Community collaboration pays dividends

Conservation Northwest is today part of a novel collaborative forestry coalition that includes timber mill owners (including Vaagen Bros. Lumber Company), conservationists (including Conservation Northwest), government workers, contract loggers, and others. What we share is the desire to find solutions that restore damaged forests, protect homes and communities from wildfire, and protect habitat for wildlife in and around the Colville National Forest. A guiding principle of the  Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition is that our members promote projects that agree to put old-growth forests off the table from logging.

Working together has brought common ground among people of many different stripes. And working together has brought success. On the Quartzite Timber Sale, just an hour north of Spokane, the coalition agreed to a project that brings second-growth logs to a local mill while safeguarding the 5,000-acre Quartzite roadless area and its old-growth red cedar, fir, and pine forest.

Eastern Washington lands involve new tasks and visions, including fire and forest management, timber and recreation economies, and wilderness preservation. This collaborative forestry group holds perhaps the greatest potential to end years of conflict concerning forest management in northeastern Washington. We're doing this by talking and working together with others, finding solutions, and building trust between conservationists and other forest interests.

Origins of the coalition

Russ Vaagen, manager of Vaagen Brothers Lumber, Tim Coleman of Conservation Northwest, consulting forester Maurice Williamson, forester Lloyd McGee, Mike Petersen of The Lands Council, and former Twisp Mayor Jim Doran met in the Colville City Council chambers in May and June of 2002, to hammer out fundamental agreements that became the glue that has made the coalition a durable entity.

From its birth until the present day, the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition has worked to build trust: first, by establishing areas of common agreement—rather than areas of disagreement—and applying those standards to decision-making, including  principles of good forestry, old-growth forest restoration, and wilderness protection.