MAURICE HANSEN. Address to the Oct 07 ER conference.

Citizen Stakeholders and Ecological Restoration in the Trench: How We Got on the Bus
By Maurice Hansen, Coordinator, Rocky Mountain Trench Natural Resources Society

How did a non-technical, non-professional, non-aligned, non-government, non-profit outfit become involved with ecosystem restoration? To answer that question, I’ll explain why we wanted on the bus, tell you some things that happened, as well as how we charmed our way from the back up nearer the front. To put things in perspective, my colleagues have described the nuts and bolts of the East Kootenay Restoration Program (ER). What I’m offering is more like a gossip column.

One important thing to understand: the Trench Society is one member of the group collaborating on ER in the Trench. We’re more active than some but not independent. The usual suspects are all on the bus. In contrast with most other stakeholders, we do have constituents directly affected by restoration outcomes.

Who drives the bus? The BC Forest Service is at the wheel -- a designated driver situation. Their natural tendency is to stick to the roads most travelled, but for the ER program the group has influence so we occasionally off-road.   
 
The Trench Society is a group of nine organizations banded together for the purpose of supporting ecosystem restoration on Crown land in the Trench; I’m the hired help. The members of the Society represent wildlife, ranching, hunting, naturalist and environmental constituencies who in turn represent about 2800 individuals. We’ve been here for going on eleven years.

What our members chiefly want from ER is the recovery of the range resource: grasses, forbs and shrubs in the zone below about 1100 meters, the dry intermountain here on the valley floor. These are the ecosystem elements that have suffered most since the advent of fire suppression and its outcome, forest ingrowth.

Putting fire back in the ecosystem is the thing that most catches the imagination but that’s not our main game. The Society did conduct one prescribed burn in 1999 but almost immediately the Forest Service closed the door on citizen groups being able to continue that activity. Only government can conduct burns on Crown land. That’s okay. Our effort goes into the establishment of open range and open forest conditions that will lead to the best recovery of the understory vegetation. That’s so burns can be as effective as possible – ample fine fuel makes for effective burns – as well as benefiting all the critters that need grass and flowers and bushes.     

Some out there think we’re bonkers, that what we’re doing, and I mean the program not just the Trench Society, is not ecosystem restoration but some scheme cooked up by a bunch of cowboys and elk hunters primarily to produce grass for cows and elk. Maybe what we’re doing isn’t quite “pure” ecosystem restoration – is there anyone in the world that really knows how to do that? But I’d argue that restoring native range health and productivity is an element of ecosystem restoration. There’s a social component to restoration and one element of that is the cow/elk constituency.

Cicero is supposed to have said, “He who does not know history is destined to remain a child.” Whatever you might make of that, it seems a good idea to be a grown-up and how the Trench Society got to this juncture in the grand scheme of things is not understandable by grown-ups without some history, the run of events from way back that lead to the current moment. We can’t give local history all the credit though; it helped that Kelowna burned in ’03.
 
I first saw this place in May of 1964. I fell in love with the idea of the West at an early age, and flying into the old downtown Cranbrook airport I saw country very different from what I was used to – here was that most lovely of landscapes, the ponderosa pine savanna. To put it mildly, the beauty of this mix of forest, grassland and snow-capped peaks stirred my senses. I had grown up in the East. The landscape there is much more prosaic – and much wetter. To me this is a powerful landscape. I wonder what newcomers think today. Occurs to me that if they don’t get off the highway or the golf course they’ll never know it as more than a viewscape.

Since 1964 a lot of water has gone under the bridge. What I didn't know, as that old DC6 came in for a landing, was that there was chronic trouble in the valley over land use. By the early 70s I'd acquired my own piece of ground and came into possession of a Crown grazing tenure. This was the ticket into the elk/cattle battle, which figures prominently in this story.

This area used to be touted as the Serengeti of North America and the hunting fraternity was numerous and aggressive. On the other side were the ranchers, who, I can tell you from personal experience, are a stubborn bunch, so the conditions were right for war. But wildlifers were way ahead of ranchers in the public support game. The individual largely responsible for this was the regional wildlife biologist at the time who had a genius for inflaming emotions while making gains for wildlife. Interestingly, this same biologist, in 1972, described the crux of the elk/cattle issue with perfect clarity. Speaking to a cattlemen’s group (there was the occasional truce), he put it this way: Fish & Wildlife Branch possessed no power to manage Crown land. Their only authority was for managing their critters. The Forest Service had all the land management authority and they weren’t into power sharing.

