The Applegate River watershed, encompassing approximately 500,000 acres, is located in southwestern Oregon. About 70 percent of the land is publicly owned. Intensive logging, extensive road building, fire suppression and a decade of drought have dramatically changed the composition and structure of the forest in the watershed. These factors have resulted in over-crowded young forests, high levels of insect damage, changed species diversity, and increased risk of catastrophic fire.
Direct participation by the community in determining the future of their watershed has the potential to overcome the animosity and gridlock that has characterized forest management for the past decade. The Partnership will work with all landowners and community members to encourage projects that promote ecosystem health and natural diversity across the entire watershed.
Creative solutions can emerge as all sides recognize the common ground shared by many diverse groups. We have an opportunity to leave a legacy we can be proud of for our children and grandchildren: a dynamic community in an enduring, healthy watershed.
In the summer of 1992, Jack Shipley and Jim Neal decided to begin discussing with others their idea of a "different approach to managing the half-million-acre Applegate watershed." Located in southwest Oregon and northern California, the Applegate watershed includes U.S. Forest Service (USFS), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), state, county, and private lands. A short white paper was written outlining basic tenets of their plan such as responsible extraction, no clearcuts, and no pesticides. Shipley solicited comments from environmental groups and natural resource agencies (mainly the USFS and BLM) and Neal similarly approached industry interests.
Surprisingly, what they found was that there was considerable overlap between the desires and interests of environmental and industry groups, centered around maintaining the long-term health of the watershed and stability of local economics. Encouraged by this apparent common ground, a meeting was organized in October 1992 with neighbors, representatives from industry, community groups, BLM, USFS, and several local environmental organizations, do discuss a plan to make the Applegate watershed a demonstration site for ecologically and financially responsible resource management.
Not wasting any time, this sixty-person group elected a nine-person Board of Directors and nine alternates, whose main job was to meet weekly to get the coalition off the ground. Nominations to the Board of Directors was based not on affiliation, but on a willingness to "work toward solutions, leave partisanship at home, put ecosystem health in front of private agendas, and have time to participate in meetings." The group crafted the following vision statement for the Applegate Partnership:
"The Applegate Partnership is a community-based project involving industry, conservation groups, natural resource agencies, and residents cooperating to encourage and facilitate the use of natural resource principles that promote ecosystem health and diversity. "Through community involvement and education, this partnership supports management of all land within the watershed in a manner that sustains natural resources and that will, in turn, contribute to economic and community stability within the Applegate Valley."
In addition to developing a vision statement, these nine people met quietly (not announced to the media or politicians) twice a week through the fall of 1992, creating guiding philosophical principles. The purpose was, according to the partnership publication Applegate Partnership: Practice Trust - Them is Us," to make future land management in the Applegate watershed ecologically credible, aesthetically acceptable, and economically viable." The decision to not go public until the right time was prompted by fear that either members of the press or politicians would misportray or use information in an inappropriate way. The members also hoped that low profile would allow the fragile new coalition time to make mistakes and develop trust without being under the watchful eye of the media. According to the document mentioned above, the Board of Directors agreed that the partnership would:
Some specific on-the-ground activities were the first steps taken toward achieving partnership goals and included plans for research and monitoring, environmental restoration, outreach, and public education. Most important, however, was the plan to involve local communities in a visioning process of the Applegate watershed, whereby the partnership encourages participation of individuals and agencies in developing a range of desired future conditions for the watershed; a community image of what the area should look like and how it should function. Specific projects are then judged by how well they respond to the community-developed goal of forest health and community economic stability.
Because of the mix of public and private land, some projects are implemented through cooperation with private landowners and some programs are administered and carried out by the BLM and USFS. A community assessment has been completed (funded through cost-sharing between USFS, BLM, Southern Oregon State College, and Rogue Institute of Ecology and Economy). A cooperative assessment of the ecological and economic health of the watershed is being conducted involving the BLM, USFS, Oregon State University, University of Oregon, Southern Oregon State College, USFS Pacific Northwest Research Station, and other interested groups and individuals. A significant step toward cooperative management was made by merging the various GIS and other analytical systems between the USFS and BLM with the assistance of John Meyer, Professor of Geography at Southern Oregon State College.
When the group went public in February 1993, it was immediately hailed as a success. Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt visited the fledgling group in March 1993, soliciting ideas for the upcoming Forest Summit in areas such as implementation, ecosystem management, and investing in community and economic infrastructure. The Summit itself referenced the group and asked two Applegate board members to participate in the Summit proceedings. The notoriety was a double-edged sword in that the high profile helped with broader support and at the same time created extreme pressure to perform.
USFS District Ranger Su Rolle believes that part of the success of this effort is attributable to federal agencies' responsiveness to a visionary idea created outside the agencies. BLM and USFS participants generally feel that the experience has helped them work more cooperatively and develop relationships of trust with outside interest. They are convinced that the partnership approach will result in more creative solutions to natural resource problems in the Applegate watershed, leading to improved environmental quality with more consistency and better follow-through on projects. Local industry and environmental groups have faith in the process and are encouraged by the fact that the gridlock has been broken. The success of a number of projects has added to the positive feelings surrounding this partnership.
According to Rolle, "this is not a project in the sense that it has an end," it is a process aimed at building relationships so that people and groups will be able to effectively participate in natural resource management decisions and projects. The group's hope is that the development and empowerment of informal local networks will make the formal partnership obsolete. This type of empowerment, as it is generally expressed by group members, would not only be beneficial in natural resource questions but would generate a broader feeling of empowerment for local communities. Members of the Applegate Partnership feel that their process is not just about the Northwest, nor is it just a timber issue; they believe it has broad implications for relearning lost community and social skills.
