Old Growth, New Ideas: Restoration Forestry Takes Root in the Siuslaw

University of Oregon Journalism School project highlights restoration and stewardship in the Siuslaw National Forest.

(See the story online for accompanying photos. See also Flux photo gallery)

A utumn rains on the Oregon Coast herald the end of another parched Pacific Northwest summer. Clad in Gore-Tex and fleece, an unlikely collection of visitors to the Siuslaw National Forest greets the storm. You might expect these rural landowners, U.S. Forest Service employees, timber industry representatives, and environmentalists to be on opposite sides of a courtroom or forest protest. The stereotypes developed during the timber wars say that what’s good for the environment hurts the economy: Logging is an enemy of forest health. Loggers and tree-huggers are supposed to hate each other. Environmental conflict is supposed to flourish in timber country.

But the Siuslaw Stewardship Group is doing something revolutionary. They’re agreeing — agreeing that healthy communities need healthy forests, agreeing on the inflexibility of some environmental laws, and agreeing on the need to restore the habitat for endangered species. They’re braving the weather together on this fall day — the University of Oregon-educated environmentalist, the Oregon State University-trained timber industry man, the landowner, and the forester — to survey a forest restoration project around an area called the Misery Thin. Contrary to forest management standards, they all agree that old growth is valuable and that restoration forestry — selectively thinning over-crowded tree plantations — can help bring it back.

Johnny Sundstrom, original group member, stands out in a Carhartt jacket, cowboy boots, and blue jeans. Crows feet crease the corners of his hazel eyes, and a small stud glimmers in his left ear. His wit electrifies the whole group; carefully timed wisecracks turn uncomfortable silences into moments of shared humor.

The Siuslaw Stewardship Group was born in timber country. The hamlet of Mapleton lies on the estuary of the Siuslaw River, which slices into the bedrock of the Oregon Coast Range. Little shops and stores cluster along this stretch of Highway 126 between Eugene and Florence. Family farms sprout in the river’s bottomlands.

The Coast Range is still teething by geologic standards, shaping itself with periodic flash floods and mudslides, but its forests were ancient by human standards when logging began. A patchwork of wind-twisted pines and sharp-needled spruce clung to the foggy river. Towering Douglas-firs and western redcedars ruled inland. Giant trees more than 250 years old housed rare animals including northern spotted owls, marbled murrelets, and northern flying squirrels. A patchy canopy covered an under-story of moss-cloaked western hemlocks and a carpet of evergreen shrubs and sword fern. Beneath the canopy stretched a web of interlaced roots and mycorrhizal fungus, weaving the biotic community together in tight interdependence. Steep-sloped mountains protected the forest community until new technology opened the Coast Range to logging after World War II.

Thanks to its old growth, the Siuslaw National Forest was the most productive national forest in the country at its peak in the mid eighties. The Mapleton Ranger District cut two billion board feet of timber between 1960 and 1990. Five mills operated at the industry’s peak. When lumber prices fell or logs fetched more money overseas, mills closed and the timber economy slumped. The fishing fleet in nearby Florence provided extra work for loggers.

Things changed radically when a lawsuit halted the Siuslaw’s timber flow in 1988. Clear-cuts in the watershed’s headwaters triggered landslides, killing salmon fingerlings and destroying spawning beds. Slides became so common that Sundstrom — a longtime area resident who manages a livestock and forest management cooperative when he’s not acting as an ambassador for the Siuslaw National Forest — could recognize the sound of one over the telephone. The local landowners sued the government, stopping the flood of timber from federal land.

“Our timber industry was dependent on Forest Service wood,” Sundstrom says. “It ground to a halt.”

While Mapleton bottomed out in the early nineties, environmentalists and loggers all over the Pacific Northwest fought over the protection of the northern spotted owl and old growth — placing the environment on one side of the growing timber wars and logging communities on the other. But not in Mapleton. Residents partnered with federal, state, and local agencies to hammer out common environmental goals for the basin. Restoration dollars trickled in for the Siuslaw’s logging-damaged salmon habitat. These developments signaled economic potential for the basin’s ecological restoration.

