Friday the 9th on the Flathead

On June 9th, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed an appeal in a lawsuit against its revised forest plan.  The appeal involved questions about ESA consultation on the plan’s effects on grizzly bears, and the proper environmental baseline for the amount of roads used in the consultation process.  After the district court opinion found flaws in the analysis conducted for consultation, the Forest reinitiated consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service, which has now been completed.  The 9th Circuit held that the new biological opinion made that issue moot.  (A new lawsuit was filed against the new biological opinion, discussed here.)

However, Kurt Steele won’t be overseeing the Flathead Forest Management Plan. As of Friday, USFS Region 1 press officer Dan Hottle said Steele “was offered and accepted” a new post as deputy director at the regional office that involves “environmental planning,” according to the Flathead Beacon. It is unknown who will be Steele’s replacement.

This was also announced on June 9th, but I assume there is no connection between the Flathead Forest Plan and Steele’s move to the regional office forest planning staff (he wasn’t hired by the Flathead until after the plan was done).  However, there may be a connection to his work on Holland Lake (discussed most recently here), since it’s hard to imagine that a forest supervisor would consider a deputy position on a regional office planning staff to be a great career move.  That connection is denied by the Forest Service.

“There’s no correlation with this (personnel change) and Holland Lake,” Hottle said. However, he said he did not know whether Steele had initiated applying for the position or if the Forest Service offered it to him first. Hottle characterized the change in position as a “lateral move” with a salary that should stay the same.

This is interesting to me because the regional planning staff didn’t have a deputy director position when I left, and the current agency directory does not show that there is such a position to apply for.  It’s not unheard of for the agency to create a position to place someone where they will be out of the way, and I’ve observed that planning staffs tend to be seen as places to put people who need putting (and of course, anyone can be a planner).  Or maybe there is some kind of vindication going on because he will nominally be overseeing the revision of the Lolo National Forest Plan, and the Lolo is where a lot of the same people who oppose the Holland Lake development like to hang out.

 

 

 

 

 

A New Book on Wicked Problems by Professor Brian Head: With Flashbacks to Dave Iverson

 

Some of you may remember Dave Iverson talking about “wicked problems”, in his Eco Watch Dialogues? At that site, I found this link to a 1999 article by Bruce Shindler and Lori Cramer of Oregon State University. In which they say:

many forest professionals were introduced to the term wicked problems in a provocative 1986 Journal of Forestry article by Allen and Gould who borrowed the phrase from the systems analysis research of (Rittel and Webber, 1973)

And of course, that was a while back.

In my hunt, I discovered that the EcoWatch Dialogues go all the way back to 1990, still on the web. Many fascinating articles and discussion. And here’s a link to a post by Dave on the topic on TSW in 2011.

So here we are in the 2020’s and the London School of Economics “Impact of Social Sciences” blog has a post by Brian Head discussing his new book “Wicked Problems in Public Policy“.  Head is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Queenland, Australia.   TSW readers are invited to review this book, which is open access (yay!). Some quotes from his blog post:

First is the well-known critique of rationalist claims that the policy process should be substantively based on rigorous ‘evidence’. In rebuttal, critics state that stakeholder interests and experience are crucial, that public policy decisions are ultimately political, and that accountability must rest with elected governments. Underpinning this are five common claims:

  • evidence is always incomplete, especially for complex and evolving issues;
  • evidence includes many forms of knowledge, which are often inconsistent;
  • evidence is always subject to value-laden interpretations, hidden or overt;
  • evidence is inevitably “cherry-picked” by governments and stakeholders to support their preferred positions; and
  • reliance on specialized expertise implies technocratic and undemocratic styles of decision-making.

The second key reason for the malaise is the rapid rise of mass communication channels that propagate misinformation, personal beliefs, and vilification of opponents. Polarisation intensifies in-group bias and provides excuses for ignoring alternative information. Partisan polarisation undermines community confidence in procedural fairness and legitimacy, which are crucial for trust in public institutions. In the face of this tsunami of propaganda and incivility, the enlightenment model of reasoned debate in the public sphere has been deeply wounded. In responding to this wave of ‘post-truth’ anti-science, the defenders of evidence-informed debate and civic education have created new networks to discuss strategy, share information, improve their communication of evidence-informed policy ideas, and develop new tools for fact-checking or reviewing the claims of partisan advocates.