Noteworthy changes in attitude have also occurred between the USFS and BLM participants. Success with this partnership has convinced many staff people that old ways of doing things are not as effective as they might have believed and that new approaches involving collaboration are needed. Rolle has noticed a change in attitude from staff believing they were "experts with a mission to convince" to a feeling of "let's see what we can do together." In so observing, Rolle was inspired to analyze and record some of the most visible paradigm shifts she observed, such as control giving way to shared power and responsibility, public education evolving into a listening and learning together interaction, and a "we/they" orientation shifting to an "us" conception of the agency and community of interests surround it.
The focus on people and interest, not on affiliation and positions, is also believed to be a major factor in the success of the partnership. Rolle stated that "the partnership isn't as much about issues as it is about relationships." A lot of time was spent working on trust, with participants interacting as individuals not as representatives from a particular organization. Because there was no lead agency or any one individual in charge, all participants could participate as equals. Many of those involved felt that the relationship-building was the most significant aspect of the entire process. In fact, at the first meeting and before they were allowed to indicate who they were and what organization they represented, participants introduced themselves, their families, and their hopes for the future. This mode of introduction highlighted participants' common interests and bonds.
Keeping the project and scope locally focused facilitated agreement between diverse interests. Jim Neal stated that "abstraction is death for partnership, but once you can sit down and talk about a definable piece of land, you can get beyond philosophy and things start to fall together - you can agree on what is acceptable and what is not." Neal also believes that local environmental organizations are more useful groups to be involved in this sort of partnership than national organizations because they have a better understanding of local conditions and history. National environmental organizations, he fears, simply do not have the time to be involved in the planning stages - local environmental organizations can be more interactive.
National and regional environmental organization were not as impressed with the process as one might have thought; big groups felt that such a partnership might be good for the environment in the specific case of the Applegate watershed, but they were not convinced that the model was one that should be broadly applied. It is felt that national environmental organizations fear under-representation in some local areas, thereby undermining some national initiatives and leaving environmental quality up to local whims.
Issues of local control created concern for some USFS and BLM employees. Some staff were worried about losing control of decision-making on federally managed lands and questioned the wisdom of opening up the process to this degree. To allay the staff's fears, they were assured that all projects involving federal land would still go through regular agency channels. The decision-making authority of line officers was not being relinquished by this process. This realization created greater acceptance of the project within both agencies.
While the inter-group tensions and challenges were perceived by the group at the beginning of the process, it turned out that the biggest threat to the partnership would come later because of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). According to Rolle, FACA has really "thrown a wrench into partnership-building" through its strict regulations regarding interactions between public sector employees and their constituents. After two years of participation with the partnership, all federal employees involved in the Applegate were forced to withdraw from the Board in the summer of 1994, fearing lawsuits under FACA. The Applegate group still has a clear mission and vision, but must proceed, at least for the moment, without the benefit of USFS or BLM participation. Rolle felt that the whole situations "was a shame...that the BLM and USFS will no longer have the same kind of opportunity to share information with their publics and develop relationships that only frequent meetings can facilitate...that something creative needs to be done about FACA...it was designed to assure balanced public/private interaction" and now appears to be preventing it. According to Rolle, this problem with FACA has been the "biggest thing to hit us in two years."
The second lesson to be learned, particularly from an agency perspective, is that there are advantages to shared leadership. District Ranger Rolle feels that more creative solutions are forthcoming from this process for on-the-ground management. Since she became a part of the process, she has integrated with the community: "We are not part of the system, a neighbor, and we care...because of this, we can expect greater follow-through and ability to solicit community and volunteer aid."
Another lesson lies in the value of being open and responsive to ideas that are generated outside an agency. In this case, it was the ability of a number of key federal officials to recognize and embrace a visionary idea and then find an appropriate role for the agency that helped foster the success.
Dwain Cross expressed an important lesson: "You need to make sure that you give other people incentives to participate." In order for people to effectively work within a partnership such as Applegate, they need to feel as if their concerns are truly being listened to and considered seriously, and they can get some of their needs met. Due to the history of confrontation and the polarization of groups and issues, people tend to respond to their stereotypes rather than what people are really saying. This attitude puts a damper on meaningful discussion, making parties inaccessible to each other. We need to convince people of their importance so they have incentives to participate. There's got to be something in it for everyone.
An overriding lesson learned by all participants in the Applegate Partnership, agency and non-agency alike, is that by adopting broader perspectives about each other and about the realm of resource management possibilities that exist, exciting opportunities for both on-the-ground management and more productive interactions between groups will arise. In the words of a Northwest Forestry Association representative in the Applegate Partnership:
"The next step for the Applegate Partnership is getting out into the Applegate community and making connections on an informal basis with the interest groups that are in the community...these (interest groups) are communities essentially. (They are) communities of affiliation, communities of occupation, communities of interest, but they are distinct. They have their own decision-making processes, they have their own leadership, they have their own geographical locations of preference. We need to link wit those and understand their issues and we need to find ways in which they can begin to bring those interests into the process. We need to create substantive mechanisms, substantive opportunities to participate in ways that gradually build their skills and opportunities so that they can be equal participants in this resource-planning process when they don't know the terminology and they haven't had enough experience, and they know it. If we really want them to participate, and I desperately do, we need to find those opportunities."
