To cut or not to cut: how to manage healthy forests.

To cut or not to cut? If you think the question is academic, you haven't heard the answers lately.

At a time when forest management needs trust and cooperation, the loudest voices are instead suspicious, accusatory, and self-serving. Some come from Americans outraged by what they say is mile after heart-wrenching mile of timberlands devastated by heavy cutting - once-productive forests turned into gully-washed wastelands left to bake in summer, erode in winter. Shouting from the opposite extreme are business owners, family breadwinners, and rural community leaders dismayed by hundreds upon thousands of acres of forest locked up, for now or forever. They envision trees dying and rotting while the towns that depended on them waste away or, worse yet, burn up in catastrophic wildfires.

Land owners and resource specialists dedicated to long-term healthy ecosystems are scrambling to escape the mud slung in the name of forest management. They are cutting some trees and not cutting others, trusting that conscientious management will provide forests and a range of tangible and intangible forest products well beyond any of their individual lives. But they are working in a political maelstrom. Outraged factions at both ends of the spectrum have unleashed their frustration in a spate of legislation, referendums, and ballot initiatives.

The timber industry convinced the 104th Congress to pass emergency legislation that, through the end of 1996, allows logging of salvage and certain green old-growth tracts on national forest land without the normal appeals process. Attached to legislation responding to the Oklahoma City bombing, the 1995 salvage rider authorizes the sale of millions of board-feet of timber under conditions that may not meet current environmental standards. Opponents have dubbed it "logging without laws."

In apparent retaliation, Sierra Club members in April approved a referendum advocating an end to all commercial logging on publicly owned lands. Led by a faction of militant members, the "zero cut" initiative allows harvesting some trees and selling the material when it is justified by forest health. But the club policy now in effect calls for eliminating all national forest logging driven by conmercialism. Timber industry critics have cynically applauded the referendum for "finally telling the truth" about the Sierra Club's philosophy.

And it won't help in the long run, say forest managers across the country. Reduced harvesting on federal lands simply puts more pressure on private forests, inevitably forcing some owners to cut more trees than they otherwise would or should. "People are still using wood," says Stan Hamilton, Idaho state forester. "Closing down the national forests isn't the answer."

The industry has fought back against the Sierra Club's referendum, endorsing a bill to replace the salvage rider with permanent legislation allowing emergency forest health activities. If the Forest Health Protection and Restoration Act is not passed, its sponsors grimly predict that entire towns and forest tracts throughout the West will go up in the flames of wildfires.

"If Washington continues to do nothing, disaster looms on the horizon," warns Congressman Wally Herger (R-CA), one of the backers. Environmental opponents call the arguments "political hype" that play on the public's hysteria over fire.

This cut-no-cut battle, focused in Washington, is being waged in microcosm in Maine over a measure placed on the November ballot by the group Ban Clearcutting. Coordinated by Jonathan Carter, former Green Party gubernatorial candidate, the referendum bans all clearcutting and restricts timber harvests to a set of strict standards that proponents say will return Maine's northern forests to health. Governor Angus King has called it "a campaign to shut down the Maine woods." He called a special session of the legislature, which adopted a competing measure to appear on the November ballot.

Ban Clearcutting is "a draconian measure which deceives the people of the state of Maine," says Vic Berardelli, a spokesman for the opposing Citizens for Healthy Forests and Economy.

"We're talking about the future of the forest," counters Carter. "This measure is a product of the timber industry's inability to operate sustainably and out of respect for the public's interests."

The polarized finger-pointing across the country has caused many forest professionals to return to the most basic question: Why care for forests? That answer is simple, they say. Private or public, large or small, forests provide what Americans want: sawlogs for construction, profits for shareholders of companies that work the forest, and solitude to inspire a poem; carbon storage and marbled murrelet habitat; sugar pine shakes and spectacular sunsets; biomass and birdsong. To keep forests healthy - to keep them at all - diverse factions will have to work hard and work together, says Kirby Beam, a Georgia landowner who manages 850 acres of nonindustrial forest with his wife, Lynda.

"We've got to trust one another. There's been a lot of false hopes, and people have done terrible things on both sides. But we're going to have to try for the sake of the trees. Isn't that what we have in common?"