(I think the humble Smokey Wire might be one of those “new networks”).

The third key reason for concern about the future of evidence-informed policymaking is that so many policy problems are intractable, controversial and turbulent. This is the domain of ‘wicked’ problems

The third key reason for concern about the future of evidence-informed policymaking is that so many policy problems are intractable, controversial and turbulent. This is the domain of ‘wicked’ problems, as outlined in Wicked Problems in Public Policy. Wicked problems are characterised by complex interactions, gaps in reliable knowledge, and enduring differences in values, interests and perspectives. Unfortunately, ‘more science’ cannot resolve these conflicting views, and therefore more data cannot directly help to de-politicize the partisan divide. Wicked problems include long-standing, yet continually evolving problems such as: refugees and immigration, human rights and inequalities, climate change, food security, water and energy security, biodiversity protection, terrorism, and the peaceful resolution of major disputes.

….

Finally, it is true that there are no neat and correct answers to wicked problems. They might not be solvable in the short term. But there are ways to better understand and manage them. For example, inclusive processes for considering the nature of the problems and possible paths toward improvement are often more beneficial than ideological solutions imposed by government. Good quality knowledge and analysis are always useful, but information alone cannot transform complex problems into simple solutions. Information-based strategies are only one important thread in the policy mix required to enable us to tackle the wicked features of complex and contentious problems.

………..

Each problem has a unique history, even though many problems closely interact with others (such as poverty, housing, health and education). Solutions are provisional and contingent. They are temporary political accommodations, depending not only on best available evidence but also on stakeholder perceptions and the capacity of leaders to negotiate shared goals.

……………

The case for using social experimentation and co-design processes is mainly pitched at the local level, rather designing mainstream national programs. These collaborative agendas and methods are very diverse. Choices need to be ‘fit for purpose’, working with relevant stakeholders and adapting to the nuances of each challenge. Collaborative and coordinated approaches are widely recommended, but the difficulties of successfully implementing such approaches are well known and skilled leadership is needed.

 

What struck me about this post is the fact that science folks are rewarded (by journal articles, media, and other professional rewards) for generalizing (does my study relate to a Ranger District in the Sierra? the Sierra? California? Dry western forests? North America? Global forest change or biodiversity?  As science becomes more models than empirical, more satellite data than on the ground, related to abstractions (defined by academics generally) such as climate change or biodiversity or regenerative agriculture.. does it drift away from having utility in solving wicked problems?

Politicians often prefer a quick fix or a simple ‘solution’ for managing a complex policy problem. In many cases, government leaders will attempt to impose their own preferred solution, either to appease their own supporter base (‘keeping promises’), or to close down the debate. This is often ineffective and sometimes counter-productive. In the long run, differences in stakeholder values and interests need to be acknowledged, and methods found to accommodate diversity and equity. This is a challenge for political leadership, as much as a challenge for evidence and expertise.

In the case of our issues, it is interesting that how many of these are seen through a national lens.  And as we often discuss, certainly federal lands belong to all people, but still perhaps the national or international view is not the best way to manage the set of wicked problems therein

Wyoming’s fractious by nature? Experience tells me otherwise

Dr. Jessica Western, standing, guides the 30-plus members of the Chronic Wasting Disease Working Group through crafting final recommendations in September 2019. (Katie Klingsporn/WyoFile)

I really liked this op-ed  by Dr. Jessica Western of the University of Wyoming published in WyoFile.

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We who work in the field of conflict resolution have seen this process work repeatedly. In my 30 years of experience, recent examples include the Wyoming Game and Fish Department tackling the “wicked” (complex and controversial) topic of chronic wasting disease, Wyoming State Parks and Cultural Resources convening an Outdoor Recreation Taskforce that resulted in numerous recommendations and federal agencies and non-governmental organizations taking on collaborative problem-solving initiatives.

How do we make these collaboration processes as successful as possible? I often hear past “failures” cited as “evidence” that collaborative problem solving doesn’t work. We’ve had our struggles, yet in every case, having the conversation was laudable.

