INTERIOR COLUMBIA BASIN ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT PROJECT

Good morning. Greetings from the other Washington. Having lived in both, I must say I prefer being here. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. Since the Forest Service was asked to open this workshop, BLM was given the opportunity to close it out. As one of the final speakers at the end of 2 days of talks, I know I have at least two strikes against me:

1) There is a high likelihood that someone has already said what I am planning to say, and
2) I'm the last obstacle between you and your lunch.

So I will try to be brief. Let me start by saying how impressed I am by the size and diversity of this group. It is obvious by your presence that there is high level of interest, concern and commitment for this process. I am especially pleased that elected officials, tribal members and members of the general public were able to join us over the past couple of days. It is the people in this room; scientists, managers and the public at large, that have been key to the success of the Interior Columbia River Basin Project to date. I know it hasn't been easy to get to this point. Many of you have sacrificed time and energy, taken political risks and, in general, gone the extra mile to keep this project moving forward. Believe me, it is appreciated.

Let me say "thank you" on behalf of the BLM Washington Office and its leadership to all of you who have worked so hard, at times in the face of strong opposition and at great personal sacrifice, in helping this important work move ahead. At times, some of you have felt tremendous pressure to complete an assignment for the project while worried about the work that was piling up at your "normal" job or at home. At times, you may have wondered if it was all worthwhile. The answer is, yes, it was worthwhile, and it will continue to be worthwhile. You are part of an innovative and ground-breaking approach to managing natural resources, one that I believe will be followed in other areas of the country. Your influence will be felt by many in future years, and will help to ensure that our natural resources and our local communities are healthy for generations to come. We extend our sincere gratitude to all of you, who have worked so diligently, and managed to find a way to bring us to this point.

After two days of listening to the scientific, economic and social assessment reports, some of you are probably thinking, "Well, the hard part is done. Making decisions based on all this technical information should be easy. We'll just let science or perhaps the economics determine our decisions (depending upon which one you think should be given more weight)."

Others of you may be feeling overwhelmed with the sheer amount of data, or perhaps confused with its complexity, "How are we ever going to find the right answer with so much information?"

The answer to the first question is "it's not that easy" and to the second: "there is no right answer." Science or economics by themselves will not give you the "right" answer. They simply provide you with information to evaluate choices. Decision-making is not simple and logical, it is complex, messy, chaotic and time consuming.

The choices we evaluate and the ones we ultimately select are based upon science and economics and community, but more fundamentally, they are based upon social values. Values are cultural phenomena, developed early in life through interaction with our family, our friends, our schools, our community and early life experiences. Values are strongly held and resistant to change; they define who we are and how we view the world. Interactions between groups, professions, or individuals occur through a filter of values. It makes communication difficult, if not seemingly impossible at times. Values are neither right nor wrong. They simply exist. They define who you are. Values color how we view our choices and how we view choices made by others.

Now comes the hard part. Setting aside our attitudes and beliefs (that stem from our values) long enough to understand each other's interests and to see if there can be agreement on some common goals. I believe many people in this room would agree on some common goals. We all want clean air, clean water, a safe community, economic stability, and healthy fish and wildlife populations.

Where we quickly enter into heated, protracted and seemingly intractable debate is over the relative value of these goals when compared to one another other, and what we might have to give up to achieve them.

I spent the past two days with a good friend of mine, Wayne Elmore, whom many of you may know. Wayne has spent the past 20 years seeking to create a dialogue between a variety of interests with a common goal of maintaining functioning riparian ecosystems. One of my favorite quotations from Wayne is, "We agree on the destination, what we are arguing over is the journey."

When do we start? What vehicle should we use? Whom do we invite along? What paths do we follow? How fast do we go? When will we know when we get there? Does that sound similar to any thoughts you may have had the past 2-days?

The Journey

Let me elaborate. How do we start on this journey? How do we make this process work at the local level?

When do we start?

You have already started with the work completed over the past three years. Many of the tools you need to use are the same ones that were used to get us this far. The information provided in the biological, economic and social assessments provide the foundation for local assessments. The workshops planned over the next couple of months will help you get started in understanding how to apply the scientific information available in these assessments to local situations.

Who do we invite along?

