History of KRCG

By Tim Coleman

Introduction

Perhaps it is somewhat instructive, maybe even beneficial at least to some, to understand the degree to which Kettle Range Conservation Group has invested its blood and treasure into safeguarding wild and old forests in the Colville and Okanogan National Forest. If any lesson learned is more salient than the abysmal outcomes of this investment measured in clearcuts, failure of legislative initiatives, and to top it off, twenty years of failed forest collaboration, I’m not aware of one.

KRCG represents a cross-section of citizens in Washington state, from those who enjoy viewing wildlife, hiking, snow sports to those who fish, hunt and collect wild foods. KRCG works ensure restoration of the circularity of natural mature & old growth forest ecosystems (DellaSala, et al 2024) habitats essential to the survival of threatened, endangered and sensitive (TES) species. KRCG members and staff live in and/or frequently use the Project area for non-motorized recreation, wildlife viewing, hunting and fishing, physical and mental wellbeing. Project authorized logging will significantly alter the natural appearing forest landscape that remains after decades of logging. This will in turn affect KRCG members use and enjoyment of Dollar Mountain area.

Our Story, Abridged

KRCG was fully engaged in Colville National Forest projects since summer 1976 when the group first formed as a pro-wilderness group. KRCG litigated the 1988 Colville Forest Plan because of its failure to protect old growth forests and wildlands. From 1992 until 2002, KRCG filed an estimate 100 administrative and litigation challenging logging projects. We actively organized a wilderness campaign from 1976 to 1984 and again from 1995 to 2019. This continues today, though in a more realistic process that in-part recognizes without a congressional champion to introduce legislation, all our hard work ends up going nowhere. But perhaps, a third time is a charm?

Although there was strong support for Wilderness designation in the U.S. Senate, then Representative Tom Foley prevented the inclusion of the Kettles in the 1984 Washington Wilderness Act. Foley does deserve credit for protecting Salmo Priest Wilderness, in the Blue Mountains and helping guide wilderness legislation outside of his district. Unfortunately, proponents of Kettle Mountain wilderness were left to fight pitched-battles fighting one timber sale after another just to hold onto what today are most of the wildlands that existed in 1984, except about 50,000 acres lost to logging, primarily before 1992.

Following the 1984 defeat Kettle Ranger’s held “Last Chance Hikes” every summer to areas slated for logging that had been proposed for wilderness — a tradition that continues to this day. At that time, statewide organizer Karen Fant told me KRCG had be the best grassroots organized group in Washington.

In 2002, Kettle Ranger’s cofounded what later became the Northeast Washington Forest Coalition. NEWFC was built on a foundation of the promise of equanimity. Twenty years of collaborative problem-solving working with the Colville National Forest and an eclectic cross section of NE Washington body politic nevertheless failed to get a promised wilderness bill introduced let alone a revised Land Management Plan (LMP) that represented a fair outcome for its decades of collaborative problem-solving that was a significant contributor to local forest products industry surviving the 2008 financial collapse fueled by a bloated housing market.

Hence, we now rely as in the past (1976-2001) on administrative and litigative measures to solve the most basic of social conflicts attributable to Forest management because elected and administrative officials were incapable of doing the right thing, and seriously, lacked the moral backbone.

Early in the 1980’s, KRCG successfully challenged the Helen Timber Sale, et al, resulting in a reprieve from logging in the Thirteenmile and adjacent Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs). Beginning with our founding in 1976, Kettle Rangers have been a wilderness group. Even though the U.S. Senate supported wilderness designation for ~80,000 acres of the Kettle River Mountains, unfortunately all was left out all of the 1984 Washington Wilderness Act. In the late 1990’s, KRCG organized public support for the Roadless Area Conservation Plan rulemaking that led to Forest Service rulemaking administratively protecting Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs) in the Colville and Okanogan National Forest.

From summer 1991 to summer 1992, KRCG worked on contract for the Audubon Society doing aerial photo, TRI Map and timber sale map interpretation. Hand drawn on 2.64” to the mile maps were results of that interpretation that when completed was shared with the CNF. On-the-ground evaluation of numerous test areas validated findings. This included the PROJECT. Based on that experience, the 1934 photos provide a very good historic snapshot of forest structure.

From 2002 to 2022, KRCG actively collaborated with CNF and the timber industry in the formation of Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition (NEWFC). KRCG was a cofounder of NEWFC and always participated in the Project development, serving as Board Secretary until 2020, attending field trips and filing detailed comments both as KRCG and as a board member of NEWFC. KRCG continues to support NEWFC’s “Strategic Vision.”

In the early 1990s, KRCG co-facilitated a winter camera survey in the eastern Kettle River Mountains, including the Project area, in search of C. lynx. All camera stations were located next to Level I & II roads and trails. Most notable of this endeavor, was the abundance of snowshoe hare tracks and pictures of hare at every camera/bait location. WDFW lynx study claimed that hare forage in the Kettle River Mountains was low quality (Stinson, D.W. 2001). An abundance of hare documented in camera survey and during three year whitebark pine restoration work in the Kettle Crest contradict Stinson.

From spring 2017 through the fall of 2019, Kettle Rangers contracted seasonally working for the CNF thinning encroaching sub alpine fir (SAF) to reduce competition with whitebark pine (WBP) – an ESA threatened species. Typically work was 3-4 days a week from late June through early November. Work areas stretched from Midnight Mountain in the north to Snow Peak in the south and almost exclusively targeted thinning to increase airflow and reduce spread of pathogenic blister rust. The first and second years were spent almost exclusively on Copper Butte, and Wapaloosie Mountain in the central Kettle River Mountains. The third year was mostly on Snow Peak.

With its release of the revised 2019 Colville National Forest Land Management Plan the Forest Service signaled their view of “collaboration” is merely advisory, by definition is not collaborative. The FS misrepresented NEWFC management alternative and then tossed it aside. Back again to its recent past (1965-2000) is clearcutting, targeting big trees, claiming wildlands are a wildfire risk but their logging plan will “restore healthy forests” – in other words, back to timber production and any excuse that will/or might work to convince the public forest wildlands and old growth trees will only survive with “chainsaw medicine.”

Understand one thing, what has proved most successful is a protracted challenge of the U.S. Forest Service’s penchant for timber volume, political favoritism at the expense of pretty much everything the public values most. What is done today that is termed “restoration” is merely a repair job to fix what existed historically before Manifest Destiny took a blowtorch to Mother Earth.