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CHRIS ROBERTS: Good afternoon. With news from Minnesota Public radio, I'm Chris Roberts. Freezing rain has made roads slick in the Thief River Falls area. Schools in Thief River Falls have called off classes for the day. Authorities say roads are also slippery in the Crookston area. Freezing rain has been falling there since early this morning.

A winter storm, the second in a week, is moving into Northern Minnesota. Between 5 and 8 inches of snow could fall in Northwestern Minnesota by this evening. Meanwhile, thunder and lightning have been reported in Fargo where a fierce storm is bringing heavy snow today. The Red River Valley is under a blizzard warning with up to 9 inches of snow expected in the Northern part of the Valley, and several school districts have closed.

In other news, the Saint Paul chamber orchestra has named Stephen Copes as its new concertmaster. Copes was hired as acting concertmaster for the current season, but the SPCO called off its search for other candidates yesterday. Copes previously worked two years as concertmaster for the Colorado Symphony Orchestra in Denver where he also co-founded a chamber music series. Cope says he's been trained in chamber music since age 10 and feels well suited to lead the SPCO.

STEPHEN COPES: Sometimes in a symphony orchestra, you can feel removed from a good deal of the players in the orchestra because they're just so far away. I mean, just physically, in this orchestra, I can communicate with everybody that I can see. And it makes the music making better.

CHRIS ROBERTS: Copes is 27 years old. In the weather, a winter storm warning has been issued for Northwestern Minnesota this afternoon, and a winter storm warning is in effect for extreme North, Central, and Northeastern Minnesota this afternoon and tonight. Expect accumulations of up to 8 inches in the North by this evening, and winds increasing as well. That's news. I'm Chris Roberts.

RACHEL REABE: NPR'S Main Street radio coverage of rural issues is supported by the Blandin Foundation, committed to strengthening communities through grant making, leadership training, and convening.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Good afternoon, and welcome to this special Main Street radio show. I'm Rachel Reabe, and we're broadcasting from Duluth on the edge of the Great North Woods that once covered much of Minnesota. There continues to be a great deal of debate on how to preserve and protect the forests that remain an important resource in our state. Our guests today have all been active participants in that conversation.

Jim Sanders is the Forest Supervisor for the Superior National Forest, and Betsy Daub is the Forest Program Director for the Minnesota State Office of the National Audubon Society. They're with me this afternoon at the Minnesota Public Radio studios of WSCN/WSCD in Duluth. Wayne Brandt, Executive Vice President for Minnesota Forest Industries, joins us from our Saint Paul studio. Good afternoon to all of you, and welcome.

BETSY DAUB: Thank you.

Good afternoon.

RACHEL REABE: Our phone lines are also open for your questions and comments. You can call us this afternoon at 1-800-537-5252. 1-800-537-5252. For 10 years, Minnesota's been talking about ways to improve forest practices. Millions of dollars have been spent to study the situation, and truckloads of reports have been generated. But let's start out with the question, are we making any progress. Betsy, your response.

BETSY DAUB: Well, I guess that depends on whose opinion you take.

RACHEL REABE: Your opinion.

BETSY DAUB: OK. Not enough, certainly not nearly enough. We've been doing a lot of conversation with a lot of different interest groups at the table in Minnesota, and that sounds good and indeed is progress over many places in the country where there's not that kind of talking occurring. But if the real measure of success is, have we made improvements on the ground in the forests? No, we haven't yet. It's been 10 years of conversations talking about improvements, but we haven't yet seen that trickle down to real change on the ground. And I think in large part because we don't really see yet a commitment from all the players to those improvements.

RACHEL REABE: Wayne Brandt, your thoughts.

WAYNE BRANDT: Well, if commitment doesn't include our members in the Timber Producers Association spending $40 million in the past four years on lower ground pressure and more environmentally sensitive logging equipment, if that's not commitment, if commitment is not agencies and private landowners having doubled the number of even-aged clearcut stands that are no longer being traditionally clear cut from 38% to 77%, if that's not progress, if the changes that have occurred in looking at ecosystems more broadly and at landscapes more broadly and species more holistically is in progress, I'm not sure what progress is.

RACHEL REABE: And have those things made a difference? Is there a level that we can demonstrate that it has changed--

WAYNE BRANDT: Well, I think--

RACHEL REABE: --or these things that will take years?

WAYNE BRANDT: Well, I think that change is an ongoing process in forest management and will continue as it has. I think for myself, when I go out on logging jobs and harvested sites with my members who are loggers all over the state, you see a significant amount of change, whether it's redistribution of the unused material, the slash, around the site to provide habitat for wildlife species, or if it's leaving more inclusions or a standing live and standing dead timber for a different species, I think you see some significant changes.

RACHEL REABE: Jim Sanders with the superior National Forest, let's give you a chance to jump in on this. Has there been progress?

