Following is an excerpt from the e book “Conservation Confidential: A Wild Path to a Less Polarizing and More Effective Activism” (Latah Books, 2025) by Mitch Friedman. Within the memoir, Friedman recounts his journey from Earth First! activist to founding father of the Seattle-based Conservation Northwest, the place he’s government director. On this chapter, he describes how he discovered widespread floor with a skeptical member of the timber group.
That is a part of our ongoing Between Us sequence, inspecting the components that contribute to polarization and forestall good governance, good citizenship and good relationships — and presenting options.
Maurice Williamson was a crusty outdated codger, and he wouldn’t have minded me saying so. He handed away in March of 2024 in Colville, Washington, the place he had raised his household throughout a profession as a consulting forester. Colville is the most important small metropolis in northeastern Washington, ninety minutes northwest of Spokane. That a part of the state aligns extra with the conservative politics of Idaho than with western Washington, and Maurice was proud to slot in. He knew and cursed my title within the Nineteen Eighties. After I was organizing protests and dispensing provocative and polarizing soundbites, Maurice was advising non-public events— from households with just a few acres to company timber barons — on logging practices. He wasn’t on my radar till 2004.
Our worlds converged within the Northeast Washington Forest Coalition, or NEWFC. When CNW started working within the space, this collaborative had simply been established to discover and actualize new widespread floor between timber and conservation pursuits within the Colville Nationwide Forest, which spans a lot of northeast Washington. This widespread floor was distinctive in occurring on the scales of each the forest stand and the bigger panorama. Northeast Washington is a mixture of dry lowlands with ponderosa pine forests that require frequent hearth to take away competing undergrowth, and better elevations with wetter mixed-conifer forests. There was broad settlement by this time that dry forests of northeast Washington, like these throughout the inside West, wanted cautious lively administration. Such administration usually contains eradicating small timber and utilizing hearth to wash up the comb, seedlings, and twigs, restoring a construction of fewer giant pine timber with a lot of house and never a lot gasoline beneath. Dry forests have suffered badly from a century of mismanagement through which managers minimize down the large timber and left behind small ones whereas additionally suppressing wildfire. The ensuing crowded stands of smaller timber are topic to water stress, illness, and uncharacteristically sizzling and huge fires, particularly in as we speak’s hotter local weather. These are among the many the reason why Indians set hearth to those forests for the previous ten thousand years, as I’ll focus on intimately later.
Fortuitously, as we speak we have now expertise to provide wooden merchandise from small timber, permitting logging to concentrate on eradicating these however leaving the larger ones. Over time, with assist from low-intensity hearth (pure or managed) each few years, this may restore dry forests towards pre-colonial situations of ecological well being. It’s more durable than it might appear, as roads constructed for logging entry can influence wildlife and particularly the situation of streams and fish. Logging that’s too aggressive or not adopted with managed hearth can perpetuate the gasoline issues that elevate wildfire danger. A few of Washington’s worst latest wildfires burned closely via non-public and tribal industrial timberland, which is in keeping with findings from analysis. Sage-steppe grassland ecosystems are additionally burning closely of late, highlighting the hotter and drier local weather. Cautious logging and cattle grazing (if centered on seasonal consumption of invasive cheatgrass) can enhance the state of affairs, whereas poor practices worsen it. Lastly, houses now pockmark the woods, constraining using hearth as a administration device. We are going to by no means be capable to resume the carefree Indian observe of letting fires rip, although we should always get as near that as is sensible.
On the panorama degree, increased elevations within the mountain ranges of northeast Washington are largely roadless and due to this fact protected against roadbuilding and most logging underneath the Roadless Space Safety Coverage adopted by President Clinton on the finish of his second time period. However in contrast to western Washington, with its three giant nationwide parks and thousands and thousands of acres of designated wilderness, japanese Washington has little or no completely protected land. The founders of NEWFC all agreed with a normal precept supplied by Duane Vaagen, the second-generation chief of a family-owned Colville-based timber firm: Roughly a 3rd of the Colville Nationwide Forest ought to be managed in every of those situations: (1) protected as wild, (2) actively restored to wholesome forests to be maintained by hearth relatively than logging, and (3) actively and indefinitely managed for timber manufacturing utilizing glorious forestry. NEWFC continues to collaboratively pursue a model of this system as we speak, with CNW workers nonetheless absolutely engaged.