For example, the Wyoming Public Lands Initiative gave interested parties a chance to learn the level of agreement that can be reached regarding Wilderness Study Areas.  In some cases we learned that the available common ground is considerable, in others not. This effort reminds us that when a topic is very controversial, it can be better to frame it as “let’s explore the topic and related interests” first. If participants find such a learning process to be productive, then they can progress into agreement-making.

Another reason I’ve heard a process termed “unsuccessful” or worse, a “sham” is that the decision had already been made. In other words, the process was to meet the requirement of public engagement and did not influence the decision one way or another. No disagreement there: that is a sham process. Successful collaborative problem solving is based on the acronym FOTE: full, open and transparent exchange. An insincere public-engagement effort is not that. Fortunately, I hardly ever feel this is the case in Wyoming.

Collaborative process regarding the Teton Range bighorn sheep herd, convened by the Teton Range Bighorn Sheep Working Group. This resulted in the Teton Range Bighorn Sheep and Winter Recreation Strategy. (Jessica Western)

A process will founder with positional participants, i.e. when stakeholders have an outcome in mind and cannot/will not engage in a deliberation based on others’ interests or explore the reasons behind positions. And if participants can find a better alternative and find their needs met outside the collaborative process, this can also render the effort moot.

One component of Wyoming’s collaborative capacity is that we have strong conflict resolution expertise, including in the fields of natural resources, education and community health. Colleagues at the Ruckelshaus have worked with outdoor recreation collaboratives, facilitated the Wyoming Renewable Energy Siting Collaborative and the Pole Mountain Gateways project with the US Forest Service. There is more expertise in Jackson, Cody, Cheyenne, Gillette and other parts of Wyoming. These consultants and the Ruckelshaus Institute also offer a variety of training and education opportunities in collaborative skills and leadership.

Our federal land management partners are becoming increasingly adept at collaborative problem-solving. Challenges remain, however. Many of us believe federal agency leaders need to do more to make collaboration the way of doing business across all federal agencies. Nevertheless, our federal partners are another resource to value and use in collaborative problem-solving. Additionally, numerous state agencies and non-governmental organizations have demonstrated their value as excellent partners in collaborative processes.

Ultimately, Wyoming people are our biggest asset. They have clearly demonstrated willingness and ability to do the hard work to explore complex issues and find solutions. Now is the time to recognize this capacity, invest in it and use it. Now that the pandemic is subsiding, let’s get ready to go back into the room and work on our future together.

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Conservation groups should be able to lease land to protect it

(I figured this from High Country News originally came from the Property and Environment Research Center, “the home of free market environmentalism,” and I wanted to make that clear.)

In much of the rural West, environmental groups have a reputation for suing to stop natural resource development. But some, like the Wyoming group, are attempting a new strategy: purchasing what they want to protect. The approach, sometimes called conservation leasing, could bolster “30 by 30,” the Biden administration’s ambitious conservation plan to conserve 30% of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030, without ending the leasing revenue that state governments have long derived from resource extraction.

The only problem: It’s often illegal.

These century-old “use it or lose it” requirements were designed to deter speculation and encourage white settlement. But today, they can bias resource management in favor of extraction.

We may have discussed this before, but not in the context of “American the Beautiful.”  (Note: they seem to assume that not all federal lands would automatically qualify, and that at least those committed to energy or grazing would not.)  Why not change the rules to allow non-consumptive/preservation interests to pay to prevent development (for a contractual time period that would count towards 30 x 30) on publicly owned lands?  I suppose a couple of answers are that 1) they shouldn’t have to pay, and 2) that money could be better used for something else.  But would just removing the legal barriers to allow that option to be considered in lieu of energy or grazing for areas where environmental protection is more valuable be that bad of a thing?

Possible Salvage Strategy for Dixie and Caldor Fires

Since a battle for salvage projects is brewing, I think the Forest Service and the timber industry should consider my idea to get the work done, as soon as possible, under the rules, laws and policies, currently in force. It would be a good thing to ‘preempt’ the expected litigation before it goes to Appeals Court.

