancesneeded to travel and the time needed to take out from the dailyresponsibilities; distances community forestry efforts are fromeach other; or the tendency of many people to not use theInternet for email communication.Partnership members welcomed any opportunities to networkwith other grantees, business owners, and steering committeemembers in situations where they could learn about new ideas,new products, and new or existing resources. Many partnersexpressed a crucial need to receive practical information in atimely manner, especially information that could be quicklyapplied to their business development. They also sought a varietyof communication tools and methods to get their messages outabout who they were and what products and services they offered.However, it became obvious that few grantees had expertise incommunication and marketing, or were not even aware of thesophistication that is possible in communicating a message. Inlight of this, while the FCSFP’s original intent was to enhanceLesson LearnedLong-standing social relationships,which facilitate cooperative action,are one of the truest measuresof collaboration. In this sensecollaboration continually buildscommunity capacity for futureproblem solving, not matter whatthe nature of the issue or concern tobe resolved.Lesson LearnedWe cannot expect that communitypartnerships based on collaborationamong diverse communitymembers, organizations, andinterests will always be successful.Reasonable and clear expectationsabout the outcomes of collaborationare a necessary part of the process,and these expectations need tocontinually be clarified and nurtured,both internally and externally.FCSFP Capacity Building — 57

When Collaborative Processes are Exhausted by Delays: A Case StudyBy Brian CottamThousand Lake Mountain looms high above Wayne County in south-central Utah. At over 11,000 feet, theflat-topped mountain, covered by dense spruce/fir and mixed conifer/aspen forests, provides commandingviews of Capitol Reef National Park to the east and Boulder Mountain and the string of rural communitiesrunning through the county to the south. The forests of Thousand Lake Mountain have also been a stableand consistent provider of logs for the many small sawmills that historically dotted the valley below, sinceMormon pioneers settled the remote country in the mid-1800s.In the late 1990s, in the midst of diminishing wood supply and resulting family sawmill closuresthroughout Wayne County, Fishlake National Forest Supervisor Rob Mrowka recognized an opportunity toturn the tide. The Thousand Lake Community Forestry Initiative began as a community-wide effort to bothstem the looming threat of spruce beetle infestation—whose devastating effects are apparent throughoutsouthern Utah forests—and provide wood products to the remaining small sawmills immediately adjacentto the high plateau. The Environmental Assessment, itself, explains that, “A secondary objective is to provideforest products to resource dependent industries in an economically feasible manner; especially to sustainlocal community based forest enterprises.”Participants in the multi-year, in-depth collaborative planning included the Southern Utah ForestProducts Association (SUFPA), other regional wood products interests, multiple environmental groups fromalong the Wasatch Front, as well as local entities such as Utah State University Extension, PanoramalandRC&D, Farm Bureau, and many others. This diverse group undertook a collaborative forest planningprocess as yet unseen in southern Utah.The EA for the project was released in May, 2001, over three years since the Initiative began cooperativeplanning. Many questioned the efficacy of spending so much time and effort on a project that addressed amere 220 acres; and this would be implemented in multiple phases, as agreed upon by Initiative participants,in order to monitor and assess forestry operations and potential impacts. Indeed, there were questions as towhether the project could actually be implemented as designed due to the numerous operational restrictionsthe group agreed to, all in a good-faith effort to end the management stalemate plaguing the FishlakeNF. Throughout the planning, the core participants--Supervisor Mrowka and members of SUFPA--wereundeterred by the criticisms. They shared a realization that this was a small stepping-stone of trust buildingby all involved, which would ultimately lead to a new paradigm of long-term stewardship by local residentsas well as a reliable wood supply for the remaining mills.After years of often grueling sharing, learning, concessions and all the other elements of collaboration,inevitable turnover began to occur with key participants. Supervisor Mrowka, possibly because of hispenchant for community engagement and often unorthodox, though trailblazing, collaborative methods inthe Intermountain Region, was reassigned and eventually left the agency. This change was profound as therehad been constant grumbling within the Supervisor’s and Loa District offices about the time and resources58 — FCSFP Capacity Building

eing spent on this new cooperative planning process. It was apparent that the language of “collaboration”was not yet spoken within the Intermountain Region. The initiative’s non-agency facilitators also changedat this time, creating a gap in the continuity of the planning. While this change was not profound, it didhighlight the need for effective and knowledgeable facilitation for this and future collaborative efforts.Unfortunately, the tumult did not stop there. SUFPA’s staff also experienced transition at this time,leaving the local timber interests—those for which the project was initially conceived and had beendesigned for all along—without effective representation and adequate participation in the time-consumingplanning process. Consequently, the agency and project was suddenly left without its principal partnerfor implementation. Finally, as the unraveling continued, the representative from the most involvedenvironmental interest left for another position in the northwest. Undoubtedly, this left an immense void inthe collaborative process. The value of this representation was magnified when other conservation interestsinterpreted this absence as theirs to fill; unfortunately, with far less interest in cooperation, collaboration,and community development.The Thousand Lake Community Forestry Initiative was appealed by one of these organizations, theUtah Environmental Congress (UEC), in August 2001, immediately following the Decision Notice toproceed with the project. Appeal issues include roadless and management indicator species. As was the casewith the Monroe Mountain Ecosystem Restoration Project (see MMERP sidebar), the District Court foundin favor of the Forest Service, though it took until March 2003 for the hearing to occur. This decision,however, was immediately appealed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals and the project is still awaiting ahearing date.Even with multiple years of cooperative planning, with active participation by environmentalorganizations—on a pilot project whose initial treatment unit in the preferred alternative is a scant 36acres of demonstration to showcase the stringent operational design features—the project is now nearlythree-years beyond the initial appeal. The Thousand Lake Community Forestry Initiative is seemingly amere afterthought for the couple of remaining Wayne County sawmills, though Fishlake National Foreststaff are even now in the process of marking sale boundaries as there has not been a judicial stay of theproject. There is no pressure on the appeals court to hear the case as the majority of original participantshave moved on and for the Forest there is little expressed enthusiasm for reinvigorating and pursuing theinitiative. If a decision in favor of the Forest Service is eventually delivered the question remains if supportcan again be garnered for renewed collaboration and actual implementation of the project.FCSFP Capacity Building — 59

Case in Point:Information ExchangeAt least two kinds of communicationare relevant to the FCSFP: informationsharing among participants andimproving community awareness,understanding, and acceptance ofcommunity-based forest restoration.Few FCSFP-funded projects developedor implemented information-exchangestrategies to improve public awareness.Most projects of the FCSFP are toosmall to have a structured informationalcomponent among their activities.But communication of their activitiesis still essential to their prosperity.What they have to say, how they sayit, and who hears it are crucial tothe project. It may be as simple astalking to neighbors, or as involved astestifying to Congress, which GeorgeRamirez, Director of Las Humanas, hasdone. Sherry Barrow in New Mexicosays she talks to her Congressman’slegislative staff regularly. The GreaterFlagstaff Forests Partnership hasa formal strategy to increase publicunderstanding of its activities andgoals. Members of the FCSFP SteeringCommittee communicate by e-mail.The Catron County Citizen’s Grouppublished The Citizen, which, untilfunding ran out, reported on forestandhealthcare-related developmentsin that New Mexico county. ColoradoTimber Industry Association focusesits efforts on media messages thathelp to balance out other messagesthat they believe portray restorationforestry as a reincarnation of traditionaltimber logging. Grant recipients havealways welcomed periodic phone callsfrom interested observers, becausethey value sharing information whenopportunities arise. Perhaps the FCSFPitself is in the best position to adopta future role of facilitating informationdissemination relevant to restorationforestry and community development.Information exchange, particularly itsannual workshop, is already a keyactivity it has participated in and onwhich it has received positive criticism.education about community forestry and develop technicaltransfers for grantees, efforts began to overlap into providingassistance in marketing and other forms of communication andnetworking.Much of the communication and networking effort of theFCSFP was brainstorming or idea searching, which shows theemergent or experimental nature of not only the FCSFP, but ofthe overall community forestry effort in the Four Corners states.However, the development of a communication infrastructurewill undoubtedly continue as community forestry partners seekto network and inform each other and the public, and graduallyacquire a clearer vision of which tools and methods work best forthem.Some thought was given to providing information throughthe Internet, or create an infrastructure for circulating a regularprinted or email newsletter. However, few partners are inclinedto communicate by email, and a newsletter is more useful forreporting on past performance and less as a real-time tool forinforming and enhancing current efforts. In addition, the costsfor a website, which was utilized some, and writing and printing anewsletter call for continuous funding streams.As it turned out, many attributes (see the DemonstrationGrants section) encompassed a communicative feature thathelped to enhance activities. For example, technical transferswere a natural extension of the technical assistance aspects of thepartnership. Creation of brochures also augmented marketingactivities, whereby a consultant was hired to assist and train smallbusiness owners in marketing their forest products and servicesmore effectively.Annual meetings, sponsored by a steering committee statecoordinator, continued the legacy begun by the Taos RoundtableSteven Steed and visitors to Skyline Forest Products in Escalante,Utah on one of the many field tours sponsored by the FCSFP.60 — FCSFP Capacity Building

and served to bring members of community forestry effortsin the Four Corners to meet and listen to each others’ stories.The FCSFP meetings were complemented by gatherings hostedby other organizations, such as the Greater Flagstaff ForestsPartnership, or the Ecological Restoration Institute, in whichissues addressed overlapped those associated with the FCSFP.Some FCSFP member attended, in a few cases presented at them.Communication tools and methods listed• Annual meeting of demonstration grant program participants• Website (http://www.fourcornersforests.org)• On-site technical assistance on utilization• Technical transfers/seminars• Product development seminars• Evaluation and assessment reports (2002, 2003)• Media contacts campaign (press kits; issue promotion; articlesubmissions; content analysis of coverage of topics relatedto community forestry efforts and the FCSFP, such as forestrestoration and wildfire mitigation treatments)• Marketing assistance• State coordinator program contacts with grantees• Grantee-grantee networking and other partnership buildingactivities• Occasional newsletterAccountability and Public SupportOne of the core principles of community forestry is socialaccountability. Inherently, communities that are most affectedby the management of surrounding forest should be consideredwhen restoration or stewardship projects are being proposed. Eachcommunity or county area has a set of values and visions aboutthe physical landscapes adjacent to them, many of which could betied to its long-standing cultural or economic traditions and waysof life.Maintaining or ensuring social accountability to the peopleand a community’s inherent values is one of the primaryresponsibilities of a local partnership organization. Obviously,in some measure this responsibility tiers upward to state, andregional partnership that conduct activities in communitysettings.Implementing this responsibility takes many forms. Itcan start with open and inclusive communications aboutany proposed community forestry activity, bringing in thoseparties that might have an interest in planning, designing orLesson LearnedIt is important that communityforestry partnerships develop theirown methods of communication withtheir partners, constituent interests,and funders. To neglect this activityis to run the risk of not buildingnecessary internal membershipand external public support for thepartnership’s goals.Lesson LearnedCollaborative partnershipscannot be sustained withoutfairly consistent, on-goingcommunication. Communicationstrengthens needed socialrelationships, and insures thetransfer of critical knowledge thatcreates opportunities and skills forfuture, mutually beneficial actions.Lesson LearnedPublic support for forestrestoration or fuel reduction inthe wildland-urban interface isan extremely valuable asset. Thebest ecological or economic plansfor forest stewardship can fail inthe face of public opposition, as aresult of mistrust or misinformationabout even the best of intentions.FCSFP Capacity Building — 61

