This is Forest to Frame, where we explore how restoring forests creates beautiful spaces. A podcast dedicated to conversations with industry leaders shaping the future of the forest industry. And now, here's your host, Russ Vaagen Russ Vaagen here with another episode of the Forest to Frame podcast. In today's episode, we're gonna talk about forest management and in particular, the A to Z project and actually projects on the Colville National Forest. There's a lot of interest around that particular type of project, how it was started, And some people would like to see a system like that across the board on our forest service lands or federal lands. But there's a lot to the A to Z type of project rather than just it's a large project and we want to see more of them. A lot of people see the A to Z project as it were, on the Colville National Forest. The first one was Mill Creek A to Z. It was in the Mill Creek drainage here on the Colville National Forest, which is why it was called that. But I think that there's a big analogy with this project that a lot of people think that, you know, maybe that was the first one we did, but it's really 10-year overnight success. Our Northeast Washington Forest Coalition, who I had the opportunity to serve as president for about a decade, worked on a series of projects. I think the A to Z project was I don't know the exact number, but close to our 50th project on the Colville National Forest. They'd grown over time, we'd learned, we'd build trust with our coalition, which included environmental organizations, it included forestry companies, interested public, recreation enthusiasts, local political leaders, county commissioners, mayors. Regional and national level politicians would get involved in their staffs helped and we even had later on we had some facilitators come in from sustainable Northwest, and I think that that is. part of the success that we worked together for so long. And of course, we worked with the Colville National Forest Leadership and occasionally with the Region 6, which is headquartered in Portland, and then the National Office in Washington, D.C., and Forest Service, for those who don't know, is under the Department of Agriculture. So we would meet occasionally with the Undersecretary of Agriculture who leads the Forest Service. A lot of people don't realize it, just a quick fact that there's the Forest Service, which I think a hundred and 92 million acres, primarily of forests, majority of which is in the western states. And then you have the Bureau of Land Management, which is also federal land. A lot of it is more rangeland, but does contain a significant amount of forests, but that's under the Department of Interior. So you've got two major departments, Interior and Agriculture. One sees over the Department of, or Bureau of Land Management, and the other one oversees the Forest Service. And then of course, you have your state, county, other jurisdictions that own land and forest land. So I just say that because when I talk about federal lands, I'm talking primarily about the Forest Service, but the Bureau of Land Management is also in there as well. In Northeast Washington, we have some BLM lands, but it's just a fraction compared to the Forest Service. So in your area, BLM lands might be the driver. They might be the majority of the forest land. A to Z and the type of project that we ultimately did, I think is applicable in both. But I think there's a lot to it that we need to talk about that, you know, the A to Z project highlights, but it's a kind of a culmination of things that we worked on. First and foremost, A to Z, the original name was Cradle to Grave. We thought that was a little cryptic and maybe not the kind of thing that we wanted to put out there, so we came up with switching it to A to Z. Well, the whole premise for the beginning and the end is having a project that one essential contract was for everything, because what happens on Forest Service projects is that the Forest Service prepares the project and then puts it out to bid in a timber sale or a stewardship contract and all the work is done essentially behind the curtain of the Forest Service. They go get public input, they do some other things, but It wasn't working and the Forest Service was really struggling to get projects out that weren't litigated by environmental organizations. a lot of it I couldn't blame them because the Forest Service was doing things in their own world and didn't really seek the right amount of input to make the right kind of decisions. That being said, we still have the National Environmental Policy Act, which on federal lands we need to do before we move a project forward. And there's a little ambiguity in there, because it's supposed to, you know, not do any harm. But You know the harm is arguable and a lot of environmental organizations that want to see nothing done on these federal forests use that against the Forest Service. So what we did is we spent a long time building trust amongst the stakeholders of our forest collaborative. And we worked with public officials, our two senators from the state, Senator Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. We worked together on a project and we got some funding for it. And it was it was a