Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
approaching them saying, “This is the decision that we went ahead and made,
and this is why we made it.” [That's] a big difference.
In the intervening years between the Blue Ridge Demonstration and the start of
the stewardship contract, the White Mountains community (including both agency
managers and nonagency stakeholders) invested considerable time in building the
kind of capacity that would allow them to undertake a project as ambitious as the stew-
ardship contract. This capacity building centered on increasing both physical and so-
cial capital. Physical capital, in the form of wood utilization businesses that could add
value to restoration by-products, was needed to transition the local wood products in-
frastructure so it could accommodate smaller-diameter logs of more variable quality.
This was addressed through a number of initiatives, including projects associated with
the federal Economic Assistance Program that supported small, local wood products
businesses through grants and technical assistance (Abrams and Burns 2007). Social
capital, the “networks, norms, and trust that facilitate coordination for mutual bene-
fit” (Putnam 1993, 1), was built over many years as an outcome of ongoing dialogue
and collaboration between the various stakeholders active in forest issues, both
through the NRWG and through more informal relationship building. The building
or rebuilding of physical and social capital involved deliberate attention and planning
by local community members over more than a decade, and progress was sometimes
slow.
Legislation, administrative regulations, and executive orders encouraging local
collaboration and capacity building in the context of public lands have all been ad-
vanced in recent years (Van De Wetering 2006), but the realization of these goals is ul-
timately dependent on the agency staff and local citizens in each particular commu-
nity. The enhanced capacity built in the White Mountains, along with the tools
provided by stewardship contracting authorities and other national policy changes, al-
lowed communities there to address some of the thorny social and economic issues re-
lated to public lands restoration—issues such as treatment costs, identifying and
building markets for restoration by-products, finding consensus on a stakeholder
“zone of agreement,” and project monitoring.
Project Costs
Per-acre costs in ponderosa pine restoration efforts are often considerable because the
initial mechanical interventions that constitute a major part of the work usually focus
on the removal of smaller trees in overstocked stands (Hjerpe, Abrams, and Becker
2009). Taking into account costs associated with the harvest and hauling of small-
diameter trees, restoration thinning treatments in southwestern ponderosa pine forests
can cost several hundred to well over a thousand dollars per acre for initial entries
(Larson and Mirth 2001; Pinjuv, Daugherty, and Fox 2001). In addition, internal
agency costs for site preparation, planning, administration, and postharvest cleanup
can run into the millions of dollars annually for a project the size of the WMSC (Sitko
and Hurteau 2010). One-time funding is sometimes available to pay for pilot or
