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The Western Counties Partnership on Restoration (CPR) Summit:

A Response to the President’s Healthy Forests Initiative

and the Western Governors’ Association 10-Year Plan

Moving from Planning to Implementation of

Collaborative Forest & Watershed Health Projects

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Ruidoso, NM

Breakout d) Roles of Local, State, Tribal, Federal Governments, Science, and

Stakeholders in Collaborative Partnerships,

Presentation Paper by Panelist Howard Hutchinson, Coalition of Arizona/New Mexico Counties

The Role of Local Governments in Implementing Forest & Watershed Health Projects

“The origins of the project lie in the patient observations of the paper's fifth author, G. Vernon Byrd, a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist at the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. His conceptual advantage was to have been paying attention to one ecosystem for decades (emphasis added).”1

Executive Summary

Sadly, there are not many partnerships functioning to implement forest and watershed restoration within the Coalition membership. What few do exist came at the strong direction of Congress with earmarked funding. Partnerships require trust, respect and commitment. Given the size of the problem, we have only tackled the equivalent of a fly speck on a grand ballroom.

Local governments have the capacity and specific knowledge of place, along with statutory authority to partner and lead restoration efforts. Local governments have partnered with numerous state and federal agencies and private organizations in planning and implementation of many small scale restoration projects throughout Arizona and New Mexico.

The observation made by the reporter above strikes at the heart of the role of local government. State and federal agencies should be actively encouraging and engaging local governments to play significant roles in planning and implementation. Generations of local observation, trial and error should be the primary source of information to guide planning and implementation. Local governments are in a unique position to assess and describe those unique local conditions and provide leadership for implementation. Absent local consensus and participation, the best laid plans are doomed to failure.

Rural Arizona and New Mexico have been subjected to economic and ecological hardships for years. The real tragedy is that on-the-ground community members have been observing and describing these realities for decades. They have hopelessly watched as their communities and environments slowly die and their pleas for relief have fallen on deaf ears.

We need to settle on a course with some defined objectives and take action. We also need to restore a market driven process with profit incentives to attract entrepreneurs and capital. There is not a happy ending to financing restoration from the public treasuries.

Federal, state and local governments have a role in creating an atmosphere where capital is willing to risk investment. Local governments need to be leading their citizens with positive encouragement to restoring our economies and environments.

One day we are planning this way, and the next we are told that this is the old way and stay tuned for the new regulation. Local planning and implementation should be de-coupled from the metamorphosing grand schemes hatched thousands of miles away from real consciousness. Moving targets destroy confidence and investment incentive.

We need to stop planning to plan, especially from afar. In order to inspire investment of human energy and dollars, there have to be some reasonable certainties. Each new popular fad or fear should not generate a new planning policy.

Building Partnerships

Local governments bring a host of capabilities to the table. In New Mexico, the Universities are required by law to provide studies and technical assistance to local governments. We have partnered with the universities on numerous activities.

Federal environmental laws encourage consultation, coordination and cooperation. Under the NEPA, local governments can become cooperating or joint lead agencies in the planning process. This brings all of the unique local perspectives and specific knowledge to the table.

The Coalition’s member counties have led the nation in these types of working partnerships with the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. We are now moving to increase the level of participation for recovery of threatened and endangered species with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Local governments have partnered with numerous state and federal agencies and private organizations in planning and implementation of restoration projects.

The Sky Determines

The physical environment determines the customs and culture of the people living in a given area.2 The flora and fauna are driven by the same forces. Generations of observation, trial and error should be the primary source of information to guide planning and implementation. Local governments are in a unique position to assess and describe those unique local conditions and provide leadership for implementation.

Collaboration and consensus are words that have crept into the planning vernacular over the last two decades. What they really mean is subject to the perspective of the participant. For politicians they are convenient escape hatches that allow decisions to be made with the perception of public participation when, in fact, it is little more than public relations. Under this new system, locally elected representatives of the people have been reduced to rubber stamps for centralized command and control decisions made at levels up the food chain.

Implementation at the local level has to start with the planning. The Coalition’s member counties are dominated by federal lands and decisions for management of those lands is mired in a tangle of international treaties and agreements, and national and state laws and regulations. This maze of bureaus and acronyms has all but obliterated consideration of local knowledge and governance. Absent local consensus and participation, the best laid plans are doomed to failure.

Mistakes Made

Driven by forces outside of the Coalition’s member counties from the late 1980’s to the present, our member counties have endured significant insults to our local economies. In the early 90’s we witnessed the total destruction of the timber industry and its infrastructure.

At the dawn of the new century, 100 years of fire suppression came home to roost with a succession of devastating wildfires. Congress found the will to enact a number of bills directing millions of dollars to reduce the threat.

The New Mexico legislature enacted Senate Bill 1 in 2001, which states in part, After consulting with the state forester and the regional United States forester, taking surveys, holding those public hearings as may be necessary and developing a plan to mitigate the effects of the disaster, a board of county commissioners for a county in which a disaster has been declared pursuant to Subsection B of this section may take such actions as are necessary to clear and thin undergrowth and to remove or log fire-damaged trees within the area of the disaster. A county may enter into an agreement with a contractor, licensee or other agent to carry out the purposes of this subsection.

