Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities: An Emerging Paradigm for Natural Resource-Dependent Communities?

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Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities:An Emerging Paradigm for NaturalResource-Dependent Communities?Erin Clover Kelly a & John C. Bliss aa Department of Forest Resources , Oregon State University ,Corvallis, Oregon, USAPublished online: 08 Jun 2009.

To cite this article: Erin Clover Kelly & John C. Bliss (2009) Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities: AnEmerging Paradigm for Natural Resource-Dependent Communities?, Society & Natural Resources: AnInternational Journal, 22:6, 519-537, DOI: 10.1080/08941920802074363

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Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities: AnEmerging Paradigm for Natural

Resource-Dependent Communities?

ERIN CLOVER KELLY AND JOHN C. BLISS

Department of Forest Resources, Oregon State University, Corvallis,Oregon, USA

Since Kaufman and Kaufman’s seminal 1946 study examining the relationshipbetween forests and communities, forest and community paradigms have shiftedfrom (1) utilitarian views that stressed community stability and sustained yieldharvests, to (2) ecosystem management and community resilience, to, we posit,(3) a new paradigm of forest and community health. The healthy forests, healthycommunities paradigm both builds upon and departs from older paradigms. Thisarticle presents a case study of a small, resource-dependent community in easternOregon to illustrate the meanings and policy implications of this emerging paradigm.

Keywords case study, community capacity, forest health

At one time, park-like forests of giant, vanilla-scented ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa)blanketed the hills and valleys of Wallowa County, Oregon (Langston 1995; Figure 1).Today, most of the large ponderosa pines are gone, and many stands are clogged withinsect- and disease-prone trees that grow in dense thickets. These landscape-widechanges occurred through a combination of cultural, political, and economic forces thatled to certain management decisions; these activities on the land, combined with under-lying ecological processes, created the conditions we see today. The forests of WallowaCounty are now susceptible to historically atypical, large-scale fires that threatenhuman lives and property. Wallowa County once supported a thriving timber industrywith a number of local mills; most of that industry has disappeared from the county.

Rural communities generally have steadily declined in well-being since at leastthe 1970s (Stauber 2001). Urban and suburban America have witnessed increasedwealth and political power, while many rural communities have experienced growingpoverty and instability (Stauber 2001; RSST 1993). For amenity-rich areas likeWallowa County, an exodus of working-class families and educated youth and aninflux of wealthy retirees and second-home buyers have changed communitycapacity and social connections (Hunter et al. 2005). Places like Wallowa Countyare grappling with changing identities as their economies shift from natural resourcedependency to service sector and recreation.

Received 9 March 2007; accepted 28 January 2008.Address correspondence to Erin Clover Kelly, Department of Forest Resources, Oregon

State University, 280 PeavyHall, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Society and Natural Resources, 22:519–537Copyright # 2009 Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0894-1920 print=1521-0723 onlineDOI: 10.1080/08941920802074363

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This article briefly reviews the evolution of prominent forest–communityrelationship paradigms (summarized in Table 1), and posits the recent emergenceof a new paradigm built upon the concept of ‘‘health,’’ with Wallowa County as acase study. We present the views of Wallowa County residents regarding foresthealth, perceived barriers to managing for forest health, connections between foresthealth and community health and capacity, and opportunities for action in the forestthat may contribute to community health. The forest and community paradigms inTable 1 are not completely distinct conceptually or temporally, but rather are expres-sions of prevailing paradigms about the relationship between forests and forest-dependent communities. These paradigms inform policies and dialogue surroundingforests and communities.

Case Study: Wallowa County

Wallowa County, Oregon, provides a contemporary illustration of the dynamics ofthe forest and community health paradigm. Wallowa County occupies a remotecorner of eastern Oregon (Figure 1). Like other rural counties, Wallowa County isstruggling with the transition from a commodity-based to a more diversifiedeconomy, while keeping its ranching and logging heritage.

Methods

Wallowa County was selected for study because (1) forest health is an issue ofwidespread public concern in the county, and (2) the county has earned a nationalreputation for being proactive on the issue, in large part due to the activities of alocal nonprofit community organization, Wallowa Resources. Wallowa Countycould be considered an ‘‘extreme’’ (Flyvbjerg 2006) or ‘‘unique’’ (Yin 2003) case,presenting an opportunity to study a phenomenon of emerging significance.

Figure 1. Wallowa County, Oregon.

