Total Running Time: 20:11
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John Heil:Welcome to Forest Focus, a series of programs about the National Forests of California. I'm John Heil and today we're discussing the Quincy Library Group. Here with me is Regional Forester, Randy Moore. Randy, how does the process work with the Quincy Library Group and the US Forest Service.
Randy Moore:Well the Quincy Library Group was formed in 1993 and the goal at that point was to have a community based group working with the National Forest to resolve some of the local issues. The ideal was to have a community that is surrounded by National Forest System lands and to look at providing the opportunity for economic stability using a collaborative process. And so it's really a unique kind of a situation that the National Forest is engaged in and is one that we really support. The challenge is always trying to balance local needs with national needs. This being a National Forest, people from all over the country can weigh in, but often the people that will affect it the most both negatively and positively are the locals. Balancing that has become a real challenge but I'm really excited with the opportunity of working with QLG to try to balance those needs.
John Heil: Great, thanks. Our first guest today is Bill Coates, former Plumas County Supervisor and long term member of the Quincy Library Group. Bill, tell me a little about this organization.
Bill Coates: Our group is made up of a three-legged stool: one leg is the public groups the County Supervisors, schools, labor unions; one leg would be the loggers and those that work in the woods and the mills; and one leg would be the local environmentalists and the organizations they represent. We were able to mix those three legs successfully. We spent a year or two arguing and then signed a document and we’ve been working ever since that signing ceremony to return the forest to pre-settlement condition. The largest destructive force going on in these forests today is the forest fires, which burn hotter and degrade the environment much more than they used to fifty to hundred years ago when they burned cooler. So we’re not having natural fires, we’re having manmade disasters where the land doesn’t really recover from the fire and we’re also ruining our air quality when that happens and releasing lots of carbon into the atmosphere and killing off lots and lots of animals and degrading streams. So there’s a real mission to bring these forests back to pre-settlement condition and you cannot do that by just leaving them alone. They really have to be thinned and managed so that big trees can grow bigger and that if we do get a ground fire in here, it’s not going to destroy the forest. So, we’d like to leave our children a forest that looks like the forests that our ancestors found when they came to this country.
John Heil: Is this something that you think could be duplicated somewhere else in California or any other parts of the country?
Bill Coates: I think collaboration can be duplicated. If there’s a willingness to respect other people then almost any hard public problem can be addressed. I think you have to be bi-partisan, it has to be both Democratic and Republican effort. I do think that it’s very helpful to have strong local environmentalist interests represented in the group. And it’s very helpful to have good, qualified foresters to ask questions of because that’s their education and their training. And it’s been useful to have the Forest Service as a resource to help us with mapping and provide us constantly with information about forest fires, watershed restoration and all the things that we need to do to bring this forest back into pre-settlement condition. But we’ve found that the local citizens all really got very excited about treating the forest with renewed care and all of us that live in these rural areas really live here because we love the land and the animals and the country. So we found that we had a lot of things in common and it’s been a spirited group to work with and an extremely satisfying circumstance.
John Heil: Well Bill thanks for being with us. I appreciate it.
Bill Coates: You’re welcome.
John Heil:I’m speaking now with Frank Stewart, the County Forester for the Quincy Library Group. This organization has an interesting name, tell me a little bit about it and why you were formed.
Frank Stewart: The Quincy Library Group, it’s not the book of the month club. It’s basically named after the Quincy Library because that’s the largest public facility in Quincy that we can meet in. But it really is an effort, it’s a collaborative effort of citizens coming together with local agencies, federal employees, state employees, and concerned citizens that want to enhance the natural resources, benefits that come off our National Forests. One of them is water, one of them is timber, one of them is air, recreation, wildlife, aesthetics, all of those are enhanced I think by the efforts of the Quincy Library Group. But it is a pilot project and it has the potential, we think, to be replicated across the west. It is needed across the west and it is needed one, to stop the catastrophic fires, two we think it addresses the water issue. Now as we get into this climate change, we talk about global warming and carbon sequestration. Carbon is nothing more than wood and really you go in and thin these stands at the level that need to be thinned, what you’re really doing is good forestry and by the way, you’re taking on a lot of carbon sequestration going on there, and converting CO2 into wood. So it just goes hand in hand and that to me is the real big benefit of what the pilot project is all about.
John Heil: What is the key to the Forest Service and the Quincy Library Group working together?
Frank Stewart: Well first of all, you have some of the finest professional resource managers in the nation working for the US Forest Service and I really appreciate their efforts. Just take an environment impact statement, take the Sugarberry on the Feather River Ranger District. You had collectively probably 600 years of professional experience from those resource managers working for the Forest Service, you’ll find you’ll have a half a dozen people with master’s degrees in wildlife management or archeology or soil science, you’ll have a whole bunch of bachelor’s of sciences, you’ll have one or two PhDs, specialists, but they’re all in natural resources. And the totality of those folks working together, the public is getting the benefit through NEPA of getting a good project put together and the problem and the frustration is, is when those folks spend a year on the project, work out all the issues and come up with a proposal, there are some parties that don’t like it and the process allows that to be appealed or stopped and that becomes very frustrating to the people out in the field. One issue I have with, with what’s going on now is the morale of the folks in the field. They work very diligently to get these projects through the NEPA process, ready to go on the ground and then to have them stalled and to have them go back and redo it, it becomes an exercise in futility.
