This time, pleas are real

By PAT WILLIAMS
Senior fellow and regional policy associate
O'Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West

"It was good theater and hopefully it will be effective," said my friend. He was talking about the recent surprise visit made by some folks from Libby and nearby communities to an environmental headquarters in Missoula. Two dozen people, filing off a school bus, had come to ask the environmental group to withdraw a lawsuit that is preventing some proposed logging on public land in northwestern Montana.

I agreed with my friend on both counts. It was, indeed, one more example of "good theater" from the towns of Libby, Troy and Eureka but this time it deserved not only an audience, but some genuine attention. Although Montanans and others in the Rocky Mountain states have watched timber-industry sponsored road shows from that beautiful but beleaguered corner of our state before, this time seems different. The difficulties are real and the participants
genuine.

They pleaded their case: new school construction jeopardized, timber mills in trouble, small businesses going broke. These one-industry towns recognize the inevitability of difficult times ahead and understandably want to limit the suffering.

Yes, this time the good theater seemed more sincere and conciliatory, but it hasn't always been so. For three decades, the northwestern timber industry, centered in Libby, has orchestrated and paid for more traveling road shows than the Montana Repertory Theater. We all remember the many Log Hauls of the 1980s, the touring Wall of Shame listing the names of lost timber mills (many of which had been bought out and closed by the big timber corporations
themselves).

We remember the nationally famous Shovel Brigade of the late 1990s. Regardless of whether the economic timber climate was roaring, as it was during the '80s or depressed as it was in the 1990s, the industry's well-paid professional agitators kept the show on the road.

If the purpose of all those years of theater was to keep people working in the hills and mills, it failed miserably. Despite the many years of good theater, front-page stories, and top-of-the-news TV film, not a single additional tree has been harvested, workers have lost their jobs and those communities have suffered unnecessarily.

It hasn't been a complete failure however; some of the industry's purpose has succeeded.

Along with hoping to persuade the public to offer up its forests, industry wanted to both replace organized labor as the voice of the workers and to elect the timber industry's favorite candidates throughout the Rockies. Industry has been successful on both counts.

Nonetheless, good theater has made bad politics and bad politics always makes bad policy. It has come at the astoundingly high price of lost jobs and ravaged communities throughout Montana's northwestern corner. The brutal truth is that industry, timber and mining, has economically whip-sawed those communities, poisoned them, diseased their people and, in the end, abandoned them, all the while convincing their elected politicians to adopt policies on
trade, environment, and the economy that have combined to make the situation worse.

However, this most recent "good theater" seems different. The two dozen participants, walking quietly into the regional headquarters of the environmental office, were genuine. Gone were the bullying threats, the insistent bravado, the angry signs, the hanging of public officials in effigy. Included in the group were elected representatives of the peopleómayors, county commissioners, the superintendent of schools -- each sincerely asking for help.

Perhaps negotiations can replace the lawsuit filed against a questionable timber harvest. The environmentalists might well be persuaded because they had been attempting for two years to avoid the lawsuit. They engaged in no less than half a dozen meetings to negotiate the planned harvest and were stonewalled by the office of the Kootenai Forest Service.

The Libby folks came to appeal to an environmental organization that is, in fact, supportive of more jobs through sustainable forestry practices, including significant new jobs in restoration work. Both sides should sit and talk. And the local people, including the timber companies, should understand that this same environmental group won a court decision on an identical case in Idaho, and that decision has recently been upheld by a higher court.

It is in the best interests of the timber workers and those who depend on them that the give and take be genuine. So here is hoping that after three decades, a piece of political theater hitting the road from Libby will finally result in standing applause and a good, long, profitable run.