520 E. C. Kelly and J. C. Bliss

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Table 1. Dominant forest management and community paradigms in U.S. history

EraForest–community relationship

paradigm Illustrative policy

Pre-1900s:Exploitation

Resource exploitation and rapidEuro-American settlement. Forests are an inexhaustibleresource

. Cut-and-run practices predominate

. Boomtowns and unstable patternsof community development

. Homestead Act(1862)

. Timber andStone Act (1878)

1900–1985:Stability

Sustained yield and communitystability. Silviculture is the solution to theperceived threat of a ‘‘timberfamine’’

. Forest management focuses onefficiency, maximizingproductivity, and timber utilization

. Continuous flows of timber createstable communities

. Sustained YieldAct (1944)

. Multiple UseSustained YieldAct (1960)

. National ForestManagement Act(1974)

1985–Present:Resilience

Ecosystem management andcommunity resilience. Declining biodiversity andperceived forest degradation spur ashift toward managing forecological processes, historicconditions, and variability acrossmultiple temporal and spatial scales

. Communities need to be resilient inthe face of inevitable, but oftenunexpected, economic, social, andecological changes

. Public participation is emphasized

. NationalEnvironmentalPolicy Act (1969)

. EndangeredSpecies Act(1973)

. Northwest ForestPlan (1994)

. National ForestManagement ActRegulations(2000)

. National FirePlan (1995)

1995–Present:Health

Healthy forests, healthy communities. Active management is needed toaddress the ‘‘forest health crisis,’’e.g., to restore forests susceptible tohistorically atypical, large-scale fireand insect and disease infestations

. Forest restoration and stewardshiprequires local community capacity,and provides communitieseconomic and cultural foundation

. Healthy ForestsRestoration Act(2003)

Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities 521

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The first author spent 212 months in Wallowa County in the summer of 2004,conducting interviews with 34 purposively selected local residents and participatingin community meetings and activities. Wallowa Resources provided an initial list ofindividuals active in local community development or forest management and policy.Following a snowball sampling strategy (Yin 2003), these individuals were asked tosuggest additional interviewees. Interviewees included 12 private forest managersand=or landowners, 10 Forest Service or other government agency employees, 2local environmental advocates, 2 members of the Nez Perce Tribe, and 8 other com-munity members, including local outfitters, public services employees, teachers, andone doctor. Some interviewees fit into several categories.

Following the process of theoretical sampling (Strauss and Corbin 1990; Robson2002), initial interviews were open-ended and the researcher was looking for abreadth of opinions. As interviews progressed, analysis proceeded concurrently,and interviews became more focused. Interviews took place in both outdoor (forest)and indoor (office) locations. Interviews lasted between 45 minutes and 5 hours.Participants signed a consent form that granted confidentiality, and were assignedpseudonyms.

Historic Forest and Community Paradigms

Exploitation: Pre-1900s and Early 1900s

Before the arrival of Euro-Americans, the Wallowa Band of the Nez Perce tribe livedin the Wallowa Valley. Migratory hunters and gatherers, the Nez Perce WallowaBand used fire as a management tool across the landscape. Fire encouraged grassregeneration for desired ungulates such as elk and deer, improved hunting andmobility through the forest, and promoted certain vegetative species (Pyne 1982;Robbins and Wolf 1994). The relationship between the Nez Perce and the landwas one of co-evolution, involving adaptive human behavior that favored certainplant and animal species and ecological processes (Redman 1999).

The Nez Perce lived in forest stands that fit the classic interior West description(e.g., Agee 2002; Youngblood 2001): predominantly large, widely spaced trees withan abundant understory of herbs that was routinely burned away, keeping coarsewoody debris levels low. Old-growth ponderosa pine-dominated forests composeda majority of the landscape (CEIPNW 2000). A mosaic of different stand structureswas maintained across the landscape because of disturbances and dynamic forces:fires, staggered tree establishment, insects, floods, and windthrow (Johnson 1994).

Most of the Nez Perce lands, including present-day Wallowa County, wereceded to the United States after the contentious Treaty of 1863. The Nez PerceWallowa Band was forcibly driven from Wallowa County in 1877. The nativepopulation was replaced with white settlers, who were enabled by the policies ofthe United States that encouraged the conversion and, often, exploitation of land(Wiebe et al. 1999).

Forestry, at this time, was largely opportunistic, with the largest and mostvaluable trees harvested as land was made available via transportation links andexpansion of white settlement. Forest industry was a force that utilized resourcesin a steadily westward cut-and-run pattern that left millions of acres dramaticallyaltered (Whitney 1987). Human populations followed employment opportunitiesin the West, often resulting in boom-and-bust, ephemeral towns (Robbins 1994).


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Some federal policies facilitated these practices, including the Homestead Act(1862) and the Timber and Stone Act (1878), which allowed timber companies accessto vast acreages, often through fraudulent means (Puter and Stevens 1907). Settle-ment occurred rapidly, with industry-owned logging camps established as timberstands were opened up. One such camp in Wallowa County, Maxville, grew in 1 yearfrom a homestead to a town of 400 residents (Highberger 2001). It closed in 1933,after 10 years of operation.