John Heil: Frank, anything else to add at all of interest to folks?
Frank Stewart: These are public lands, and I think all the public has an opportunity to express their concern. That’s why we vote in federal and state legislators and I encourage folks to contact their legislators to let them know that there is a way to stop these catastrophic fires and it is through active management of the public lands and private property in the state of California and folks and the fine professionals within the Forest Service need that support. And so I really encourage the public to step up to the plate and support it.
John Heil: Thank very much for joining us today. We really appreciate it.
Frank Stewart: You bet. Thank you very much.
John Heil: Okay I’m talking here with Jay Francis, Jay can tell me about what you do and your title?
Jay Francis: I’m the Forest Manager for Collin’s Pine Company in Chester, California. We own and manage 94,000 acres of timberland there. We also have a sawmill. Our timberland supply about half of our resource needs. The other half we have to purchase from the outside. The Forest Service being the largest land owner around us, a lot of those logs can and should come from those lands so a lot of that wood comes from the Lassen National Forest and the Plumas National Forest because we’re right in the middle of those two forests.
John Heil: Could you tell us maybe what the public could do to make a difference?
Jay Francis: I think the public can support ventures like Quincy Library Group and really demand that the forests are managed in such a way that it protects all value. We’re seeing tremendous fires, these devastating fires in recent years that we didn’t used to have. And when you think about it, it’s only logical. If we’re not removing 90% of the biomass that is being grown every year, at some point in time it’s going to get removed whether it’s through forest management and harvesting or it’s going to be in these catastrophic wildfires that really are not very discretionary in how and when they burn.
John Heil: Are you optimistic that the future can be changed?
Jay Francis: Anybody who is still in this business has to be an eternal optimist. [Laughs] So I guess I am optimistic. Part of the reason that I am optimistic is because I see what we’ve been doing on our own lands for almost seventy years and I see the public can come out and say wow these still look like forests but you guys are logging, that’s great, we should be doing this more on our National Forests. So yeah I am optimistic. I think it’s, we’ve still got a few hurdles to overcome. The Forest Service is in a very difficult situation where they can do the best work out on the ground but then they’ll get forestalled in court. So the projects don’t actually get implemented and before they can get implemented, we see these fires burning them up. So I think the public can help to support the Forest Service and the legislators that are trying to get some of these projects done out on the ground, anything they can do to support that, that is huge, but I’m hoping that the tide is turned and people realize that we either have to manage our forests in a responsible manner or we will lose them forever.
John Heil: Do you have anything to add that you’d like to share?
Jay Francis: Yeah, I give the Forest Service kudos for continuing to try to persevere in a difficult situation. They get rocks thrown at them from all sides and it’s a difficult job but with everybody’s help I think they can do a good job.
John Heil: Well thanks a lot for taking the time to be with us. I appreciate it.
Jay Francis: Thank you.
John Heil: I’m here with Michael Jackson. Michael, could you tell me what you do?
Michael Jackson: I’m a water lawyer for the environmental movement and my job is to represent environmental interests in water issues, with a particular focus on the San Francisco Bay and the San Joaquin, Sacramento Delta.
John Heil: Tell me a little bit about the Quincy Library Group and their role in working with the Forest Service?
Michael Jackson: Well it’s an evolving collaboration like most collaborations. We started working with the United States Forest Service in approximately 1993. We spent a substantial amount of time looking around the Plumas and the Tahoe National Forest and determined that this would be a great area for a pilot project to determine whether or not thinning the forest and attempting to reform forest structure by using group selection would be a valuable addition to the knowledge base of Forest Service nationally. And the Quincy Library Group five year pilot program began in the year 1999. We believe, here in Plumas County that since the federal government owns 75% of the county and most of the forests within the county, that if there’s going to be any restructuring of the forest, any fire prevention by removing fuels, it ought to be a commercial operation, because trying to have people in Connecticut and Florida subsidize what goes on in California forests, because we’re not allowed to sell the product, is simply a form of welfare and could only be sustained with political power. We’re looking for a program that will last a hundred years because it took us a hundred years of what we believe to be mismanagement to get into the situation that we find within our county community, at the present time. And so we are relatively insistent that the capitalist form of producing products should be carried out on public land as well as on private land in order to protect both.
John Heil: Well thanks a lot for taking the time to be with us; I appreciate it. Okay, we're talking with Pete Duncan, who is the Plumas National Forest fuels officer. Pete, could you tell me a little bit about what you do.
Pete Duncan: I am the Forest Fuels Officer for the Plumas National Forest, which means I coordinate all the fuels treatment activities that happen on the forest, whether it be mechanical, hand or prescribed burning.
John Heil: Tell me a little bit about some of the projects that you've worked on with the Quincy Library Group?
