NE Washington sets pace to save forests
REPUBLIC -- Just over 100,000 of our state's 6.5 million residents live in four wide-open northeast Washington counties that extend from the Cascade Crest to the Idaho border.
They've endured city dwellers' jokes, fueled by county commissioners' malapropisms and the tiny minority of militia activists who watch for black helicopters and United Nations infiltrators. George H.W. Bush made his lone 1992 re-election campaign foray into Washington for a speech in Colville demonizing the Endangered Species Act.
Lately, however, locals here have become examples for us all and are national pacesetters in laying aside feuds, putting heads together and figuring how forest preservation can live alongside a forest economy.
"We've come out of our dugouts and are exchanging lineup cards at home plate, while the Forest Service is still out in left field," joked Russ Vaagen, vice president at his family's Colville mill, where Bush spoke in 1992.
As he sat down in the Vaagen Bros. boardroom on Monday, veteran Republic-based environmental activist Tim Coleman noted that he was due back twice for meetings later in the week.
"When I describe Russ and other timber people as our friends, I get slight, unmistakable looks of suspicion from the feds," said Coleman, who is with Conservation Northwest.
It wasn't so long ago, in 2002, when Vaagen Bros. closed its mill in Republic and Coleman was fielding death threats over the phone. A local restaurant put a sign in its window that he was not welcome on the premises.
A little more than five years later, a Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition -- composed of historic foes -- has come up with a blueprint for the 1.1 million-acre Colville National Forest.
It would set aside more than 300,000 acres as designated wilderness, protecting dry, old-growth forests of Ponderosa pine and interior rain forests of Western red cedar ... and the rich wildlife habitat of rounded 7,000-foot peaks dotted with small lakes.
A slightly larger chunk of the national forest, closer to towns, would be "responsible management areas" producing a sustainable flow of timber with thinning that would reduce the risk of out-of-control wildfires.
Continue reading this article from the Seattle P-I:
NE Washington sets pace to save forests