JIM SANDERS: Yes, I think we have to look at it in forestry or in natural resource management, is that it's an art and science. And as we move forward, we're more into the art than we are into the science. We base our management of natural resources, be it the timber, be it the wildlife, or the habitat that we have out there, on our science. But there is no definitive answer at any one point in time. And the art becomes and how you put that scientific basis to application on the ground.

BETSY DAUB: I would agree with that, but I don't think we've applied it in this case.

[SCREECHING]

Greater than 70% of the Chippewa National Forest, for example, is still being managed primarily for the main goal of perpetuating fast growing young-aged trees such as aspen, to meet the needs of just a few industries, the paper and waferboard industries. Over 86% on the Superior National Forest outside the Boundary Waters is managed this way as well. If you're looking at, have we accomplished the goal of making our forests more diverse for the variety of plants and animals and people needs from these forests, I think the answer still is no.

RACHEL REABE: Our phone lines are open for your questions and comments today, the number 1-800-537-5252. And we have a lot of people already waiting on the phone. We will start with Clyde in Minneapolis. Good afternoon, Clyde.

AUDIENCE: Hello. I'd like to ask Wayne Brandt about the proposed industry alternative for the master plans of the Chippewa and the Superior National Forests. I understand your proposal is to double the harvest level on the Superior National Forest. I guess my concern is that that means redefining a lot of areas that have been protected as part of the timber base. It may mean making some questionable assumptions about how much yield there will be after our next wave of foreign exotic insects sweep through the Midwest, and it also means assumptions about logging practices, which may not protect our riparian areas. So my concern is that I'm not sure that doubling the harvest level in the spear national forests is really moving in the right direction.

WAYNE BRANDT: Well, Clyde raises an interesting question about the alternative that we, through Minnesota Forest Industries, have proposed on the two forests. I would not want the listeners to think that we, as the industry, started looking at volumes. The analytical process that we went through to develop this alternative was to go back and look at the best research that we were able to find on historical disturbance patterns on the two forests.

And to then, from that, calculate out what that would mean given the reserves in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and the various federal law legislation that prohibits harvesting in certain areas to then look at that and try and mimic what occurred historically through particularly fire, but also through windthrow windstorms to mimic that with harvest.

On the Superior National Forest, it does, in fact, yield a very substantial increase in the potential acres to be harvested, far less so on the Chippewa. But when you look at the Superior, I think you have to understand that in the present management plan, there's only about a third of the Superior National Forest that's even considered for management. You've got the BWC with over a million acres that's off limits, and no one is suggesting that that change in any way, shape, or form, and then you've got some 400,000 or 500,000 acres that in the previous plan were not considered because of economic reasons.

We think the right way to go about the forest plan revisions is to look at the ecology and to look at it in a landscape and ecosystem level and not to look at it in a process of going through and zoning the forest that we're going to have, only this use in this area, only that use in that area. We think that runs contrary to what the chief of the Forest Service said. We think it runs contrary to good resource management and the directions through the forest resources council and other processes that we've been heading to here in Minnesota.

RACHEL REABE: Jim Sanders, let's hear from you. You are the supervisor of the Superior National Forest, which actually begins 50 miles North of us here in Duluth, runs up to the Canadian border, almost borders Lake Superior on the other side.

JIM SANDERS: Well, let's talk about first what the role of the Superior National Forest or what the role of National Forest is across the country and that public land. We were established as through law or policy that we don't focus on any one dominant issue or resource. We're there to deal with, yes, the timber resource, with the outdoor recreation, with the wildlife habitat, with water quality. Our mission is for multiple uses and not to focus on one to dominate over the other and to try to bring that to the landscape. And--

RACHEL REABE: You are not required to make money?

JIM SANDERS: We are not required to make money. We are attempting and will work always, whether it's in our recreation program, our timber program, or even our wilderness program, to be very efficient in how we implement that mandate and the management on the ground.

RACHEL REABE: And is there a proposal on the table to double the cutting in the Superior National Forest?

JIM SANDERS: Yeah. We on the Superior and the Chippewa are in is in the process of revising our 1986 forest plans. Those plans guide the management for those two forests across that entire forest, on the federal land only. And what we are asking for or have asked for at this point is for some extensive involvement from the public, collaboration, if you would call, to help us in developing the various alternatives. And we're obligated to look for a range of alternatives.

Yes, there are alternatives that has been proposed or developed from the industry, Minnesota forest Industries, that Wayne talked about that talks about focuses heavier on the harvest to deal with those historic conditions that took place and disturbance regimes that have happened on our forests over the years, and then we have proposals from other groups. The Sierra Club has put one together. That would go to the other side. Audubon--

RACHEL REABE: So everybody's got a plan?

JIM SANDERS: You bet. They've got--

RACHEL REABE: But do you and your position think that the Superior National Forest could sustain double the cutting that's being done there now?