Trust among public forest advocates today may be as elusive as the proverbial hunted snipe, but it was once a given. For most of the century since the creation of the national forest system, the public has had confidence that its timbered land was in good hands. Designed specifically for public interest, including protecting timber supply and water quality, national forests were only lightly harvested during the first half of the century. After World War II timber needs boomed, and by the 1950s, industrial timber owners had heavily cut their own private lands, knowing that the national forests remained as a source of timber. Having diminished in the short-term their supply of private material to log, industry officials turned to the 191 million acres tended by the U.S. Forest Service. Annual timber sales, which had averaged less then 2 billion board-feet a year during the agency's first half-century, jumped to nearly 14 billion in the 1960s, based on sustained yield projections and goals.

Recreational use of national forests increased along with logging. By 1976 backpackers and skiers, anglers and hunters were streaming into the woods at 20 times the numbers before and immediately after World War II. As their recreational pursuits took them deeper into the forest, they became disturbed by what they found. Many others who were upset were not environmental purists but ranchers, water district managers, and rural chamber of commerce leaders - people who had historically supported development on public lands. They watched their livelihoods slough off like erosion from an overcut hillside. The combined outcry placed new demands on national forest managers. Along with lumber and other wood products, the public insisted that national forests also provide for wildlife, watershed, and recreation.

The agency did not transform gracefully - or quickly, in part due to conflicting policy directions from Congress, which continued to mandate high timber sale targets. Environmental groups in the 1970s and 1980s launched a barrage of lawsuits to force compliance with the law. Court decisions imposed more and more restrictions on the Forest Service, culminating in Federal District Judge William Dwyer's 1991 opinion on the northern spotted owl. Dwyer castigated the agency for its "deliberate and systematic refusal" to comply with federal wildlife laws. Coupled with new agency policy directives, logging on national forests all but stopped.

It was out of that impasse in the early 1990s that a bizarre breed of coalitions emerged, starting in the Pacific Northwest. Lifelong enemies began reaching out to one another, finding a middle ground that both could accept. "Very strange alliances began forming," says Sami Yassa, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "People took their lumps, but both sides decided to try." In California, then-U.S. Forest Service Regional Forester Ron Stewart adopted a 1993 plan to protect the California spotted owl that relied on scientific data. It was a compromise for all sides, says Yassa, but they agreed to accept it.

To develop a national vision for forest management over the next century, timber industry, academic, and environmental leaders gathered forest users from all 50 states and the District of Columbia at the Seventh American Forest Congress held in February in Washington, DC. Despite their cavernous philosophical differences, the 1,300 participants found many areas of agreement in recommending where to cut and where not to cut.

In this burgeoning climate of compromise and tentative trust, the salvage rider struck like a hurricane from hell. "It was the final blow that put people in a state of outrage and disillusionment," says Michael McCloskey, chairman of the Sierra Club. Its response was the "zero cut" initiative. "There is a lack of confidence that commercial logging will ever be done in an environmentally protective way," McCloskey says.

Lack of confidence pervades forest management today. For many land owners and forest professionals, it goes beyond endemic distrust of particular political adversaries to include political solutions in general. If the years of in-fighting and waffling government policies have had any long-term benefit, it may be in the reaction from on-the-ground forest managers. Frustrated by the polarity and exhausted by the indecision, forest owners from woodlots in Tennessee to million-acre tracts in Oregon are turning to the elements fundamental to the future of forests: soil, water, and trees. They are focusing on natural resources.

"We've been going about it backwards," says Laurel Ames, executive director of the Sierra Nevada Alliance, a coalition of regional environmental groups. Jobs and the local economy are critical; the threat of wildfire is not all hysteria; species are truly being endangered by loss of habitat. But the solutions that will keep economies healthy, communities safe, and wildlife protected begin with the resources in the woods. "We have to figure out how to deal with the forests first, then the rest," Ames says.

To shift their focus to forest plants and animals, managers are relying more and more on local people whose experience spans several decades and whose caring transcends politics. Their expertise combines with a willingness to solve problems on the ground, allowing new approaches and techniques. "Things are happening locally," says Tom Nelson, chief forester for Sierra Pacific Industries.

