| Quincy Library Group |
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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.
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.
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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