JIM SANDERS: At this point, given the regulations that we have in place, I wouldn't say we were looking at doubling the cutting or going to zero on the cutting. It's trying to find that harvest pattern or-- let's talk about the forest we want, the landscape we want across the Superior or the Chippewa. And through that, through maintaining water quality habitat for wildlife or fisheries or whatever, then we will have some alterations to that forest and that will be at some level.

RACHEL REABE: And the decision will have to be made when?

JIM SANDERS: We will be looking at providing a draft environmental impact statement next fall, and then a final in about two years.

BETSY DAUB: If I could just jump in here too, just to set the stage, I think many of your listeners heard in the series previous that Minnesota's Northern Forest used to be-- previously a very diverse force-- mixtures of different tree types and different ages, a real mosaic. And through the focus on providing fiber for the paper and waferboard industries, we have radically simplified our forests. We have a force that is becoming not a whole lot more diverse than a corn field with just the proliferation of young aged Aspen everywhere.

This is not balanced forest management. And Jim is right when he says that the National Forests have a mandate to provide for the variety of needs and uses of our public forest lands. What Wayne is proposing with doubling the harvest on the Superior National Forest is, they've had almost all of the pie. Now they want it completely. This is--

WAYNE BRANDT: Oh, Betsy, that's just nonsense. And you know it.

BETSY DAUB: Wayne, this--

WAYNE BRANDT: --Superior national forest, in the current plan, there's only a third of the acres that are even considered for management. And the notion that we're somehow converting massive amounts of the state's forest land, let alone the National Forest, to a simplified cover type goes against all of the research and information out there.

BETSY DAUB: Wayne, I just disagree. The research--

WAYNE BRANDT: I know you disagree, but unfortunately, you're wrong.

BETSY DAUB: You're talking about 10-year-old information. And in the last 10 years, we have dramatically accelerated the harvest here in Minnesota.

WAYNE BRANDT: The harvest is less today than it was 10 years ago.

RACHEL REABE: Ladies and gentlemen, let's go to our phone callers because they are waiting patiently and have many questions and comments that they would like to bring up. We go now to Saint Paul. Good afternoon, Lars.

AUDIENCE: Good afternoon. This is somewhat directed at Superior National Forest, but it's the land that really adjoins it and that's owned by Minnesota power. And what I've been seeing is Minnesota power leasing off small sections to small logging companies or small family run logging companies that go in, lease the land for 100 years. They go in, cut their wood, and they leave. And there doesn't seem like there's much management going on. That land is just left, and it becomes Aspen scrub after that.

What's the responsibility of Minnesota Power and what is the-- it's more on the private land ownership issue of the small loggers going in and pulling off $5,000, $10,000 worth of land and leaving scrub Aspen there. And it really destroys the land that's around it and also Superior National Forest that adjoins the Minnesota Power land.

WAYNE BRANDT: I don't mean to speak for Minnesota Power, but I have some familiarity with their land management program. To the best of my knowledge, they don't do any kind of long term timber leases. They do have a program where they lease Lakeshore lots to individuals on the long term. The state of Minnesota, also through the last couple of sessions, has bought a substantial amount of the riverfront property they had in the Saint Louis river to protect that on into the future in terms of their management of the Timberland that they own. I know that they employ a number of professional foresters and have got a staff and a process they go through, but it's not any kind of long term leasing arrangement.

RACHEL REABE: We go North to Side Lake for our next phone call. Good afternoon, Max.

AUDIENCE: Hello.

RACHEL REABE: Good afternoon. Go ahead with your question or comment.

AUDIENCE: Thank you for taking my call. I've been listening here intently. This is an excellent program, but one important aspect that has not been at all addressed yet is the role of fire in the forest. The Boreal Forest in particular is a fire ecosystem, and I don't think we can talk effectively about the forests without addressing fire. Excuse me. And if possible, I'd like each of your guests to talk a little bit about fire ecology and fire in the forest from their perspective, and I'll hang up and listen. Thank you.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you, Max. Jim, let's start with you. Again, you supervise the Superior National Forest. Briefly, the role of fire.

JIM SANDERS: Well, our forests in the Northwoods of Minnesota are forests that have developed with fire as a key ingredient to that development of those forests. And as we look, that is one disturbance regime that is out there that took place before European settlement the Native Americans use. We, through disturbance inside the Boundary Waters, we will look at allowing fire to continue to roll under certain circumstances, under conditions that were beneficial because we know we need to bring fire back into that system.

Outside the boundary waters, we are looking at tools for that disturbance, in some cases to maintain that disturbance. Some places, we will bring fire into it or we will use timber harvest to replicate that disturbance, or where there isn't a commercial product or in it's unsafe to bring fire in, we'll use some mechanical treatment to bring that disturbance regime in.