implementing it. Often it means planning andconducting a project that fits the capacity of thecommunity’s economy, its work force, and desiresfor growth and expansion. Creating an industrialexpansion beyond the desires of a community couldcreate a backlash against the stewardship effort.Similarly, community partnerships need tobuild understanding and trust about the ecologicalimprovements being considered. As a key bridgebetween the community, the forest, and the publicland managers, the partnership or sponsoringorganizations can create awareness of the needfor actions to improve forest health, reduce firerisk, and strengthen local stewardship capacity.On occasion, this awareness and support canbe established by starting with a relatively smalldemonstration project, taking anyone who isinterested on a field trip to the site, making regularreports to the city council or county commission,and non-profit natural resource groups.The primary issues or concerns of accountabilitymay vary from community to community. It couldbe that the main topic has to do with culturalheritage, traditions, and the sacredness of theland (see the accounts below of La Humanas). Itcould be that there needs to be special attention toinclusion of small businesses that have been left outof previous forestry work due to agency biddingpractices that favored large corporations. Or itcould be that homeowners and community and firedistrict officials need to be brought into wildfireprevention planning, targeting and prioritizinghigh risk areas, and educating neighborhoods abouthow to work together. These latter activities arealso interrelated with the previous discussion ofcollaborative processes, which build trust and lastingrelationships and communal or social capacity forstewardship.Strategically, ensuring accountability tomeanings and understandings of the cultureand society around the forest will pay long-termdividends in community support, credibility, andsustainability of the proposed stewardship process.Another key way that accountability is ensuredis through a commitment to monitoring andevaluation, which is taken up in greater detail in thefollowing section.Multi-Party MonitoringWhile informal monitoring occurs naturally frommany perspectives on a continuous basis, formalmonitoring is difficult to implement. It takestime and resources to organize, and for manypractitioners and business operators, it seems like adetour from the main objectives. There are alwayswhat seem like innumerable technical questionsabout what to monitor and how to choose thecriteria. Such questions become exceedinglycomplex when discussed between scientists,ecologists, and ordinary folks within traditionalforest communities. As a result there are built-inavoidances to pursuing multi-party monitoring.The following is excerpted from MultipartyMonitoring and Assessment Guidelines for CommunityBased Forest Restoration in Southwestern PonderosaPine Forests (DRAFT prepared by Ann Moote,February 04, 2003, p. 3).Why monitor forest restoration projects?Resource management often follows an“adaptive management” approach, which isdesigned to allow frequent review and feedbackon progress toward project goals while theproject is being implemented (Figure 1). Thisfeedback allows project managers to takecorrective action when faced with changingecological, economic, or social conditions.Feedback is particularly important to ecosystemrestoration projects to help forest managers,scientists, and practitioners can learn moreabout how restoration treatments change theforest and modify the treatments to better meetproject goals.Effective monitoring is an essential elementof adaptive management, because it providesa reliable feedback on the effects of projectactions. Monitoring involves the repeatedmeasurement of variables over time to determineif actions have caused changes or trends – eitherexpected or unexpected. As opposed to casualobservation, monitoring is designed to helpus identify what changes are occurring in thesystem and whether or not these changes are dueto our actions.62 — FCSFP Capacity Building

Why multiparty monitoring?A multiparty process is one that involves aheterogeneous group of individuals fromcommunity-based groups; local, regional, andnational interest groups; and public agenciesin an effort to be responsive to diverse interestsand objectives. In many ways, multi-partymonitoring reflects a national trend towardbroader participation in environmental policyand management, especially on public lands.A diverse group of interests is more likelyto develop a comprehensive list of issues tobe monitored. Engaging diverse parties in themultiparty monitoring process can also helpavoid duplication of efforts and unnecessarycompetitions among interests, may promotegreater efficiencies, and could help buildbeneficial relationships among those involved.The underlying premise of multipartymonitoring is that potentially conflictingstakeholder views are more likely to be resolvedwhen each party is given the opportunityto independently identify what needs to bemonitored, and when these concerns areintegrated into a jointly developed monitoringprogram (Kusel et al., 2000, Bliss et al., 2001).Bringing diverse parties into the process earlyon, therefore, can help a group avoid potentialconflicts later on.One should keep in mind however, that thisprocess approach is not just a way to promote“buy-in” or reduce conflict. Rather, multipartymonitoring should be used to:• Identify the right questions to ask;• Assess how well a project is meeting desiredoutcomes and responding to diverse concerns;and• Identify how management can be adapted toimprove results.The multiparty approach is designed topromote a mutual learning, as participantswork together to better understand projectefforts and impacts. Participants can expectto gain a greater understanding of ecologicalhealth, the local community’s economic andsocial well-being, and the interconnectionsbetween the environment, the economy, andsocial conditions. They will also learn moreabout others’ perspectives on the project and itspotential outcomes.Here are three distinct statements from the GreaterFlagstaff Forests Partnership website that are helpfulas goals for monitoring the ecological, economic,and social aspects.Ecological Research and MonitoringResearch and monitoring are criticalcomponents of the Partnership’s restorationefforts. Through them, we will expand ourscientific knowledge of ecosystem processes, andhow those processes are altered by particularmanagement decisions. Research into methodsfor reducing the risk of catastrophic fire andthe impacts on ecological processes will alsobe a critical component of the Partnership’sresearch efforts. The information gatheredthrough research and monitoring will guide thePartnership when it designs future restorationprojects. A few examples of potential researchquestions include:• How can restoration efforts be evaluated andimproved? Specific experiments will be designedto test alternative restoration treatments,providing guidance for future project design andimplementation.• What are the impacts of different fuel reductionstrategies on wildlife habitat? Restoring denseforests to a more open structure similar to whatexisted prior to Euro-American settlement willmost likely reduce fire risk. However, the impactsassociated with such a restoration on wildlifehabitat needs to be better understood along witha more precise understanding of how speciescomposition will change.• What fuel treatment strategies are appropriatefor the Urban Wildland Interface? To betterunderstand how to reduce the possibility ofcatastrophic fires in the lands surroundingFlagstaff, alternative fuel reduction strategiesshould be devised, implemented and evaluated.FCSFP Capacity Building — 63

Economic Research and MonitoringRestoration is labor-intensive and expensive,and it is unlikely that the Federal governmentwill provide the funding necessary to restorethe health of millions of acres in the West.To develop a better understanding of theeconomic issues associated with restoration,the Partnership will evaluate economic issuesassociated with each project it undertakes.Possible economic research questions include:• Is it possible to fund restoration projects throughthe removal and sale of forest products fromthe restoration area? Restoring the ecologicalhealth of the region’s forests will be an expensiveundertaking. Land managers, businessrepresentatives, and conservationists need a betterunderstanding of the economics associated withrestoration.• Given ecological, economical, and socialconstraints, what is the estimated amount andtype of forest products that can reasonably beexpected to be removed from the region’s forestsin the future? Establishing sustainable forestrybasedbusinesses will require a predictable flowof raw materials from the region’s forests. Thetype and cost of products, available volumes, andfluctuations in availability are examples of issuesthat need to be examined.• What are the potential uses of small diameter treesand how can the market for them be improved?Large numbers of small diameter trees, whichhave low economic value, will be removed duringrestoration activities. Developing a market forthem and increasing their value is critical if theyare to help provide funding for future restorationefforts.Social Research and MonitoringIf the Partnership is to succeed, it must besupported by a broad cross section of thecommunity. Understanding the interests,values and needs, of the community will helpthe Partnership to design and implementrestoration projects that restore vital ecosystemprocesses, while allowing the continued use andenjoyment of the Urban Wildland Interface bylocal residents. Some questions that need to beanswered include:• What tree density and forest structure is acceptableto the community? Science tells us that prior toEuro-American settlement, the region’s ponderosapine forests were much more open and park like,with clumps of individual trees and scatteredstands of higher density. However, people areused to the high density of present-day forests andmay find the removal of large numbers of treesobjectionable. Land managers and ecologists needa better understanding of the range of visuallyacceptable changes in the Interface forests.• What are public perceptions of air quality issuesrelated to restoration? One of the key ecologicalprocesses that the Partnership hopes to reintroduceis frequent, low-intensity fire, which will impactair quality. We need a better understanding ofpeople’s willingness to accept air quality impactsas part of restoration, as well as on-going baselineresearch on air quality impacts from prescribedburning and wildfire.• Is the Partnership achieving its goals and meetingthe expectations of area residents? The success ofthe non-profit and partnership approach needs tobe evaluated, and the factors leading to success orfailure need to be determined.64 — FCSFP Capacity Building

