Collaborative forest proposal gets No. 2 ranking
By Scotta Callister Blue Mountain Eagle | Posted: Tuesday, November 1, 2011 4:51 pm
CANYON CITY - Local forest advocates recently returned from Salt Lake City, Utah, with good news about a proposal for a decade's worth of forest restoration work on the Malheur National Forest.
The proposal, backed by the collaboratives Blue Mountain Forest Partners and the Harney County Collaborative, was one of 26 reviewed by a federal committee at an Oct. 18-20 meeting in Salt Lake City.
Grant County Judge Mark Webb said the proposal came out rated second among the 26 proposals under consideration by the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program advisory committee.
Region 6 had the top three proposals, which Webb said were "far and away" better than the others.
The committee, which advises Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, has recommended the Malheur proposal for funding.
If approved by the secretary and funded by Congress, Webb said, the local area could see another $2.5 million annually for work on the Malheur Forest.
First, however, Congress must appropriate the money - some $40 million - to fully fund the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Act program.
Webb noted the pressure on Congress to cut spending, but he is hopeful that federal decision-makers will recognize this as a situation where funding will create jobs, fuel the local economy and help take care of the environment.
The program, established in 2009, is intended to encourage collaborative, science-based restoration of national forest lands, on a landscape scale while encouraging ecological, economic and social sustainability.
Also making the trip to Utah were attorney Susan Jane Brown of the Blue Mountains Forest Partners and Curt Qual and Roy Walker of the Malheur National Forest staff.
Brown was thrilled with the ranking of the Malheur proposal.
In a blog on the process, she reported that the 14-member committee agreed that the proposal demonstrated strong collaboration, science-based restoration treatments, a well rounded monitoring program and "overall maturity of vision for a resilient forest."
She noted the difficult challenges that come with collaboration, where results can be hard to quantify.
"With this recognition of excellence from the committee, though we have passed a milestone that everyone can easily understand: our work is so exceptional that it deserves financial recognition and support," she wrote.