Much of the funding authorized by Congress has been diverted into emergency fire fighting. Little of that funding made it to the ground to reduce the threat of wildfire or benefit the ailing forest communities. Some counties with earmarked Congressional funding pushed forward with developing prescriptions to reduce the threats contained in their declarations of emergency.

What had not and still has not dawned on many is that the once viable human and capital infrastructure at the local level was gone. The skills are fading and equipment and mills necessary to process the daunting mass of overstocked forests have been sold, dismantled and moved to more hospitable environments.

In the meantime, environmental degradation continues unchecked. This includes loss of habitat to fire, insect and disease, increased deposition of dioxin, mercury and other toxins into the air and water, and increased releases of carbon dioxide and reduction of carbon sink biomass. Overgrown forests reduce delivery to surface flows and groundwater recharge exacerbating the decline of riparian systems.

This is by no means an in depth description of the problem or mistakes made. Social disfunction indicators such as suicide, increased divorce, domestic violence, substance abuse and juvenile delinquency are on the increase in forest communities. The real tragedy is that local on-the-ground community members have been observing and describing these realities for decades. They have hopelessly watched as their communities and environments slowly die.

Planning to Plan or Taking Action?

Federal, state and local government elected officials have come and gone during the fifteen years of the Coalition’s existence. Watershed, land, forest restoration, species restoration and riparian plans costing hundreds of millions of dollars have been dutifully crafted, appealed, litigated, amended and smugly placed on shelves.

We can continue planning to plan or commence action. A training tool for planning describes the problem of a traveling salesman in Montana trying to plan the most efficient route through the state. After spending weeks developing his route, he was saddened by the realization that a competitor who had just jumped in his car and gone had beat him to all of his potential clients.

We need to settle on a course with some defined objectives and take action or plan on planning. We also need to restore a market driven process with profit incentives to attract entrepreneurs and capital. There is not a happy ending for trying to finance restoration from the public treasuries.

Federal, state and local governments have a role in creating an atmosphere where capital is willing to risk investment. Local governments need to be leading their citizens with positive encouragement to restoring our economies and environments.

Moving Targets in the Information Age

With each changing legislative body and administration in Washington, D.C. and Santa Fe, new planning regulations and initiatives come into play. The Coalition’s member counties have spent countless hours learning one and then another method to plan and then planning to plan.

The information age has delivered via the internet countless volumes of knowledge from every corner of the earth. It also allows us to voice our opinions to those various corners. Given the short duration of this accessibility it is no wonder we are in a state of confusion. Small rural New Mexican communities are analyzed within the context of the nation and globe. It is no wonder then, when the NEPA documents proclaim, “Findings of No Significant Impact.”

Their comments are dwarfed and out shouted by editorials in the Washington Post and New York Times. Not too many years ago decisions were made and executed before the news of their undertakings reached those towns.

Each popular urban fad or cause moves policy makers in Congress and the state capitols in new directions. International planners driven by special interests devise new planning systems in far off places that rural citizens only dream about visiting. These planners have no knowledge of the people and places their actions affect.

One day we are planning this way, and the next we are told that this is the old way and stay tuned for the new regulation. Local planning and implementation should be de-coupled from the metamorphosing grand schemes hatched thousands of miles away from real consciousness. Moving targets destroy confidence and investment incentive.

Conclusion

The role of local governments in our grand system is to be the check on reality for the central governments. This is where the rubber meets the road. Local governments should be placed in the lead for forest and watershed restoration in order to inspire community support and investment.

State and local governments should be creating a tax and regulatory atmosphere that fosters incentives for establishing the businesses and industry up to the task at hand. The federal government should be investigating the transfer of management of federal lands to the states, local government and the people who live on the land.

We need to stop planning to plan, especially from afar. In order to inspire investment of human energy and dollars, there must be some reasonable certainties. Each new fad or fear should not generate a new planning policy.

It is appropriate to include the conclusion to a paper delivered by Jim Catron, Dr. Alex Thal and myself in 1994, on this very subject.

Before the Age of Enlightenment, all power and all property belonged to the absolute monarch and the aristocracy. History was a constant struggle for power and property between armed elites. Peace is dependent upon government by popular consensus and private property rights.

The consequences of failure to include the issues of this paper in environmental planning are ultimately social costs. Administrative costs include transaction costs and government fiscal stress. There are political, litigation, and environmental costs incurred by such failures. More important is the threat to basic liberty and individual fairness that further erodes the citizens’ trust in government to protect individual liberty, private property rights and the commons.

Environmental protection raises no new issues for the student of government. The questions addressed in this paper, who pays and who decides were the issues of the Enlightenment.

Classical Liberal political philosophy rejects arbitrary power vested in elites. Self-government, government by popular consensus is the system blueprinted in the Constitution. Efforts to use the cause of environmental protection to increase the arbitrary power of government will backfire. If protection of nature becomes identified with arbitrary assumption by agencies of dictatorial powers, the grass roots will resist and rebel, to the detriment of both self government and the environment.3

1. How Foxes in the Aleutian Henhouse Doomed Islands Plant Life, By Charles Petit, For The New York times, March 29, 2005

2. Sky Determines, Calvin, 1934, The MacMillan Company; 1948,1965 University of New Mexico Press; 1993, paperback edition reprinted by arrangement with UNM Press, High Lonesome Books

3. Environmental Planning and the Clash Between The “Commons” And Private Property - Who Decides? Who Pays?, Presented at the New Mexico Conference on the Environment April 26, 1994