Stability: 1900–1985

In 1891, with grim warnings of a pending ‘‘timber famine,’’ Congress gave thePresident the authority to establish forest reserves, and the 1897 Organic Act laidout their purposes: to ‘‘preserve and protect the forests’’ and to ‘‘provide a contin-uous supply of timber’’ to U.S. citizens (16 U.S.C. 471 et seq.). When the UnitedStates Forest Service was established in 1905, Gifford Pinchot stated that ‘‘thepermanence of the resources of the reserves is . . . indispensable to continued prosper-ity’’ (Pinchot 1905, 11). Pinchot was an early advocate of silviculture, which was seenas an antidote to the prevailing unsustainable industrial practices. Early argumentsfavoring the establishment of the National Forest system stemmed from the beliefthat professional foresters could maintain perpetual timber supplies, which wouldhelp create permanent communities to work in those forests (Carroll et al. 1989).

The application of silviculture to the Western forests reflected a belief systemthat emphasized utilizing resources, maximizing productivity and efficiency for thebenefit of mankind, and applying generalized principles to the landscape (Langston1995). Silviculturists promoted conversion of stagnant, insect- and disease-riddledold pine forests to vigorous young stands of orderly, managed trees that wouldprovide a predictable flow of timber (Weidman 1921). Further, federal policies ofthe early 20th century supported complete fire suppression because fire was seenas a destructive force (Pyne 1982).

Stable communities, it was believed, would be a natural consequence of theperpetual productivity of these regulated forests. The Sustained Yield Act of 1944was written ‘‘in order to promote the stability . . . of communities . . . through contin-uous supplies of timber’’ (16 U.S.C. x583). Thus, the controlled harvests on publiclands, supplementing the harvests on private lands, would assure local citizens ofa permanent source of employment. The Sustained Yield Act was the first explicitacknowledgment of the link between forest management and community stability(Schallau 1989).

The Sustained Yield Act was never fully implemented, but its core precept wasechoed in later Forest Service policies, including the National Forest ManagementAct of 1976, which emphasized sustained yield forestry and directed the Secretaryof Agriculture to ‘‘consider the economic stability of communities whose economiesare dependent on such national forest materials’’ (16 U.S.C. 1600 x14(e(1)(C)).

Community stability assumes an isolated, static state, but communities, likeforests, are inherently dynamic and embedded within a world that presents distur-bances and challenges (Lee 1987). Stability came neither to the forests nor the com-munities that depended on them. In western Oregon, for example, mill closures andcommunity decline were evident in the 1980s, largely because of a volatile global tim-ber market (Schallau 1989). While sustained yield practices could maintain a stableflow of timber, they could not prevent mechanization, consolidation, globalization,


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ecological changes, and the exportation of manufacturing jobs overseas, all ofwhich have contributed to forest-dependent community instability (Robbins 1988;Weeks 1990). In the forests of the inland West, the union of sustained yield withcommunity stability had created mills that were highly dependent on public timbersales, prompting some forest economists to promote increased public lands harveststo maintain mills and jobs in forest-dependent communities (Carroll 1995), whileenvironmentalists criticized sustained yield because of management emphasis oncommodity production (Blatner et al. 1995).

The removal of fire created a more structurally homogenized landscape, withdensely packed stands of shade-tolerant trees (Agee 1993). This resulted in changedforest communities and fuel ladders that can carry flames into the canopy. Manyforests of the inland West, including those of Wallowa County, now have densestands of dead and dying trees, susceptible to large-scale, historically atypical fires(Quigley et al. 1996).

The paradigm of a stable community dependent on a well-managed forestadhering to sustained yield principles was interrupted by unanticipated social andecological changes that called into question the resilience of both the timber-dependent communities and the forests themselves.

Resilience: 1985–Present

Natural resource policies such as the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 andthe Endangered Species Act of 1974 gave the general public the ability to challengepublic forest management. Conflicting objectives for forests led to declining timberharvest levels on public lands and contributed to mill closures across eastern Oregon(Barney and Worth 2001). The sea change in public forest management came in1991, when a consortium of environmental groups filed a lawsuit to protect thediminishing old-growth habitat of the endangered northern spotted owl. Thus beganthe ‘‘spotted owl wars’’ in the Pacific Northwest, resulting in the 1994 NorthwestForest Plan and a nationwide reassessment of public land management. The North-west Forest Plan signaled the adoption of ecosystem management as a guiding forestand community paradigm, and forest plans began to address the role of complexecological processes that had previously been excluded from management.