This situation was a variation of what’s called in traffic jams the Sicilian four-way deadlock. Forest Service managed land but not critters; Fish & Wildlife Branch managed critters but not land. Hmmm…

Anyway, Fish & Wildlife Branch’s short-term remedy was to mobilize public opinion in support of wildlife. This pressure, bubbling through the political system, would be the pointy stick motivating the Forest Service to implement land management schemes in favour of wildlife. The irony was that the ranching industry's problem was a mirror image. Ranchers likewise did not have the ability to implement land management strategies in their interests – but unlike Fish & Wildlife Branch, they had limited ability to garner public support. They didn’t have the bodies and were a lot busier, but the big hindrance was the contrasting charisma between cows and elk. The elk have it. So far even the most beautiful of Herefords has not appeared on the cover of Bugle magazine. The real problem was that Crown land was allocated in a way that rendered the needs of the range resource problematic for both interests. 

This example illustrates the situation. Imagine an encounter between two strange dogs. If you own a dog you may know how they'll test each other to see who’s going to give. If, in this doggy confrontation, you were to poke one with a stick you’d likely get a dogfight. But if the hurt canine took a moment to reflect it might become obvious where the source of the pain originated and appropriate action could then be launched. Maybe with the help of his new canine buddy, teach that humanoid what to do with the stick. Metaphorically, the stick was the land allocation problem wielded by the Forest Service.

Here is an embarrassing revelation. Wildlifers and ranchers at the time could not claim to be more evolved than canines in handling their disputes. Motto for the period: “The time for cooperation is now past … it is now time for senseless bickering.” 
   
Rapid social change has got to be a rare phenomenon but the beginning of a change was in the wind starting in 1968 and it really hasn’t stopped since, although heavily subject to the molasses factor. Here’s a look at the most interesting blips on the change continuum.

1968 – Project Grassroots. Eight livestock/wildlife groups funded their own study. The conclusion: “A decision has to be made [whether or not] to maintain ranges at an agreed level of forest succession and range productivity. [If done] A distinct increase in total productivity of the range lands for all uses can be achieved.” 

1974 – BC’s Chief Forester of the day Bill Young was a visionary – he gets the credit anyway – who implemented Coordinated Resource Management Planning (CRMP). This was a major program. Contrary to the military model of planning in use at the time (and still healthy in spots today), the central idea was that the folks whose interests were at stake on the ground would plan its use – what a revolutionary notion. The stakeholders had their first taste of consensus building – still a work in progress. Federal and provincial governments came up with a pile of cash for range fencing, which improved cattle management but didn’t kill any trees, which were the fundamental problem. Sad to say, CRMP has pretty much faded away – only a few artefacts linger. But it’s fair to say CRMP probably helped inform changes that were still to come. Art Crane, assistant district ranger at the time, elegantly stated the big lesson from the exercise: “Without timber management, you can’t have range management.” We can now say that without timber management, you can’t have ecosystem restoration.  In the East Kootenay anyway.

1990 – East Kootenay Trench Agriculture/Wildlife Committee (EKTAWC), the BC Environment Minister’s initiative to solve the problem once and for all. All stakeholders were in, with a million government dollars. The naturalist/environmental constituency made their first appearance in the fray. Inclusivity was on the increase. They brought with them the notion that ecosystems possessed intrinsic value and should function in their own right, as opposed to being only a source of commodities. That notion informs the program today. The duration of this exercise: 1990 to 1997. Seven years and three governments. The central recommendation was, surprise: Need to recover the range resource, need a restoration program. The monotony of the findings was offset by gains in stakeholder cordiality.

1992 – Commission on Resources and Environment (CORE), the BC Premier's scheme to end the wars in the woods. Consensus model of negotiation. You’re probably aware consensus is favoured by those who have no power, like us. The powerful are usually okay with the status quo as a starting point. The CORE exercise was wonderfully instructive. Where else could you see the interaction between the likes of the hired guns of big industry and some volunteer citizen representing non-motorized outdoor recreation, that is, the backpackers. The drawbridge had accidentally been lowered and the peasants had got in the castle. It was, occasionally, a lot of fun. Ecosystem restoration in the Trench was a dominant theme. The CORE table did produce a land use plan. Upon its release all hell broke loose in opposition, complete with a yellow ribbon parade, rally, speeches and no end of other nonsense. We even had the CIA involved – Communities In Action – backed by certain industrial interests as it turned out, a sneak attack by the forces of evil. Out of the ruckus emerged the Kootenay Boundary Land Use Plan (KBLUP) and its offspring, the KBLUP Implementation Guidelines that contained the framework for, guess: a restoration program. 

1996 – The Trench Society was formed. Same stakeholders as the EKTAWC less the government reps. The Society is the son of EKTAWC. Our ammunition was the EKTAWC report and the CORE report, to name a few from the pile of reports generated during forty years of declining range resources. The stakeholder conflict was on hold – as a wildlifer put it, “We can fight for nothing, or work together and get paid.” Some change from the two dogs scenario. So the new game was to use the collaborative power of grassroots range stakeholders to push, shove and otherwise encourage the already agreed-to recommendations into life. The vehicle for this would be a program based on the implementation guidelines – tailored to the dry forests of the Trench – already set out in the KBLUP.
   
