Bitterroot is partnering with the The Modern West podcast to examine the resilience of Western people and towns. This is the fifth and final part of the series.
Part 1: The Blackfoot Watershed: Montana’s Laboratory for Rural Collaboration
Part 2: This New Mexico Town is the Next Adventure Hub. Can it Quit Fossil Fuels?
Part 3: Out of the Wilderness: Guides are Teaming Up to Prevent Suicides
Part 4: This Oregon Town is a Hotbed of Latinx Political Leadership
Divisive as our modern era may seem, it doesn’t hold a candle to the acrimony the Northwest’s forest communities experienced in the 1990s. At the time, changes in timber economics and more stringent federal regulations were roiling the forest products industry. Environmentalists wanted to end clear-cut logging and enact greater protections for the endangered spotted owl and its old-growth habitat. Timber firms, meanwhile, wanted more access to the dwindling supply of those older, more profitable trees. And neither party was happy with how the U.S. Forest Service was managing the land.
But, as the so-called timber wars dragged on, something unusual happened in northeast Washington. Back in 1987, Duane Vaagen, the owner of Vaagen Brothers Lumber in Colville, invested in a computer-guided saw that could quickly mill trees as small as 4.5 inches in diameter. As access to old growth dwindled, Vaagen leaned more and more on these skinny trees to keep his company afloat. His new business model opened up a diplomatic opportunity. Local conservation organizations like the Kettle Range Conservation Group and The Lands Council were often protesting timber sales, but Vaagen felt the parties could find common ground if logging within Colville National Forest (locals call it “the Colville”) was restricted to stands of smaller, second-growth trees. So he extended an olive branch.
“Collaboration was all new then and it seemed like a good avenue for starting a conversation with folks who were shutting down every timber sale offered on the Colville, and all over the West,” Vaagen told the Spokane Spokesman-Review.
Vaagen, The Lands Council’s Mike Petersen, and Kettle Range’s Timothy Coleman started talking. In 2002, they formed the Northeast Washington Forest Coalition (NEWFC), a group of timber firms, conservationists, and forestry professionals that advocates for restoration forestry within the 1.1 million acre Colville National Forest. The group’s track record of compromise and innovation has made the Colville a leader among national forests in both timber production and restoration treatments that mitigate the risk of wildfire. What’s taking place out here could offer a path forward for other areas of the West trying to boost the resilience of both fire-prone forests and rural economies.
“The thing that amazes me about the Colville is the level of innovation, and the willingness of all the partners to take pretty big risks,” said Andrew Spaeth, who, as coordinator of the state Department of Natural Resources’ forest health committee, has worked extensively in northeast Washington. “That part of Washington is really doing some groundbreaking stuff, and it wouldn’t be possible without these connections that have been built over the years, and the leadership of the Colville National Forest.”
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Those early discussions between NEWFC members and the U.S. Forest Service yielded a blueprint that, Petersen told me, more or less stand today. NEWFC supports timber yields of at least 80 million board-feet a year and sales that encompass large swaths of landscape, rather than spot-by-spot clearcuts. In exchange, roadless areas and old-growth stands are pretty much off-limits, and the group supports designated wilderness areas in the Colville (Congress has yet to act on the latter).
“For the Forest Service, it was like, Wow, maybe we won’t get appealed and litigated as much. For the timber industry: Wow, maybe we’ll get more of a steady supply. And for us, they won’t be cutting big trees and building roads as much,” Petersen said. “Everyone had a little give and take on it.”
All this has made the Colville timber regime one of the most active on federal land. In fiscal 2019, 87.1 million board-feet was harvested from the forest, one of the highest production volumes in the country. That same year, 16,561 acres underwent prescribed burns, mechanical thinning, and other treatments to reduce fuel loads and mitigate risk of megafires.
“We still build roads, we’re still actively logging. But we’ve gone from treating 5,000 acres a year, to 15 to 20,000 acres a year,” Rodney Smoldon, Colville National Forest Supervisor, told me. “So we’ve tripled the footprint of the work we’re doing, and we’re doing it in a way that garners the support of the Collaborative.”