Pete Duncan: We meet with them, we listen to their input, and we look at the project area and we decide what the treatment needs to be, where it needs to be, and when we come to the implementation portion, we make sure that we're within the law. We talk with the QLG and try to come up with some common grounds or room for improvement, and let them push it from their standpoint. Our biggest constraints in implementing these are a lot of external things. We plan a project and then it starts, as we go through the NEPA process, it gets sliced and diced by a myriad of special interests. Everything from archaeology, wildlife, water and soils concerns, botany, external concerns, it could be a mining claim or some special interests. The treatments that all the forests are doing need to continue at a much greater scale and a much faster pace. The ecosystem is very dynamic and it's ever-changing. The fires are getting bigger, they are getting more severe than they have been, even in the last five years than they were ten years ago. And if we don't make a change, we're going to lose more houses and we're going to kill more people, and we're going to lose more of an ecosystem that we need more than ever now for water quality and quantity.
John Heil: Well, thanks a lot, Pete. Appreciate it. Thanks for being in the show.
Pete Duncan: Okay, thank you.
John Heil: We’re here now with Karen Hayden, the District Ranger on the Feather River Ranger District of the Plumas National Forest. Karen, explain to us what the District’s role is with the QLG.
Karen Hayden: The Forest Service interaction with the Quincy Library Group members is long-standing. I’ve been working with various members of the Quincy Library Group in various capacities since the middle ‘90s. Today what I primarily do with the Quincy Library Group is I come to the meetings once a month and share information about what’s going on with the district projects and then there’s field trips to monitor those projects that have been implemented, opportunities at various times for informal discussions about issues, concerns and opportunities specific to those projects.
John Heil: What about other community members, do they have a say in how the forests are run?
Karen Hayden: Well we meet with the Quincy Library Group members monthly at the formal meetings and then there’s the informal meetings. There’s a lot of collaborative efforts going on that are all headed in the same direction and the focus is on fuels reduction. And often we have a Forest Service fuels officer on the board and they help to guide the process, help the volunteers with the Fire Safe Councils to figure out the best way, the strategic way to get the fuels reduced on the private land. And then we facilitate helping them to do their NEPA documentations so that they can spend the funds to get the work done on the private land. So it’s a great collaborative effort, a great cooperation. It takes a lot of energy and time and commitment and it’s definitely the right thing to be doing.
John Heil: Thank you Karen. Here now is George Terhune, retired pilot, and a long term Quincy resident and member of the Quincy Library Group. George, what are the goals of the QLG?
George Terhune: I think it turns out over time that you could boil it down to establishing a sustainable structure. I think we look on fire protection as being a necessary first step, but not sufficient; the mechanical participation, thinning, restructuring, removing some structures and opening up the forests for more sunlight to the forest floor to regenerate pine trees and other missing components. Now originally in the community stability proposal that QLG adopted, 15, 16 years ago now, the model was the pre-settlement forest. Nowadays even that is in question. With climate change and other effects of human population, it probably isn’t feasible or even desirable to try to recreate literally the pre-settlement forest. Right now, in my personal view, using the available resources and the available processes, it cannot be done by the Forest Service. But, by involving other components of the total system, mainly state power, local power through stewardship contracting, through participation in various ways, based on not just the value of the forests and the timber, the value of the water that comes from it and so forth, if all those values can be brought together, there is enough financial backing to make it feasible to do but it will have to proceed by a significantly different model than what has happened until now. Within QLG, you have to take account of the short term. Livelihoods are involved and you cannot have a future if you don’t survive the short term. But along with that we have to have a longer term vision of where it wants to go strategically. Neither one of those is possible if we go back to arguing about what size tree should be cut under the standards and guidelines of the 2001 framework. That’s a dead-end, that’s going backwards to nothing. If we can persuade people to look honestly and go forward, then we have a chance.
John Heil: What is key for the Forest Service and the Quincy Library Group working together?
George Terhune: There will inherently be difficulties, so that we have to learn how to handle the rough spots that come along. The best way to do that is to talk them out, pretty frankly and straightforward and that’s what happens in QLG meetings. [Laughs] It can get to be pretty rough once in a while. I have no difficulty with the individual in the Forest Service, dealing with them. I have some difficulty dealing with the Forest Service as an institution. It has some inherent problems and that’s one of the reasons why I think it would be beneficial, to get the state and local governments and entities, more directly involved. We’ve made a start on that, and if we can make that stick here and become the principal for the area, I look on that as a good possibility. We just need to have enough faith and enough energy to stick with it long enough. I’m a late comer to the process, but I’ve been in it 15 years [Laughs].
John Heil: Well you know George, thanks very much for taking the time to talk to me and we appreciate it very much.
George Terhune: Thank you and I’m always as anybody in QLG can tell you, I’m always ready to talk.
John Heil: Thank you George, and thanks to all the guests on this episode of Forest Focus. The Forest Service’s work with the Quincy Library Group is just one example of our collaborative efforts at forest management. We appreciate you taking the time to learn more about this group. For further information, visit: www.fs.fed.us/r5/hfqlg
To receive future episodes of Forest Focus, please subscribe to our RSS feed. I’m John Heil and thank you for listening.