A hogan constructed of small diameter timber by IndigenousCommunity Enterprises in Cameron, Arizona and marketed totraditional Dineh as affordable traditional housing.Lesson LearnedThe primary impact of the FCSFPand other programs is theempowerment of the tribe to activelymanage traditional tribal lands. Thesecondary impact is the availabilityof forest products that help toimprove the quality of life of tribalcommunities; firewood, furniture,lumber, etc.Cultural & Tribal Heritage“The value of the FCSFP is that it created acoordinating group that earned the respect of theregional forester, and kept in touch with the tribes,businesses, and communities. . . . A new tribalrelationship has developed over the last few years.”(John Waconda, FCSFP-BIA Tribal Coordinator)The FCSFP helped to create a sense that tribes ought to bepartners in community forestry. In turn, relationships with stateand federal land agencies improved. In the past, conflicts overland and water rights have typically dominated state and tribalrelationships. By introducing the possibilities of cooperation withtribes with regard to sustainable forestry the aura of past conflictswere reduced. The interests of multiple parties in cooperating inthe natural resources are an open door to improved tribal, stateand federal government relations.In the past, cultural preservation and modern economicdevelopment have been viewed as more or less incompatible.However, lately, due to the impacts of FCSFP and other similarsupporting programs, economic development and tribal andHispanic cultural preservation appear to have found newcommon ground through the practice of community-basedforestry. From this perspective, community forestry has becomea means for integrating traditional commitments to healthy andsacred landscapes with current needs for appropriate employmentopportunities and sustainable ecologically centered careers.One important impact of the FCSFP and other programsLesson LearnedEmploying community-based forestrestoration to aid in sustaininghistorical, cultural relationshipswith the land is a new interactionbetween tribes and the USDAForest Service and Bureau of IndianAffairs. Working in the woods is atraditional, cultural practice. It isan organic part of living. Progressis possible because communityforest activities are renewing tiesto the land. A vision towards thesenew connections is strong amongtribal and Hispanic members of theFCSFP.FCSFP Capacity Building — 65

A Case in Point: Jemez PuebloWalatowa Woodlands InitiativeThe Cerro Grande fire of 1999 changedthe urgency for restoration issues inNew Mexico. The Walatowa WoodlandsInitiative (WWI) program at the JemezPueblo, now in year six, employs a“socio-anthropological” perspective offorestry. The program’s main objectiveshave been: 1) to protect and restorethe forest resource and symbioticrelationships; 2) to protect sacred sitesand places where medicinal plantsare gathered and where religioussocieties have their areas; and, 3) tocreate employment for traditional tribalmembers.The program was already operatingwhen the Cerro Grande Fire struck.The religious leaders of Jemez Pueblo,which is a very traditional non-gamingtribe, issued a directive to createeconomic development from the landbasedindustries of agriculture, ranching,and forestry, all of which focus onrenewable resources. The attempt wasto take the existing management androll it into a tribal enterprise. It was notintended to make a profit, just cover thecost of doing business.An enterprise approach differsconsiderably from the traditional tribalprogram, which is set up for meetingfederal standards for managing federalfunds and tribal programs, such aselderly and healthcare programs. Abusiness enterprise is more flexible andresponsive to the financial needs of abusiness. For example, when a truckradiator hose breaks it may take a dayto replace through the operation of anenterprise. It may take seven to 10 daysthrough a traditional tribal program,while costs continue to be incurred whilethe equipment is broken down.(e.g., Community Forest Restoration Program in New Mexico)is the empowerment of the tribe to actively manage traditionaltribal lands. Another is the availability of forest products thathelp to improve the quality of life of tribal communities, suchas firewood, furniture, lumber, etc. Also, tribal members arereceiving greater opportunities to interact more closely withtraditional tribal lands and receive federal support to do so,particularly through demonstration grants, technical assistance,workshops and general networking opportunities, all of whichhelp to build internal capacity to more actively manage triballands. Additionally, the forest management program that isbeing built is creating educational and on-the-job trainingopportunities for tribal members, including such stewardshipactivities as: tree planting, fire suppression, forest rehabilitation,and operate machinery to conduct restoration harvesting andchipping.A new level of skill for tribal members involved in theenterprises has been reported, such as the sawmills at Zuni andJemez and on thinning crews. A next step at Zuni is to provideeducational training to more full-time employees for the sawmill,furniture factory, and other enterprises. The tribes are moreable to develop products, operate mills, work with biomass, andmanufacture furniture. They are able to tap into a large, availablelabor pool; especially now with emphasis on fuels treatment,which has been a major focus at Jemez for a number of years.“Workers have become sources of knowledge to whichthe BIA and other government agencies can turn to developmanagement plans. More appropriate and applicable informationcan be shared in the planning stages of on-the-ground projectsthat help to ensure that projects are founded on soundmanagement rationales” (John Waconda, BIA).Looking at current tribal needs, tribes involved in communityforestry lack business-manager expertise to negotiate contracts,to know government contracting protocols, to be familiarwith small-business development issues, and with financing aprogram, or project. This lack is surmountable, given adequatetime and support to integrate the tribes’ traditional interestsand values in community forestry with appropriate business andentrepreneurship training and experience.More focus in improving methods of communication andimplementation of the planning phases and the contractingphases of projects is needed. Better communication should leadto better planning and contracting. Once these challenges areimproved, the implementation phase is assured. More attentioncan be focused on young people by creating more opportunitiesfor them to get education and job opportunities at tribalenterprises. Right now, the awareness that such opportunitiesexist is growing.66 — FCSFP Capacity Building

Case in Point:Las HumanasAs CEO of Las HumanasCooperative, located in Manzano,New Mexico, southeast ofAlbuquerque, George Ramirez isbusily involved with innumerableaspects of the Manzano LandGrant, a 7,000-acre areacommunally owned since the16th-century Spanish settlement. Manzano is one of five land grantsadjacent to each other and running north and south along the flanksof the Manzano Mountains, almost exactly at the geographicalcenter of the state. Ramirez oversees developing a non-profit forestrestoration and fuel reduction services business. For about six years,he has seen the challenges that most community forestry efforts inthe Four Corners have experienced; usually with fewer resources.Right now, Las Humanas workers are getting steady work. Threeyears ago, he employed eight forest workers; now 16 work regularly.Ramirez reports progress on Las Humanas’ three major goals:improving watershed water quality and quantity; operating a forestrestoration and fuels reduction service in partnership with the ForestService and the State of New Mexico; and creating educational fieldopportunities for local teens to get involved in caring for the forests.“The only resource we have is an unhealthy land. It’s reachedthe bottom, but we’re helping to turn it around.”The goal of involving more members of the community has beena gradual success, but the demand for jobs is greater than broadcommunity interest in forest restoration principles. However, this isevolving as a few high school and elementary aged kids are showinginterest in Ramirez’s work.Commercial competition has increased as well. Three yearsago, Las Humanas was the only fire mitigation or community-basedthinning organization in operation; now there are eight, Ramirezreports. The price per acre for providing fuel-reduction services hasdropped drastically, due primarily to the presence of a Florida-basedbusiness that works cheaper and is “mobile.”To offset this situation, Ramirez, as are other FCSFP projectpartners, encourages the Forest Service to allow the local communityfirst choice on public land projects in order to assist in communityand economic development. He advocates the concept of “bestvalue,” whereby the local community is given preference on jobs inthe interest of supporting community economic development andsustaining local traditional ways of interacting with the forests ofthe area. Ramirez said this approach is similar to giving veteranspreference when hiring for government jobs. The best value-biddingcriterion does not mean, “playing favorites,” he said.Asked where the greatest capacity is to advance, GeorgeRamirez said continue “moving trees and keeping people working.”The next step to build capacity is to develop a variety of products,not just one, or two, such as vigas. The market is limited for vigasand prices drop when supply exceeds demand. Las Humanas isinterested in developing a cabinet-making shop that specializesin Spanish/New Mexican style furniture that utilizes restorationmaterials. This would be linked to a traditional-cultural activity, hesaid. He stressed the need to identify the demand before making aproduct and not try to create a product that will create a market.Lesson LearnedSometimes it takes a charismaticleader to make things possible andcultivate local interest and supportin building new relationships withothers in the interest of renewingcultural ties.Lesson LearnedTribal and traditional ethniccommunities epitomize thefundamental nature of thecommunity-forestry movement bystressing that forest managementshould fit the values of a placebasedsociety. Yet, the challengethat remains among thesecommunities is the construction ofappropriate economic enterprisesbased in viable business principlesthat have been adapted toindigenous values and traditions.FCSFP Capacity Building — 67

The small revenue stream that FCSFP fundingwas part of is not enough to maintain a program socontinued funding is needed.“The [tribal forestry enterprises] may never beself-sustaining, in fact,” one tribal contact said. Theywill continue to need assistance due simply to theirremoteness from major markets. These constraintshinder large-scale market development. In addition,much of the work is labor intensive, so progresshappens slowly. At the same time, tribal enterprisesare reluctant to mechanize. Two main reasons arecited for this: the labor pool is so large (out-of-worklaborers); and, mechanization could occur at a scaleinappropriate for tribal values, perspectives, andprinciples of adaptation.The latter point, “principles of adaptation,”refers to a significant parameter that characterizesa tribal perspective of community forestry;particularly to the strong spiritual, cultural, andtraditional beliefs that exist in tribal cultures.The significance of nature in the lives of humanbeings is a paramount concern in their approachto community forestry. They deliberately andconsciously base their interaction with forests on thepremise that they need to be cared for so that theyprovide for the community.As one interviewee said: “Without this, thepeople would not exist. In modern terms, you canthink of it as forest management. It’s a symbioticrelationship. This is the underlying principle thatguides all tribal decisions to actively manage,or conserve and protect forest resources. Oncethat understanding is maintained it guides thedevelopment, or “non-development,” of enterprises.The forest resources don’t belong to any singleindividual. They belong to the whole tribe. It’severybody’s responsibility to care for those resourcesand whatever is maintained belongs to the wholecommunity. Everybody is the benefactor of goodsand services. The forest and products are lookedupon as for the common good. This is challengingin a business sense, because of the profit motive tomaximize gains. The social good sometimes doesn’tsupport those [market] principles” (John Waconda,BIA).If these cultural linkages don’t occur, theappropriate level [scale] of operation may be moredifficult to achieve. A high-capacity, large-volumesawmill may not be supported by enterprisemanagers, and council and tribal members forwhom a large degree of harvesting would not bebiologically and socially acceptable. “Self-restraint isself-sustaining. You should not expect to get rich atexpense of the whole.”68 — FCSFP Capacity Building