Many of the same people we have been working with over the past three years need to continue on this journey with a greater emphasis on all interested people at the local level. We need to make sure that we continue to work with our elected officials, especially those who represent counties and states. As federal agencies, we must keep them informed, answer their questions and involve them as partners. We cannot overlook these interests. The role of counties cannot be overestimated. They've been at the table for much of the effort and we truly appreciate their support. Counties have a high stake in how the Interior Columbia Basin project turns out, because the management of resources on public land takes place in their backyards. We want the counties to stay active in this effort because we understand, more than ever before, that we cannot go forward without a close link to them. Much of the same can be said of state agencies and elected officials.

Another important constituent is Native American communities. We've learned a lot in working with tribal governments and we hope that we can offer something back to them: We believe that the plans we're producing will not only benefit natural resources that are important to them, but also can help preserve their cultural heritage. We look forward to a healthy and mutually productive relationship with tribal governments.

Land management and other agencies must continue to work together. Gone are the days when land management agencies would come up with a completed project proposal and then ask the regulatory agencies to review it. No more turning in a report and then seeing if we get a passing grade. We have to work on the reports together, from start to finish. While we have specific individual agency missions, our objectives are fundamentally the same to maintain or improve the condition of the land and its natural resources. We must continue to build relationships with all of our publics. We all are trying to do what is best for the region. Let's make that our common ground. By building relationships, opening channels of communications, foregoing turf battles, we will all be better able to address the challenges we face.

Conflict Management

We ask a lot from our managers. When public land management began 50 years ago (in BLM's case) and over 90 years ago (in the case of the Forest Service), we initially asked our managers to make decisions based on good science. We were optimists; we assumed that there were clear differences between right and wrong solutions and better scientific and technical information would help us find the "right" ones.

When our publics began to disagree with some of our scientific solutions, we added economic analysis to the decision-making model - again searching for that one "right" answer through optimization models, cost/benefit analysis, etc. Our managers had to develop economically as well as scientifically sound solutions. Much to our surprise, the public debate increased.

We now understand that social values need to be part of the mix. So we are asking our managers to put on several more hats

- to communicate with everyone (communication specialist)
- understand differing values (social scientist)
- work with local communities (community relations)
- seek consensus where possible (conflict resolution expert)

in addition to the scientific and economic analysis hats they are already wearing.

How do we go about incorporating values into the decision making process?

It is not an easy task - coming from Washington, D.C., where there is an entire industry focussed on maintaining separate and competing interests (lobbying industry) - beliefs and values are strongly felt and vigorously defended. But it is possible to temporarily set aside our attitudes and beliefs in order to focus on common interests and goals - you have proven that with the work done on this project to date.

We spend enormous amounts of energy arguing about different methods to achieve our goals and sometimes miss the fact that our goals are the same; clean water, healthy forests and fish populations, and stable communities. The scientific assessment process has helped define some of those common goals.

At the local level, we need all of you to continue to focus on common interests and goals, rather than differences in the paths we want to take to achieve them. We are beginning to understand that there are multiple pathways to achieve these goals. There are techniques found in conflict resolution processes that can help us focus on common interests and finding common solutions rather than arguing over our individual positions, but everyone needs to participate in that process.

Managers, with the help of others, can act as catalysts for that process; sometimes a neutral third party can help facilitate the dialogue. But it requires participation from all of you. Remember, we agree on the destination, we are arguing over the journey.

The wonderful thing about ecosystem-based management is that it is never done. Some of you may be appalled by that - but it is a plus. We will always be learning new things, changing our course, improving what we are doing, building on success, and learning from false starts. There is no road map - you are developing it as you travel.

Making it Work:

What can each of us do when we return to our respective homes to move this process forward?

1. Federal Land Managers - local, state and regional. You have perhaps the most difficult task.

Communicate

• listening is more important than speaking, listen to local groups most importantly, but also regional and national interests
• listen early, middle and late
• develop a continuous communication process, not just when it comes time to make a decision
• round tables, collaborative learning process, informal field trips, and workshops all assist in increasing mutual understanding of values as well as facts (science) and figures

Coordinate

• with other agencies
• with local communities
• with elected officials
• with tribes

Cooperate

• with adjacent landowners
• with each other
• with everyone who has an interest in managing natural resources

2. Elected officials, counties, state agencies, tribes -- thanks for sticking with this process for the past three years

• Participate - stay involved in the process, for it is a process or a journey with no clear pathway. We are testing as we go, and choosing alternate paths as we learn more.
• You have been essential to the process to date and will continue to be essential to the process in the future.
• Understand that this journey is a long one, there will be dips and bumps, curves and detours as we travel down this new road together-- suspend judgement if you can.
• As long as we continue working together, we are making progress.