A consequence of all this churning was a brighter outlook – some optimism amongst the grassroots that something real and significant might actually happen. It’s a good thing that hope springs eternal because the effects produced to this point equated to dropping a custard pie off a six-foot stepladder. 

1997 – East Kootenay Ecosystem Restoration Program launched by the Forest Service. The inaugural meeting was in July ’97; the Trench Society was invited to participate along with the usual suspects from other government agencies and the timber industry. I think we all got put at the back of the bus. The Forest Service had figured out how to plan for restoration because without a planning system, the idea was not going to fly. Things were getting scary. Something was going to actually happen on the ground.

That was ten years ago, so what’s happened since? For our part, we've organized workshops, speakers, media tours; harvested timber, conducted monitoring, cleaned up behind loggers, lobbied government, got in and out of trouble. We even did a burn, mentioned at the start. Our goal: inflict maximum damage.

But the jewel in our crown is the Waldo North Project near Jaffray, a 1600-hectare ER project funded, planned and executed by the Trench Society. This project is extraordinary because the Forest Service granted a licence to cut, giving us the ability to go full-phase, meaning completion of all pre-burn operations. Major learning so far: patience, because it took four years to get operational -- but if we had it to do over, it'd be quicker. About 600 ha was completed last winter/spring. Twenty-two thousand cubic meteres of sawlogs and pulp were moved, plus a huge amount of scud. The good news: it's a financial break-even. The bad news: looks like I'll be reporting on it for the rest of my life.

Our contribution has been part of the overall ER program and certainly not the major part. The other presentations today have given you the big picture: number of hectares treated, treatments, dollars spent, etc. Gratifyingly, the idea of ecosystem restoration is now a provincial program. The Rocky Mountain Forest District has a full-time program manager for ER, Randy Harris, and he has a helper. Quite a change from one person working part time off the corner of his desk. The stakeholder effort put into this the program has built a foundation for a pretty solid program that looks like it has a future here and maybe in other parts of the province.                                  
  
Results from the social side: The effects have not been what the Trench Society hoped for. Among our membership, the ranching industry has been most disappointed. That sector is undergoing much change, hit hard by the BSE crisis and now the value of the Canadian dollar and the ethanol fiasco. It’s hard to predict where the industry will be ten years fout. Maybe sold out as amenity ranches to Alberta oil money. More results from ER could have made some difference in ranching prospects.
The wildlife sector is not far behind in concern, especially fearing a return to the dog days. There were a lot of expectations placed on the program.

Personally, I’d like to see a plan developed and implemented for the restoration of sharp-tailed grouse, now extirpated from the Trench. In my mind, sharptails are like the canary in the mine. If we can figure out how to get a viable population re-established, that would be evidence of pretty successful range restoration, wouldn’t it? Those charismatic mega fauna, elk, have flourished for a number of reasons – I'd venture the ER program being one of them. 

The present reality: As Randy Harris put it the other day: the low hanging restoration fruit has been picked. We’re now face to face with the elegant analysis of thirty years ago, adjusted for the present: “Without timber management you can’t have ecosystem restoration.” Restoration harvest must be increased substantially. That's the next hurdle and it brings us back to the land allocation problem. Fixing this well take some doing but chances are much better  than ten years ago. On the local scene, working relationships within the program are good and I daresay getting better. Anyhow, there's now a much better chance of making a deal with king timber.

To wind up, let’s get back to the bus:
(1) How did we come to get on?
Up until things got bureaucratic, we figured we owned it, so even though we had to turn it over, being refused a seat would have precipitated war. We managed to be annoying, took awhile to grow out of that.
(2) Why did we get on?
You should have gathered by now that our constituency had the most to directly gain or lose. Looking at results of the previous forty years, not getting on the bus would have been ardently stupid. If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. The grassroots had to move up the food chain if we were to influence the program in ways to meet the needs of our members.
(3) How did we improve our popularity? 
With great difficulty. Went to charm school. Actually it was through good luck and some hard work that we became valuable to the program – a fair exchange since it’s obviously valuable to us.

The parting thought is that, along with the others on the bus, the Trench Society wants to feel we own the thing. In my opinion, a strong sense of stakeholder ownership in the program will be the best insurance that it will live and in get the job done. And there is still much to do.  

Maurice made the presentation above to the Ecological Restoration in Southeastern BC conference held Oct. 11-13, 2007, in Cranbrook, BC. The conference was sponsored by the BC Chapter of the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER-BC) and the Columbia Mountains Institute of Applied Ecology (CMI).