Red Lodge Clearinghouse - Greater Flagstaff Forests Partnership

Greater Flagstaff Forests Partnership

USDA Forest Service/Photo by Bill Williams

"Our main goal is to restore healthy forests and to protect communities, but we won't abandon our ecological perspective to just protect communities. We believe we can do both at the same time," says Steve Gatewood, program director of the Greater Flagstaff Forests Partnership. Location: Flagstaff, Arizona

Objective: The Greater Flagstaff Forests Partnership (GFFP) has three primary goals:

Restore natural ecosystem functions in ponderosa pine forests surrounding Flagstaff;

Manage forest fuels to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire; and

Research and test key ecological, economic and social dimensions of restoration efforts.

Toward that end, GFFP has sought to develop a local market for small-diameter trees culled from thinning efforts and has engaged in community education efforts to inform the public about the benefits of thinning and controlled burning.

Participants: GFFP, formerly known as the Grand Canyon Forests Partnership, entered a memorandum of understanding for restoration work with the U.S. Forest Service in 2003, with the Forest Service retaining full decision-making authority over any activities on Forest Service lands.

GFFP has a 25-member Partnership Advisory Board, which reaches decisions through consensus. The partners include the Coconino County Farm Bureau and Cattle Growers Association, Coconino Natural Resource Conservation District, Cocopai Resource Conservation and Development District, Ecological Restoration Institute, Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce, Flagstaff Native Plant and Seed, Grand Canyon Trust, Greater Flagstaff Economic Council, Highlands Fire Department, Indigenous Community Enterprises, Northern Arizona Conservation Corps, Northern Arizona University, Perkins Timber Harvesting, Ponderosa Fire Advisory Council, Practical Mycology, The Nature Conservancy, Society of American Foresters-Northern Arizona Chapter, Southwest Environmental Consultants, The Arboretum at Flagstaff, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and city, county and state officials.

Photo courtesy of USDA Forest Service

History: Almost a century of fire suppression, coupled with old-growth logging and overgrazing, have left the ponderosa-pine forests of northern Arizona choked with small trees and underbrush, dramatically increasing the risk of intense crown fires that scorch soil, destroy wildlife habitat and burn homes. The Grand Canyon Forests Partnership was created after the 1996 wildfire season, when the Hochderffer, Horseshoe and Bridger-Knoll fires burned more than 75,000 acres in the Coconino and Kaibab national forests near Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon. These devastating wildfires revealed the need to return the forests surrounding Flagstaff to a more natural tree-density level.

The Grand Canyon Forests Partnership began as a collaborative effort organized by the Grand Canyon Trust. Partnership members eventually sought to become an independent group that focused specifically on the Flagstaff area. In 2002, they formed their own 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Greater Flagstaff Forests Partnership. The Grand Canyon Trust and the Nature Conservancy represent the conservation community as partners of GFFP, but several environmental advocacy groups have not joined or no longer attend GFFP meetings, including the Sierra Club and the Southwest Forest Alliance.

Along with its partners, which include Northern Arizona University and the Ponderosa Fire Advisory Council, GFFP works to develop scientific projects to help restore meadows and open stands to the tree-choked forests near Flagstaff. GFFP's memorandum of understanding with the Forest Service targets the Flagstaff Urban-Wildland Interface Area. GFFP coordinated with the Ponderosa Fire Advisory Council to complete a Community Wildfire Protection Plan under the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. This plan was approved in January 2005 and redefines the Urban-Wildland Interface Area as encompassing 280,000 wooded acres surrounding the Greater Flagstaff Area, an increase from the previous estimate of 180,000 acres. More than 100,000 acres of the interface area are located in the Coconino National Forest, with other lands owned by the city of Flagstaff, the state or private landowners. The interface area stretches from Cinder Hills on Flagstaff's east side to Fort Valley on the west and from the base of the San Francisco Peaks south to Pulliam Airport. GFFP is conducting environmental analyses within the interface area to design thinning and burning projects.

Accomplishments: In cooperation with the Forest Service, GFFP and its partners have:

Analyzed project areas totaling more than 95,000 acres in the Flagstaff Urban-Wildland Interface Area;

Mechanically thinned more than 3,100 acres of Forest Service land, with roughly 1,900 additional acres under contract to be thinned;

Mechanically thinned approximately 5,200 acres within the interface area owned by the city of Flagstaff, the state or private landowners; and

Used broadcast burning across approximately 5,400 acres of all interface lands.

Photo courtesy of GFFP

GFFP also has helped manage roads and trails to meet the competing interests of recreation and wildlife. Approximately four miles of roads have been closed or obliterated, the Chimney Springs meadow underwent ecological restoration work and campsites have been designated and cleaned up along Freidlein Prairie Road, a popular recreation area.