RACHEL REABE: Betsy, is fire any less painful than cutting?

BETSY DAUB: Well, fire is-- as Jim said, it's absolutely a natural part of these systems, these forest systems, and has a place in them. And I think it highlights-- the caller's point, highlights the issue of, we need to get away from doing the same thing everywhere. Our forests are diverse. They need to be treated in a diverse-management approach.

And 80% of the way we log in Minnesota, or more than 80%, is by clear cutting. That doesn't achieve that balance, that variety that we need, and fire is one aspect that we can introduce and bring in and try using as a management tool to add a little more diversity to what we're doing.

RACHEL REABE: Wayne Brant, your thoughts.

WAYNE BRANDT: Fire is nature's clear cut. And it's not a pretty thing, and it probably has very little likelihood with the numbers of people who own property, whether they're hunting cabins or lake places, the property owners in our northern forest certainly aren't going to want to see a substantial reintroduction of fire. So while it has been an important part of the ecosystem and the Forest Service, as Jim points out, within the Boundary Waters utilizes it, we don't think it's going to be-- the risks are too high to let wildfires burn.

RACHEL REABE: We have a logger on the phone from the town of Finland. Good afternoon, Corey.

AUDIENCE: Yes, I just-- I want to first say that I listen to NPR in my harvesting equipment out here in the woods, and I'm on my cellular phone right now calling in because it's a very good program. NPR is great, and I'm glad to see everybody that's on the panel that gets to talk. But anyway, my thoughts that I wanted to mention on the show here were that diversity is a necessary thing that we need to have in the woods and all the different interests that are involved in that. The DNR, the paper companies themselves.

We're talking about the goshawk earlier in the first hour, and we just-- I work for potlatch, and they just had a wildlife guy out here painting areas off and talking about the goshawk and its territory. They're highly motivated in finding out goshawk territory. They have them mapped on GPS. I don't know which way I want to put it, but they're very deep into this diversity of the forest and trying to look for ways to promote the forest. I mean--

RACHEL REABE: So Corey, are you comfortable, Corey, that the forests are being protected but can still be logged?

AUDIENCE: Definitely. So, I mean-- and the big part of it is, you don't realize it. Like Wayne had mentioned earlier, people have to get out of their cars and go actually look. I mean, I think a lot of these people are-- I think the biggest crime is all the pavement and all the cities that people-- that's where they're calling from, and I think that's the worst crime. Out here, the forests are regrowing and much to the efforts of the paper companies and the logging interests that are involved in it.

One of the foresters for Potlatch-- I hate to-- I don't want to use his name, but he'll know if he's listening. But he said, I'd like to put a bumper sticker on my vehicle and say, I've planted 2 million trees this year. How many have you planted? For the people who call in to talk about how the forests are-- the state of the forest in Minnesota.

RACHEL REABE: Thank you, Corey, for your call today. We go now down to Minneapolis where Doug is waiting on the phone. Hello, Doug.

AUDIENCE: Hi. This question really is posed to someone who's not on the panel, but I think maybe Betsy and Jim Sanders might respond to it. I'm talking about old forests which are unfragmented. And you talked about one earlier at Big Lake Seven Beaver. Another one is just on the western boundary of the BWC. It's called Little East Creek forest. And that forest has been left largely untouched by harvesting and roads since the early part of the century.

In the original mosaic, there was a lot of pine in there. Right now according to the US Forest Service, their own vegetative type map for the area, there's only one stand that is large enough of white pine left in the area that it has a designation as a white pine cover type in this 20 square mile area, one small area. That area is going to be scheduled to be cut by the DNR this winter.

The white pines are up to 200 years old. Some of them are younger. The ones that are younger are dying of blister rust. The older ones are healthy, the seed trees. The seed trees are the ones that are going to be cut. This represents cutting of white pine, which, as you know, there's only less than 1% of original white pine left in Northern Minnesota.

RACHEL REABE: And your question, Doug?

AUDIENCE: What do you think about that-- yeah. My question is, what do you think about that practice and why not convince the DNR that they ought to buy back those trees from Boise Cascade, who's bid on them successfully?

RACHEL REABE: Betsy?

BETSY DAUB: Well, I think that's a great idea. We certainly know that white pine is a very treasured, rare resource here in Minnesota. I think what Doug is bringing up is a problem that plagues Minnesota, which is, we don't have good communication from the Minnesota DNR about what they're planning, where they're planning to do something.

There's not a process for notifying the public or involving the public in any meaningful ways. And so we have these last minute surprise discoveries at the 11th hour, and trying to resolve them is never-- they're never resolved to anybody's satisfaction. And it's an unfortunate-- it's unfortunate occurrence. The forest service, however, does have a public involvement notification process, and I think Minnesota's DNR would do well to try to emulate that so that we can--

We live in a Democratic society. And anytime you try to-- public land management agencies, when they're not allowing the public to be involved in knowing what's happening and what's going to happen in their backyard and to their public resources, I think you need to start being nervous about why it is they don't want the public knowing what they're doing.