Again to Maurice, who engaged deeply in NEWFC for the various years that his well being and vitality allowed. He was at first overtly disdainful and skeptical of my workers and our agenda. He had his perceptions about me and maybe conservationists on the whole, knowledgeable by painful experiences of the ’80s and ’90s. The route I give workers in these collaborations is to interact honorably. We depend on making use of the most effective obtainable science to barter and implement the most effective practices. In cases the place science is unclear, we’re clear about that and attempt to be taught collectively by each partaking consultants and attempting small-scale discipline experiments. Our strictest rule is to by no means transfer the goalposts. We’re to barter aggressively utilizing our greatest arguments and techniques, however then stand by no matter settlement is struck. Behaving honorably builds belief and reciprocation.
Particular pursuits usually shift their goalposts. As soon as one concession is received, they demand a brand new one. Politicians do it, as do enterprise pursuits. None pains me greater than watching peer conservation teams accomplish that. Teams will sue to dam a shift in authorized standing for a rebounded species, to use a brand new rule to an outdated plan, or to power one other query to be answered throughout the tome of an environmental examine. Organic arguments can at all times be discovered, usually with a lot legitimacy. However there’s a price. Our leverage stems from the help of the general public and respect of companions. If we don’t stand by our agreements, why would anybody spend effort to dialogue with and accommodate us?
Maurice needed to see it to imagine it. Like my workers, Maurice negotiated laborious, representing his views and information from a life devoted to his career. It didn’t shock him that we’d, as an illustration, push for cover of huge timber and streamside buffers, citing scientific analysis. He would gruffly push again, citing opposite analysis and expertise. That’s how the work is completed, by arguing, listening, and reaching lodging. The poison was that Maurice assumed we’d search for methods to later exit or modify these lodging when it suited us. When he as a substitute noticed my workers, most notably the diligent and earnest David Heflick, sadly now deceased, honorably standing by agreements, his posture modified.
There was a specific day when Maurice smiled and pulled out a bottle of whiskey, in all probability Previous Crow, his favourite model. We had received his respect. Over time, he turned a pal, every of us enduring playful insults from the opposite.
The NEWFC collaboration fostered a interval of nice productiveness within the Colville Nationwide Forest. The forest had glorious management who appreciated the cues the collaborative despatched concerning what tasks have been of biggest profit and least concern, and likewise which didn’t measure up and wanted particular modification. Working collectively to provide solely tasks that includes glorious forestry for restorative aims, the forest moved from a nationwide laggard to a nationwide chief in timber output. Nearly twenty years on now, we have now seen good days and dangerous, alternatives and challenges. The key sauce of collaboration is high quality relationships constructed on belief. Not simply among the many collaborative group, but in addition with public company leaders. The Forest Service has a coverage of shifting its leaders across the nation, which imposes turnover and disruption in these relationships. There are additionally inside incentives throughout the company that create headwinds, resembling efficiency opinions that reward personnel for hitting timber targets as a substitute of ecological ones. On the entire, collaboration requires laborious work, persistence, and persistence. Its biggest attract is that it stands in distinction to the polarizing various.
Like my relationship with collaboration as a tactic, my one with Maurice was an extended journey. Wanting again, I’d not change a factor about it. Whereas we succeeded find widespread floor and getting loads finished collectively, we didn’t change Maurice’s core values, and he didn’t change mine. The final time I noticed him, he was watching a rant on a conservative information channel. He known as it “the reality.” Nonetheless, the advantages of that relationship and others prefer it embody hundreds of acres of forests which have been restored towards a extra pure and ecologically wholesome situation. In addition they embody much less political polarization, as we now higher perceive and respect each other and converse up in our communities to counter caricatures now known as “othering of out-groups.” We additionally be taught from each other.
Mark Twain stated, “It ain’t what you don’t know that will get you into hassle. It’s what for positive that simply ain’t so.” We reside in a fancy world that doesn’t at all times match into our psychological fashions. The most effective elixir is a robust dose of different viewpoints, particularly these shaped via cautious examine and lengthy expertise. I worth what I’ve heard from foresters, ranchers, farmers, hunters, and Indians. I usually be taught from their viewpoints regardless of whether or not I agree with them. It provides me a extra full view of the world and a wholesome skepticism of any doctrine, together with no matter I’m imagined to imagine as an city liberal environmentalist.
