Forest Fight

nvironmentalists have a love-hate relationship with Y. Leon Favreau. They admire how his sprawling factory, Bethel Furniture Stock Inc., maximizes the value from every hardwood tree it uses-a wonderful example for the industry, in the words of one environmentalist. But the same activists revile Favreau's habit of blaming them for his firm's recent spate of bad luck.

Bethel Furniture Stock, founded in 1958 by Favreau's father, was until recently one of the fastest growing firms of its kind in the United States. But for the last two years, Favreau explains in his tiny factory office, it has faced problems on two fronts. Brazil, China, Malaysia and Slovenia have begun offering cheaper furniture to western markets and, at the same time, more American hardwood is being sent overseas to be turned into furniture and bowling alleys.

Though Favreau acknowledges these trends are global, he contends that American environmentalists have made matters worse. He notes that the White Mountain National Forest, which straddles the Maine-New Hampshire border about five miles from his factory, is producing only half to two-thirds the timber that the Forest Service allows, due to a shortage of Forest Service staff and a series of challenges by environmentalists.

Overall, timber from White Mountain and Vermont's Green Mountain National Forest accounts for less than 5 percent of Vermont's and New Hampshire's timber output and even less of Maine's total-facts that lead some environmentalists to suggest additional harvesting restrictions can be absorbed. Even that small harvest is still enough-at least according to one environmentalist's calculations-to make a board an inch thick, a foot wide and 3,769 miles long. It would stretch from Concord, N.H., past the North Pole.

Favreau counters that the amount cut from White Mountain-even if it's small compared to the private cut-is crucial for mills like his, since it lowers the price of wood and keeps him competitive with low-cost overseas firms. Now, Favreau's factory, which once used national forest timber for one-third of its raw materials, uses hardly any.

Most private landowners, Favreau says, overlook their immediate financial interest and support more national forest harvesting "because they know that restrictions start with government land and then go to private lands." Favreau became so worried with environmentalism that he's spent several years leading the Multiple Use Association, a local property-rights group, whose mission is "to correct the misinformation that green groups put out."

If such frustration is widespread-and it seems to be-it presents an ominous backdrop for today's once-in-a-decade debate about how best to utilize the nearly 800,000-acre White Mountain National Forest. Environmentalists and forest ecologists urge caution, arguing that species habitats and wilderness need to be preserved. At the same time, groups representing hikers, campers, and motorists want to preserve their access to the forest's rustic beauty. White Mountain gets 7 million visitors a year, more than visit Yellowstone National Park.

National forest neighbors worry about how forest policies could affect their properties. And strapped loggers and mills in the region want to continue cutting trees, arguing that Northeast forests have remained robustly healthy during centuries of cutting and can continue to do so indefinitely.

As usual, the Forest Service is caught in the middle. For the better part of a century the Forest Service has been inundated with these same conflicting demands. It has learned only too well how intensely frustrated competing groups can get. During the long-festering and sometimes violent clashes in the Pacific Northwest, loggers and environmentalists have sparred over old-growth forests and the endangered spotted owl.

Fortunately for Forest Service officials, few if any of their New England lands consist of the irreplaceable old-growth forests that inspire special passions among environmentalists. And, as long as the Clinton administration continues to agree, no endangered species has emerged as an issue that could catalyze court injunctions.

Given this window of opportunity, the Forest Service is trying to head off a maelstrom by encouraging public comment and seeking a consensus before the fists fly. So far, the plan is on track and officials are
being praised for their efforts. But the Forest Service has a poor reputation among some activists and the agency is groaning under personnel shortages, budgetary restraints and turnover among key staffers.

Most participants agree the agency faces an uphill battle. "You can't satisfy everybody. It's not big enough to give everybody a share," says David A. Publicover, a New Hampshire-based forest ecologist with the Appalachian Mountain Club.

What's at Stake

The battle over White Mountain and Vermont's Green Mountain National Forest-which is undergoing the same planning process in concert with the "Whites," as that forest is called-boils down to three major issues: wilderness, recreation and timber harvesting.

White Mountain is a crucial and popular part of what has become known as the Northern Forest, a 26-million-acre swath of northern New England that comprises the largest unbroken forest in the eastern United States. Millions of Americans live within a few hours' drive of its scenic vistas and wooded trails; thousands of politically important timber-industry workers rely on its resources.

"This is a very special area," Publicover says from his Appalachian Mountain Club office, located at the foot of New Hampshire's Mount Washington. "It's scenic. It's the only place in New England that can provide big wilderness or roadless areas. It's not prime timber, but it sits in the middle of the true northern hardwood zone-sugar maple, yellow birch. It's an area with a lot of competing demands on its resources, and these are continuing to increase."

Chuck Prowsa, a veteran Forest Service official most recently stationed in the West, arrived at the White Mountain National Forest in early 1995 and soon set out to devise ground rules for the planning process. Now he's the agency's man on the hot seat.