RACHEL REABE: Jim, your comment. I know one of the goals of the Superior National Forest is to preserve the white pines for as long as you can, the older white pines.

JIM SANDERS: Yeah. We are actively trying to manage and maintain and enhance white pine. That was a subject in part of the debate around the sale last winter up in the Eryri area, but we planted in the last couple of years over a million seedlings of white pine and have timber sales underway that are out to specifically help to regenerate white pine.

RACHEL REABE: And your great, great, great grandchildren will enjoy those.

JIM SANDERS: Very much so. And that's the objective, is what we leave and do today, is what will be there for all of our children into the future. But my role or our role on the federal or forest land-- Forest Service land is not to dictate what will happen on the other nonfederal ownerships, and that is within their purview of how and they go about their management. For our national forest land, as Betsy said, we have a very open involved public involvement process and welcome and want that public to be involved.

RACHEL REABE: Time consuming and expensive process, but it works.

JIM SANDERS: Well, yes, but that's what we're on.

RACHEL REABE: That's what the--

JIM SANDERS: On the federal public lands, that's part of the process that has embedded in that, and it does work. It's not easy. It's not clean, and it gets very messy along the way. But that's part of the debate that we're having.

RACHEL REABE: And it might be interesting to note that the Superior and the Chippewa National Forest are two national forests in Minnesota represent just 12% of the forest lands in this state.

JIM SANDERS: That's correct, yes.

WAYNE BRANDT: I do think it's unfair, though, to suggest that there's no opportunity for public input or public involvement in the DNR processes. They have a process-- they do have opportunities for public input. They're certainly not as bureaucratically complex as has been created by the Congress and the courts for the Forest Service, but it's not that they're off in some deep, dark corner making decisions. They are very responsive to the public and to state elected officials.

RACHEL REABE: You're listening to a special Main Street show on Minnesota's timber industry. I'm Rachel Reabe, and we're broadcasting from the Minnesota Public Radio studios of WSCN/WSCD in Duluth. My guest today, Jim Sanders of the Superior National Forest and Betsy Daub of the National Audubon Society. They're here with me in Duluth. Wayne Brandt of the Minnesota Forest Industries is joining us from our Saint Paul studio. Our phone lines are open for your questions and comments. If you'd like to join our conversation this afternoon, call us at 1-800-537-5252. We now go to Bemidji. Good afternoon, Judy.

AUDIENCE: Thank you. Thank you for this very interesting program. I have a comment and then a question. I agree with Betsy in that the pie is getting smaller, and there's pressures from all areas on our forests. And example, the cutting is increasing. Here in Beltrami County, on all ownerships, 152,821 cords were harvested in 1996. 1997, it went up to 312,952 cords, all species for pulpwood. So there are pressures.

And industry is reluctant, in fact, hostile to guidelines that might be mandated on forest practices. They want everything to be voluntary. I have gotten out of my car, and I have walked a lot of the woods, and I have not seen where voluntary guidelines have particularly worked. Now, my question is to Wayne Brandt. You want things voluntary.

I'm going to shift positions a little bit here, and I'm going to ask you, sir, why doesn't your industry voluntarily shift over a production of paper from post-consumer waste? I've been using it for five years. It's my preference. I do not use up bleached white paper. I do not-- and I think if the public were given the choice, I think they-- and the prices would come down, they would choose too to purchase a post-consumer or paper made from post-consumer waste.

RACHEL REABE: Now, Brandt, your response to that question.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

AUDIENCE: OK.

WAYNE BRANDT: Caller raises an interesting point on the use of recycled fiber. The forest products industry nationally and here in this state have been part of increasing the amount of recovered paper from some 28% to 45% in the past nine years. That has been accomplished with the investment of in excess of $12 billion nationwide.

Here in Minnesota, if you look back 10 years, there were very limited amounts of recycled content paper being produced. Now there's some 23 different grades that are being produced by our paper companies. And that's all been done in a voluntary way. And as consumers and the caller indicates that she is one of those consumers that seeks out recycled content paper.

As more and more consumers do that, that's what gets made. Paper companies don't wake up in the morning having some unquenchable desire to make a product that people don't want to buy, that their customers don't want to buy, and they will make what the demand is out there for.

RACHEL REABE: So, Betsy, do you see your job is trying to convince consumers that white paper is not good, paper made from recycled is better?

BETSY DAUB: Well, I think that's all of our jobs in a sense, is to educate people about how much we consume in this society in ways that we can consume less and take less of the natural resources that we need. I would also add-- a couple of different callers have touched on a few issues of economics and how we provide for people and wildlife for the long term.