Being educated as a scientist, I imagine passionately within the scientific methodology for its deliberate, managed seek for reality. Trendy life wouldn’t be doable with out what society has discovered this manner. However the universe hides its truths from even our greatest queries. As an illustration, medical science has the profit that its research can contain thousands and thousands of human topics whose habits might be considerably managed. But we now discover that even in most of the greatest epidemiological research, the outcomes can’t be replicated in subsequent analysis. The decongestant drug phenylephrine, for instance, is now thought-about ineffective after years of being broadly used. If medical science, with all its cash and motivation, remains to be in early days, contemplate how way more there may be to find out about forest ecology and administration. We appear to know sufficient to confidently say, as I did above, that in dry forests we have to defend and reestablish huge outdated timber whereas reintroducing hearth and, the place mandatory, eradicating (by chainsaw) small timber to revive extra fire-resilient stands. However some forests are drier than others. On north-facing slopes and center elevations, the forests are of combined varieties that confound easy or assured prescriptions. Restoring an entire panorama of drier forest varieties entails intentionally returning it to a mosaic of forest ages and openings in order that the habitat is diverse and wildfire is much less more likely to blow as much as megafire proportions. The problem and complexity of that enterprise is huge. It’s laborious sufficient to get predictable returns in a yard veggie backyard, so in fact we should be humble about what we expect and do over thousands and thousands of acres of forest knocked off-kilter by hearth exclusion and reckless logging. The open and trusting relationships with Maurice and others on the NEWFC desk enable for modest trial-and-error studying to advance on this monumental problem collectively.
A few of the tasks that we at NEWFC have agreed to are opposed and even litigated by different conservation teams. Normally, they’re extra inflexible in what they assume science signifies, extra polar of their views of pursuits embodied within the collaborative, and fewer trusting of the Forest Service. A few of their arguments have benefit in isolation; others I feel are misinformed. However on the entire, I see them as shortsighted, as I’ll clarify sooner or later.
The success of forest collaboratives like NEWFC in opening dialogue, constructing belief, and advancing restoration tasks brought about them to unfold quickly throughout the western U.S., with combined outcomes.
As difficult because the panorama ecology of dry forests is, there at the least was a physique of science in place to construct from. There was much less readability on how you can transfer ahead on the wetter west facet of the area. Our nationwide forests comprise a whole lot of hundreds of acres of forest regrown after clearcut logging up via the Nineteen Eighties. Analysis helps thinning these stands to speed up development of the remaining timber and expedite stands attaining old-growth traits. Analysis was additionally clear that we may assist fish via measures like eradicating some roads and stabilizing stream banks. However little consideration had been given to how you can prioritize work for the best return on funding. In 2014, Jen Watkins noticed this want and stepped ahead.
Jen and Dave Werntz invited main ecologists and foresters from the U.S. Forest Service, Washington Division of Pure Assets, College of Washington, and elsewhere. This group, which included Jerry Franklin, the luminary forest ecologist who led the design of the Northwest Forest Plan, met till they produced a protocol for restoring westside forest landscapes. The Forest Service has since utilized this protocol to a big and distinctive restoration mission simply northwest of Mount Rainier.
The teachings we’re studying from this mission might be utilized throughout the moist forests of the Northwest, bettering forest habitat and watersheds whereas offering wooden merchandise and jobs for struggling rural communities.
The abilities, belief, and popularity gained from our collaborative work on federal lands in southwest and northeast Washington led to a different alternative. In 2006, I acquired a name from Doug Sutherland, the Republican who was then serving as Washington’s Commissioner of Public Lands. He requested if I’d serve on a panel of stakeholders to resolve a decade of controversy concerning the forests of Blanchard Mountain. This can be a treasured state forest in northwest Washington, the place the Cascade Mountains meet the waters of Puget Sound. I signed up.
The forests of Blanchard Mountain will not be old-growth, however they’re ecologically vital and prized for recreation, being simply off Interstate 5 solely twenty minutes from Bellingham and an hour from Seattle. The forest had been logged closely within the early twentieth century, like virtually all privately owned forest within the lowlands of western Washington. The land reverted to the county when its homeowners minimize and run, leaving taxes unpaid. The state later agreed to take over reforesting and managing such lands for the good thing about counties. Eight a long time on, the now stately forest was wrapped with tranquil trails resulting in excessive factors providing gorgeous views of Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands. Summer time weekends discover these trails crowded with hikers, equestrians, and mountain bikers. Within the late ‘90s, the Division of Pure Assets kicked a hornet’s nest by proposing clearcuts throughout the coronary heart of Blanchard Mountain. We launched grassroots resistance, with CNW’s Lisa McShane catalyzing formation of an area group, Associates of Blanchard Mountain. A political stalemate ensued that lasted a number of years, resulting in that decision from Commissioner Sutherland.