THEME II: Economic Components“A forest products enterprise in Arizona can be very expensive to operate. Energy costs versus productionoutput highlights part of the challenge. Retooling existing industry to use a greater volume of small diametermaterial and incorporating biomass residuals for myriad other applications, has promise for creatingsustainment, but not before significant money is plunged into the effort. Consider, for example, one of thethree remaining sawmills in northern Arizona, Reidhead Brothers Lumber Mill in Nutrioso, a communityembedded in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest with a rich logging tradition but struggling to find aniche in the battle to restore the health and vitality of Arizona’s forests. Once capable of milling 7 to 8 millionboard feet (mmbf) of lumber per year, this mill’s production has fallen to about 2 mmbf. Their productsinclude 3x4, 4x4, 6x6 and 4x6 dimensional lumber cut to 8 and 16-foot lengths. Most of the milled lumberis used in making pallets, assembled at plants in Phoenix or El Paso. A small amount of milled material isused in creating tongue-in-groove flooring for log homes. The 18 employees currently mill logs 9 inches andlarger with aged equipment. Material less than 9 inches is peeled for poles and posts, and waste residueis sold as mulch or boiler fuel. Significant funding is necessary for this mill to modernize and incorporateevery use of the material generated from their operations. Perhaps one operator put it best when hestated, ‘We are trying to pin the solution to forest health on the backs of the poorest people in the region’(Little Colorado River Plateau Resource, Conservation and Development Area, Inc. August 2003. ArizonaIndustries of the Future Forestry Action Plan. Prepared for the Arizona Department of Commerce. Holbrook, AZ:LCRP RC&D).The second area of implementation capacity is theeconomy. A new economy built around stewardshipprinciples is needed to undertake the difficult workof stewardship of many acres of unhealthy forests.As already noted, this new restoration-based forestproducts process is highly adapted from the oldcommodity timber industry of the past. Whileit can at times integrate with some of the moretraditional commodity-oriented wood products,such as timber, beams, oriented strand board, andpulpwood, its success depends on a whole hostof new products and services. This contemporarywood products economy has the character of acutting edge, innovative, technology in the modernbusiness world. Product development and design,marketing, innovative and revenue enhancingpractices are critical elements of the new economyof stewardship, as much shaped by forest restorationservices as by universal commodities.If these adaptive, economic elements are notdeveloped and cannot become viable, then thefuture of community-based stewardship looks bleak.Why? Because there is a general expectation thatmuch of the work needs to be paid for through“market” functions. While in the short term thereare public resources to rebuild a stewardshipeconomy, and some “subsidies” are available throughthe National Fire Plan and possibly through the newHealth Forest Restoration Act, the long-term successof forest renewal depends on producing marketableproducts and services from low value raw materials.At times, this sounds like the proverbial tale of“making a silk purse from a sow’s ear.” Whilethis is true to a degree, through innovation andentrepreneurship, some successes are beginning tooccur.FCSFP Capacity Building — 69

Case in PointSherry Barrow Strategies, Inc. (SBS)is the manufacturing component of theRWUI and a FCSFP grantee. WhenGlen and Sherry Barrow got involved inthe effort and received funding throughthe FCSFP and other public and privatesources to build a manufacturing plant,other things became possible in theintegration of utilization componentsfrom harvesting onward. Essentially,SBS provided the answer of what to dowith the small-diameter timber once itwas harvested. They built a plant thatmanufactures animal bedding shavingsfrom freshly harvested small diameter.Another piece of the puzzle was filled inas SBS provided a market and createddemand for raw materials.Also adding a crucial element isSierra Contracting, Inc. a compostingand mulching business, located inRuidoso Downs, just across the streetfrom the famed Ruidoso DownsRacetrack. Owner Van Patton takes thematerials that SBS can’t use, as wellas slash hauled off of private propertywithin the Ruidoso Village limits (aspart of a fire-risk reduction ordinance)and makes compost. He then sellsit through a contract with the NewMexico Department of Transportationfor highway mulching projects. Sierraalso gives some back to the community,whereby residents get their own slashback in the form of soil enrichingcompost.With diligence and perseverance,the overall effort has continued to evolvesince about 1999. As of 2004, morecomponents have been filled in, such asmore regular participation of a logger.SBS reported that they are havingdifficulty keeping up with the demandfrom consumers due to the popularity oftheir product. They cite lack of regular,steady and large enough supply as thehold up.Derek Snow, Southern Utah University Economic DevelopmentCouncil, sharing tips with small business owners during theFCSFP 2003 annual workshop.Small Business Orientation“We [the FCSFP] elevated the issues. We focused on helpingthe business community, and nobody else was doing that.”(Carla Harper, OCS Interview, February 17, 2004)One of the largest questions facing the community forestrymovement is how to structure and scale wood products businessesto operate efficiently in the new field of forest restoration. Manybelieve that local, small-scale, and often, family owned businessesare part of the answer. Indeed, small business has always playeda significant role in the regional context of forest restoration. Afew medium-scale manufacturing operations make up part of theindustry, such as Forest Energies in Show Low, Arizona, whichmakes fire-stove pellets for commercial and residential sales.However, the regional industry is largely defined by individualsand families continually trying to find a niche and figure outwhat product they can make and sell with the raw materials thatare available.In addition to the small-business niche focus, anothersignificant issue raised was to what degree could small businessactually handle the amount of raw materials that needed to bedisposed of from forests in the region. From the beginning,biomass utilization was considered a possible avenue fordisposing of vast volumes of thinned materials. But it also haspresented difficult challenges that are still in the process of beingconfronted. One that persists is the difficulty of getting access to70 — FCSFP Capacity Building

large enough volumes of timber to make investment desirable toindustry.Efforts to develop both avenues continue; but whatever scaleis achieved in terms of disposing of low-quality timber in thename of ecological restoration, small business will surely be foundat the center of that development.Entrepreneurship in Community Forestry:Critical for Success“It’s like fishing. You try different lures, maybepoles, then . . . fall in and a fish swims in yourpocket. You just gotta be out there!”(Gordon West, Gila WoodNet, Silver City, NM).When it looked like the Four Corners saw-timber industry wasdisappearing, many FCSFP members began to express thatentrepreneurship held the energy to recreate a new forest-basedindustry. The FCSFP took on a character of an entrepreneurshipsupport organization. Many believed, and still believe, thatyou can’t have community based forest restoration withoutentrepreneurship. It is the essence of “hands-on.”The importance of supporting entrepreneurship forrebuilding capacity is “an absolute must,” said Kim Kostelnik.“A spark in an individual or group that wants to get somethingaccomplished. Gravitate towards a ‘doer.’ They have an abilityto express problems, issues, barriers that affect what the agencymight do.”Entrepreneurship is characterized by the commitment of localpeople who are creative, willing to take risks, and are adaptable.Entrepreneurship is the one thing many FCSFP partners havein common. They brought their inventive minds and a varietyof skills into the network: an engineer, long-time loggers wholearned what they know by experience, craftspeople, furniturebuilders, construction contractors to name a few. They saw anopportunity in the ecological needs of forests to develop businessopportunities; particularly in the development of new productsand tools (new technology) to harvest and process small diameter.A Small Business Perspective“. . . we have lost virtually the entireforest and wood products infrastructurein our area. We need to rebuild aninfrastructure—a skilled workforce andbusiness enterprises—if the critical workof restoring healthy forest ecosystemsis to be accomplished. We also needto create innovative, value-addedenterprises to use the byproducts ofthis restoration work . . . . From what wehave seen, the greatest opportunity tostart building this infrastructure is withsmall entrepreneurial companies likeours looking for a market niche. Smallcompanies might not accomplish large,landscape objectives quickly, but we canbuild capacity, begin doing the importantwork, and start building trust and lessons. . . . Colorado and other states withforest health issues need businesseslike ours to serve as a management tooland to provide jobs, a tax base, andproducts. We are small but we are also areal part of our community. If we go outof business our area has not only lostgood jobs, but also the land managerhas lost an important tool.“. . . in typical restoration projects,we have to cut and handle a lot of lowquality trees. We also try to cut a fewgood ones in order to do well in our localmarkets and make the economics work.There is still a lot of uncertainty andrisk for small enterprises like ours tryingto make any profit while conductingrestoration work.“We do not expect a guaranteedsupply. However, the Forest Servicemust be a consistent, predictablesupplier of material. Our businessplanning depends on being able topredict where our supply of wood willcome from each year, and we needaccurate reliable information from theRio Grande and San Juan nationalforests. . . . We are not asking forindustrial forestry, we want restorationwork.”(Cassandra Doyon, Rocky Mt. TimberProducts/Doyon Logging, 2/4/04, toHouse Resource Committee, Subcomm.on Forests/Forest Health).FCSFP Capacity Building — 71

Case in Point: Multi-products andmulti-markets—An integratedeconomic development strategyTen to 20 years ago, along the MogollonRim in east-central Arizona, a timberand wood products industry thrived.In Eagar, a Stone Corp. timber millemployed more than 100 people, andthe pulp mill at Snowflake purchasedsignificant amounts of chips. This keptmany people working in the woods andin processing raw materials. Today, thesawmill at Eagar is closed, and the pulpmill uses only recycled paper.From the public lands perspective,including the White Mountain ApacheHomelands and the Apache-Sitgreaves(A/S) National Forest, what do you dowith thousands of acres of overstockedstands of ponderosa pine, manyof which face an unnatural standreplacementfire? (Recall that one ofthe largest fires in the West, the Rodeo-Chediski, occurred there and on theWhite Mountain Apache Reservation inJune 2002.) If you were Jim Andersen,former RCA Coordinator for the A-SNF, you think “plaid.” “Plaid” was Jim’sway of saying multi-products and multimarkets.Plaid is one way of overcomingcommunity and forest dependence onone product, one source of revenue andjobs, one means of utilizing resourcesthat need to be removed from a stagnantecosystem.Under the general auspices of theArizona Sustainable Forests Partnership,coordinated through the LittleColorado Resource and ConservationDistrict based in Holbrook, Arizona,several businesses and communityorganizations are working in concert toaddress a problem that is larger thanany single agency, organization, orbusiness can solve alone. Walker Bros.,a multi-generational logging companylocated in Eagar, has returned 18 jobsto the region after becoming equippedto mechanically thin high volumes ofsmall diameter material. About half ofthe material in the form of clean chipsis transported to Forest Energy Corp.in Show Low to manufacture stovepellets. At the old Stone sawmill, effortsare underway to bring a biomass steamturbine on-line, which will produce[continued on next page . . .]Rustic Style Furniture in Dolores, Colorado received a demonstrationgrant to improve marketing. They utilize aspen mainly, little smalldiameterpine; but serve as a model example of a small businesseffectively practicing stewardship principles.MarketingFCSFP has been building capacity directly in marketingand utilization, and indirectly in forest restoration. It’s anindirect link. We in the Four Corner’s did not go out . .. generally, we did not go out and fund restoration. Butwe indirectly encouraged and supported progress andimplementation of forest restoration by creating somemarkets for the products that come from those treatments.And by, I think, contributing to the evolution of publicperception. You know, by getting those small businessesin there with community support, so that people weremore supportive of cutting trees and restoring the forest.(Al Hendricks, Arizona Department ofFire and Aviation Management, April 28, 2004)Even though small business is considered the foundation ofcommunity-based forestry, small individual businesses struggleto get an economic foothold. A couple of years into the FCSFPdevelopment, it was thought that marketing could help;however, many rural community people lacked the resources,skills, and funding to include marketing in their whole effort.So the FCSFP steering committee contracted with a consultantto assist businesses in developing brand identification. Thedegree to which this was accomplished was mostly remedialand introductory, but still welcomed as another tool availableto grantees who could benefit. As a capacity-building method,marketing continues to be considered important overall, although72 — FCSFP Capacity Building