 

The Forest Service should quickly get their plans together, making sure that the project will survive the lower court battles. It is likely that such plans that were upheld by lower courts, in the past, would survive the inevitable lower court battles. Once the lower court allows the project(s), the timber industry should get all the fallers they can find, and get every snag designated for harvest on the ground. Don’t worry too much about skidding until the felling gets done. That way, when the case is appealed, most of Chad Hanson’s issues would now be rendered ‘moot’. It sure seems like the Hanson folks’ entire case is dependent on having standing snags. If this idea is successful, I’m sure that Hanson will try to block the skidding and transport of logs to the mill. The Appeals Court would have to decide if skidding operations and log hauling are harmful to spotted owls and black-backed woodpeckers.

 

It seems worth a try, to thin out snags over HUGE areas, while minimizing the legal wranglings.

Timber Wars Peace Breaking Out in John Day, Oregon: New York Times Op-ed

Thanks to Bob Sproul for finding this New York Times story about Susan Jane Brown and efforts to reach consensus around logging on the Malheur National Forest by Nichols Kristof. Since it’s so relevant, I’m posting the entire piece. I do like the idea that our humble forest work could “offer lessons for a divided country.” It’s also interesting that this is posted as an opinion, while other pieces, which seem similar to me (interviews with people supplemented by statistics), are counted as news stories. The comments are also interesting; I see some from three hours ago, but it says they are now closed. Susan Jane Brown, member of our own TSW community, plays a prominent (and dare I say heroic) role in the story.

April 10, 2021
JOHN DAY, Ore. — One of the most venomous battles in our polarized nation is the one that has unfolded between loggers and environmentalists in timber towns like this one in the snow-capped Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon.

Yet, astonishingly, peace has broken out here. Loggers and tree-huggers who once loathed and feared each other have learned to hold their noses and cooperate — and this may have saved the town. It may also offer lessons for a divided country.

The timber industry, by far the biggest employer in John Day, survives here only because environmentalists led by Susan Jane Brown, a Portland lawyer, fought to save these workers’ jobs by keeping chain saws active. John Shelk, who owns the town’s sawmill, and might be expected to eat environmental lawyers for breakfast, says simply, “Susan Jane is my hero.”

This collaboration between environmentalists and loggers is often grumpy, incomplete and precarious, but it’s also inspiring. It offers America a model of a process to sit down with antagonists, seek common ground, register progress (punctuated with eye rolls and moans) and knit this country back together.

The timber peace process began in 2003 at a bitter meeting over forest policy. Loggers were furious at Brown for having halted logging in local national forests by suing to protect species like woodpeckers and redband trout and by tying the U.S. Forest Service in procedural knots — but they were also desperate to save their livelihoods. A delegation of burly woodsmen approached Brown, who is 5-foot-2, and invited her to go out into the forest with them.

“My life flashed before my eyes,” Brown told me. But she took a deep breath, overcame her fears and eventually spent three days with the loggers (she brought a very large friend as a bodyguard), visiting forests and arguing about whether trees should be cut.

“It was very tense,” she remembered. But while the two sides didn’t agree, each was surprised to find the other not entirely diabolical.

“We thought, ‘Well, we haven’t killed each other, so maybe we should keep talking and let’s see what happens,’” she said. In 2006 they formalized the dialogue by naming it Blue Mountains Forest Partners.

The word “partners,” though, was mostly aspirational. The timber industry was collapsing, with a 90 percent plunge in the harvest from national forests in Oregon between the 1980s and the 2000s. Workers were losing well-paying jobs and in some places the human toll was catastrophic. I wrote recently about an Oregon friend of mine, Mike Stepp, whose life disintegrated into homelessness and early death when he couldn’t follow his dad into a good sawmill or factory job. Brown says that back when she started to talk with the loggers she didn’t really think of the human cost.

“My attitude was, ‘You deserved it,’” she said. “‘You cut down all the old growth.’”

John Day reciprocated the hostility. The area was already deeply conservative — it had voted overwhelmingly to withdraw from the United Nations — and the closure of two of its three sawmills left people fearful and furious.