And I think if-- I think many people would be interested in looking at what industry has proposed for both the Chippewa and the Superior National Forest. And if you look at their own graphs, they're proposing, over the next 100 years, two cycles of booms and busts for those forests and those forest communities. In other words, high harvest levels and then rock bottom harvest levels.

This is not good, sustainable forestry for-- this is not good for the loggers. This is not good for logging families. This is not good for the communities that depend on these jobs, and it certainly isn't good for the forests. And I would just add that what Audubon is about is enlightened, improved forest management. And we have worked with citizens for over a year to gather information and form a vision that is more balanced, that is providing for people to have incomes from the forest, but also providing for the array of plants and animals.

RACHEL REABE: Wayne Brandt, would you like to respond to that, the boom and bust cycles?

WAYNE BRANDT: Yeah. I wish Betsy would have called and posed that question to us and the analytical folks that we had work on it. That's clearly not what we've proposed in the cycles that she shows, and we'd be happy to chat with her about those graphs, are evened out in what we propose for the forest because we certainly don't want to see boom and busts out there. That's not our intent.

We think that as part of this alternative development process, that the Forest Service ought to be looking at a broad range of ideas about how to manage them. And I frankly find it a little offensive to be attacked on NPR for forwarding an idea that's an ecologically-based approach.

BETSY DAUB: Wayne, that's an ecological-- your vision is based on disturbance patterns in the boreal forest, which do not occur here in Minnesota. We don't have any boreal forests, so your model is based on an ecosystem in Canada.

RACHEL REABE: Let's let Jim Sanders get into this conversation.

JIM SANDERS: Yeah. It's our process that's being debated, and I guess we're seeing the level of how that public involvement works. And what we're looking for, as Wayne pointed out and as Betsy has provided in their alternative through, is that wide range. And that's what we're obligated to look for, is that wide range of alternatives for how to manage the Superior National Forest--

RACHEL REABE: You have a difficult job, don't you?

JIM SANDERS: Oh, yeah. It's difficult, complex, and exciting, all at the same time.

RACHEL REABE: We go to Saint Paul now where John waits on the line. Good afternoon, John.

AUDIENCE: Hi. I've got a few questions here. And--

RACHEL REABE: Why don't you-- let's take your most important question, John.

AUDIENCE: OK. As a hunter and a trapper-- and I've done some logging in the past too, so I've been out of my car looking. And I can see what's being done. And it's really changed quite a bit over logging practices of, say, even 10 years ago where they used to do clear cuts and say 10 to 40, possibly even an 80 acre section. Now there's hundreds of acres being clear cut at a time.

And it's happened-- it's happening really quick. And the practices being used right now seem to really affect the surface hydrology of the area where the runoff going through streams or skidding through streams, they're harvesting during the summertime when the soils are more affected. I'm wondering, after generations of this, of monocropping aspen, what will we have left for our future generations of minnesotans? I mean, what will happen to the soil communities?

RACHEL REABE: Jim, do you want to respond to that?

JIM SANDERS: Well, what will happen or not happen based on that, that what we go through an extensive analysis of any project or proposed timber sale. We have to try with our expertise that we have on the forest, our hydrologists soil scientists, ecologists to take a look at what is being proposed. Both not at-- not only at the site level where the logging is taking place, but how does that fit into the landscape. That becomes part of the quilt or the pattern for there.

And I think you could see also, on the public, on the federal Forest Service lands, that harvest patterns have changed. We have differences in sizes of the harvest units because recognizing you need small harvests, you need large units, you need different patches or trees remaining within those. It's looking for that diversity not only at the site level, but across the landscape to try to provide that and not to go for just one species or the other. It's our intent for planting white pine or all. This year, half of our harvest was in commercial thinning in red pine stands that were planted back into Civilian Conservation Corps days. So our harvest patterns are changing on much of the landscape.

BETSY DAUB: As you may have heard in the series prior over four years ago, the Minnesota State commissioned or completed, excuse me, a study, a massive study of the impacts of timber harvesting on the environment. And despite some of the flaws in that study that might have actually underestimated the impacts of harvesting, it had some alarming predictions, and we need to pay attention to those predictions.

They were saying that if we don't even change the way we harvest and the rate that we harvest our forests today, just looking at bird species alone, 20-- I'm sorry, 39 species of birds may experience significant population declines without doing anything different than what we're doing today. This is of a concern to us and should be a concern to all of Minnesotans.

50 years from now, which is the length of time that this study was looking out into the future-- and I have a 20-month-old daughter who turns 20 months old today. When she's 50 years from now, I don't want her looking back and saying, gee, they really screwed up. They didn't do a very good job of taking care of these resources because sure enough, 50 years from now, those predictions became a reality. We have an opportunity today to try to be more conservative and more caring and more thoughtful in how we care for our forests. Let's not mess it up. This is a rare opportunity.