This enhanced restoration work is possible thanks, in part, to unique agreements with some NEWFC members. In 2013, the Forest Service contracted with Vaagen Brothers on a 10-year, 54,000-acre “A to Z” restoration project in the Colville’s Mill Creek drainage. Vaagen Brothers undertook the planning and environmental analysis typically done by the Forest Service — at a cost of roughly $2 million, Vaagen has said — and oversees restoration activities such as mechanical thinning, culvert repair, road maintenance, and stream rehabilitation. In return, Vaagen Brothers gets the cut timber, which could top 200 million board-feet over the project’s life. Another proposal, the Sxwuytn project, aims to conduct restoration work on 90,000 acres of state, federal, tribal, and private forestland in conjunction with the Kalispel Tribe and the state DNR. Consultant Gloria Flora, a NEWFC board member, is coordinating the effort.
Such projects aren’t without controversy. Some environmental groups argued the Mill Creek A to Z was a giveaway to Vaagen Brothers. The Alliance for the Wild Rockies challenged the project in federal court, but the 9th District Court of Appeals in 2017 allowed it to go forward.
Petersen, The Lands Council’s executive director, acknowledged that elements of the A to Z agreement, particularly Vaagen Brothers’ involvement in the National Environmental Protection Act assessment (Vaagen hired an outside firm to conduct the assessment), could cause concern. “That raises red flags … it took a lot of scrutiny,” he said. “But I’ve been on dozens of field trips out there, and have taken people to visit post-logging, and I’ll stand by what they did.”
Instead of intense clearcuts on small portions of the watershed, Vaagen’s cuts were more evenly distributed across the broader landscape. All areas that were thinned had been logged in the past, and the treatment left patches of tree stands with meadows in between, conditions that benefit airy larch and ponderosa pine forests that are resilient to fire.
“These are not old-growth forests being cut down, or the old timber industry versus environmentalists,” Russ Vaagen, Duane’s son, said at a mass-timber conference earlier this year. “This is working in concert. [Timber production] isn’t the driver — it’s the byproduct of these efforts.”
The A to Z’s financial structure has perks, too. The Forest Service has long understood the need for thinning and prescribed fire to prevent megafires that have engulfed the West, but its budget for such restoration work is scant. Were he to rely solely on congressional appropriations, Smoldon said it could take 70 years for his team to work through the Colville’s restoration backlog. Thanks to its partnerships with private firms and other government entities, he anticipates the work being accomplished in a fraction of the time.
“Now, we’re on a 20-year cycle,” Smoldon said. “In 20 years, we’re not going to be talking about restoring the health and productivity of our forest — we’re going to be talking about sustaining it.”
The speed is necessary. A history of fire suppression has left forests like the Colville choked with thick stands of shrubs, young trees, and other vegetation that fuel gigantic fires. In 2017, the state of Washington determined it had 20 years to treat 1.25 million acres of overgrown forests east of the Cascade ridge to mitigate the risk of catastrophic fires.
Colville and the surrounding area wasn’t immune to the decline of the timber industry in the 1990s. In 1989, back when 130 million board-feet of lumber was coming out of Colville National Forest, Vaagen had nearly 500 employees; today, the company has closer to 260, but the newfound focus on restoration logging could make the region more economically resilient. New opportunities are opening up, too. In 2017, Russ Vaagen started Vaagen Timbers, which manufacturers glue-laminated beams and cross-laminated timber panels — construction materials some argue are environmentally friendly substitutes for concrete and steel.
“We’re putting what would’ve been burned in wildfire into our cities,” Russ Vaagen said. “And I think that’s pretty exciting.”
Spaeth, with the state DNR, said increased restoration and maintenance creates not just timber jobs, but opportunities for contractors that handle habitat restoration, road maintenance, and the like. To Smoldon, who grew up in Colville, the forest and town both are positioned to flourish in the coming years. When he drives to and from work, he sees full shops and restaurants — during non-pandemic times, at least — and lumber in the Vaagen yard ready to be shipped out.
“Timber extraction, grazing, mining, solitude, fishing, hunting — we have all of that,” Smoldon said. “What the Collaborative does is helps us find that balance where everybody’s winning. It’s not like the late ’80s and ’90s, when everybody was losing.”
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