smaller project. I think it was Malo East Lake, which was in Ferry County, and it was near the Curlew Lake, and it was a great thinning project. We got some federal funds with the help of the senators to move that forward, but all this stuff was kind of a one-off, and it wasn't real repeatable. While we were getting parts and pieces of the system figured out, And we knew we had to go larger scale. And we knew the Forest Service was limited in budget and personnel. And so what we thought is, okay, instead of the Forest Service doing all the pre-work and the NEPA work and the environmental compliance and the layout and all this, the other stuff, We thought with our collaborative that we could do a better job of it. And we actually had a another project that we did called the turnkey project, and it was in northern Stevens County and. It was the precursor to the A to Z project, but there were some challenges there. We had the Forest Service still kind of doing the NEPA work. And anyway, it worked, but it wasn't as good as the A to Z project model. The A to Z project model, I actually was the one who highlighted the area on the map. I knew the Forest Service didn't have any immediate plans to go to this area. It was a well-roaded system. It was where people did a lot of camping, hunting, fishing, recreating. There was a wildland-urban interface because there were a number of houses out there. It has been managed in the past. There wasn't a real contentious issue when it came to environmental concerns. We went out there and I, like I said, I drew the area on a map with a highlighter and I went over it and it was ultimately what was decided to move forward. It was about 54,000 acres. And it was, if you've ever dealt with forest service projects, typically the forest service projects have a large sale area or a project area and then small activity areas. This was different because we were gonna do one large area and do as much treatment as possible. I would say the Forest Service was probably typically 10 to maybe high as 20% of the land mass in a project area would actually get some treatment. this turned out to be 50% active management. So there was over 25,000 acres of actual forest thinning done. And, you know, there's never a situation where all the area is forested and needs the treatment. There are swamps and rock outcrop croppings and other things that, you know, don't get actively managed. So, but we knew we needed more per project done. And so The RFP was put out to do all the NEPA work, all the layout work, all the public comment, and then it would go out to bid, and then the market would bid on it. But what we were doing, at the time I worked for Vaughan Brothers Lumber, and we were the group that bid on the project. But we took a lot of risk doing it. But it was because of the confidence and trust we had in the Northeast Washington Forest Coalition that we did it. And there's a lot of praise to be given to a lot of people. But we went through that project. We put it out there for bid. We were Boggan Brothers was awarded the project. We worked hard on it. And we were able to get a third-party contractor. There's a process, I won't get into the details, but we had somebody come in that had done NEPA work in the past, and it was an arm's length. So we weren't directing them what to do. They were out there doing it. They went and found the areas that needed the most treatment. They talked with the adjacent landowners, the stakeholders, had public meetings, got buy-in, and created a project that tried to encompass all the concerns that people had out there. And they did an excellent job. And the group was called Kramer Fish Sciences, and they've done really good work on that. So moving that forward, we got done and it was ready to go to bid and Boggan Brothers was ultimately the successful bidder on it. Now that was the big risk because somebody else could have come in and bid on that particular project after Wagner Brothers had done all the work, Wagner Brothers paid for all the NEPA work. And I don't know the final tally, but it was like a couple million dollars in work that Kramer Fish Sciences had done. And there were other indirect costs. It's a big deal. The Forest Service used to have to pay for that and they used to have to staff it. Well, they didn't have enough money and they didn't have enough people, so they couldn't get work done. So this was the log jam that we were trying to uncork. And it essentially worked. There was a lawsuit, however, because we didn't change the dispute resolution clause. So once it was out there, it was still subject to litigation. And thankfully, all the members of the coalition stuck together. And when it went to the Ninth Circuit, I had the opportunity to go in there and watch the proceedings in front of the three judges. And it was amazing because we had one side of the courtroom that was filled with all types from very conservative Eastern Washington County commissioners to the heads of several conservation groups based in Seattle that had participated in the process and were supporting of it. And then we had one group out of Montana that was really You know, they just didn't want to see anything happen. They were invited to the process. They declined. They declined