As a co-founder of the Quincy Library Group, one of dozens of community alliances (see "The Quincy Library Group," January/February 1995), Nelson is working with local environmentalists, elected officials, and business owners to implement a plan that steers salvage logging into areas of national forests surrounding small towns. The plan is designed to produce material for local sawmills while making the towns safer against the threat of wildfire.

"We can't manage natural resources on the Western slope of the Sierra Nevada from inside the Washington beltway," Nelson says.

To guarantee their forest ecosystems survive to benefit future generations, managers are turning more and more to science. Soil studies are determining the effect of ground cover on nitrogen content and the quantity of timber a site can produce. Climate studies are measuring forests' potential to store carbon and the long-term effects on global warming. Fire studies are establishing optimum temperatures for low-intensity burns that return woods to a more natural state. More of the science is aimed at long-term forest health, sustainability, and functioning ecosystems.

By applying scientific research and local knowledge to improve collaboration and knowledge among the local community, forests can support local economies without negative impacts on the ecosystem.

"We need to be conservative and long-term in our approach but not stupid about the real economic pressures on a forest," says Richard Donovan, director of Smart Wood. His nonprofit company is working toward sustainable forest management worldwide through technical assessment, monitoring, and evaluation of forest ecosystems that certify "green" products from qualifying forests.

The goal of managing forests for future generations has prompted the American Forest and Paper Association to launch its own program, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. "We have an interest in sustainable forestry - an economic interest as well as a deep interest in the environment," says Luke Popovich, an association spokesman.

In 1995 the association began requiring compliance with its Sustainable Forestry Initiative as a condition of membership for the approximately 200 trade groups, forest industry and paper companies it represents. Ten dropped out; 17 others did not meet the minimum standards. Members certify themselves according to guidelines developed by the AF&PA. An independent advisory panel may also make an on-site inspection to analyze their data.

Along with setting new standards for its members, AF&PA is conducting training sessions for loggers that introduce principles of hydrology, riparian habitat protections, and basic Environmental Protection Act requirements. Including loggers is critical to the future of forests, says Popovich. "With all the intentions in the world and all the politics by our green detractors, at the end of the day we're not going to improve forests if the logger on the ground doesn't get the message."

Not everyone is enthusiastic about the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. Yassa, the NRDC scientist, is among those who have challenged the timber industry program as a self-serving agenda that will do little to assure long-term forest health. But Smart Wood director Donovan views it as a positive trend. "Even the most conservative elements in industry are talking about sustainability. It's focusing on the forest - saying what matters is the forest."

Some managers who have been committed to long-term forest health for decades are beginning to enjoy the payoffs. The benefits vary with their particular objectives, ranging from the beauty of fall color to the black ink of a bottom line.

Collins Pine Co. reaps commercial success and national recognition on top of the long-term satisfaction of managing a sustainable ecosystem. Collins' 94,000-acre mixed conifer Almanor Forest in northeastern California has produced 30 million board-feet a year for 50 years without clearcuts or herbicides. It retains the hush of an old-growth forest while supporting a local sawmill.

"We think what we are doing makes sense for the forest and the community," says Larry Potts, general manager of the company's Chester, California, operation.

Still, the company asked for an independent analysis to be sure. The eight-month evaluation used a comprehensive forest conservation scoring system developed by Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) of Oakland. When it was completed in 1993, Collins Pine became the first privately owned forest in North America to earn independent certification under the SCS forest conservation program. The company is marketing its lumber through a Home Depot program that promotes products with certified environmental accomplishments. President Clinton honored Collins and Home Depot with a 1996 award for sustainable development.

In central Massachusetts, managers of a forest surrounding Quabbin Reservoir believe their long-term goal of a healthy ecosystem will produce high-quality water for their 2.5 million customers in Boston. They have asked Smart Wood to evaluate their 58,000-acre forest to validate a strategy that includes some intensive management within the watershed. The Massachusetts Audubon Society has criticized the plan.

Over the years, the predominantly white pine and red oak forest around Quabbin has become an even-aged stand vulnerable to insect infestation and hurricanes. Diversity would make it more resilient, says Thom Kyker-Snowman, a natural resource specialist with the state division of watershed management. His long-term plan includes cutting half-acre openings in the old stands to allow young trees to develop. On southeast-facing slopes near reservoir outlets, these young stands are disaster insurance. If a hurricane flattens an even-aged stand, both nutrients and sediment will wash into the water, degrading it for up to five years. But the young forest will be spared, continuing its aggressive growth and reducing the loss of nutrients.

