Collaborative timber harvest crafted on Pinchot

A Vancouver-based environmental group, long accustomed to blocking timber sales in national forests, recently embarked on a novel concept: Designing a logging project of its own. If it's accepted by Gifford Pinchot National Forest managers, Platt and other members of the so-called Pinchot Partnership expect the restoration project on the north end of the forest will generate 11 million board feet of timber, two to three years of local employment and the decommissioning of 22 miles of crumbling logging roads. The environmental group collaborated with conservation, union, tribal and local residents to design the plan and draft a formal environmental assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. The collaborative group, which formed in 2002, is the oldest among three relatively new organizations thinking about new ways to break through long-simmering disputes between loggers and environmentalists. The forest thinning project near Packwood represents the first time one of the collaborative groups has delivered a full environmental analysis on a suggestion. The group did marshal several federal and foundation grants to underwrite much of the specialized research and writing required to produce a NEPA-quality assessment. Platt estimated the total cost of creating the 110-page document at $140,000...Columbian