In 2002, GFFP released the findings of an 18-month study called the Small Diameter Wood Utilization Report, which found there was no local market for small-diameter trees culled from thinning efforts, thus increasing the cost and complexity of thinning projects. The study called for the creation of a new restoration-based industry, including a sawmill that could process logs from 5 to 12 inches in diameter. Funding for the sawmill still hasn't been located, so most trees from thinning efforts have been burned in slash piles. Recently, however, GFFP has begun discussions with several businesses that may be interested in establishing small diameter wood processing facilities in the community. GFFP is also studying the feasibility of a small-scale biomass electrical generating station using wood culled from thinning projects.

In January 2004, GFFP awarded two Enterprise Development Fund grants to local businesses utilizing small-diameter trees. Indigenous Community Ventures received $95,000 to purchase a saw that cuts peeled, small-diameter trees for use in Navajo hogans. Total Timber received a $100,000 grant to buy a log splitter and shrink wrapper to process small trees into bulk bags of firewood. GFFP also has begun a cost-share program, whereby private landowners living in the interface area can apply for reimbursement of half the cost of thinning their own properties to create defensible space from wildfire. Ten such projects have been completed.

Challenges/constraints: GFFP has been successful in obtaining a variety of state, federal and private grants to fund various projects, but some grant streams are drying up, says program director Steve Gatewood. The partnership has provided community education about the need for restorative work in the forests, but GFFP still receives complaints from some residents about the smoke from controlled burns.

Before treatment

More important, GFFP has faced administrative appeals or litigation over some thinning projects from several environmental advocacy groups, including the Sierra Club, Southwest Forest Alliance, Forest Guardians and the Center for Biological Diversity. Most notably:

Administrative appeals and litigation delayed Fort Valley, GFFP's first landscape-scale thinning project, from 1999 to 2001. The appellants eventually succeeded in imposing a 16-inch diameter cap on the size of trees that could be removed across more than 6,000 acres in the Coconino National Forest. Gatewood says GFFP's studies found some large trees, especially those located in former meadows, need to be removed to restore the natural ecosystem prior to European settlement, which consisted of scattered stands of trees with a grassy understory rather than a continuous, forested canopy.

The current Woody Ridge restoration project, which calls for thinning or controlled burning across roughly 11,500 acres of the Coconino National Forest, also was appealed by environmental groups seeking a 16-inch diameter cap and protection of forested habitat for the northern goshawk, a raptor which is now the subject of federal petitions seeking to list it as endangered. The Forest Service upheld Woody Ridge without a 16-inch cap, but the project has not yet begun on the ground.

After treatment
Photos courtesy of USDA Forest Service

Sharon Galbreath used to attend GFFP meetings as the forest issues coordinator for the Grand Canyon Chapter of the Sierra Club, a volunteer position she still holds. In 2002, she also became executive director of the Southwest Forest Alliance. Galbreath says early GFFP meetings were rocked by "very, very vitriolic" disputes between two opposing factions, one concerned with thinning to protect Flagstaff homes with the other side more interested in forest ecology. The Southwest Forest Alliance and Sierra Club agree with GFFP about the need to protect the few remaining old-growth trees while still doing prescribed burning in the interface area to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire. However representatives from both the Sierra Club and Southwest Forest Alliance withdrew their participation from GFFP because of concerns over the number and size of younger trees that should be removed in thinning projects.

Explaining why the Southwest Forest Alliance withdrew from the project, Galbreath says trees larger than 16 inches need to be saved even if they aren't considered old-growth because they will become the next generation of old-growth trees in the forests. The Alliance initially had developed its own research demonstration plot in the Fort Valley project using a less-intensive thinning model. "We've taken a pretty firm stand on saving those large-diameter trees," Galbreath says. "We're starting from two different philosophical approaches, not only the science."

Galbreath also questions the need for the GFFP, given that public participation already is welcomed in the scoping and environmental reviews required by the Forest Service for any projects in the Coconino National Forest. "Some of these collaborative processes reach the point where they soak up way too much time for the benefits you get," she says.

Gatewood attributes the dispute to "dueling science" used in differing restoration models. He concedes GFFP doesn't represent everyone and says GFFP's relationship with some environmental groups is "cordial but cautious." "Because we deal with the Forest Service, we're always suspect," he says. "(The environmental groups) don't care about us. They care about what the Forest Service does on public lands."

Heather Green, a community forestry liaison with the Coconino National Forest, works on joint projects between GFFP and the Forest Service. She believes GFFP is broadly diverse, even though there are still some missing pieces in its representation of all local stakeholders. GFFP provides an established network of communication that has helped move some projects forward. "Collaboration is time-consuming and it takes a lot of work and a lot of energy, and it's very much the right thing to do," Green says. "Realistically speaking, the expectation is that appeals and litigation can occur in spite of having a good collaborative effort, and you just need to have solid documentation and good communication and try to make the best decisions you can."

For more information see:

GFFP Homepage

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Last Updated ( Friday, 16 May 2008 )