Ecosystem management relies on holistic management and the reintroduction ofecological processes to retain viable populations of species; it is a movement awayfrom the utilitarian focus of previous management (Grumbine 1994). Ecosystemmanagement emphasizes resilience, which is based on the role of disturbance insystems, and the ability of systems to reorganize following disturbances (Gundersonand Holling 2002). Sociologists, too, gravitated toward ecosystem management, andthe ability of resilient communities to adapt and to maintain well-being in thecontext of a changing world (Beckley and Korber 1994). Some believe that ecosys-tem management ‘‘has carried the most hopes for finding some coherent andcomprehensive means for systematically fitting human demand within biophysicaland sociopolitical realities’’ (Machlis et al. 1997, 348).

Ecosystem management ties resilient communities to resilient ecosystems. Berkesand Folke (1998) demonstrate links between natural resource management thatincorporates disturbance and resilience and nearby human communities. Folkeet al. (2002) emphasize the dynamic nature of social and ecological systems, andthe importance of resilience in both: ‘‘management that builds resilience can sustain


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social-ecological systems in the face of surprise, unpredictability, and complexity’’(Folke et al. 2002, 438). Resilience theories challenge both the equilibrium views ofecology (Scoones 1999) and the historical emphasis on economic optimization(Chapin and Whiteman 1998), and they suggest that the efforts of forest managersto remove and control forest disturbances led to the systems’ collapse. Likewise,efforts to promote community stability through sustained yield led to economic sys-tems that were vulnerable to collapse in the face of unexpected change (Schallau 1989).

Ecosystem management continues to be a guiding paradigm for forest andcommunity policies and practices. However, many of its early promises have goneunfulfilled. As an example, the Northwest Forest Plan has become inflexible in itsapplication and has led to management timidity on publicly owned lands (Thomas2003). Another example is fire suppression policy: since 1995, the Forest Servicehas called for reintegrating fire as an ecological process, with proactive fuels reduc-tion and fire reintroduction (Stephens and Ruth 2005). Yet fire suppression hasremained its primary fire management activity (Stephens and Ruth 2005; Dombecket al. 2004). The large wildfires that have beset Western forests in recent years haveprompted another paradigm, built upon the notions of ecosystem management: for-est and community health. The paradigm is an outgrowth of ecosystem management,but it has several distinguishing characteristics, including an emphasis on activemanagement and the role of community capacity in forest restoration.

An Emergent Paradigm: Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities

We propose that the healthy forests, healthy communities paradigm, which linksforest restoration and community capacity, has emerged as a result of large-scalewildfires and rural community decline in the western United States. We give a briefoverview of the paradigm’s core components then explore our interview data todescribe forest and community health from the perspectives of residents of WallowaCounty.

The health paradigm recognizes that forests are currently unhealthy, but that acure is possible. The symptoms of illness in Western forests include historicallyatypical large-scale, stand-replacing wildfires, insect irruptions, the spread ofinvasive species, and the diminution of native species (Quigley et al. 1996). Curesare being debated, but may rest largely in attempts to reintroduce ecologicalprocesses and mimic historic forest structures through management tools such asforest thinning and prescribed fire (Agee 2002; Quigley et al. 1996).

These projects may bring employment to rural communities that are surroundedby public lands and that have a historic natural resource dependency. In the PacificNorthwest, resource-dependent communities are economically vulnerable (Phillips1999), and isolated communities have seen higher unemployment and lower wagesthan urban counties (Helvoigt et al. 2003). Healthy forests legislation promotesthe link between communities and forests; the subtitle of the Healthy Forests Initia-tive of 2002 was ‘‘An Initiative for Wildfire Prevention and Stronger Communities’’(Bush 2002).

Healthy Forests Policies

A series of policy directives has addressed forest health. In 2000, President Clintoncommissioned an analysis of the large-scale wildfires of that year (Babbitt and


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Glickman 2000). That report and a set of corresponding federal agency strategiesform what is known as the National Fire Plan (NFP). The NFP emphasized forestrestoration, hazardous fuels reduction, and community assistance. The plan wassupplemented by the Healthy Forests Initiative of 2002, which created tools toimplement fuels reduction projects in an expedited manner (Bush 2003).

In 2003, Congress passed the Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA), whichaimed to improve forest conditions by promoting active forest management, particu-larly fuels reduction and insect and disease control. HFRA deals explicitly with ruralcommunities by providing incentives for locally created Community Wildfire Protec-tion Plans, facilitating collaboration, and funding small-tree utilization projects.Stewardship contracting also became feasible in 2003 (Public Law 108–7 x323).

What is a Healthy Forest?