"In Idaho, you have maybe 70 percent of the land in public hands, but in New England you generally end up being a small percentage of the state's land-ownership, so you
really get focused on," he says. "That means you need to provide leadership."

The last Forest Service land use plan for the Whites was issued in 1986. It divided the forest's acreage into zones where certain activities were permitted or prohibited, declaring, for example, that 55 percent of the acreage would be off-limits to harvesting.

But these numbers, as a practical matter, were not set in stone. Directives from Congress always can shift priorities midstream, and complaints from environmentalists can delay or halt cuts entirely. Moreover, Forest Service officials at the Whites have often been too overburdened to give harvesting applications timely consideration.

As a result, Prowsa says, over the last decade loggers have cut only 71 percent of the timber volume the 1986 plan allowed, including far fewer unpopular clear-cuts than projected. These were made up in part by boosting the number of selective cuts, which some argue cause less ecological damage than leveling entire stands of trees. In any case, timber specialists say that in recent years the total amount cut has been falling.

Considering these trends, timber interests are expected to plead for more harvesting in order to make up for lost time or, at the very least, to request a more predictable stream of national forest timber on the market. Timber partisans even note that clear-cuts, despite their ugly aesthetics, provide many wildlife species with exactly the kinds of open spaces they need.

This wildlife-vs.-scenery trade-off puts forest managers in a bind. Some environmentalists argue there is enough species-friendly clear-cutting on private lands to make federal clear-cuts superfluous.

"There's no question that that kind of habitat has to be there," Publicover says. "The question is how big a patch you need. One of the things about ecosystem management is looking at the region as a whole. When they did the 1986 plan, they looked at the grounds as if they were an island. There's much greater attention now to how the National Forest fits into its surroundings, such as whether it should be managing for habitat that's not protected on nearby lands."

The Forest Service seems impressed by that reasoning. "We've realized that the last plan was focused within the national forest boundaries," Prowsa says. "But when you look at such a small percentage of the whole, you have to consider all of the lands in context."

What's New

Much has changed since the last plan. Off-road vehicle enthusiasts have begun showing up at public comment sessions. They are seeking to change the 1986 policy, which severely restricts their access. At the same time, hikers and campers are upset that backwoods facilities are crowded and not always well maintained.

Recreation is certainly is a priority for Forest Service officials. One survey found that 60 percent of New Hampshire's visitors eventually visit the Whites-a number, Prowsa suggests, that may not be sustainable. As an experiment, the Forest Service recently instituted some recreational fees, but the difficulty of collecting them has left revenue estimates far shy of the $500,000 officials had hoped to raise. The fees also were controversial with visitors and residents.

"One of the key issues is the carrying capacity of the land," Prowsa says. "One, what is the right number of people where we can still protect the resources from trampling and poor water quality? And two, what is the recreational experience? A lot of people come here to get away from other people. Are we providing that experience? That's something to review in the plan."

To answer these questions and others, activists on both ends of the political spectrum have been sharpening their rhetoric and sometimes their behavior. When mill owner Favreau attended his first "wise use" meeting out West a decade ago, he recalls that he was the only easterner in the room. Now Favreau's Multiple Use Association boasts a membership of 500.

On the other side, some environmentalists considered radical by mainstream activists recently occupied the town hall in Gorham, N.H., a mill town adjoining White Mountain. But even mainstream environmentalists have become increasingly eager to take the kinds of legal actions that initiated battles in the Pacific Northwest.

In 1994, a coalition that included the Na-tional Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society and others sued to stop a timber sale in Vermont's Green Mountain National Forest-the first case of its kind against the Forest Service in the East, says Stephen L. Saltonstall of the Conservation Law Foundation in Montpelier, Vt. The action, designed to preserve black bear and songbird habitats, won the plaintiffs a federal district court injunction restricting logging and road-building. The Forest Service has appealed and awaits a decision.

"Our case was that it was clear from Forest Service documents that the project in question would harm bears, and that the Forest Service concealed the fact that bear biologists had opposed the project," Saltonstall says. "We also had a whistleblower who went to a school that the Forest Service had held on how to get around environmental laws."

Saltonstall and others condemn what they see as perverse bureaucratic incentives for the Forest Service to cut more timber than it needs, even if it nets the federal government a loss. Gauged by its net return to the Treasury, Saltonstall says, White Mountain finished $1.6 million in the red in fiscal 1995 as a result of timber cuts, not including an additional $1.05 million for the "Greens." Saltonstall describes Forest Service accounting practices as being "like the house in a floating craps game," which always wins even if everyone loses.

Forest Service officials have hired professional facilitators to coax constructive debate on forest policy.

Four public meetings were scheduled between July and October to determine whether the agency is addressing the right issues, as well as to gauge the intensity of disagreement on major points and to figure out which questions need answers from scientists and other experts.