"It's controversial to say we can improve on nature's design... But we believe we can practice forest management intensively and not only not disturb the water quality, but actually improve it." Smart Wood's evaluation is scheduled for completion late this year.

The benefits of a long-term forest management plan go well beyond a glass of good water in Boston. They include economic prosperity for private timber companies and for rural economies. They include rich habitat for well-stocked plants and animals as well as those that are endangered. Some ecosystems are improved by cutting, others by no cutting.

For Kirby and Lynda Beam, sound forest management is simply the return for the privilege of owning the land. Their forest near Savannah was Georgia's first stewardship farm under a government program promoting sustainable forest management. They harvest some stands heavily; some land they will not even cross with a bicycle. The Beams' goal is to do well by the resources they inherited. Their grandson represents the seventh generation to walk through the trees to the creek and know that his grandparents, and theirs before them, stood on the same piece of dirt.

"For him to look at that forest and think it's like that because that's how God made it - that's foolishness," says Kirby. "What we have today and what he will have is because of the way we managed. We've got to do a good job."

For forests to continue to supply both tangible and intangible products to an ever-demanding public, forest professionals must work together on the ground they manage. By focusing on the trees, the water, and the soil, they can make the decisions about where to cut and where not to cut, which will sustain forests as complete ecosystems into the distant future.

RELATED ARTICLE: Forest Health as Political Football

In 1994, after two years of scientific work exploring "forest ecosystem health" issues in the Inland West and Northern Rockies, AMERICAN FORESTS mounted a public information campaign focusing on conditions that differed from historic patterns. Many of the region's forests now were much more dense and characterized by historically less dominant species.

We concluded that an increasing human presence and activities such as grazing and logging since the late 1800s were largely responsible. The most significant reason: the exclusion of wildfire, which for centuries had shaped and maintained the region's forest ecosystems. An informed public discussion of forest ecosystem health, we believed, was the first step in a long process of restoring more vigorous, resilient, and yes, healthy conditions.

At the request of the House Agriculture Committee, we began work on legislation to address the risks these conditions posed, engaging national environmental and forest industry representatives. After some progress, the discussions hit several obstacles and closed down. Then came the elections of 1994, new Congressional leadership, and a very different political climate.

The extensive and destructive wildfires in 1994 provided a "teachable moment," when we could get media attention. We sought a policy debate about the risks that altered forest conditions posed to both natural resources - including wildlife, fish, water and soil, as well as trees - and human communities. And we wanted to spotlight ways forest ecosystems might be restored within a range of normal historic patterns.

Instead, a debate erupted over the millions of acres of forest that had burned and how to capture the remaining economic value of the burned trees, prevent further damage, and rehabilitate the forests. "Salvage logging" took center stage in 1995's policy debate, confusing the forest health issue and diverting attention from critical questions about restoring forest ecosystems.

Erroneously citing forest health restoration as a key purpose, the new Congress soon passed a legislative rider to expedite salvage logging. It also permitted logging of some controversial old-growth-forest timber sales. Environmentalists attacked, calling forest health a ploy of logging interests. As the controversy grew more political, we lost the opportunity to discuss forest health restoration policies and practices, including thinning or the use of prescribed fire as a tool in fire-dependent forests. The window on our teachable moment slammed shut, and not even 1996's widespread fires could open it.

One important way AMERICAN FORESTS is now addressing the issue is in partnership with regional groups, in places where forest health is a widely perceived concern. in northern California and southern Oregon, we have been working with the Lead Partnership Group, a consortium of 10 community-based organizations whose members range from environmental to forest-industry groups. We are participating in, and learning from, their efforts to address forest health in their region, and we're helping them bring these issues and solutions to national attention. In the current policy environment, and perhaps beyond, working with community-based groups may be the most promising means of resolving natural resource issues.

- Dan Smith and Gerald Gray

"Proceedings of the Lead Partnership Group Roundtable on Communities of Place, Partnerships, and Forest Health" is being published this fall. For order information, call 202/667-3300 ext. 237, or visit or Web site: http://www.amfor.org