|
Colloboration
allows the media to focus on the issues, not the contest
By
Gens Johnson
for Headwaters News
For too long, now, the agenda for civic discourse
surrounding public lands issues has been defined by conflict. An
event, framed as a confrontation, impartially presenting two sides
of a story -- this is classic journalism.
Use it, or preserve it? Private rights vs. the environment? And
the conflict that usually frames the debates on the management of
public lands often becomes the news story, rather than the issues
or any common ground.
But occasionally ordinary people can hear those that are more intimately
involved in public lands issues talking with each other. In our
recent FocusWest/Western Divide
production, it became apparent that public lands issues are
much more complex than an either-or situation.
If Jack Ward Thomas, former chief of the Forest Service is
right, (requires
RealAudio) "Collaboration is the only game in town, and
there are no rules."
These conversations are critically important in moving beyond the
current conflicts and stalemates to identify common ground.
The FocusWest project is an attempt to broaden the dialogue on issues,
such as the use and management of public lands, that are distinctly
important in the Intermountain West. Funded by the Ford Foundation,
the public television networks serving Idaho, Wyoming and Northern
Nevada have formed a collaborative partnership with the goal of
increasing citizen involvement in public affairs.
Western Divide is the first product resulting from the partnership.
Other topics to be tackled this year include water use and management,
and the impact of the growing Latino population.
Producing Western Divide is an interesting exercise in building
a collaboration in order to expand a vision within the region, while
consolidating resources and efforts to focus on local action.
People in each of the geographic areas are struggling with public
lands issues, by different means, and with varying degrees of success.
But the slate of underlying problems is very similar.
Our initial aim was to share these stories about specific people
and places – Yellowstone, Jarbidge, the Owyhee canyons –
to stimulate greater awareness, interest, and knowledge about public
lands issues. And this would lead to local action.
Curiously enough, we decided to rethink the format of the project
after assembling some two dozen individuals, spanning the spectrum
of those who are more involved in these issues, to interact with
a panel that included Cecil Andrus, former secretary of the Interior
and governor of Idaho; Jack Ward Thomas, former Forest Service chief;
former Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth-Hage; and Greg Cawley, head
of political science at the University of Wyoming.
That this studio full of people, each with a distinct perspective,
were willing to spend an afternoon talking and listening to each
other, and what they ended up actually saying, was a bit of a surprise
to us.
And we wonder if it might even have surprised some of them.
Yes, there were the usual discussions on "wise use" vs.
"preservation," and the questions about property rights,
a Western way of life and the general public interest. But in the
end, there was much more excitement about shared views and objectives.
"Aha," we thought as we reviewed the two-and-a-half hours
of tape that resulted. It might be that emerging new technologies,
such as digital television, will let us share these different insights,
and that alternative frameworks for discussion will enable more
effective citizen involvement than the usual approach to television
journalism allows.
Public affairs television tends to limit us a single program, usually
no more than an hour, with a beginning, middle and end. And what
this usually allows is a presentation of polar positions.
If we could, on the other hand, get away from the linear experience
of television, we might be able to show the interweaving of ideas
and the excitement about collaboration that we saw in the studio
session.
We could begin to approximate the "enhanced television"
possibilities of digital TV by using the web, and eventually an
iDVD, to engage, inform, and move people to action.
This approach offers the added advantage that Western Divide is
now available to people via the Web, "on demand," throughout
the region.
A new Dialogue
program on public lands will air Thursday, Feb. 21, a new
look at the FocusWest studio session on the subject.
The next FocusWest production in May will examine water issues
in the Intermountain West. We hope to again bring people together
in our studio, use our various technologies to let people watch
the interaction, and ultimately frame the issues in some new ways.
The dialogue that took place in the studio was,
itself, an important product of this project. Some people most involved
in public lands issues point out to me that there is only so much
an ordinary person can do, given the constraints of the system.
Perhaps, the same people posit, the most fruitful conversations
will be those discussions between people who are more expert, more
vested, in the issues. To that end, the studio session may have
been a catalyst of some sort.
However, I’d like to think that there is an important role
for citizens throughout our region to play in public lands use and
management. We need to feel that the issues are real, and that they
are ours. We are the people that must build local collaborations.
But we don’t need to rediscover the wheel for each locale.
It’s helpful and informative to see how others in our region
approach the problems and opportunities. We should feel inspired
to act, with confidence that we, too, can make a difference.
New regional advisory councils, many with funding, will provide
an additional tool for expanding the involvement and power of local
citizens in public lands issues.