so they could come in and file a lawsuit. But their argument, you know, the judges saw right through it. Essentially, they said, look at all these people here from all these backgrounds that have worked all this time on this project. And then you're not paying attention to the details and you're bringing up these kind of out of left field arguments about environmental concerns and animals that might be harmed. And they sided with the project and with the forest service to go forward, which was a monumental kind of watershed moment for forest management community collaboratives. So it moved forward and Boggan Brothers did the work on the project. They did the work in, I think it was three or four years, 54,000 acres, 25,000 plus of which was actually harvested. It was brought to the mill. The forest, we take people up there all the time now to show them where their mass timber comes from and show them the before and the after. the reactions are the same. Why aren't we doing this everywhere? This is amazing. The forest looks healthy and vibrant and the right trees are there. It just makes sense. So we need to do more of it. Fortunately, on the Colville National Forest, there's an A to Z 2.0 that has gone on and is under contract now. It's 70 plus thousand acres in Cholula, Washington. And this one's cool because there were more recreation interests that actually asked for the project in a very similar type story watershed. It's about 30 miles south of the original project. But we're talking about you know we've identified that there's 400,000 acres of roaded landscape on the on the 1.1 million acres of the caldwell national forest that should be actively managed and there's another. I don't know what the total is 300,000 acres or so that need some sort of restoration. So we've got a tremendous amount here that we can go out and restore. And we've done two projects on with the A to Z model. And it's totaling, you know, about 125,000 acres, and you, you know, You look at that, you back it back down, you're probably about half of that's active management. So there's a lot of opportunity for more. But I think the key points here that I wrote down is that we need large scale contracts to take care of this large scale problem. We have entire watersheds that need thinning, that have roads that we can get out there and do it. We need an improved dispute resolution system. It shouldn't be allowed to just not participate and file a lawsuit. You should be able to have your concerns heard. And then if the decision to move forward doesn't meet those concerns, there should be a dispute resolution process that's equitable and fast. So I suggest that there should be a 60-day mediation period. And then if that's not resolved, then you have another 30 days, and it's binding arbitration by some sort of judge. And I think that would allow us to move things forward. But there shouldn't be an alternative that is we do nothing. We should remove any contentious areas and continue forward with the forest restoration work. It's just too important. It's important for the environment. It's important for the communities. It's important for all of us and the air we breathe that we have healthy forests. And I think that We need community support. We need people in the community to be part of these collaboratives or at least engaged and all stakeholders, recreation, sportsmen, conservationists, business interests, and others. There's a tremendous need for this. And I think that the more groups, individuals we have that are in favor of it, the better. And lastly, I just say, we need more common ground. We need to focus on interests rather than positions and abundance rather than scarcity. we should not be focused on extracting, we should be focused on creating healthy forests, especially on our public lands, and getting the byproduct of that out. So we actually get an improved forest and we have an industry that's built upon it. And I think it's an amazing story that very few people understand. And now with the advent of mass timber, we can build these beautiful buildings from single family residential structures, all the way up to mid rise structures right now. Dakota accepts 18 stories in the United States. And I think that the future will be hybrid buildings with steel and mass timber and concrete, so that we can reduce the weight, because wood has a very great strength to weight ratio. And it's beautiful. So we're on the right path, but we need to focus on this federal forest management issue. And I'm really excited about where we're headed with it. And I think it's gonna drive the future in a very positive direction. So that's the Forest Frame podcast for today about the A to Z project. It's a long podcast, but it's a big subject. And I think we need to figure out how do we do our projects on federal land in this manner, learning from the A to Z projects in Northeast Washington to apply them across the country on our fire dependent landscapes in particular, but all of our Western forests, we need to focus on it. And if we agree as a community that these forests should be managed and we can cross those items off that are contentious, we need to move forward and accelerate and create healthy forests and great products. That's it for today.