Community collaboration on the Colville

Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition makes good

Conservation Northwest is part of a novel collaborative forestry coalition that has labored together since 2003 to find solutions for people and wildlife on the Colville National Forest. The successful coalition includes timber mill owners (including Vaagen Bros. Lumber Company), conservationists (including Conservation Northwest), government workers, contract loggers, and many others. Together we have moved from controversy to common ground for the forest.

Origins of the coalition

In 2002, several local leaders, met in the Colville City Council chambers to hammer out fundamental agreements that became the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition. Those leaders were 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. The coalition started by establishing areas of common agreement—rather than areas of disagreement—and applying those standards to decision making:  principles of good forestry, old-growth forest restoration, and wilderness protection.

What all parties today still share is the desire to find collaborative solutions that restore damaged forests, protect homes and communities from wildfire, support timber and recreation economies, and protect habitat for wildlife in and around the Colville National Forest.

Forging a novel plan

What the Coalition has forged through successful collaboration is a novel management proposal for the Colville National Forest that balances forest restoration with working forests and wilderness protection.

Collaborative members promote projects with broad public support. All agree that controversial logging practices such as clearcutting, logging of old-growth trees, or logging in roadless areas are not acceptable. Small diameter wood is the catch word of the day.

Working together has brought common ground among people of many different stripes. And working together has brought success, for example, the Coalition's cooperative Quartzite Timber Sale, just an hour north of Spokane, brings second-growth logs to a local mill, while safeguarding the 5,000-acre Quartzite roadless area and its old-growth stands of western red cedar, fir, and pine.