WAYNE BRANDT: I think Betsy also highlights one of the things that I think many of us that have been involved in these issues have experienced and that was mentioned in one of the segments in the previous hour, and that is the GEIS information. She cites the 39 figure. You can also look at the figures that show the number of species of birds increasing.

I think one of the things that we all struggle with, whether it's the National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, the Forest Products Industry, the Private Property Rights people, or anyone else is, so many of these issues are very heavily value driven. And one group of people has one set of values that they believe deeply in. Another group has another set of values that may impact how they view whether game species are relatively more important than species of birds that we would want to simply look at, or whether motorized recreational activities are most important, or the solitude--

RACHEL REABE: So that's why the discussion at the table is so lively, because people are coming in with a whole different set of expectations and priorities.

WAYNE BRANDT: I think that's absolutely correct. And I think that one of the things here in Minnesota that we have that is a structural advantage, if you will, versus some of the areas out West is, we have got a variety of land ownership. And those landowners, be they the federal government, the state government, county government, Native American tribes, private individuals, or the forest industry, have a mosaic of goals. And the interrelationship of them and the values that people bring to each of those areas and how they choose to use or not use their land are very important to all of us.

RACHEL REABE: And we have a landowner waiting on the phone with us today. Charles, you're calling from independence.

AUDIENCE: Yes. I'd just like to comment on my experiences. We have a private owners up in Northern Minnesota and have a small 180 acre piece of property that-- 40 of it was cleared and 148 were timbered. And when we looked at long term management, we first were relatively suspicious of the corporate agencies and looked at some nonprofit organizations, come in and take a look and give us some recommendations.

However, we were really surprised our best recommendations came from Potlatch. We told them what we wanted. We wanted long term, small scale, mixed forest so that we'd have a diversity and for songbirds and ruffed grouse. And they came in and listened to exactly what you want, came in with a biologist.

They walked the property, cruised the property, and we ended up with a long term plan where we took-- we clearcut it for-- trying to do a Gillian approach to forest management. We had to compromise with-- yeah, the Gillian approach would be 1 acre a year in a 40 or so. We did for small 4-acre clearcuts, a total of 16 acres out of the 140, and then hope to do it again in about 10 years with a set aside approximately 25% to 30% of it to not mess with at all. And the Potlatch experience was just incredibly positive. Their biologists came in, recognized what we wanted, marked off sites where we-- for raptors, and it was just a great experience and I was quite surprised.

RACHEL REABE: And Jim, you'd like to respond to that.

JIM SANDERS: Well, I think the caller just exhibits what is the uniqueness that comes to the Northwoods of Minnesota, and that is the diversity that we need. We all can agree that we need diversity across the landscape. And part of that diversity comes from the ownership patterns that we have and the objectives and the intentions for how individuals will treat their land, as the caller is talking about, because there's no one answer, no one way nor should there be one way to treat every acre.

Because it is that diversity we have both in harvest and nonharvest, whether it's inside the Boundary Waters, outside the Boundary Waters, private land, industrial lands, or federal or state land, those approaches will bring the diversity not only in ownership, but the diversity in our forests that we need to deal with the variety of species we have.

I think what your series is pointing out, you talk about the heavy logging that took place in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The forests we have today that we're debating about demonstrate the resiliency of our forests, of our natural resources. And we're debating and talking about how to use those forests that have responded and rebounded. They are different than what they were before that harvesting. But that's what we're debating about, is that resiliency and where we go from here.

RACHEL REABE: Our next phone caller is calling us from Minneapolis. Good afternoon, Laura.

AUDIENCE: Hi. My name is Laura McLeod. I'm a student at the University of Minnesota, and I've also done quite a bit of research at the White Earth Indian reservation. And my primary research interest is the importance of harvesting for the vitality of native cultures in Northern Minnesota. And time and time again, people have told me and shown me how clear cutting is destroying not only their traditional harvesting sites, but also destroying their cultural values and their cultural ways that they would like to pass on to their children.

And I hear the word diversity quite a bit, but there's one piece that seems to be missing, which I think is missing in the GEIS as well, and that's a recognition of the link between cultural diversity and biological diversity. And I know the GEIS looks at cultural resources of Native peoples. But primarily, that's the burial sites, grave sites, archeological artifacts, and not--

RACHEL REABE: And we need to expand our viewpoint then.

AUDIENCE: Right, Not the needs of what people need today in terms of a living, standing, healthy, diverse forest. And I know that Aspen regenerates quickly, but for a person who picks medicines to treat their community, the illnesses in their community, medicines don't grow in Aspen Groves. And not too many animals grow in Aspen Groves or berries that they would traditionally pick. So I would--

RACHEL REABE: Let's give Betsy a chance to respond to that. Betsy, go ahead.