Then, with almost no new logs coming in, Shelk announced that he would have to close the last sawmill, just as he had already closed his two other sawmills in Eastern Oregon. The entire town was teetering.

Yet this was also a crisis for environmentalists. In their meetings with the foresters, Brown and her colleagues had gradually been persuaded that some logging was necessary to make the forests healthy again.

That’s because nearby forests were dangerously overgrown. For thousands of years, fires had burned the forests every decade or so, clearing out the underbrush but not harming large trees. Decades of fire suppression had ended that natural balance, leaving the forests full of tinder just when climate change was also making them drier and hotter.

“This is not natural,” Pam Hardy, who works with Brown at the Western Environmental Law Center, told me as we walked through a national forest full of saplings and brush west of John Day. If a fire broke out in a place like this, she explained, there was so much fuel that the fire would burn hot and incinerate everything — destroying forests, rather than keeping them healthy.

The best hope to revive the forests, Hardy and Brown concluded, was to hire loggers to clear out small trees — and that meant there had to be a sawmill to take the logs. “I need the mill,” Brown explained.

So the environmentalists and loggers joined forces. With the help of Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, they won a 10-year stewardship contract to subsidize forest thinning and restoration of the traditional landscape, and this saved the mill and kept the town alive.

“Without her, we wouldn’t be,” said Mark Webb, a county commissioner. “It’s as simple as that.”

Yet this kind of cooperation is brutally difficult. Small logs are less profitable for the sawmill than large ones, and many people on all sides see those participating in the dialogue as sellouts.

Webb, who has a Ph.D in philosophy but was drawn to rural spaces, joined the forestry collaborative, as the process is called, but instead of being rewarded for saving the mill, he was defeated in his re-election bid. Hardy was nudged out of another environmental organization for her openness to logging to reduce fire danger. And Shelk, the owner of the mill and an active member of the collaborative, says, “I’m kind of an outcast in the timber industry.”

There are other forest collaboratives around Oregon that are also trying to sustain dialogue between loggers and environmentalists, with varying degrees of success and frustration. In John Day, the group is tussling over how much salvage logging to allow after forest fires, and how many roads should be allowed in the national forests. But members are making progress, and Brown has built a weekend home in John Day.

What advice do they offer for bridging hostilities and creating a peace process? A starting point is finding people from each side who are equipped with humility and empathy. Then when disputes arise, both sides need to agree to defer to science — and if the science doesn’t exist, then to conduct experiments to gather evidence. They say it doesn’t hurt if after meetings everyone relaxes over dinner together.

“It helps to have alcohol, and it helps to have food,” Brown said.

I normally cover people who are exchanging insults, occasionally gunfire. So there’s something exhilarating about being in Brown’s home in John Day, with loggers and environmental lawyers arguing amiably around a dinner table, antagonists who have also become friends.

They roll their eyes in fond exasperation at things the others say, and across town, because of them, the sawmill is still spitting out boards and keeping John Day humming. Maybe there’s something the rest of the country can learn from this handful of sellouts who saved a town.

EPA Files Objection on BLM Decision?

Pronghorn seen here graze near natural gas operations in the Upper Green River Basin of Wyoming. Credit: Jeff Burrell, Wyoming Conservation Society
I ran across this story today in Wyofile. It brought back memories of disagreements about BLM’s air quality models as discussed by lawyers and judges during FS/BLM litigation. According to this story, EPA objected to a BLM decision. Isn’t there some kind of interagency disagreement resolution method other than objecting? I’m not sure I’ve seen that within the federal government, is this something new? Can we expect to see it in FS decisions?

The Bureau of Land Management improperly used an “alternative approach” to predicting air pollution from a 5,000-well oilfield, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said as it joined a chorus of critics blasting approval of the Delaware-sized development near Douglas.

The federal environmental watchdog filed its objection to the agency’s decision along with 13 stakeholders that either objected to or protested against the final study.

If BLM ignored Audubon on grouse, it did provide the EPA with its reasoning for allowing more air pollution. EPA engaged the land and minerals agency from the start of the analysis providing a “detailed explanation” of why the BLM should use EPA methodologies in predicting whether air pollution will violate federal standards.

