Red Lodge Clearinghouse

Quincy Library Group

Photo by Jane Braxton Little

The Quincy Library Group burst onto the national stage on July 9, 1997, when the U.S. House of Representatives approved, 429-1, a forest management plan developed by this rural consensus coalition to manage 2.4 million acres of northeastern California's national forest land.

It was an extraordinary accomplishment for a rural group of environmentalists, timber executives, county commissioners and volunteers. Approval by the U.S. Senate followed, and President Clinton signed the bill on Oct. 28, 1998.

The 1999 Herger-Feinstein Quincy Library Group Forest Recovery Act established a five-year program to test how best to protect a forest and its habitat from fires and destructive logging, while still producing enough wood to keep the local timber industry alive. The emphasis in the bill was on thinning, the creation of firebreaks, and the protection of 526,400 acres of roadless areas.

The bill had the backing of the Clinton administration and the local communities. But it also had enemies in several national environmental groups, as well as some Northern California regional and local environmental groups.

In the end, President Clinton's signing of the bill into law was QLG's high point. After the drama in D.C., not much happened on the ground. In 2000, the first year of the program, crews built fuel breaks on only 7,158 acres - 12 percent of what the legislation mandates. The law authorizes the logging of 9,000 acres annually, but only 200 acres of large trees were harvested singly and in two-acre patch cuts.

Lack of funding wasn't the problem; $98.8 million was committed over five years. Nevertheless, after three seasons of woods work, the acres treated for fuel reduction and logging totaled just one-third of the minimum expectation.

Photo by Jane Braxton Little

QLG members blame the U. S. Forest Service's 2001 Sierra Nevada Framework, a management plan for 11 national forests in California. To protect the California spotted owl, the guidelines imposed limits on how large a tree can be cut and how much of the canopy can be removed. The major effect on the QLG program was a dramatic reduction in the volume of economically valuable timber.

After months of negotiations with agency officials over amending the Framework to allow full implementation of its program, the QLG suspended all public meetings in November 2001. The group continued to meet in private, preparing a lawsuit against the Forest Service. Representatives emerged from the secrecy of these meetings to solicit funding from local counties.

In February 2003, Congress authorized a five-year extension to the QLG legislation. The group filed its lawsuit in March 2003 seeking replacement of the 2001 Framework. Weeks later, Regional Forester Jack Blackwell announced Framework revisions that call for full implementation of the QLG logging program, included in his final Framework revisions announced in January 2004. The combined actions triggered a lawsuit by environmentalists to prevent closed-door negotiations over the Framework between QLG and the Forest Service.

The litigation and meeting closures have had little effect on the general public. Although the group attracted widespread public participation at first, most outsiders who had offered new ideas said they got the cold shoulder and stopped attending. When the QLG chose to go the legislative route, others dropped out. Some opposed the top-down approach of legislation. Others opposed the emphasis on logging contained in the legislation.

While loggers and local environmentalists in the Quincy group get along much better, new antagonism between QLG supporters and critics now divides the community. Forming QLG may also have destroyed the local Friends of Plumas Wilderness, which planted the seeds for the QLG plan: the environmental group has not met since 1995. Moreover, none of the roadless areas within the QLG region were included in California wilderness legislation introduced in 2002 because, say coordinators, there was not enough local support.

On the brighter side, as a local alliance testing new forest management strategies, the QLG has made valuable contributions. It brought fire and forest fuel loading to the attention of national environmentalists. The coalition's concept of fuel breaks has been adopted around the West.

Photo courtesy of USDA Forest Service

It is as a collaborative that the Quincy Library Group is troubling. Many who have tried to participate have felt ostracized. And although it is developing policy for managing federal lands, the coalition has demonstrated little concern for involving the broader public in its process. It resumed occasional open meetings in May 2002, but does not advertise them.

No one knows what would be happening now if QLG had stuck with consensus and insisted on trying to include everyone. Instead, in its drive to deliver the protected roadless areas promised to environmentalists and the timber harvests promised to loggers, the QLG took a top-down, federally mandated approach that has limited participation in the program.

It could have taken the less certain broad consensus route, where relationships are first built over a relatively long period of time and ambitious goals are tackled later. Instead, the group set ambitious goals as its priority. These goals held the group together admirably, but they also created a need to move quickly and purposefully.

So far, at least, that shortcut hasn't gotten the Quincy Library Group much beyond widespread name recognition. The stronger sense of community it fostered is limited to those who subscribe to its program.

For more information see:

U.S Forest Service Quincy Library Group Project Information

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Last Updated ( Friday, 11 April 2008 )

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