The tree plantations replacing old forests were over-crowded fire hazards, almost impossible to walk through. The young trees weren’t growing fast enough to become valuable timber. Congress had under-funded the Forest Service, postponing costly thinning for decades.

Siuslaw foresters developed a plan to use profits from timber sales for local habitat restoration instead of sending the money to the federal treasury. In 1995 Sundstrom flew to Washington, D.C. with the Siuslaw National Forest’s supervisor to pitch the plan to Vice President Al Gore’s Reinvention of Government Task force. Their ideas were radical at the time — too radical.

“They said it couldn’t be done,” Sundstrom says. “Sometimes you just have to wait.”

Radicals firebombed Forest Service property, spiked trees, and traded insults and sometimes death threats with timber workers across fire-road barricades.

What seemed like a good idea to the Siuslaw’s forest revolutionaries wasn’t good politics in D.C. Congress funds the Forest Service in its budget, but if districts kept timber profits, then control of national forests might localize. Activists staged tree-sits and human blockades from Idaho to California to prevent logging in old-growth forests. The timber industry poured millions into congressional campaigns. Radicals firebombed Forest Service property, spiked trees, and traded insults and sometimes death threats with timber workers across fire-road barricades. Destitute timber communities held massive rallies to draw media attention to their plight. The Forest Service was polarized between old-school foresters who favored tree plantations and ecologists more concerned about ecosystem health than timber harvesting. Relinquishing management of national forests to local interests wasn’t an option in this politically volatile environment.

But the Siuslaw National Forest’s visionaries didn’t quit working behind the scenes. In 1999, Congress authorized a national five-year stewardship contracting pilot program. Stewardship contracting meant that foresters wouldn’t just mark trees for cutting. They’d design timber sales to spur the regeneration of old growth. The rules included a provision to use thinning profits on local restoration and community revitalization. Stakeholders would advise the Forest Service how to spend the money. For those who saw the links between the community and the forest, it was an exciting moment.

“The foresters jumped on it,” Sundstrom says. “They came to the community for help forming a stakeholder team to determine local needs.” 

The Siuslaw Stewardship Group coalesced in 2002. Composed of Forest Service employees, landowners like Sundstrom, the Siuslaw Watershed Council, other local agencies, and non-profits like Oregon Wild, the new group was sure to spark fresh dialogue.

Environmentalists wanted old growth, while timber interests wanted a steady supply of logs. Foresters wanted efficiency and stability in their forests, and locals wanted forest jobs again. People with such diverse interests could work together or just as easily degenerate into the adversarial stalemate of the timber wars. Nobody involved with the project knew what would happen.

The group, bound together by a common vision of restoration across the board, met at the Watershed Council’s crowded building a stone’s throw from the river. Everyone agreed that forests were more than just groups of trees. Stewardship contracting offered them a unique opportunity to influence forest management decisions. But they had questions about how stewardship logging would work: Could they design moneymaking timber sales that included restoration goals? Could they spend public money on private land? For months they slogged through long meetings, learning how to use the group’s newfound authority.

After more than a year’s work, the group members thought they were ready. They requested restoration proposals and picked ones that would benefit the community. Among their plans were training for the volunteer fire department and funding the oldest outdoor school program in Oregon. They intended to restore the watershed and revitalize the community.

But when the fledging group tried to take off, the assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture ruled that timber receipts could only be used for restoration on public and private land not on community revitalization. While the stewardship-contracting handbook stated funds could be used for projects like education and firefighting, officials said this was not the case. The decision shattered the group’s carefully crafted plans.  

“It was almost a deal breaker,” Sundstrom says.

Group members felt betrayed. Promised one thing, they’d been given something less. It was a familiar feeling for the community that had lost a battle to keep a district ranger office in Mapleton after collecting 400 signatures in twenty-four hours and scrambling to find a new location for the office. One angry member, venting the emotion many shared, quit the group.

