Forest partnership forges ahead with 'radical center' on plan

The U.S. Forest Service is in the midst of updating its plan for Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests that will guide how the forests are managed for the next 15-plus years, and a diverse local group is working to find common ground in order to influence the plan effectively and benefit forest users, from loggers to conservationists.

The Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Partnership is led by a 13-member leadership team representing the conservation, economic development and tourism, forest products, recreation, and water and wildlife sectors, with more than 30 member organizations that are trying to bring the "radical center" to the forefront of national forest land management in a time of skyrocketing social and political divisiveness.

Over the past five-plus years, the partnership has been working out the different goals among its partners who normally butt heads when it comes to forest management. By doing that, the group has found a middle ground that will eliminate that conflict from taking up valuable time between the release of the draft and the finalization of the Forest Service's plan.

As of September, more than 1,000 species had been analyzed for impact, 435 ecological plan components analyzed, 200 hours had been spent refining GIS maps, and miles of recreation areas have been analyzed, according to the latest information available from the Forest Service.

The service plans to release a draft environmental impact statement in the spring, kicking off a 90-day comment period before the agency will respond to those comments, and finalize its plan and environmental impact statement. The final plan should be released in winter 2020.

After public input has flooded in, the Forest Service update states that geographic area goals have been changed to reflect local values, and sections have been added on public involvement, recreational areas, old growth forests, plant and animal diversity, and more.

When the draft plan is released later this year, the Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Partnership will be poised to offer further comment carefully tailored to make the most impact.

That plan will guide the management of the 1.1 million acres of national forest lands. According to its website, the partnership's mission is striving to create a lasting voice for innovative management and public investment in the public forests of North Carolina’s mountains.

That group has formed a consensus ahead of the plan’s release to meet the needs of hunters and wildlife enthusiasts, of recreational users and visitors, forest products businesses, water needs and interests, conservation-minded residents and the forest itself, along with its many inhabitants.

The partnership has a number of ways to accomplish that.

One recommendation is restoring access to the forests with a sustainable roads network, that the Forest Service make progress toward reducing its maintenance backlog and making the road system environmentally and financially sustainable. Other recommendations include supporting the region’s economy with a diverse variety of forest uses, creating a recreation user council, using tiered objectives, and exploring “win-win” alternatives rather than plans with clear winners and losers.

Jill Gottesman, conservation specialist with the Wilderness Society, said that it was apparent early on that “for a lot of reasons, this forest plan is pretty groundbreaking.”

It's the first of eight across the country being implemented under new planning rules put in place in 2012, she said, and comes with a set of directives that includes directing the Forest Service to use the best available science and to use a collaborative process.

“For all of those goals, we want to make sure we have a good plan,” Gottesman said. The idea is a good plan will help all parties get more done with the resources focused where they’re most needed, she said.

Lang Hornthal is the owner of locally-sourced rustic furniture company Appalachian Designs and is the director of Root Cause, a regional initiative looking to raise awareness of the local forest products industry among people who care about sustainability.

He represents the forest products user group as part of the partnership, speaking up for any activity on the forest that ultimately supports the products industry.

It’s easy to point fingers at each other, he said, but it’s hard to sit down with people and solve problems and try and appreciate the problem from a larger scale to find solutions everyone can live with.

“So much of the press that we see regarding forest planning seems to seize upon conflict and where groups have butted heads,” Hornthal said. “We’re of the opinion that the sexier story is the radical center.”

The “radical center,” he said, is collaborating from the center rather than the things that have divided groups in the past, and one of the great things about partnerships is reducing the conflict that's happened with past plans.

The products industry recognizes that it doesn't need to cut timber in controversial areas and that there are ways to protect old growth and heritage areas, for example, he said.

"We don't think that conflict has to be there," Hornthal said. "There's no reason why certain values on the forest have to suffer just so you can cut timber."

Graham County Economic Development Director Sophia Paulos represents a county where 70 percent of the land is publicly owned, and where both the timber industry and recreation are big-time economic drivers.

The timber industry isn't only part of the economy, but part of the culture in Graham County, while the popularity of outdoor recreation is taking off and making the county a tourist destination, she said.

What she hopes to see out of the forest plan is for timber harvests to be managed at a median scale, to give the timber industry in the county a level of consistency it hasn't had historically. In the past, there would be a high year with lots of timber harvests, then a slump for several years when next to no timber was harvested, making it hard for those folks to run their businesses.

As for recreation, she said it's her hope that it will be taken for the important economic driver that it is and funded in a way to allow proper development and maintenance.

"We want to see sustainable timber harvesting being done on the forest," Hornthal said.

By sustainable, he cited approaches like harvesting timber when a road has to be built or maintained or when a parking lot is constructed for a recreational access, and done in a way so as not to harm water quality or wildlife.

Gottesman said the Wilderness Society is interested in essentially how the forest is zoned and in making good recommendations to the Forest Service for wilderness.

She said the group is not opposed to logging or active management, but wants to work to make sure that the most special places remain intact, an important goal for water quality, recreation and wildlife that need those forests to thrive.

And when it comes to using the best available science, climate change will be key when thinking about the plan moving forward, Gottesman said, knowing that the plan will effect the next 15 years of forest management and potentially longer, almost the next generation.

Paulos said the partnership has shown that winning scenarios are achievable. "When we're in conflict, we're all losing," she said.

As the plan is released and then put into action, the relationships built through the Nantahala-Pisgah Forest Partnership will be crucial through the monitoring and implementation phases, Gottesman said.

"If the Forest Service can give us a plan and alternative that really does its best to give all or most of the interests what they want ... we see an all-boats-rise situation and we can get more done," she said.

She said the hope is that because they have maintained steady communication that the Forest Service will take some of the partnership's ideas to heart. So far, it seems like they are.

While conflict will never be completely gone, the partnership will spend time trying to better understand the values of its different members and educate themselves on how they can help, Hornthal said.

Paulos said conversations are being had about maintaining the partnership throughout the implementation of the plan.

The partnership has been forging relationships and exchanging ideas for years among people who know the forest intimately, Gottesman said.

"In an era when agency budgets and staffing have gone down, (non-governmental organizations) too are all trying to do more with less," she said. "It's high time to really be working together across interests and groups and really figure out how we ... can craft an amazing future of these public lands."