secondary to product and service development and businessretention.This integrated planning has lead over the past several yearsto a higher level of economic and community capacity with aspecific regional area. Thus, when the Apache-Sitgreaves NationalForest was ready to enter into a long-term stewardship contract,business relationship, trust, and social equity had been built thatenabled a consortium of individual businesses to bid on and winthe contract. (see previous discussion of stewardship contracting.)UtilizationIf we want to do the work in the woods, the restoration orfuel reduction, whatever you want to call it, or whatever itis; it can’t get done unless you have the people to both do itand do something with the raw material. ...You can sit hearand talk about restoration until you are blue in the face, butnothing will happen if we don’t figure out a way to use thisstuff. ...Otherwise it is just flapping our gums and then we aredoing a disservice to everyone…Because then we are justtalking and wasting time. We have to figure out how to use it.(Brian Cottam, former coordinatorGreater Flagstaff Forest PartnershipMarch, 2004)The whole of community-based forest restoration isdependent on the utilization of small-diameter timber. Unlessthe American public is going to subsidize forest restoration, waysmust be found to successfully move and dispose of timber in anefficient, low-impact manner, develop products, and find marketsto buy them.The utilization story is one in which many FCSFPdemonstration grant recipients were actually part of a larger,local context. In each case, the grantee contributed a crucialcomponent to overall efforts, which make the whole thingpossible. Conversely, the individual entrepreneurship/smallbusiness couldn’t make it without a community-wide involvementof other components. The Ruidoso Wildland-Urban InterfaceWorking Group (RWUI) is one example of such integratedcooperation that stems from stump to consumer and has workedrather well.electricity and be linked to the grid.Outside of Springerville, justnorth of Eagar, Imperial Laminators isproducing a laminated highway guardrailthat has passed U.S. Department ofTransportation standards for safetyand resiliency. It could utilize significantvolumes of two-by-six lumber. ImperialLaminators is also developing a numberof laminated beam products for use inpost and beam construction.Just northwest of Show Low, NeilBrewer, another multi-generationalwood worker, is producing a wide rangeof products from peeled poles, to apanelized log home system, to housebeams and landscaping mulch. TheTown of Eagar has taken over the oldPrecision lumber mill, and is developingan industrial park oriented especiallyto wood processing. In the Pinetop-Lakeside area near Show Low, threeprescriptions have been implementedon the Blue Ridge DemonstrationProject. Ed Collins, the District Rangeron that portion of the A/S NF, and SteveCampbell, with County Extension, havebeen working with private landownersin the area to establish collaborativerelationships with multiple intereststhrough the Natural Resources WorkingGroup to improve forest health andreduce fire riskNo one has struck it rich yet. It isnot yet clear that all the visions andideas are going to work out exactly asplanned, but for the first time in a whilethere is hope. It is starting to look likethe capacity of small wood processingbusinesses can mature enough to utilizethe thousands of acres of fire pronelands surrounding the rapidly urbanizingcommunities on the Mogollon Rim.More and more people are thinking“plaid,” and finding new ways to sharethe forest stewardship problem, build adiversified market, and take better careof the lands and their communities. Ahealthy optimism is being created bythe many partners, and being rallied byHerb Hopper through the Little ColoradoRC&D. The group, working through theArizona Sustainable Forest Partnership,seems to be achieving success throughteamwork, multiple solutions, strongcommunity leadership, innovation,and collaborative entrepreneurship bytaking a strategic approach to economicsustainability and forest restoration.FCSFP Capacity Building — 73

Case in PointThe results of supporting productdevelopment were mixed accordingto some. “So much goes into productdevelopment,” said Tim Reader,Colorado State Forest Service. “FourCorners realized that it’s too hard todevelop new products when the industrywas failing.” Early on, the focus turnedtowards trying to retain the existingindustry and adding value to traditionalproducts, such as dip-diffusion treatmentof posts and poles.Buying equipment helped in themanufacturing of products, but it alsohad mixed results. While the jury isstill out on the effects of equipmentpurchases, industry people havestressed that they need equipment.Small-business developmentconsultants were saying equipmentpurchasing should be the last concern.The FCSFP-related operators havecome in a spectrum of approaches tothis issue. For example, StonerTopLumber in Dolores, Colorado boughta tub grinder (“Rotochopper”) to chipsmall-diameter timber into shavings forplaygrounds, but they have not beenable to develop playground-safe chips.They did not conduct the marketingsurveys before buying the grinder(Dunmire, Carolyn. Undated. StonerTopLumber and the Rotochopper: TurningWaste Wood into Value-added Products,a marketing report). The animal bedshavings manufacturing business, SBS,Inc. in the Ruidoso, New Mexico area,took a more systematic approach totheir innovation in partnership interactionand new product development,manufacturing and marketing. They didthe extensive research before investingin equipment.Product DevelopmentThe focus on product development by FCSFP partnershas leveraged considerable integration of several attributesof community-based forestry, such as: technical assistance,utilization, restoration, marketing assistance, entrepreneurship,business start-ups, information exchange, deciding whether toexpand existing products or develop new ones, and getting clearon connections to existing markets as well as to new markets. Thelist goes on, showing how product development has been, andcontinues to be, central to activities of community-based forestry.Product development also has depended upon integratingnetworks of people and resources, locally and regionally, evennationally. Many factors have created a mine field of challenges:the infrastructure, the lack of high-valued raw materials thatcould produce high-demand products, the lack of skilled woodsworkers, the lack of confidence in reinvestment, etc.Developing products from a small- to a large scale havecharacterized this attribute of FCSFP grantees and communitybasedforestry. On the small end of the scale, furniture making iscommon across the region. On the large end, biomass has been atthe forefront of interests. One reason why is that there is a beliefthat biomass can provide material to more than one market,thus creating demand to move larger volumes of material fromovergrown and at-risk forests.While biomass is considered to offer a means for disposingof poor quality timber on a large scale, a number of intervieweeswarn of caveats. It is not a cure all, they say, and warn againsta jump-on-the-bandwagon mentality, which they believe hascaused problems in the past. At some point, it became obviousthat the timber industry was in such a depressed state that iflarge volumes of timber material were available to it, the industrycould not dispose of it fast enough. The principles of ecologicalrestoration may be compromised if too large of a scale ofharvesting took place, some claim.Probably some of the best examples of product developmentare where utilization and product manufacturing came togetherin profitable ways. SBS, Inc. is commonly referred to in NewMexico for doing a good job of this. Arizona projects, such asIndigenous Community Enterprises and Neil Brewer Associates,have been successful as well at utilizing increasing volumes oftimber, bolstered by the incentive that the large fires of 2002provided.74 — FCSFP Capacity Building

Mill Conversions“The wood products industry in the westernUnited States lacks the ability to carryout large-scale restoration projects. Theinfrastructure to process small-diameterand underutilized trees generally does notexist, or is economically infeasible givenlow product values. In many regions, thelack of a consistent material supply frompublic lands hinders contractors’ abilityto invest in the necessary equipment.”(Cassandra Doyon 2/04/04).Are mills key, or just part of the long chain ofadaptations that will be needed?“Refitting mills to handle small diameter is thecoming thing across the West,” according to RayWrobley, SEC, Sedona, Arizona. “But the trendappears to be intermittent, depending on the regionand on the interest of people there.” In the PacificNorthwest, which is considered the place for bigdiameter trees, many mills won’t take a log smallerthan 22 inches on the large end. There might stillbe specialty mills, but only a few. In Colorado, somethink it takes too much to convert a large timbersawmill into a small diameter utilization mill.“You might as well start from scratch,” saidWrobley. “Everyone is retooling to small diameter.There still is motivation to invest.”The problem in order to compete is mills haveto be in high production, Wrobley said, whichworks in the Northwest and British Columbia,where huge volumes per acre are common. Incontrast, a small company in Montrose, Colorado,Intermountain, which can handle 100 million boardfeet a year, has to reach out across the country tostay in business.Like mills, loggers are geared towards smalllogs now. At Vallecito Reservoir near Durango,the logger doing salvage after the 74,000-acreMissionary Ridge fire had to sell his big logs in thefield, because they were too big for him to handle.Aside from the cost and the demand to producehigh volumes of products, some are saying thatit makes sense to separate the small-diameterwood processing activity from the saw-timber millactivity. This is similar to “starting from scratch,but not only because of the cost. It just makes moreutilization sense to some.”Nevertheless, mill conversion became animportant focus of some FCSFP partners who saw aneed and had a desire to fill it. In Reserve, NM, theCatron County Citizens Group utilized remnantsof an old, defunct mill, along with a new saw, andrebuilt a much smaller mill on the same site inorder to process restoration timber from upcominglogging out of the Sheep Basin Restoration Unit; acommunity and economic development process thathas taken nearly 10 years.The Doyons in Southfork, Colorado symbolizea notable milestone in the mill conversion story.Their background is in logging as contractors,but they were losing jobs as mills shut down. Sothey decided to take the risk and purchase andreassemble a La Sal, Utah mill and add milling totheir logging portfolio. Their story is quite dramaticin that it shows a dedication to community-basedforestry and to keeping their business, which isreally their lifestyle, going. Cassandra Doyoneven testified to a congressional subcommitteeabout the subject (Doyon 2003). Her statementstouch on several themes crucial to communitybasedforestry: the need for restoration forestryand a supporting industry, bidding for restorationprojects (and needed training), costs of projectsversus US Forest Service selection criteria, USFSconfusing and conflicting policies and rules, foreigncompetition, OSHA regulations and safety training,forest and wood products infrastructure, landscapescalerestoration harvesting, and rural communityassistance (ibid.).The significance of the rather recent focus onmill conversions has to do with the fact that somany, many mills have closed down over the lasttwo to three decades, and suddenly new mills arepopping up; in Catron, near Trinidad, Colorado andRaton, New Mexico and in Southfork, Colorado.Whether or not this focus is a sign of renewedvigor, or fresh indication of potential, is not soclear; however, it testifies to the entrepreneurialmomentum that seems to exist and to the desireof people to recreate an industry in response to theneed to treat forests and to the incentives to do so.FCSFP Capacity Building — 75