But cooler tempers prevailed that night, and the group postponed any decisions on what to do for a month. The situation was tenuous. The group hadn’t made it past the first round of proposals before the rules changed. They risked losing credibility with the community whose support they depended on.

“That was a blow to us as well as our partners,” says forester Dan Seggotta. “It was less than we were expecting under the pilot program.”

The new rules blocked foresters from using restoration funds to plan future stewardship contracts — restricting their ability to build momentum.

Basin residents saw that local foresters were on their side. Group members realized that politics would keep on changing, but the Siuslaw wouldn’t — unless they made it. They refocused on restoring public and private land, shelving their grander plans for a better political climate. Their work started to pay off.

A revolution blossomed on the ground. Instead of marking trees, foresters trusted logging contractors to cut the right ones, saving $60,000 a year in paint and labor. Oregon Wild, formerly opposed to logging on public land, helped design timber sales instead of blocking them. Logging profits financed the restoration of salmon habitat. Environmentalists worked with timber giants like Georgia-Pacific instead of fighting them; the biggest challenge wasn’t stopping loggers from cutting too many trees, but getting enough timber companies involved to make the plan work.

Instead of marking trees, foresters trusted logging contractors to cut the right ones, saving $60,000 a year in paint and labor.

Restoration knit the group together, but road building threatened to pull its work apart. The Misery Thin, a stand of scrawny forty-year-old Douglas-firs crowding a knife-edged slope in the Siuslaw National Forest, looked like an ideal stewardship sale. Given room, Conifers grow quickly, but only during their first eighty years. Thinned in time, the stand would rapidly mature and someday become old growth. If not, it might never grow big trees and could weaken and succumb to disease or catch fire and burn.

But the Misery Thin had a catch. In order to get at the stand, the group had to build a new road. Forest roads often trigger landslides in the Coast Range, something the Siuslaw National Forest had seen more than its share of. Environmentalists usually fight roads with the same ferocity they fight clear-cuts. The group wanted to close roads, not build them. Members questioned whether building new roads would compromise their mission.

The State Department of Forestry, obligated by law to replace a washed-out road, could have built a road and sold the timber the old way. Valuing the group’s input, foresters asked for their support.

The group realized it could build an expensive, environmentally sound road or give up Misery Thin and risk the results of a regular forest road, which could lead to more landslides. It chose to build. It was a defining moment for the group members; they realized that carefully planned roads, like selective thinning, could be tools for forest restoration. The Siuslaw National Forest employees’ faith in the process bound the group and its allies together even more tightly.

“It has really paid dividends in getting community support,” Seggotta says.

Now, ignoring the rain, members of the group surveying the Misery Thin imagine the forest it will become after logging. The remaining trees will grow majestic, their branches once again interlacing in a protective canopy. The animals that build their homes in old growth will return to nest in snags left by loggers. Beneath the forest, mycorrhizae will spread, supporting the forest’s nutrition cycles. The thickly graveled Misery Road should soak up moisture and prevent mudslides. If the group continues, it can restore the Siuslaw National Forest and rebuild their community.

But to do so they need allies. The Forest Service is plagued by lawsuits and loses money on most timber sales. The group members are helping turn the Siuslaw National Forest into a profitable, lawsuit-free national forest. Now they want to spread their homegrown revolution across timber country — changing the environmental stereotype from one of conflict to one of cooperation. If they succeed — if they stitch restoration forestry into the fabric of timber country — they could prevent political shifts from changing the rules again and maybe even regain the power to fund community revitalization projects.

The group is helping with other collaborative efforts statewide, including the Alsea Stewardship Group, Sustainable Northwest, and Rural Voices for Community Conservation. Organizations such as Cascadia Wildlands Project in nearby Eugene, tired of conflict and gridlock, are using the Siuslaw National Forest as a guide for their own restoration efforts.

“We’re out there helping people use the authority and learn about it,” Sundstrom says. “We wanted to get other people up to speed so they would hit the same problems with the authority that we did, so we would have a critical mass push for change and improvement.”