Now it is up to us to pick up on the
conversational threads: redefining conservation, focusing on
the results of good land management, recognizing the need to fix
a broken system, and seeking collaborative solutions rather than
resolution through confrontation.
The power of the media is to offer, and frame, topics for public
debate and action. What action? That’s up to those willing
to engage in the dialogue.
Gens Johnson is the director of DTV Planning
and Learning Services at Idaho Public Television in Moscow, Idaho.
She also directs the FocusWest collaborative project, which brings
together people and resources in Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada and Montana
to explore how new communication media can support public affairs
and encourage citizen involvement.
Have an opinion? Post it now.
Click
here to comment. Click
here to see what others are saying.
Or click
here to view other forums.
click
here for a printer-friendly version
 |
 |
It's
still rare, but consensus catches on
By
Greg Lakes, editor
Headwaters News
Feb. 20, 2002
The siege mentality that makes for such good press
is still the consistent theme throughout the West's natural resource
decisions, and in the courtrooms, public hearings and strategy sessions
where the drama is played out.
Colorado Rep. Scott McInnes is holding hearings to ferret out eco-terrorists,
amid mounting calls for investigation of the equally radical faction
of the wise-use movement. Gloria
Flora, a former forest supervisor in Nevada, took a step farther
and told the panel that politicians should share in the blame for
fanning anti-federal sentiments and inciting attacks on her staff.
In Colorado, the Idaho-based Western Watershed Project is trying
to end grazing on 250,000 acres of public range, a continuation
of its efforts to get cattle off public land entirely, and a pressured
BLM administrator cut off grazing on a sprawling
Owyhee County, Idaho, lease.
In Wyoming, the Jack Morrow Hills have
become a test of the Bush administration's attempts to open
more of the Rockies to energy exploration, and the battle is on
between industry and environmentalists, and as usual, land-management
agencies are caught in the crossfire.
North
Idaho ORV enthusiasts protested what they say are increasingly
restrictive Forest Service road closures, and irrrigators in Montana
and Wyoming are bashing state and federal officials over
coalbed-methane-well discharges into the Powder River.
And that sums up just the past few weeks.
Still, there have been signs of agreement. And those could be the
beginnings of consensus. And they might be a prelude to a growing
framework for more successful collaborative processes.
New
Mexico's Quivera Foundation turned people away from its first
conference in mid-January, a tribute to the group's five-year effort
to bring together ranchers and environmentalists for the good of
the land. The conference was to promote the New Ranch, a holistic
melding of management concepts that intensifies grazing for shorter
periods and keeps cows out of streams, among other things. The conference's
biggest import was that it signaled a break in the long-standing
us-vs.-them impasse, according to the moderator.
A coalition of private, state and federal groups and officials that
cut across political lines cooperated to purchase
the sprawling Baca Ranch in Colorado, and to add its 97,000
acres and its underlying aquifer to the soon-to-be-created Great
Sand Dunes National Park. The Nature Conservancy bought the ranch
for $31.3 million, in a complex deal brokered by Colorado's Republican
congressional delegation, was originally backed by the Clinton administration
and endorsed by the state's governor and Land Board.
A coalition of local, state and national conservation groups united
with area residents in an ambitious plan to protect
working ranches in the foothills of Colorado's Sangre de Cristo
Range, a two-pronged effort that will cost $10 million for just
the first phase.
And in what might be considered a mixed blessing, environmentalists,
industry execs and Forest Service officials came to consensus on
how much of the burned-over Bitterroot National Forest to log, but
only after the judge ordered them into a closed room and told them
to mediate their way to consensus.
Pardon us for looking so close to home, but Daniel Kemmis, director
of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West, the Missoula policy center
that sponsors Headwaters News, is one of the leading voices for
collaboration. In
a recent interview with the Missoula Independent, Kemmis said
the current system is hopelessly gridlocked. But at times and in
places, consensus is possible, he said, by bringing a mix of interests
to the same table.
Kemmis is the first to concede collaboration won't work everywhere,
according to the article. And in a memorable statement that should
have made Quote of the Month:
"You probably wouldn’t want to look to Elko
as the first place to do this," he said.
Have an opinion? Post it
now.
Click
here to comment. Click
here to see what others are saying.
Or click
here to view other forums.
click
here for a printer-friendly version
|
|
|
|
|
By
John Freemuth
for Headwaters News
In late November of last year, the contentious
world of natural resources management received a stunning
surprise. The Quincy Library Group, once the great hope of
many soured by policy gridlock and increasingly centralized
decision-making, announced that it was suspending its meetings,
because, in its words, "The Sierra Nevada Framework has
effectively killed our project."
|
| (more)
|
|