BLM first said EPA, which sets National Ambient Air Quality Standards, employed an inaccurate approach to gauge impact. EPA’s estimates are based on “impacts for stationary sources that remain in a given location for multiple years,” BLM contended. Instead, drill rigs and such usually don’t operate in a single location permanently.

EPA countered, saying that while a rig might move, it could, essentially, continue working all year. BLM’s “alternative approach” to predicting air pollution “did not align with EPA’s methods,” EPA wrote. That departure from standards makes it impossible to compare model results to the air standards, EPA said.

Operators sided with the land and minerals agency, which said it, the BLM, lacked authority “to require application of the air quality mitigation measures.”

BLM had the final word. It “may rely,” on Wyoming’s DEQ “to ensure permitted activities do not exceed or violate any state or federal air quality standards under the Clean Air Act,” the agency said.

Wyoming’s DEQ, would be the agency that would patrol for any violations, BLM said. That state agency, BLM said, “is subject to oversight by the EPA.”

What We Can Learn from a Conflict Resolution Expert

Professor Carrie Menkel-Meadow of UC Irvine Law School

While we remain immersed in what some folks call “environmental” conflicts, there are other folks who are experts in the world of conflict resolution. Perhaps we can learn from them. One of these is Carrie Menkel-Meadow, a law prof at UC Irvine. Here are some excerpts from her 2010 paper “When Litigation Is Not the Only Way: Consensus Building and Mediation As Public Interest Lawyering“.

While Hampshire concludes that agreement on the substantive good is not possible in our modern, diverse, and pluralistic world/ he is optimistic that there might be one human universal: “fairness in procedure is an invariable value, a constant in human nature …. [T]here is everywhere a well-recognized need for procedures for conflict resolution, which can replace brute force and domination and tyranny.” Hampshire refers to several forms of conflict resolution, including both well-known forms such as adjudication, arbitration, and ”judging,,, as well as broader political processes such as deliberating, examining, discussing policy choices, diplomatic negotiations, and “hearing.” … When properly expanded from “hear the other side” to “hear all sides,” Hampshire provides a foundational principle from which to measure whether justice and the public interest are served in all political and legal decision making. Where Hampshire sees justice in the recognition that all conflict is inevitable and must be humanely tended to, those in the conflict resolution movement see the conflict resolution processes employed as at least one important measure of justice.

She goes on to say that there are seldom only two sides in public conflicts.

Environmental issues involve developers, local communities, who themselves may be split between pro-development employment seekers and environmental conservationists, a wide variety of disagreeing public interest groups, and federal, state, and local agencies. … Consider how often in litigation the “real parties in interest” include others besides those formally named as plaintiff or defendant in any given case. To the extent that multiple parties have claims, needs, interests and “rights” in a legal action, the concept of “hearing both sides” may be falsely reductionist in assuming that all parties can align themselves on one or the other side of the “v.” and that any resolution favoring one side over the other will solve the problem, conclude the litigation, or end the conflict

The environmental arena is an especially productive domain for these processes. Former Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, frustrated by the legislative grid-lock on some forms of environmental regulation and wildlife protection, championed a process he denominated “quasi-legislative dispute resolution. Habitat Conservation Planning empowers the stakeholders in a particular region to engage in trades and negotiations and to set standards for preservation of species not protected by the binary approach of current legislation. Environmental problems over natural resource use cannot be solved in dichotomous terms and not with the time-consuming processes of litigation or legislation. ”New governmental processes, involve all the stakeholders and to manage a variety of targeted, and in some cases, unique, creative solutions to problems. Such solutions may themselves be contingent and revisited with an agreed-upon process as scientific conditions or facts change.

