Colville National Forest Centennial
May 2007

Forest Management and the Human Element
by Rick Brazell, Forest Supervisor, Colville National Forest

For 100 years now, the Colville National Forest has existed bringing fulfillment to the many hikers, hunters, fisherman, loggers, miners, gatherers, recreationalists and others that have cared to enter. What will the next 100 years look like, and, maybe more importantly, how will that be determined? It would be safe to say that most of the 150 national forests have been and are currently managed in the traditional way of government experts suggesting projects, doing the planning, and then implementing and monitoring the impacts. Public participation is encouraged in a multitude of ways from letters to e-mails to public meetings where comments are captured and evaluated by Forest Service planning specialists. It's a process that resulted in the accomplishment of a lot of good work on the land, but also has been the forum for divisiveness of interests, as opposing groups have individually tried to gain favor with Forest Service decision-makers for their particular position. Putting the decision-maker in the middle in many cases creates winners and losers, followed by appeals and litigation of decisions.

The Colville National Forest has embarked on a new journey in management where the human element is being merged with the scientific one. In a word, it's called collaboration. It involves encouraging all the often opposing groups and individuals to get together, roll up their sleeves and set down to find common interests. It takes a lot of patience and time, because relationships have to be built and trust has to take seed. Biological and social sciences have both been explored, and the end result has been the enlightenment of all concerned, including the Forest Service. Collaboration processes have been used on numerous fuels and timber projects, on the controversial travel management analysis, and on the Colville's Forest Plan revision.

On the Colville, collaboration is what we do. The public has a new seat, a different seat at the table. This effort to serve the public by getting them to help solve the conflicts is a new way of doing business that the agency has embraced. The Colville, along with the Allegany National Forest in Pennsylvania and the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in California have been selected as "Proof of Concept" forests. These three forests have been given the task of establishing and testing a new business model for the Forest Service. This new model will encompass collaboration to a high level and will emphasis stability in the communities we serve. It offers a flexible budgeting system that is geared to be measured on producing favorable outcomes on the land rather than outputs. It's a model where the resource needs on the land determine the budget instead of the budget allocated determining the actions on the land. And more importantly, the public who really own the federal lands, gets to play a vital role in helping to determine the forest's future.

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