Crafting compromise: Despite widely disparate views, members of collaborative have come up with series of proposals that are headed to Washington, D.C.

Members of the Clearwater Basin Collaborative are testing the trust, respect and friendships they have built with one another during the past two years.

And it's not through touchy-feely exercises. Instead they are each taking what logger Greg Danly calls a leap of faith, agreeing to projects and principles that sometimes go against everything they stand for.

Loggers, county commissioners and all-terrain-vehicle riders are agreeing to support new wilderness areas and protecting streams and rivers with wild and scenic designation. Environmentalists are signing off on logging projects, endorsing motorized trails and supporting the notion that counties deserve compensation for the nontaxable federal lands within their borders.

Although they get along well, the commitments they are making are difficult, sometimes frustrating and each knows some of the things they endorse will not be popular with their constituents. Supporting wilderness is not the way to guarantee re-election for commissioners in Idaho and Clearwater counties. Greasing the wheels for increased logging does not speak to the people who fund environmental organizations. Members of motorized recreation groups do not pay dues and volunteer for trail projects so their representatives can help make sure some places will never see the tracks of a motorcycle or ATV.

They are each betting the mutual back-scratching they are doing will pay dividends that allow them and their supporters to overlook their philosophical betrayal.

"It's all about trying to get enough for everybody so everyone is satisfied. That is what collaboratives do and not sacrifice our principles, that is where we are at now," said Scott Stouder of Riggins, a representative of Trout Unlimited.

If it all works according to a rough plan, Idaho's Clearwater Basin could see five new wilderness areas and about a half-dozen new wild and scenic river sections, county governments and schools could be more financially secure, the timber industry will cut more federal timber and recreationists of all stripes will have more amenities. That is the basic outline of their plan.

"All we want is everything," said Danly, of Empire Lumber.

His comment reflects that it is early in the process, that the solutions the group have come up with will surely be pared down and that harder choices lie ahead. But he and others are optimistic and believe in the process some have dubbed "the new way to manage public lands."

Draft plan gets first look in D.C.

Representatives of the group will be in Washington, D.C., this week meeting with members of Congress, other interest groups and leaders of the U.S. Forest Service. They are seeking feedback on a list of legislative and administrative ideas they have come up with. The trade-offs are designed to protect both the land and the economy of the Clearwater Basin. In the nation's capital they hope to learn what is possible, and the group is far from producing a final product.

But the D.C. package shows the sort of things the group hopes to accomplish - the compromises that hold promise in breaking a decades-long cold war between different factions interested in national forest management.

There are four subcommittees to the group: rural economies, land allocation, landscape health and recreation. Each has a set of recommendations.

The land allocation subcommittee has endorsed five new wilderness areas, two of which have not previously been recommended in the Clearwater or Nez Perce National Forest plans. They are the Great Burn area in the Upper Lochsa Basin, the Mallard Larkins Pioneer Area between the North Fork Clearwater and St. Joe rivers, and additions to the existing Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area. Recommended for the first time is the eastern half of the Bighorn Weitas inventoried roadless area on the Clearwater Forest and the east side of the Meadow Creek roadless area on the Nez Perce Forest.

Potential new wilderness areas remain one of the most controversial and politically charged elements of the collaborative's proposal. The land allocation committee has endorsed the five areas but the larger group has not, voting instead to say it endorses the idea of new wilderness. It chose not to name the five areas in the package going to Washington, D.C., for feedback.

Besides new wilderness areas and wild and scenic river designations, the land allocation subcommittee has endorsed the idea of making a large chunk of the Clearwater Forest a national recreation area. No boundaries have been proposed but the area would include much of the nonwilderness roadless areas north of the Selway River. Timber harvest would be allowed in some but not all places, as would motorized recreation.

"One of the benefits is putting the Clearwater on the map," said Jonathan Oppenheimer, a member of the collaborative representing the Idaho Conservation League. "When you look at a map of Idaho, the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area and the Sawtooth National Recreation Area jump out at you. It helps create more of a destination and attracts funding to support visitor centers, trails and campgrounds that would directly benefit the economy of the region and tie together a lot of the assets of the region, both culturally and historically, with the Lewis and Clark Trail and some of the greatest fishing and hunting and wildland recreation opportunities."

Tax the feds? It's an option

Other key components of the group's plan include finding a way for Clearwater and Idaho counties, both dominated by federal land, to receive money that can't come from traditional private property taxes. Idaho County Commissioner Skip Brandt wants federal lands to be taxed similar to private land. The idea, which emerged from the rural economies subcommittee, would have the federal government pay something akin to taxes based on the number of federal acres within individual counties and on the designation of that land. (See accompanying story.)

Short of the tax equivalency plan being adopted by Congress, members of the rural economies subcommittee also endorsed a package of other alternatives that would supplement counties for search-and-rescue and law enforcement activities carried out on public land, seek funding to expand the Idaho County Airport at Grangeville to accommodate more air traffic for wildland firefighting, funding of biomass plants in Orofino and Elk City, a heavy equipment operator school at Kamiah and a traditional skills school at Elk City that would train people to work with tools required in wilderness areas.

Requests for money would go away if Brandt's tax idea is adopted.

Congress tends to frown on timber sales

The timber side of the package - written by the landscape health subcommittee - is a little more difficult and involves fewer legislative solutions. Congressional staffers have told the group that bills which include fixed numbers of acres to be harvested or board feet to be cut are tough to get through Congress. So the group is looking at ways to make sure the Forest Service can produce timber sales. For instance, there is a proposal that would allow forests to retain receipts from traditional and stewardship timber sales and use the money for things such as future project planning under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Bill Higgins of the Idaho Forest Group at Grangeville said there are two primary barriers to more timber sales: lack of money for planning and procedural problems such as lawsuits.

"We often hear (from the Forest Service) we would have done more if we had more money. What we are looking at is trying to create a self-sufficiency opportunity here where we are able to fund the critical function, which would be the NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) planning process."

Timber sales are often blocked by administrative appeals and lawsuits. Higgins would like the collaborative to create what he calls "a blueprint of the forest." It is similar to a forest plan. But instead of the agency deciding where harvest can happen, collaborative members would tell the agency where they would accept harvest projects and areas where timber sales are likely to be challenged. The agency would still have to follow laws covering things like leaving sufficient old-growth timber on the landscape and protecting riparian areas and water quality. Logging would be concentrated in areas of the forest that already have roads.

"I hope we can find enough consensus agreement in the roaded country to grow the (timber) program over what it has been in recent years," he said. "I'm a little afraid we are going to find so many barriers it may squash what we really can do."

The blueprint envisions the collaborative group staying together into the future and commenting on the agency's timber projects. Higgins said solving the timber and governmental funding problems are essential if wilderness and other ideas are to gain support.

"When you look at this thing in the big picture, in order for folks like me to stand up and support wilderness and more land protection, you have to solve two big problems. You have to solve the timber problem and the local government problem," he said. "If we could actually pull that off you will see folks like me stand in support of land-protection measures folks like Jonathan (Oppenheimer) and Brad (Brooks of the Wilderness Society) are seeking. It's my honest belief that those other two need to come first and we have a high degree of confidence we are actually going to solve those issues."

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Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273.