You've heard of "charter schools." Now how about
"charter forests?" Charter schools are alternatives
to public schools that, in limited number, use
public funds to educate students, often in
alternative, experimental ways. They are beginning
to show some measure of success throughout the
United States.
President Bush proposes to do something similar
with forests.
Limited in number and using public funds, charter
forests would explore alternative ways to manage
public land under the supervision of local trusts.
They will be highly controversial; nonetheless, it is
important they be given a chance.
Once a model of good management, the United
States Forest Service is in a bad way today. It
careens between overcutting and undercutting
timber as administrations change, favoring one
group of users and then another while constantly
embroiled in debilitating lawsuits.
There has got to be a better way.
In an important new book, "This Sovereign Land,"
former Montana legislative leader Dan Kemmis
says the federal government has suffered "the loss
of governing legitimacy" in the American West. It
cannot meet all of its obligations to preserve and
protect our land, water and wildlife while serving
multiple uses.
Kemmis favors experimental local trusts and
partnerships, always with a requirement that
environmental quality be retained, if not improved.
Examples of cooperative and consensus-based
management are beginning to pop up all over the
West. Charter forests potentially fit into this
movement.
Environmentalists see charter forests as an
invitation to disaster. Local control means control
by industry at the expense of healthy forests,
they're convinced. They're highly suspicious of an
idea that has been put forward by a former timber
industry lobbyist, Agriculture Undersecretary
Mark Rey.
Nonetheless, the principle of local sovereignty built
into America's system of government has to be
tested on federal lands in a way consistent with
good science and good management. Some
experiments will serve as a bad example, but bad
examples can be useful. Good examples can be
powerful. This newspaper called for experiments
years ago. It's time to act.
The lands director of the Idaho Land Board,
Winston Wiggins, thinks five pilot projects
developed by the state starting in l996 qualify
perfectly as charter forests. Idaho has indeed
anticipated the idea.
The problem is the proposed projects are so
massive in size - l0.7 million acres - as to constitute
a take-over, not an experiment. A smaller
experiment in Idaho would be an excellent idea.
"The question is not whether Westerners are smart
enough or experienced enough to do this work;
clearly they are," writes Kemmis. "The unresolved
question is whether they can muster the political
will - backed by the breadth of consensus - to
convince the rest of the country that Westerners
should be entrusted with such a responsibility ...
(for) lands belonging to all Americans."
We'll never know until we try.
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