Environmental activists gather at law conference

Oregon Wild's Tim Lillebo describes the challenges and rewards of seeking collaboration in Oregon's forests.

To get to “Kum Ba Ya,” sometimes you have to risk fisticuffs. This was one of the lessons from a panel discussion on collaboration at the annual environmental law conference being held this week at the University of Oregon.

“Perspectives on Collaboration” was just one of nearly 125 panels, workshops and lectures at the 26th annual Public Interest Environmental Law Conference that began Thursday and will run through Sunday. Organized by Land Air Water, a student environmental law society, the event draws thousands of activists, scientists, lawyers and students from around the world who gather to compare notes, network, strategize, celebrate successes and commiserate over failures.

The sessions include discussions on forests, fisheries and farms, climate change, indigenous issues and energy crises.

The conference both inspires and energizes those who attend it, said Michael Nixon, a Pittsburgh lawyer who specializes in cultural resources, historic preservation and protecting Native American sacred sites. Nixon, a Lewis & Clark College law school graduate, said he’s been coming to the conference for at least 20 years.

“For six months afterward there’s an afterglow of positive energy and rejuvenation and excitement. It stays with you in a subtle and profound way,” he said.

Frequently environmental news breaks during the conference and this year is no exception, he said. On Thursday, an Arizona district court judge ruled that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service erred when it failed to consider Arizona’s bald eagles as a separate population that required continued listing as an endangered species, despite the fact that the agency took bald eagles off the list last year. There are fewer than 50 breeding pairs in Arizona, according to an Arizona Republic news story.

Robin Silver, a founder of the Center for Biological Diversity,which filed the lawsuit with the Maricopa Audubon Society, is at the Eugene conference, so students and activists will be able to talk shop with him as word of the decision ripples out to attendees, Nixon said.

“After seven years of President Bush, to get a court decision from an administration notorious for disregarding environmental law is inspiring,” he said.

But litigation isn’t the only tool for activists, said Emily Platt, executive director of The Gifford Pinchot Task Force and one of three panelists discussing collaboration at the Friday morning session.

Her organization for years used lawsuits to block old growth logging on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington, which extends from the Columbia Gorge north to Mount Rainier and includes Mount St. Helens.

But the lawsuits occupied all their time and they weren’t able to get to the restoration projects they really wanted to achieve, she said.

“We weren’t able to reach our larger goals until we worked with nontraditional allies,” such as people living in rural communities, county commissioners and representatives of the logging industry, she said.

Sitting down with opponents takes time and is frustrating, but breakthroughs occur, often on field trips when people actually get out in the woods together, Platt said.

She described standing in an oldgrowth grove with a representative from the industry group the American Forest Resources Council, who said, “I can see why society would want to protect places like these,” she said.

Also on the panel was Jack Roberts of the Lane Metro Partnership, who described the deadlock in Eugene over the construction of the West Eugene Parkway, which would have put a road through recently restored wetlands. After years of strife over the parkway, the state canceled funding for it, Roberts said. But since then a group of citizens that includes wetlands supporters and the business community have been meeting to see if there’s common ground, a way to protect the environment and solve the congestion on West 11th Avenue, Roberts said.

“It’s a way to identify common interests rather than continue to fight,” he said.

Collaboration only works because environmental groups have a record of success in litigating, said the other panelist, Tim Lillebo, a regional representative for Oregon Wild, an environmental nonprofit agency.

With that power came the ability to sit at the table with industry groups and state agencies to look for areas of common interest.

In Eastern Oregon, where Lillebo works, thinning to reduce the risk of fires and to improve the health of old trees has been working on the Deschutes National Forest, he said.

Such efforts don’t come easy. Lillebo described getting so frustrated with a timber industry representative that the two almost came to blows before backing down.

“It’s time-consuming and frustrating and it’s much easier to say, ‘You can go to hell and we’re going the other way,’ ” he said.

But working past the disagreements has paid off with improvements to the forest, and his relationship with his opponent has warmed because of their work together, he said.

“We never learned the words to ‘Kum Ba Ya,’ but we do share a beer now and then,” he said.