Sounds like structured adaptive management. (my bold)

Size Matters (?):

Consensus outcomes are more likely to focus on the future, as well as the past. They are supposed to be based on underlying interests and needs, rather than arguments and positions. As the popular parlance goes, they are intended to “expand the pie,” or look for additional resources or new ideas, rather than to divide a presumed limited sum of resources available to the parties. In more technical terms, different processes are more likely to produce “pareto optimal” solutions than the assumed compromises of negotiation or “split the baby” compromise verdicts or arbitration awards. In processes where all the “real parties in interest, participate, there will be more than two sides to each issue and very likely there will be more than one issue to be resolved. Expanding, rather than narrowing, issues will increase the likelihood of reaching good agreements, because as game theory and other quantitative theories propose, more solutions are possible when more “trades” are possible. Although it may seem counterintuitive to conventional legal reasoners, the more disagreement about what is important, the better. Oppositional or complementary “trades” allow each side to satisfy their most important needs by meeting the most important needs of other parties. With more complementary, rather than conflicting, desires, we can find more ways to share things, an elaboration of the Homans theory of complementary needs.

This makes much sense, and I can see how that might go back to why collaborative processes fit better with multi-activity large projects. However, following this along, it seems like forest plans would be even better for achieving agreement, but that doesn’t seem to be the way it works. Or is it?

Other ideas?

Here’s a link to the Bruce Babbitt paper she cites. But I couldn’t seem to get it for free. Also this one looks interesting. “Bruce Babbitt’s use of … A Mid-term Report Card” by Tom Melling. Maybe someone with access to a law library could help?

Media, Divides and Talking Across Them: Some Polling and Some History

Both of these sources (Limerick’s history post and the webinar) talk about people in the middle.

The Colorado Media Project had an interesting webinar on “Reclaiming the Public Square: Trust, Media and Democracy in Post-Election Colorado.” I think it’s worth watching to get the views of (some) media folks on problems and solutions. The presentation by Stephen Hawkins runs from 5:06 to 18:00 and was my first introduction to More in Common

More in Common works on both short and longer term initiatives to address the underlying drivers of fracturing and polarization, and build more united, resilient and inclusive societies.

More in Common divides Americans politically into eight “Tribes” (see the chart above). Following that is a presentation about some Gallup polling that put people into three political categories (Ds, Is and R’s)(see chart above). It would be interesting to take some forest-related questions and see what different narratives might result from dividing folks who answer into three or eight categories. My guess is that eight would yield more understanding of peoples’ points of view. You don’t have to be a sociologist of science to think that how you structure the study (what groups you choose, exactly what questions you ask) can affect the answers you obtain.

Patty Limerick had an interesting idea in her “Not My First Rodeo” post History’s Essential Workers about the role of interpreters in Western history.

A Familiar Story from the Past, A Fresh Approach for the Present
As Meriwether Lewis and William Clark traveled from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean, the terrain they crossed presented an almost unfathomable variety of landforms. And yet the diversity of the languages they encountered proved far more difficult to comprehend.

At every stage of the trip, the expedition encountered a group that spoke a different language. On a few occasions, this required Clark and Lewis to engage in an early nineteenth century experimentation with what would later be called “the telephone game,” a chain of interpreters lined up to pass on a single message. In one episode when clear communication was of great importance, Lewis spoke in English to a French soldier from the expedition. The soldier then spoke in French to the expedition’s official interpreter, Toussaint Charbonneau. Charbonneau then spoke in Hidatsa to Sacagawea, who spoke in Shoshone to a leader of that tribe. And then the process reversed: Shoshone to Hidatsa to French to English.

Here’s an idea that we suspect no one else has proposed: this would be a good time to adopt his chain of translation and put it to use to our world today.

There is no mistaking our national dilemma: people who are firmly committed to one political position are unable to communicate with people who are firmly committed to an opposite political position.

Lewis and Clark offer us a promising technique.

A far-left progressive Democrat would speak to a centrist Democrat. The moderate Democrat would speak to a centrist Republican. The centrist Republican would speak to a far-right Republican, who could then offer his response to the centrist Republican, and that response would then move back along the chain.

After a few messages have traveled back and forth through the chain, the time would be right for a designated interpreter to step in. Asking everyone to pause, the interpreter could ask everyone a few debriefing questions: “What did you just hear? Was it what you expected to hear? Where do you agree and disagree? Were there parts that you simply did not understand and that need more explanation? Do you need to keep using this chain of indirection, or are you ready now to talk with each other?”

Limerick has an interesting idea but in our forest world, I’m not sure our views fall into neat political categories whether three, four as in Limerick, or eight. Thoughts?