This German-made “Unimog” purchased by Gila WoodNet isan example of the smaller, more manueverable, and low-impactmachinery being employed in small-diameter restoration logging.Labor Force Development“When the wood flow gets started so thata guy can make a business, then we willget some jobs being created. It has beenhard to bring people along over four yearswithout having wood. Even then, the smalldiameter thinning business is the steepestentrepreneurial hill you can climb.”(Gordon West, Gila WoodNet,Silver City New Mexico)Regional differences are very important whenit comes to the topic of workforce training anddevelopment. Whereas the Pacific Northwestneeded to focus on immediate training for largenumbers of out of work logging and timberworkers, the economic situation in the Southwestin the late 1990 was quite different. While somelarge timber mills were still being closed in1998-99, much of the industry had been lost even earlier.The human, social, and economic impacts of thelarge scale changes in timber production, whilestill being felt, had been absorbed in significantmeasure by the 70’s, 80’s, and early 90’s. The largescale wood industry, active in Flagstaff, Durango,Snowflake, Espanola, Eagar, and Reserve among76 — FCSFP Capacity Buildingcommunities, had already been largelydown sized by the early to mid 1990’s.What remained was few small andmoderate size businesses, family ownedsawmills and logging companies, and afew adaptive businesses that convertedtheir mills to smaller diameter materialsor adapted their production to includefuel treatment, house log kits, largescalelandscaping for ski-areas, amongother wood related services.What woods workers who remainedhad to figure out ways to create smallniche businesses such as producinghigher-value beams for western homeconstruction, turning posts to replicatea traditional Hispanic style, or createda whole new product such as Aspenpaneling. These businesses sustainedemployment for a core number of woodworkers, while others left the region,turned to other careers, or retired. Whatremains is a small number of wood productionworkers who still struggle to sustain themselves.This is an aging population for the most part, whoseknowledge and experience is extremely valuableto the future success of wood production in theSouthwest.As community forestry continues to grow inthe areas of forest restoration, and new productsfrom undervalued wood materials remains a neededobjective, there will be a gap in available skilledworkers. In Catron County for example, whereasthe old Stone Mill in Reserve employed upwards ofa hundred persons, today only a handful of skilledworkers remain who have not invested themselvesin other employment or careers. It is unclear wherefuture workers can be drawn from as the Catronmill expands to 15-20 employees.In the early stages of economic developmentthrough community forestry, the Southwestern orFour Corners Region can fill its initial work forceneeds through reaching out to local people andsmall businesses. However, steady and moderategrowth in employment to just meet the needs offorest restoration will require a work force thatdoes not presently exist. For many workers this issomewhat difficult to contemplate because theirmost recent experience has been mere economic

survival. How strongly can they contemplate an economic futurein wood production tied to restoration forestry?Given this history and context, the development of a skilledworkforce will become an increasingly important question. Whatnew careers will merge from the conversion of mills to smalldiameter products? What changes will come from increasedmechanization of logging and thinning operations. Howcan labor force needs be met in a highly diversified economicenvironment that could include traditional milling, new woodcomposites, furniture manufacturing, biomass energy, ecologicalmonitoring, and many other outcomes that must be integratedinto a holistic restoration process? Answers to these questions willcome from highly entrepreneurial businesses, hands-on technicalworkshops and training initiatives, state labor developmentprograms, and state forester support of technical assistance andeducational programs.New TechnologyMost of the entrepreneurial activity associated with the FCSFPcentered on product development and manufacturing, newharvesting and milling technologies, and the purchase ofmachinery to diversify harvesting and milling of products andservices. Obviously, advanced technology is considered necessaryto add value to products, operate in the woods more efficientlyand to reduce restoration costs.The goal of sustainability hinges heavily on the ability todevelop new technology that is relevant and effective. Towardsthis goal the list is long of what FCSFP partners have beenincorporating in their efforts. For example, the chain-flail chipperutilized by Walker Brothers in Arizona has been effective inremoving large volumes of timber to transport to Forest Energiesin Show Low. Gila WoodNet in Silver City, New Mexicofabricated a low-impact loader vehicle to conduct small-diametertimber harvesting more efficiently by eliminating the needfor skidding. Randy Roper added a bandsaw to produce moremarketable retail products at Lone Eagle Lumber Company nearGrand Junction, Colorado. Ralph Barela pieced together a plantto manufacture fireplace logs out of chips from his successfulviga business in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Phil Archuleta, withP & M Signs in Mountainair, NM, an oft-mentioned successstory, persevered long enough to develop a wood and plasticcomposite that is now under a profitable contract to producesignage with the USDA Forest Service. Also in New Mexico, theCatron County Citizens Group has converted a sawtimber millinto a log sort yard and a processing plant for small diametertimber. SBS, Inc. in Glencoe, NM and Zuni Furniture Enterpriseboth are testing a prototype co-generation unit at their facilitiesLesson LearnedWhether defined in terms of newproducts or markets, innovativetechnology or small businessentrepreneurship, or any number ofother adaptations in harvesting andmilling, the ultimate sustainability ofrestoration forestry in the Southwestis highly dependent upon theevolving economic infrastructure,capacity and resilience of smalland moderate size businesses.There is a clear need to establish apartnership with this entrepreneurialsector.FCSFP Capacity Building — 77

in partnership with the US Department ofEnergy; two of only seven such experiments inthe United States. Similarly, in Eagar, Arizona,Steve Hall refitted a defunct mill to generateelectricity by burning small-diameter timber.Indigenous Enterprises in Cameron, Arizona basesits whole Hogan Project on the development ofspecial fasteners used to build traditional Navajohomes out of small diameter timber. Richardand Cassandra Doyon, at great financial risk,dismantled a long-standing timber mill in La Sal,Utah and reassembled it in Southfork, Coloradowith an aim to process small diameter timber theylog from restoration projects. In Escalante, Utah,Skyline Forest Products, with financial assistancefrom a host of providers, including the FCSFP,bought and has been testing a portable micro-millthat processes small diameter.Development of new technologies has alwaysbeen an area ripe for innovation in the FCSFPnetwork, in which technical expertise from bothwithin and from outside of the locality has playeda significant role.This has been made up of a combination of localexpertise and inventiveness of the partners andtechnical assistance providers, such as the US ForestProducts Lab in Madison, Wisconsin to developand test some of these technologies. For example,Gordon West at Gila WoodNet in Silver City, NewMexico has been working with a Lab expert todesign and strength test wood/plastic composite. P& M Signs did the same thing. Tim Reader withthe Colorado Wood Marketing and UtilizationCenter has also utilized the Forest Products Lab forsimilar testing. Underlying this interaction is theconstant search to find a product that can be massproduced for a large market, such as the home andcommercial construction industry and the energyand heating sectors of the economy.78 — FCSFP Capacity Building

THEME III: Ecology“It is time for the majority to take back control of the nation’s resources and demand that scientificknowledge be applied to managing forests for the qualities Americans value. Our forest ecosystemsare complex, but it is obvious to me that our current legal/social situation is even more complex. I can,however, see that the power to make decisions has been taken from the majority (voters) and put inthe hands of a few. The laws under which we work have, I believe, inadvertently placed the most powerover what is done (or not done) on public lands in the hands of a few who oppose active management.Those who have grabbed control are using the courts and various laws, particularly the EndangeredSpecies Act, as tools to advance their agendas. There seems to be little connection between scientificknowledge of forest ecosystems and many of the decisions being made through the courts today.”(Marlin Johnson, Combining Social and Ecological Needs on Forest Lands in the United States: A GlobalPerspective: Much of this paper was originally presented as The Role of Wood Removals in Sustainable ForestManagement in the United States: The Contribution of Federal Lands. The authors were Marlin Johnson, Dr.Hal Salwasser, and Barry Bollenbacher, IUFRO Conference in Malaysia, August 2000.)“Just as there is a broad range of eco-system conditions within the dynamics of a given ecosystem,((you can be anywhere from a pioneer successional stage to a seral stage in the same ecosystem,and they are all valid stages) likewise you can go into sivilculture and you can say we could leaveit at this density, or this density, or this density, or this density! And there are trade-offs.”(Al Hendricks, Arizona Department of Fireand Aviation Management, April 28, 2004)Research on restoration ecology has contributedsignificantly to FCSFP activities; whether directlyor indirectly by FCSFP partners or others involvedin community restoration. However, as theexcerpted material here shows, the process of forestrestoration is fraught with difficulties. Despite thedetermination of those who value its potential, theyare faced with many challenges to realize their visionand their goals.There is not one simple prescription thatwill work for the majority of ecosystems in theSouthwest. It depends on what the particularstand of trees looks like, how it is composed,what the restoration goals are, and often timeswhat competing values for a given forest are at thediscussion table. Even though one might think thatthe science of ecology might give us a clear scientificanswer about forest restoration, it is rational afterall, the current state of understanding and thecomplexity of perspectives, do not allow this tohappen. As Al Hendricks said, “Restoration is a$500.00 word.”Fire regimes, stand structures, silviculturalprescription development, ecological monitoring,and documentation are important components ofthe science and practice of restoration forestry. Tobe effective, scientific observation and learning mustrely on sharing of information and new knowledge,from the researcher to the forest-thinning operator,to stakeholders and general public in a timelymanner. Restoration forestry is characterized bytwo major activities: developing, applying, testingprescriptions and harvesting methods; and scientificmonitoring that ultimately guides restorationand building of an infrastructure for economicrevitalization, allowing both to adapt to newinformation (Johnson 1996).FCSFP Capacity Building — 79

