Collaboration, its successes and stumbling blocks, got the spotlight in two John Day gatherings last week. Although still evolving, the collaborative process on the Malheur National Forest has made enough progress to lure two of President Obama’s top environmental advisors to visit Grant County. Also last week, U.S. Rep. Greg Walden was in town to tap the brains of local elected, business and forest industry officials, seeking ideas for a new path in forest management.

The events produced divergent views of collaboration, the process by which stakeholders hash out their differences to come up with projects that will restore stressed forest stands and, hopefully, avoid litigation. In one instance collaboration was touted as the best way to create “community-drive solutions.” In another, it was dismissed as a “garden-party” approach to forest management.

Amid the bouquets and brickbats, a couple of areas of consensus emerged. One was the importance of local sawmills, which all agreed are needed to restore the fire-prone forests and our struggling communities. Wallowa County officials lamented the loss of their mill infrastructure, with Commission Chair Mike Hayward noting that “now, we have to start over.” Sustainable Northwest’s Martin Goebel noted that he and other “reformed environmentalists” used to believe there were too many mills for the forests, but now “we find it’s just the opposite.”

Some of last week’s forum-goers were hopeful, if not confident, that collaboration can produce the work needed to keep the remaining mills alive; some were clearly skeptical that it will produce enough, fast enough.

And that brings us to another topic of general agreement last week: the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Both groups voiced frustration at the way NEPA plays out on the ground in this era of critical restoration efforts. While Nancy Sutley, chair of the president’s Council on Environmental Quality, insisted that the basic concepts of the law remain valid, she conceded a need to smooth out its implementation.

Local participants were more blunt, describing the 40-year-old law as bulky, bureaucratic and oudated. They noted the way it consumes taxpayer-funded staff time and creates rafts of paperwork. They alluded to a bigger concern – the sense that NEPA doesn’t promote the greater good, and may even work against it. They worry that by putting overriding importance on finding specific, narrow flaws, the law is used to halt projects that could offer broad benefits to the forest ecosystem, the rural communities and the economy.

They’ve got a point. Oddly, NEPA demands perfection from two realms that are rife with anomalies, exceptions and imperfections: government and nature. It perpetuates a dynamic of protection vs. production, with the deck stacked for the nitpickers. The result is delay and decay.

Clearly, NEPA needs a fresh look as all sides push ahead in the quest for healthier forests. And community resilience needs to be a big part of any new – or continuing – strategy. If our visitors from the White House and the halls of Congress were looking for messages to take back to their colleagues in D.C., that’s a good place to start. – SC