3. Washington Office officials

• I probably should be giving this talk in Washington, D.C., rather than in Spokane -- we need to learn from your model.
• We need to develop the same techniques to communicate, coordinate and cooperate that I am recommending to you.
• We tend to value competition rather than cooperation in D.C.
• We compete within agencies and between agencies for money, people, resources and recognition.
• We are not good role models for how we need to do business in the future.
• We are starting to turn that around -- but it hasn't been easy -- agency cultures, traditions and past successes of the competitive process tend to get in our way.
• We are reaching beyond the old model and trying to design a new mode of operation; we have to.
• We are working together to develop streamlined procedures for NEPA compliance, ESA consultation and consultation on cultural resource with State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO).
• We are developing joint national strategies for forest and sustainable forestry.
• We are looking at new ways to fund land health treatments for fuels reduction, forest health -- as well as other efforts.
• We are attempting to develop incentives and rewards based on how well we manage for ecosystem health -- that involves rethinking how we account for performance.
• That's a tough one -- we are used to measuring activities (acres treated) or outputs (board feet/Animal Unit Months) rather than results (acres with restored ecosystem-integrity.)

Some of you may be thinking (or at least hoping): "I have just spent three years of my life completing this monumental undertaking (a scientific assessment covering 140 million acres.) I've paid my dues, now I can go back to basic research instead of dabbling in the more messy applied research area."

• We need you more than ever as we work our way through implementation.
• We need you to help design sound monitoring strategies.
• We need you to help interpret data and determine whether we are on course or need to adjust.
• There is an ongoing need as new data are collected to update and evaluate the assessments to ensure they are kept current.
• The research/management partnership is here to stay.

5. Members of the public at large -- whether you belong to a group, live in the region, obtain your livelihood off public land or are simply interested and concerned, we need you the most. You are who we manage public lands for. Stay involved, communicate, participate.

Where Do We Go From Here?

I believe we have entered a third phase in resource management in the United States.

FIRST PHASE -- Settlement to late 1800's

• Taming Wild Nature: through plow and ax
• Clearing the land, cultivating fields, bringing order to the chaotic wilderness.

SECOND PHASE -- Late 1800's to 1980's

• Improving Upon Nature: through science and technology
• Develop genetically superior stocks, statistically valid sampling and measuring techniques
• Calculations of growth and yield tables for timber
• Engineered solutions for ecosystem fixes - dams, channel straightening, structural improvements, etc.

THIRD PHASE -- 1990's and beyond

• Working with Nature: understanding natural processes and functions are the foundation of ecosystem integrity.
• Examples: Kissimmee River and Mississippi River restoration of natural wetlands
• Without ecological integrity, we cannot support economic outputs, community stability or other values.

This third phase is likely to continue for sometime:

• the more we learn about ecosystems, the more we understand we don't know
• we are just beginning to understand the role of disturbance in natural ecosystem processes
• the effects of our actions today are not likely to be fully understood for sometime to come
• the learning process is continuous: as we learn more, we can better predict results and better meet a variety of needs

We need all of your continued support, commitment, and enthusiasm as we continue on this journey. Together we can learn from each other, adjust our course, and monitor our results to improve upon past success.

We're moving forward with ecosystem-based management because our old way of doing things no longer meets the needs of communities, nor was it keeping enough of our natural resources healthy.

We're moving forward because of the wealth of information we all have and we all need to share. This is not a one-way street. In Oregon, for example, there are more than 60 local, watershed council organizations. We need to put their knowledge and insights to work for us. In return we hope that we can offer them data and suggestions that will be helpful. We know that there are many, many other conservation, recreation, industry and other groups that we can tap into. Our door is always open to them.

We are moving forward with ecosystem management because we care about the land, the wildlife, the trees, the soil, the water, the fish, the air, and most importantly the people who depend upon and love these lands.

I encourage you to move forward with commitment, vision and enthusiasm. The journey has just begun, but the destination is in sight. Have a wonderful trip!