Scientific advisory panels will present their findings by early 1998 to a volunteer public planning group that will then suggest revisions to the 1986 plan. Then local and regional Forest Service officials will weigh the findings and, beginning in the spring of 1998, will initiate the formal procedures established by the National Environmental Policy Act. If all goes well, the process should be completed by the millennium.

Can it work? Prowsa says the pro- cess has been "very cordial" through the early stages. "It was a real relief to get to this part of the country, where the culture seems more oriented to the town-meeting approach," he says. "We made a point of capitalizing on this positive aspect of the culture" when setting up the planning process.

Activists say they aren't willing to write off the process yet, but they're not exactly sanguine, either. The Forest Service "is willing to hear our case and will certainly listen to everybody," says mill owner Favreau. "But it's gotten very political, especially under the Clinton administration. There are directives from the top to harvest less, and to let foresters go and to keep biologists."

Environmentalists draw the opposite conclusion-that the Forest Service is still run with a pro-timber bias. In reality, both camps may be right, Prowsa says. Since the early 1990s, he says, Forest Service headquarters has required ecosystem management techniques, but implementing that mandate has been left up to officials at each forest. This means that local officials like Prowsa are left to grapple with the right balance.

Sometimes, even well-intentioned moves like hiring facilitators have caused consternation. When environmentalist Jamie Sayen--who directs the Northern Appalachian Restoration Project and publishes the New Hampshire-based Northern Forest Forum--first met with Forest Service officials on the planning process, "they knew I was representative of some of the so-called radical elements and they wanted to hear my concerns early on." But since then Sayen has become disenchanted with the agency's choice of facilitators because they previously worked for timber industry interests.

Prowsa defends the choice, saying it came down to choosing between an independent group unfamiliar with the local issues and another group that had demonstrated evenhandedness and was familiar with the area, despite prior work for timber interests.

On the other side, Gorham, N.H., select-man Mike Waddell, a critic of many environmental groups, says he's simply worried about the Forest Service's ability to pay for and staff its planning process. "It's going nowhere," he says. "They have no staff and no money to do this job. The Forest Service just does not have the personnel to deal with this." At least one environmentalist privately concurred.

Prowsa acknowledges that funds and personnel for White Mountain National Forest operations have been recently been shrinking. He says most of the employees who were offered buyouts in 1994 took them. Prowsa estimates that employment in the forest has declined from its peak of 135 to 120. It's projected to bottom out at about 90 by fiscal 2000, just as the new plan is slated for implementation.

In the meantime, the forest's budget-which rose through the late 1980s to more than $12 million in 1993-has fallen steadily to just over $7.7 million in 1997, even as tourist pressures have increased. Already, Forest Service funds have been shifted from monitoring flora, fauna and water. Prowsa says such shifts do not pose immediate danger, but eventually could force unpleasant constraints on ecosystem management.

Indeed, even the planning process itself is strapped and many key people are volunteers. This has prompted an informal "Tiltin' Diner Group" (so named for the retro-1950s eatery in Tilton, N.H., where they gather) to open its pockets. So far the group--which consists of industry executives, environmental groups and ski area officials, among others--has been willing to pony up $35,000, Prowsa says.

"There was a concern among some that they would try to control process" to benefit their own interests, Prowsa says. "But everything we've seen backs up their stated intent, which is to help us bring out the best information and help citizens become more informed."

Mistrust Or Hope?

Few people know more about collaborative environmental problem-solving than Connie Lewis, the associate director of the Keystone Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Keystone, Colo. Last year the center released a federally sponsored study she conducted of almost 50 collaborative environmental policy-making efforts. Though she acknowledges the obstacles, she says the approach can often produce tangible results.

"I saw some wonderful examples of Forest Service employees who had a genuine interest," she says. "One of the issues the USFS has to grapple with is empowering area rangers and managers to have the authority to engage and make decisions."

But the agency's reputation among the warring parties is deteriorating, and not just among wise use advocates who profess to hate federal control. "Those of us who have dealt with the USFS don't have a surplus of trust," says environmentalist Sayen. "Whatever reforms they may claim, they're still very much the handmaiden of the timber industry, not the protector of the ecological trust."

The present anti-federal mood helps, says environmentalist Saltonstall. "People are less likely to believe the Forest Service's distortion of the facts. I think there are a lot of good and idealistic people at the Forest Service, but the bureaucratic mentality is geared almost entirely toward getting the cut out.

Of course, the agency has vast experience with all this. Even before the spotted owl controversy, Prowsa's father--a Forest Service employee out West--once told his son that "most of the old-time rangers were wearing six-shooters, and it wasn't just for four-legged varmints." The main change, his son notes, is that "the number of people has grown, the land base has shrunk and the number of national forest conflicts has grown right along with that."