In interviews with a broad spectrum of Wallowa County residents, a commondefinition of a healthy forest emerged that includes (1) historically appropriate foreststructure and functions; (2) biological diversity; and (3) economic productivity,including access for local community members. We describe each of these compo-nents using the words of Wallowa County residents. Residents were not promptedwith ‘‘forest health’’ language; rather, it was a term that was used repeatedly whenreferring to forest conditions. While forest health is a metaphor, likely created withinthe forest industry to suggest connections between the medical and forestry profes-sions, it is now a commonly used phrase.

Healthy Forest StructureThe most visible symptoms of forest health problems in the county are the manydense, stagnant thickets of trees, including many dead trees. Many forest managersand owners spoke of healthy forests in terms of stocking levels and tree spacing,reflecting their awareness of the dense stands that are a legacy of Euro-American firesuppression and cutting the largest trees:

I do think that we high graded for years and years and years in thiscountry, cut the best and leave the worst, and I think that’s been to thedetriment of the resource. [Joshua, community forest non-profit organi-zation worker]

Proper spacing was regarded as essential to maintaining productivity andencouraging tree growth. Whether to reestablish more historical conditions, or fortimber production purposes, growing trees quickly was seen as desirable. Mostinterviewees pointed to overcrowded stand conditions as harmful to productivity.A well-spaced stand contributes to tree vigor:

If they’re evenly spaced, to where there’s enough water and nutrients inthe soil to support them, they grow, and they grow healthy . . . [They] needto be thinned out, if you’re going to grow big trees. [Michael, indepen-dent logger]

The problems with tree density are tied to a perceived need to manage. Intervie-wees overwhelmingly agreed that current conditions on the landscape meant that


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humans should take responsibility for forest conditions through active management.The perception that many stands had been degraded by previous managementpractices, particularly those driven exclusively by economics, was very strong. Butmost forest managers expressed a desire to change conditions and to work con-sciously toward a forest that met long-term objectives. Adam, who had workedfor the forest industry, described several instances in the past where he had ‘‘ripped’’the ground or in some way degraded the land. In his retirement he’d bought his ownland, where he said he intended to ‘‘grow old-growth,’’ to be achieved by removingsuppressed trees. Most interviewees argued for active forest management:

We should be thinning the thickets and cutting the worst stuff and leavingthe best stuff, so that over time you would simply have a better forestthan you started with. [Blake, Forest Service employee]

Past forest management practices likely contributed to poor forest health today,which Ned, a logger who had worked for the timber industry, acknowledged.

They just cut the areas too hard . . .When I was 18 years old, I didn’tknow at the time but things were being done that should never have beendone. Skidding down creek beds, skidding down on a 40% slope.

Active forest management does not guarantee a return to historical conditions;changes due to human and natural disturbances cannot be easily overcome. Manyinterviewees indicated that changing social expectations also impeded a return tohistorical conditions. As Rex, a Forest Service employee, said, ‘‘We’ve got newroads, new weeds, new desires for the forest.’’ Post-settlement human interactionshave affected the lands of Wallowa County in profound ways. Even if it were ecolo-gically possible to attain historical conditions, societal changes—for example, housesin the wildland–urban interface and clean air regulations—probably prohibit this.

Though historical conditions cannot be mimicked precisely, previous forestconditions can serve as reference points. Interviewees generally indicated that therole for foresters was to rectify current conditions through active management.

We’ve been hands-on for so long . . . you don’t take a kid who’s in themidst of growing or a troubled kid and say, oh my God, I’ve beenmanaging you wrong for all these years, I’m just going to walk awayand let you finish it off. [Hannah, soil scientist]

The presence of a particular type of active management was seen as necessary torestore forest health.

Leave out the word logging . . . talk about forest management. Then wehave a different approach. Management. What could be done to thisforest to manage it? It could improve if we thinned it. [Marcus, retiredForest Service employee]

Management that included small-diameter tree removal was supported by nearlyall interviewees; they recognized, however, that the economic impediments ofharvesting small-diameter trees make this very difficult to implement.


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Biological DiversityThe second most frequently mentioned component of a healthy forest wasdiversity. Historically, Wallowa County forests were ‘‘simplified’’ through harvestprescriptions and fire suppression practices that reduced biodiversity (Quigley et al.1996; Langston 1995). But this trend has been changing, especially among smallwoodland owners. One forest owner, Paul, went so far as to retain pockets ofdwarf mistletoe-infected Douglas-fir trees as habitat. Paul pointed to a fewmistletoe-infected trees that provided a nesting platform for great gray owls. Inhis management philosophy, ‘‘everything we do in forest practices should beconsidering diversity.’’