The following (Frederici 2003) summarizesissues of the ecology of forest restoration and theunderstandings of those in the research, support,and implementation of restoration harvests.“Forest restoration focuses on returning low-level fire toits core role, and on protecting the oldest trees and promotingthe growth and development of new generations of old trees. Italso must consider other native plant species besides pine trees;it must consider restoration of native wildlife composition anddensities; it must consider nutrient cycling and hydrology; itmust address concerns about invasive species. For it to succeedat meaningful landscape scales it must also be linked to worksuch as the removal of roads and the restoration of springs,wet meadows, and open, grassy park- lands, most of which areseverely degraded throughout the Southwest. Finally, if it is tobecome a lasting part of the social landscape, restoration mustbenefit and sustain human communities.Given this complexity, it is no wonder that there hasbeen and will continue to be a tension between those whofocus on the dangers from large-scale fire and hence advocatefor large-scale restoration, implemented swiftly, and thosewho would take a slower approach. The brakes on restorationare many. If restoration presents all the promise of a broad,interdisciplinary endeavor that uses a wide range of humancapabilities, it is also - for many of the same reasons - fraughtwith difficulty. Residents often oppose prescribed burns. Someenvironmentalists, concerned about potential profiteering bya reestablished wood products industry, oppose commercialthinning treatments. Land managers face bureaucratic inertia,red tape, and litigation that can delay projects for years -sometimes for so long that conditions change sufficiently sothat the entire inventory, project planning, and environmentalreview process becomes outdated and must be begun again,causing a lack of follow-through to implementation that stiflesthe creativity and flexibility needed to conduct restoration.Congress continues to appropriate far more funding for firesuppression than for restoration treatments that will ultimately(but often not immediately) reduce suppression costs. Manyrural communities and workers lack the capital, equipment,and skills needed to carry out the needed work. Markets forthe small-diameter timber removed from thinned forests oftendo not exist, necessitating public funding for thinning” (ix-xx).. . .“Ecological restoration has as its goals the preservationof biodiversity, the health and maintenance of sustainableecosystems, and the development of mutually beneficialrelationships between humans and nature. In some instances,though, it is perceived as a specialized endeavor that remainsprimarily of interest to its practitioners - something yet to befully understood by society’s mainstream. In southwesternponderosa pine forests, restoration is more than this.Ecological restoration of these forests is intimately tied tohuman well-being, and is of concern to wide segments ofsociety. Many southwestern forests that are ecologicallyunhealthy are also uncommonly prone to dangerous, highintensityfires. Restoration has the potential to simultaneouslyreturn ecological integrity and reduce the risk of such fires”(3).80 — FCSFP Capacity BuildingA Utilization and Restoration Connection“FCSFP was not about physically pursuingtreatment on the ground, restoring aforest with individual projects. It was abouthelping to restore a forest by developingthe industrial infrastructure, communitybased economic infrastructure, to make itpossible and sustainable. It’s a very importantpart. Because as the FC Partnership hasdeveloped rural economies, businesses,to enhance utilization, that in turn hasimproved the opportunity to accomplishforest restoration. Long way to go. But that’sthe direction we have been moving in.”Al Hendricks, Arizona Department of Fire andAviation Management, April 28, 2004Strictly from an evaluation perspective, it is clearthat on-the-ground restoration has not occurred atrates that many had hoped for when the FCSFPprocess began. However, this should not beconsidered failure. Rather, the number of acres thathave been treated, which have increased during theyears, are merely a measure of current progress, aregister of the current reality among several othermeasures of broader progress.Note that in relation to this description ofprogress, many FCSFP grants were made tobusinesses that were not directly involved in on-thegroundrestoration projects. Increasingly, fundingwas made to support business development, andincreasing capacity to utilize timber and producevarious products. For example, FCSFP fundingsupport purchases of a resaw, a chain flail chipper,parts for a fire log manufacturing plant, and manyother equipment purchases. All of this, it can besaid with some confidence, has helped to buildcapacity to conduct forest restoration.Many projects are associated in some waywith restoration-related goals, but it is worthasking the question why the FCSFP was not moredirectly involved with specific restorations. Twoexplanations emerge. One, only a small number ofactual restoration projects have gotten underwayduring the past few years. Networking the rightpeople and accessing public lands are two of thechallenges to achieving progress in this realm.Second, obstacles make efforts to conduct

estoration very costly and time consuming. It has made bettersense to turn energies towards activities that are in better positionsto be productive. This is what seems to have occurred in the caseof the FCSFP and many of its grant recipients. Attention hasshifted from on-the-ground restoration to what is determinedachievable and constructive, that is building economic capacityfor the future.By 2004, more on-the-ground activity was occurring incomparison to the earlier years of the FCSFP, when interim,capacity-building, activities were emphasized. These includedtaking advantage of National Fire Plan dollars to conduct fuelreduction in wildland/urban interface lands, purchase equipment,and developing a more entrepreneurial approach to a commercialindustry that provides fuel-reduction and defensible-space serviceson private land. As mentioned before, the work on private landsis providing benchmarks for observing the effects of thinning overtime. This serves a research purpose that can help project realisticoutcomes on public lands relevant to restoration harvesting.To reiterate, capacity building is where the real story is.Grant recipients of FCSFP funding are part of a Four Cornerswide multi-level effort to build a new economic and physicalinfrastructure that is positioned to utilize small-diameter pine andother wood products of restoration thinning work.What is occurring is a continual building of knowledge thatin the long-term could be viewed as contributing to more actualrestoration. For example, the number of silvicultural prescriptionsbeing developed for specific values and localities and being testedhas increased over time. The kinds of landscapes in which theyare being tried out are more numerous, too. Projects in Arizonaand New Mexico particularly are demonstrating and monitoringprescriptions. These include the Blue Ridge DemonstrationProject near Show Low and the Millsite project near Silver City.Individuals in Colorado are hoping to develop opportunities toconduct demonstrations that utilize restoration prescriptionsappropriate for the location.Infrastructure development is taking place, both physicallyand economically, in planning for eventual access to forests todo restoration harvests. This is being led by entrepreneurialmindedbusiness people in the region, many of whom are FCSFPpartners. Developments in infrastructure and relationshipbuilding suggest that capacity for conducting efficient andeffective utilization and on-the-ground restoration is stronger.Optimism endures, judging from the persistence of theentrepreneurial efforts to develop new products, new low-impactharvesting equipment, new manufacturing machinery, andnew strategies for community awareness and support. Thesereflect a capacity-building momentum based on the expectationthat access to public forests for raw timber will ultimatelymaterialize. The merging of the contexts of ecology, economy,Case in Point: Communication andAdaptive ManagementCommunication and education areneeded all across the board at both theproject and the programmatic levels.This is the second big challenge of theJobs and Biodiversity Coalition, GordonWest believes.The coalition actually advocatescreating a timber program that utilizessmall diameter and saw timber entirelyseparately. West says the ForestService and anyone involved in CBFshould treat big trees and smalldiameter trees as different things, notlump them together.“A small-diameter processing facilitywill look very different from a lumbermill,” West said. “The trick is to get thehighest value for the least amount ofprocessing.”For example, the small diameterfacility will process small trees, roughsawn lumber and architectural details.West is experimenting with developinga house kit that utilizes logs that retainsome of their curve. He is selective, butprocesses the logs as little as possiblein order to reduce the cost of handling.FCSFP Capacity Building — 81

and community will continually need to be addressed as peoplework to solve the challenges and evolve greater, commonunderstandings.“Zone of Agreement”The “zone of agreement” is essentialto the working relationship of participantsin the Jobs and Biodiversity Coalitionin Silver City, New Mexico. Meetingparticipants must adhere to this guidingprinciple of engagement. In the caseof the restoration demonstration atthe Millsite, parameters agreed uponwithin the zone of agreement include:only trees under 12 inches in diameterare harvested, no saw logs are taken,no economic drivers behind theprescription, only ecologically sensitiveby-products are planned.Wildfire MitigationSometime after the FCSFP organized, growing demand toconduct wildfire mitigation and the emergence of the NationalFire Plan created opportunities for the FCSFP members toharvest small diameter timber in the wildland-urban interface oftheir communities. This was in direct response to the availabilityof federal funding, specifically the National Fire Plan, for fireplanning and mitigation. Shifts in operations took place towardswildfire mitigation and fuels reduction. The scope of involvementranged from small, as in Catron County, to large-scale operations,as in Flagstaff.In some cases, taking advantage of NFP funding was done inlieu of doing forest restoration. It is important to note that not allin-woods work is actual forest restoration in which silviculturalprescriptions designed to address several issues, such as habitatand natural fire reintroduction. Rather, much is simpler fuelsreduction to protect homes and property from catastrophicwildfire in the wildland-urban interface on private and publiclands where they are adjacent to each other, which, of course, iscommon in the Four Corners. Prescriptions are involved in actualrestoration, but common in fuels reduction projects. However,both, restoration and fuels reduction are deeply connected withcommunity economic development, small business development,and the notion of stewardship. All of these should be consideredin future development of community-based fuels reduction andforest restoration industries.In 2003, the overlap of fuels reduction and true restorationgained a new level of attention through the creation of theHealthy Forests Restoration Act which created “incentive forcommunities to engage in comprehensive forest planning andprioritization” (Society of American Foresters, 2004, Preparing aCommunity Wildfire Protection Plan: A handbook for Wildland-Urban Interface Communities. Bethesda, Maryland: SAF).What may turn out to be a major creation of the HFRA is theincentives it offers the US Forest Service and the Bureau of LandManagement to engage with local communities in prioritizingand implementing fuels reduction projects (ibid. p2).Already, community wildfire plans developed in a numberof communities have made significant differences in theamount of on-the-ground being achieved. Communitiesassociated with the FCSFP to this effect include, Ruidoso,NM, Reserve, NM, Flagstaff, AZ, Show Low and Pinetop,AZ, and several communities in southwestern Colorado (see82 — FCSFP Capacity Building