The outcome was the Blanchard Forest Methods Group. It had a dozen seats crammed by leaders from conservation, recreation, timber trade, Skagit County, and the college district that obtained income from the logging of these lands. The perimeters have been clear, with the environmental caucus wanting all outdated forest protected, and the timber and income pursuits dug in in any other case. We met month-to-month for properly over a 12 months. It was far into that course of earlier than we discovered sufficient widespread floor on which to succeed in settlement. The breakthrough got here after we realized that each one events wished to stop encroaching residential improvement from decreasing the non-public timberland that gives logs, jobs, and higher habitat for salmon and wildlife than do homes and paved streets.
With that widespread curiosity as lubricant, we narrowly reached consensus on a plan to guard from logging about sixteen hundred acres that included many of the older forest on the mountain. We have been to collectively request funding from the legislature to compensate the county and faculty district for the worth of the forest, plus further funds representing the worth of the land on which the forest stood. The DNR was to make use of the latter to buy non-public timberland liable to residential improvement and handle it perpetually in forestry.
The settlement moved ahead with key legislators on board. Some activists felt the settlement ought to have protected extra acreage and even the whole lot of state forest across the mountain, many of the the rest of which was plantations of second- (or third) development. They sued to dam it. CNW intervened on the facet of the state, honoring our dedication. The courtroom finally dominated in opposition to the lawsuit, however the uncertainty it brought about restricted how a lot funding the legislature would commit throughout the interim. Then the economic system crashed. It could be virtually a decade earlier than the complete quantity was dedicated and we may lastly have fun the protected land. Throughout the intervening decade, I organized electronic mail campaigns and annual journeys to Olympia to foyer for the funds. These foyer days included the timber leaders and different stakeholders from the Blanchard Forest Methods Group, all standing by our settlement. All advised, the twenty-year effort saved sixteen hundred acres of this scenic, ecological, and leisure gem at a complete price of twelve million {dollars}.
May we have now finished higher had we refused to collaborate? Perhaps. Perhaps not. I’m snug with, and pleased with, the selection I made and its outcomes. But it surely did get intense. There have been heated debates over electronic mail listservs on the science and strategic implications of thinning westside plantations. This was effective and applicable. However a line was crossed in 2007, nonetheless the early days of collaboration for forest restoration, when a hardline group leveled a harsh accusation at CNW. They in contrast our work to the Vichy Regime of France, which collaborated with Nazi Germany. If that comparability have been to carry, it will imply that CNW was aiding and abetting the forces of destruction of nature, resembling corporations that revenue by harming public forests. I couldn’t assist however give this considerate consideration, particularly because the group was one which I had beforehand allied with and even served on the board of. I then replied with a prolonged letter to the management of that group, through which I wrote:
“Can the timber trade be seen as an occupying power on our public land when the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie Nationwide Forest has sustained logging ranges lower than ten % of historic highs for about twenty years? A greater analogy may be to France after liberation, when Winston Churchill himself proposed that reconstruction of Europe wanted to begin with French-German collaboration.”
I stand by that comparability. I ended that 2007 letter with the next strains. It troubles me how related these phrases stay virtually twenty years on:
“Our conservation motion faces a curious paradox. Because of local weather change, the prospect of utter ecological catastrophe has by no means been extra pressing, and trigger for normal despair by no means extra actual. But we discover higher public and political help—at the least right here in our state—than maybe ever earlier than. I imagine we are able to make nice positive factors if we, like Churchill did, construct our efforts round a spirit that mixes realism, shared sacrifice, and hope. We might even see safety of what we worth if we promote options that construct help and momentum, relatively than beliefs that rally a base however in the end flip away People who’ve grown weary of polarization.”
I’ve come to be a bit humble about what I feel we all know, even from science. Listening with respect to individuals who produce other views, knowledgeable by their expertise and commentary, is worth it. Collaboration fosters that chance. If nothing else, we are able to make each other giggle like Maurice and I did.