A number of interviewees stressed the contribution of species diversity toeconomic resilience. Mitchell, who belongs to a conservation group, said that itwas good to preserve a number of tree species in a stand, as well as different sizeand age classes:

If you have that diversity, you’ll always have the most productive of thespecies that are still growing, and the less productive, you can take. Whenyou have diversity in a forest, you have options, and opportunities. Whenyou simply strip it off, you have nothing.

Paul referred to this as ‘‘hedging’’ and said that if all the trees of one speciesdeveloped an insect or disease problem, they could be selectively removed and theremaining trees could be left in the stand.

Landscape-wide diversity was the focus of several interviewees, who saidthat heterogeneous forest structure may be duplicated by human management.Many managers were concerned about the ability of stands to withstand insectand disease infestations and fires. Without forest management, most intervieweesindicated that large-scale wildfires would occur, resulting in further homogenizationof the landscape:

You’ve got to make it what mother nature had it. What happens whenyou do nothing . . .mother nature comes through with fire and it becomesall the same. It’s not a mosaic. [Blake, Forest Service employee]

Forest health projects should not only address the risks of fuels buildup andinsects, but the health of the ecosystem, another point of agreement. Michael, theindependent logger, said:

[Forestry] doesn’t pertain to cutting trees, it’s keeping them healthy. Ifyou have healthy trees, you’ve got wildlife, you’ve got clean water, you’vegot grasses, you’ve got shrubs, you’ve got the whole ecosystem. You’vegot ants; ants are very important. So you have to create a habitat forthem, so I leave logs out there for them.

Cognizance of complex ecosystem relationships points to some of the benefits ofadaptive, place-based management. Managers who have watched the conditions onthe land change have made connections between long-term processes and conditionsand may care for the forest more adaptively than centralized, command-and-controlmanagement.


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Economic Productivity and Forest AccessEconomic value was the third component of forest health most frequently cited byinterviewees; it was seen as an incentive to keep people, and management, on theland. As the mills and forest jobs in the county disappear, and it becomes moreand more difficult to profit from timberlands, those lands may lose their functionas ‘‘working lands.’’ It may become more profitable to sell lands for residential orrecreational development than to hold onto them for forest management. Neil, aforest laborer on private property, said:

People portray forestry as a dirty industry and tourism as a cleanindustry, there’s nothing dirtier than tourism. Totally consumptive anddoesn’t produce anything. There’s nothing greener than [this type of]forestry. You get wood for buildings . . . and it’s good for morel [mush-rooms] and wildlife. [Neil]

Forests are only economically valuable if they are accessible. Access is definedby Ribot and Peluso (2003, 153) as ‘‘the ability to derive benefits from things.’’Access to land can be described as a continuum of rights, from gathering firewoodto the right to sell the land (Agrawal and Ostrom 2001). Accessibility also includesdecision-making power, or local involvement, often described by interviewees as a‘‘seat at the table.’’

Interviewees indicated that governmental, environmental, and industrial groupswere external forces that had affected local forest access as well as harvest levels andmanagement decisions, which in turn affect economic and ecological conditionswithin the county.

First, legislation and regulation (‘‘rules’’) constrained management decisions.Particular rules were sometimes seen as beneficial, but most were described asarbitrary and unnecessarily complex. One example of a so-called harmful rule wasthe Eastside Screen, which prohibits the cutting of any tree over 21 inches indiameter.

The Forest Service has a rule, don’t cut any trees over 21 inches. Thatdoesn’t make sense. It’s not biologically sound . . . you can’t manage astand of timber by diameter, that’s the reason the timber is the way itis now. Because they did diameter cuts—they cut all the big ones.[Andrew, industrial forest manager]

A common perception was that rules served to ‘‘lock out’’ locals from benefitingeconomically on federal lands. However, even those most opposed to rules on publiclands indicated that having no rules was not an option. Michael, for example, spokeat length of the negative effects of arbitrary rules. He then related a story abouthunting in Canada, where he saw a huge clearcut ‘‘five miles square.’’ He said:‘‘That’s no restrictions. So we’ve got to have restrictions.’’

Second, interviewees said that environmental groups blocked access to publiclands. Many residents of Wallowa County identified urban environmentalists as‘‘outsiders’’ who were adversely affecting the forests and communities of the county.While the connection between urban and environmentalist may not be entirelyaccurate, the term ‘‘somebody from New York City’’ was often shorthand for anenvironmentalist. Many interviewees stressed that they were also environmentalists,


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but it was the urban environmentalists who were obstructing management andinterfering in local issues. Most environmentalists were not described as malicious,but ignorant of their effects on the land.

There’s a lot of people that believe that they’re doing the right thing, bydonating money to [environmental groups]. When something’s appealed,it comes back to them and they say, yeah, I donated money and theysucceeded in appealing this. [Michael]

Overall, many interviewees were wary of environmental groups, which may havedisenfranchised many local residents by dismissing local knowledge and practices onthe land through litigation.