Office of Community Services. 2002. Five-countyCommunity Wildfire Plans). Development ofcommunity wildfire plans has brought peopletogether in ways only comparable to how an actualwildfire brings them together in common cause.Wildfire Mitigation and CommunityStewardship in Ruidoso, New MexicoAvailability of NFP funds created incentive toconduct wildfire mitigation in New Mexico wheregrassroots concerns over wildfire risks was alreadybuilding organizational capacity that allowed peopleto take advantage of NFP funds when they didbecome available. Concern over wildfire danger waskeen even before the New Mexico State ForestryDivision listed the state’s 20 most vulnerableinterface communities, with Ruidoso at the top (theUSDA Forest Service rated Ruidoso second in theUS).In Ruidoso, New Mexico, local collaboration toconduct wildfire mitigation over a broad area mightbe described as “integrative utilization,” wherebyeach partner contributes some component—fromstump to consumer—to the overall mechanism ofcommunity forestry. They are making deliberateefforts to put together the pieces of each neededactivity to ensure an economic model of verticalintegration serves their needs. The plan is composedof “harvesting, transportation, and milling”components. The approach reflects broader regionalefforts to organize a multi-party/agency programto rebuild a community-based forest productseconomy that works to improve forest health, aswell as provide wildfire protection. Towards thisend, Ruidoso wears “two hats,” says Village Forester,Rick DeIaco: one for the Ruidoso CommunityFire Management Plan on private and municipalland within village limits; and the other is for the“Wildland-Urban Interface Working Group,” acommunity-based partnership working on the“Eagle Creek Fuels Reduction Project” upstream inthe town’s watershed on Lincoln National Forest.Local, county, state, and federal governmentsand agencies make up the WUI partnership. It hasbeen funded by National Fire Plan dollars madeavailable through the Western Wildland UrbanInterface Grants Program. The goal has been tocreate a buffer on public and tribal land adjacent tothe village, to lessen crown-fire potential, and forcefires to the ground before they reach residentialareas.The in-village ordinance aims to trim “ladder”fuels that could carry flames into the forestcanopy. Upstream in the village’s watershed, moresubstantial wildfire mitigation and forest restorationis taking place through the Eagle Creek FuelsReduction Project.Similar activities occur on both projects:the village transports homeowners’ green waste(grapple-hook trucks) to dumpsters provided bySierra Contracting composters. On public land,another partner, Sherry Barrow Strategies, Inc.,manufactures the green small-diameter timberinto animal bed shavings. Like Sierra Contracting,SBS, Inc. is another entrepreneurial achievementintegrating the economic model into a multi-partypartnership effort that utilizes a variety of publicand private funding.“The service and outreach program hasexpanded far beyond what we expected,” DeIacoFCSFP Capacity Building — 83

Case in Point:The Jobs and Biodiversity CoalitionAdaptive management can bethought of in social terms, as well asecological. In Silver City, the story isas much one of people adjusting howthey interact as it is adapting forestrestoration methods, guided by whatthey learn from the results of theiractivities.The Jobs and Biodiversity Project,a Ford Foundation-funded project, hasbeen at the core of efforts to developa community-based forest restorationdemonstration project at the Millsiteon the Gila National Forest 25 milesnorthwest of Silver City, New Mexico,and integrate a number of componentsfrom stump to consumer in order tomake it work sustainably.The “coalition,” as the project’smembers call themselves, work atwhat amounts to be an experimentin communication, partnership, andecological forest restoration linked tolocal entrepreneurial development. Thecore members and organizations are:Todd Schulke—Southwest Center forBiological Diversity; Gordon West—GilaWood Net and Santa Clara Woodworks;Gerry Engel—Silver City RangerDistrict of the USDA Forest Service;and Judy Ward—Silver City/GrantCounty Economic Development Council(SIGRED). The local representative ofthe Nature Conservancy is peripherallyinvolved.The coalition is the only entityactively pursuing community-basedforestry in the Silver City/Grant Countyarea. Adjacent Catron County has otherefforts occurring distinct from GrantCounty.Bringing the core members togetherwas a stroke of “lucky coincidence ofhaving the right people in the sameplace at the same time,” said DistrictRanger Gerry Engel. They’ve developeda relationship among themselves thatmakes on-the-ground accomplishmentspossible. “People of different views canactually get something done on theground!” he said.“We agreed to leave professionalegos at home,” Engel said. “Thecollaboration is unique, but difficult to[continued on next page . . . ]84 — FCSFP Capacity BuildingRuidoso Village Forester Rick DeIaco and a home building contractorgoing over plans for creating defensible space before new homeconstruction begins.said. “The first year we hauled 20,000 cubic yards away, last yearit was 40,000, and this year we are expecting 60,000.”Adaptive ManagementThe hands-on nature of the FCSFP reflects the adaptivemanagement aspects of community forestry. Through a process oflearn-as-you-go, adaptive management entails learning form whatdoes not work, as well as what does (Richard 1995). Becausethrough adaptive management we are learning about what works,it is often associated with a monitoring program associatedwith initial ecological conditions, proposed actions to treat orrestore the landscape or site, and an assessment to determine towhat degree the expected results of the prescription have beenachieved.Adaptive management is in essence a decision-making processbased on a sequential determination if you are achieving thedesired management goals in the forest. To make an appropriatedetermination requires a description of the baseline conditions,clear delineation of the treatment options and actions, and aninterdisciplinary approach to evaluating the actual outcomes.A multitude of potential desired outcomes, sometimes relatingto water quality, wildlife habitat, soil conditions, insects,and wildfire behavior, among others, can often make theimplementation of adaptive management fairly complex. Thisoften creates some tension over the amount of scientific resourcesand time that can be devoted to assessment and monitoring, eventhough the fundamental need for adaptive management is wellaccepted.

The need for adaptive management is clearly a function ofthe current testing or demonstration phase of community forestryand the underlying goal of improving ecosystem conditions. Eventhough it is time consuming and requires substantial communityand scientific resources, it is necessary to understand which ofseveral thinning and restoration prescriptions are most reasonablewithin given ecological phases, stand structures, and dynamicconditions.An example of how a variety of restoration treatments is beingimplemented, monitored and adaptively managed is occurringon lands around Flagstaff, Arizona through many stakeholdersparticipating in the Greater Flagstaff Forest Partnership (GFFP).A series of key program elements and commitments from theGFFP website (www.gffp.org) presents a concise picture of theimportant interrelationships between forest restoration, science,monitoring, and adaptive management:• A Framework for Restoring Forest Ecosystems: The Partnershipuses a framework of comprehensive ecological restoration as ourguide in developing proposed actions in the forests. Restorationtreatments may include combinations of selective small-treethinning, reintroduction of surface fire, access and recreationmanagement activities, road obliteration, weed control, etc.• Strong Scientific Foundation: Projects are designed based on arigorous scientific understanding of the processes that shaped thenatural ecosystem’s structure and function. Actions are proposedto improve forest ecosystem health and sustainability based uponthis understanding.• Restoration is Approached as an Experimental Field: The Partnershiprecognizes that there is much that we don’t know about restoringforest ecosystems. This uncertainty requires us to test a variety ofapproaches. We are currently testing and researching restorationprescriptions developed by Northern Arizona University’sEcological Restoration Institute, the USDA/USFS RockyMountain Research Station, and the Southwest Forest Alliance.• Extensive Research and Monitoring: The Partnership is committedto researching and monitoring the key ecological, economicand social impacts and issues associated with landscape-scalerestoration. The Partnership’s first 10,000-acre landscape scaleproject at Fort Valley includes a $500,000 ecosystem researchbudget and over 20 ongoing studies.• Commitment to Adaptive Management: Research and monitoringresults are fed back into the Partnership to improve the designof future projects. The Partnership’s scope covers a 100,000-acredescribe. We have gotten along, listenedto each other’s point of view and havethe same goal to move forward. We allstrongly feel we need to do something,to get something done.”Gordon West, who owns SantaClara Woodworks and founded GilaWoodNet, said theirs is an approachdistinct from other community-basedforestry projects.“We designed the project, and thenlooked for people to get involved. Wedidn’t start a collaborative and then lookfor a project to work on together. We usea ‘zone of agreement’ design. We don’tlet outside arguments stop the project.Involvement and participation are basedon the needs of the project.”The coalition operates accordingto the essential adaptive principleof harvesting in small increments,then integrating new knowledgein the next phase of harvesting toimprove on past performance. Eachparticipant contributes a particularvision, knowledge and expertisein carrying out all the aspects ofutilization—from planning a prescription,to harvesting, transporting, milling/processing, marketing, administrating,communicating (internal/external), andmonitoring.Now, after a few years oforganization, the coalition is geared upto launch a full-scale restoration projectat the 1,200-acre Millsite, 800 fromwhich timber will actually be harvested.The coalition has utilized 100 percent oftimber moved off the initial 35 acres ofthe demonstration area, partners say.Another prescription has been writtenfor 68 acres, to be harvested summer of2004. They then hope to ultimately treatabout 200-300 per year for the next fewyears.West believes the coalition has atransferable model ready to be sharedwith others.“I’ve come to the understanding thatwhat we are trying to do here is create anew culture,” West told me. “We’ve beendoing third world forestry in New Mexicoand the US. The stewardship idea ofcommunity-based forestry is part of thateffort to get a culture.”FCSFP Capacity Building — 85

analysis area, in which a mosaic of restorationactivities will be proposed over a 10-year period,moving in a step-wise, adaptive fashion. Weestimate that ultimately 30-50% of the overall areawill receive some type of restoration treatment.While over the past five years within the FCSFP, themethodologies of adaptive management have beenin a “start-up” mode, due in part to the limited scaleand variety of many of the restoration projects, itis anticipated that increased investment in it willbe made over time. The recently developed longtermstewardship contract on the Apache-SitgreavesNational Forest, the White Mountain StewardshipProject, should provide many opportunities foradaptive management applications.86 — FCSFP Capacity Building

EndnoteWhile these lessons learned and strategies forcapacity building are being presented towards thecompletion of the FCSFP five-year demonstrationperiod, 1999-2004, it is not anticipated that thebenefits of this regional partnership will suddenlybe concluded. The work of many communities,businesses, organizations, tribes, national forests,state forestry organizations, and individual leadersand partners will continue through a variety ofcommunity forestry projects and a wide varietyof partnerships. The knowledge about the social,economic, and ecological processes of a newstewardship approach to forest health will continueto grow, and become an on-going and expandinglegacy for future practitioners of communityforestry.In this context the overall conceptual frameworkthat describes the FCSFP, along with its manyoperational components, are offered as a workingperspective that will be enriched by further,experience, implementation, and reflection. It istherefore our hope that the concepts and storiespresented here are a beginning platform upon whichadditional understanding, methods, and learningcan be place, and further adapted as progresscontinues to be made in the Four Corners Region.In an attempt to facilitate additional growthand dissemination of knowledge about the kindsof forest restoration and stewardship illustrated bythe Four Corners Sustainable Forest Partnershipover the past five years, the USFS Rocky MountainResearch Station-Flagstaff, with the assistanceof the Office Of Community Services at FortLewis College, Durango, Colorado, will soon beestablishing the Southwest Community ForestryCaucus. The Caucus will serve as a regional networkfor the primary purpose of collecting and sharinginformation about community forestry concepts,models, and projects.This report will be highlighted on a new websitefor the Southwest Community Forestry Caucus locatedat Fort Lewis College (http://ocs.fortlewis.edu),where the intent will be to create greater accessibilityto knowledge, examples, and conversation aboutbest practices in the growing field of communityforestry and stewardship of natural resources.FCSFP Capacity Building — 87

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