Finally, large-scale absentee forest owners restricted local decision making andcontributed to economic uncertainty. This was not a new phenomenon; when onemill closed in 1963, the local newspaper editor said that ‘‘we are face to face withthe realization that we must . . .make some genuine efforts to control the destinyof this county if progress rather than stagnation is to be the tone of tomorrow’’(Coffman 1984, 159). Most interviewees described profit for distant shareholdersas the primary decision-making driver for industrial land management.

What is a Healthy Community?

Interviews illustrated a consistent definition of a healthy community, which included(1) a healthy population structure, (2) a skilled workforce, and (3) high communitycapacity (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. The healthy forests, healthy communities paradigm. Forest and community healthdisplay striking parallels, and are linked through multiple symbiotic relationships.


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Healthy Population StructureRecent out-migration in Wallowa County has resulted in part from mill closures:the county lost over 270 timber-related jobs in the 1990s, about 12% of total employ-ment (Barney and Worth 2001). Melissa, a community forestry worker, said thatchildren are encouraged to get an education in order to get out of the county, ratherthan getting an education in order to stay. Demographic evidence supports the claimthat many younger, able-bodied workers, along with their families, are leaving thecounty: Wallowa County has proportionally far fewer residents who are betweenthe ages of 20 and 39 years than Oregon as a whole, a trend that worsened in the1990s (U.S. Census 2000), and over 25% of in-migrants during the 1990s came inorder to retire (Miller and Slater 1999).

The county’s total population has remained fairly stable, however, because ofthe influx of retirees and second-home buyers. One outcome of this is a loss of theworking middle class, an increase in wealthy newcomers, and a growth of low-income residents who work in the service sector (Stauber 2001). In a survey ofWallowa County citizens, respondents indicated that ‘‘out-migration of youngpeople=families,’’ and ‘‘substitution of service jobs for wood and lumber productsjobs’’ were serious concerns (Steele et al. 2004).

Diversified EconomyDeveloping a more diversified local economy is a prescription often made in thecommunity development literature, particularly in the case of rural naturalresource-dependent communities (e.g., Schallau 1990; RSST 1993; Bliss and Bailey2005). In our interviews, logging and mill work were often described as family-wagejobs, while service industry jobs were not. In Oregon, service sector jobs are generally‘‘low wage’’ (under $10 per hour), while logging and forestry jobs are ‘‘averagewage’’ ($10–$29.99 per hour) (Moore 2005).

While Wallowans recognize the need for new job opportunities, they do notwant to lose the natural resource base of their economy and culture. The forestworkers of Wallowa County are aging and their expertise is rapidly being lost evenas the need for its application to forest restoration is gaining recognition.

Almost everybody I know in the profession, the dirt foresters and loggers, are50 and over and we’re losing those folks. We’re losing that experience, we’relosing that knowledge . . . it’s not something we can get out of a textbook.You’re losing what this land will do. [Andrew, industrial forest manager]

This link to forest health is important. According to the Kentucky essayistWendell Berry, a threatened forest is one without a ‘‘local forest culture and a localforest economy’’ (Berry 1995, 25).

High Community CapacityThe human capital embedded in a skilled forestry workforce is just one element ofcommunity capacity. Community capacity, defined as ‘‘the collective ability ofresidents in a community to respond to external and internal stresses; to createand take advantage of opportunities’’ (Kusel 1996, 369), comes from the residentsthemselves, and residents of Wallowa County have had a remarkable history ofbuilding capacity in order to confront adversity. In the early 1990s, Wallowanswatched the spotted owl wars of western Oregon skeptically. As federal forest


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management changed, residents in Wallowa County who had relied on thecommodity outputs of federal forests worried about their jobs and their economy.In 1994, within an atmosphere of tension and distrust, a local nonprofit communityforestry group formed. It began with a group of people meeting in the back room ofa bakery every month. Melissa, a member of the group, described them as ‘‘[The] 80percent in the middle that really wanted to find resolution and find a new way ofdoing natural resource management.’’

These meetings eventually led to the establishment of Wallowa Resources (WR),which has been actively involved in the elaboration of the healthy forests, healthycommunities paradigm, and in its local implementation. WR has set up a small-diameter mill and various restoration projects for aspen establishment and noxiousweed control. Their work exemplifies a recent effort to create jobs while promotingforest health through beneficial management activities.

Discussion

The case of Wallowa County, Oregon, suggests a new paradigm for framing relation-ships between rural communities and the forests that surround them. Using thelanguage of Wallowa residents, we’ve illustrated key features of this paradigm.Wallowans describe a healthy forest as one that is structurally sound, biologicallydiverse, ecologically and economically productive, and accessible to the community.Similarly, they view a healthy community as one that displays a balanced populationstructure, a diversified economy, and high community capacity (Figure 2). Therelationship is one of symbiosis—the forest is in need of restoration, active manage-ment, and stewardship, care that the community can provide. In turn, the com-munity draws upon the forest for its economic and cultural sustenance.

Wallowa County is not distinct in recognizing these linkages and using thehealth metaphor. Elsewhere in Oregon, the Healthy Forests, Healthy CommunitiesPartnership, a nonprofit network, was formed to produce and market woodproducts resulting from the forest restoration activities of locally owned businessesin the Pacific Northwest. Nationally, the recent creation of the U.S. Endowmentfor Forestry and Communities promises to focus attention on the symbiotic relation-ship of forests and rural communities. The mission of this endowment is to ‘‘advancesystemic, transformative and sustainable change for the health and vitality of thenation’s working forests and forest-reliant communities’’ (U.S. Endowment 2007).At the U.S. Endowment’s ‘‘Strategic Focal Initiatives’’ workshop held in November,2007, the rhetoric of community stability, ecosystem management, and sustainabilitywas augmented with the language of health (personal communication, John Bliss).

Illustrations of this emerging paradigm appear in the forestry literature andshare a number of goals, including restoring forest health, overcoming the jobs-versus-environment debate, building community capacity, and developing a localforest restoration workforce (e.g., Donoghue and Sturtevant 2008; Kusel and Adler2003). The Swan Citizens’ Ad Hoc Committee of Missoula County, Montana, estab-lished in 1990, provides local citizens opportunities to influence forest managementdecisions affecting corporate and public forest lands that sustain the area’s forestindustry (Cestero and Belsky 2003). Residents of Trinity County, California, aregion with a heavily timber-dependent economy, formed the Watershed Researchand Training Center in 1993 to create local jobs and conduct forest restorationprojects on Forest Service lands (Danks 2000). A more formal recognition of


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community-based forestry was achieved in the signing of the Herger–FeinsteinQuincy Library Group Forest Recovery Act in 1998. This management plan focuseson species protection, fire reduction, and sustaining local sawmills, and illustrates theemergence of community-based efforts on federal lands (Davis and King 2001).These projects demonstrate a convergence of concerns for forest health andcommunity wellbeing.

How responsive are existing federal policies to the healthy forests, healthycommunities linkages described here? The Healthy Forests Restoration Actencourages collaboration and community involvement and streamlines decision-making processes, making some project implementation easier. However, currentfederal forest policies have some serious drawbacks for places such as WallowaCounty. First, the Forest Service has terminated a policy of local hiring preferences.Most restoration contracts within the county are currently awarded to nonresidents(Christofferson et al. 2004). The loss of local hiring preferences, combined with anincreased emphasis on competitive contracting in the federal government (WhiteHouse OMB 2002), has favored large, urban-based companies, a practice that canperpetuate a pattern of poverty in rural areas. It is also a missed opportunity forthe federal government to attract human capital and investment to rural areas.

Second, there has been a gradual loss of institutional capacity within federalland management agencies, particularly the U.S. Forest Service. At one point, theForest Service was the largest single employer in the county, with almost 300employees; this number dwindled to about 40 employees in 2003. These losses exem-plify a nationwide trend. With a diminishing budget and employee losses, theagency’s capacity to implement or participate in collaborative efforts has eroded.Funding mechanisms for restoration in the Forest Service are still tied to traditionaltimber-based funding, such as the Knutson Vandenberg Act of 1930, which allowsforests to retain a portion of timber receipts. However, with the decline of timberharvests on federal lands, these funds have decreased significantly, and the ForestService budget has remained stagnant or fallen.

Additionally, fire suppression efforts have siphoned money away from otherprojects. From 1999 to 2003, wildland fire management (including fuels reduction)lost $20 million to fire suppression (GAO 2004).

Finally, the prevailing emphasis on wildland–urban interface (WUI) areas maydiscriminate against rural areas. At least 50% of HFRA appropriations must bespent in WUI areas, thus benefiting places with significant WUIs. However, veryremote areas, including Wallowa County, do not have large areas of WUIs, andyet are often more dependent on federal projects and access to federal lands.

As the forest health crisis deepens and expands, and more acres of forest areconsumed by wildfire, we expect forest health to become an increasingly dominantframe for public debate. As America looks for solutions to the crisis in the forest,the capacity of forest communities to participate will attract increased attention,and the links between healthy forests and healthy communities will be illuminated.We believe this emergent paradigm will have increasing salience in the years ahead.

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Documents

Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities: An Emerging Paradigm for Natural Resource-Dependent Communities?