BETSY DAUB: You've hit a very important issue, absolutely. Right on the nose. And it gets back to, again, trying to provide our forests to meet the needs of all different kinds of people and all the different values. And the cultural values, the spiritual values associated with our forests are also critical. The citizens that Audubon's been working with for over a year to provide visions for the National Forests in Minnesota have said that needs to be something that these two forests take a much greater-- give much greater attention to in the next decade and beyond. That we do need to be providing for traditional gathering of forest products and traditional hunting and fishing.

RACHEL REABE: And Betsy, before we go to our next call, for those people who are listening who do not know what GEIS means, give us the shortest definition you can.

BETSY DAUB: It was a state sponsored study that was commissioned and began in 1990 and finished in 1994, took four years and a bucket billion worth of taxpayer money, to examine what the impacts might be from timber harvesting on Minnesota's environment.

RACHEL REABE: Let's go to Phil in Spring Lake Park. Good afternoon, Phil.

AUDIENCE: Hi. Thanks for this conversation. Thanks for taking my call. I think this kind of conversation, of all the diverse opinions, is really what's needed. And my comment along that line is, I'm a big aficionado of our State Park system, and we have an absolutely terrific State Park system that has an absolute preservationist mandate.

Then on the other hand, we're talking about use of forest resources on the order of harvesting or mining the living world. And it seems to me we need more of the conversation between those two extremes so that it should be pretty easy to agree that we're going to, of course, save this large tract of old growth white pine, or, of course, this area is environmentally sensitive or it houses some interesting rare species. And so of course, we will preserve this and not log it or we'll only take something very minimally, maybe taking a couple of large valuable trees rather than clear cutting. I guess I have difficulty understanding why this conversation is so difficult.

WAYNE BRANDT: I think it's so difficult, as the caller points out, and we chatted about earlier, because of the values that we all have and bring to the table. And I think that the state of Minnesota and the citizens can be proud of some of the processes that we have gone through here, whether it's the generic environmental impact statement or the roundtable that followed that up or the activities of the Minnesota Forest Resources Council where you've got 14 diverse viewpoints coming together to hopefully drive the drive the car down the center lane without any oncoming traffic.

JIM SANDERS: Just tag on to what Wayne talked about there. I think you're right, the debate is over, the emotional part, and that's the different values that we bring to it. My experience in natural resource management has spanned more than Minnesota. And be it the Pacific Northwest, the interior rocky mountains, or even Washington DC. And what I see, what we are doing in Minnesota is unique and outstanding, because we are bringing the interest together.

And is there fast or quick solutions? No, because these are not quick, easy problems as we're seeing now. If anything, they're more confusing the more you talk about them. But we have the people at the table. In what form that is can continue to evolve. But what's important is, everybody is sitting down. We're talking about it. We're working our way through it because the resources will be what benefits from that process. And that's what's key and unique and what we have going on here.

RACHEL REABE: Do people have a mind to compromise, though? Do they have a heart for compromise or, Betsy, is that the problem here, that you bring people in from very-- and we've heard it during this show today, from very diverse points of view and very cemented points of view and say, now let's come up with a consensus? Does that work?

BETSY DAUB: Well, I think the chance it has of working is if no one party is greedy and wants-- either digs in their heels and says, we refuse to acknowledge there needs to be change or we refuse in our actions to acknowledge that there needs to be change or wants to just continue to hang on to what they've got. And we won't be able to meet all those different values and needs of our forests if that happens.

RACHEL REABE: And you're willing to give a little?

BETSY DAUB: I think that's what this is about, is that the scales have been tipped so far in one direction. So, I mean, we're looking at the majority of our northern forests are being managed by clear cutting and the majority of our two national forests are managed for the primary purpose of meeting the needs of a few industries. That's not balanced. And so what we're saying is, yeah, we need to restore that balance. We need to be able to meet the needs of people who want to recreate, who we want to make a living in the forest, who want that connection spiritually and culturally.

RACHEL REABE: Wayne Brant, do you feel like the scale has been tipped towards industry?

WAYNE BRANDT: My members get so frustrated, whether they're the logger out there who has invested seven or $800,000 in equipment and is employing his neighbor and her children, whether it's the companies that have hired wildlife biologists and hydrologists to do a better job. It's so frustrating to be constantly attacked and to not receive any significant acknowledgment for the changes that have occurred in practices, for the investments that have been made in equipment, and for the support that we have put behind a whole host of things, whether it's the DNR surveying and establishing old growth reserves, whether it's the preparation of extended rotation programs and different ownerships, whether it's the investment of some $40 million in new logging equipment as--

RACHEL REABE: So you feel there has been compromise on your side, that you have come with a mood and a mindset for compromise?

WAYNE BRANDT: We think that we've got an awfully good track record of acknowledging where there are ways that we can do things better, acknowledging where there are problems, and actually putting our shoulders to the wheel, whether it's supporting legislation, supporting processes, programs, or the actual spending of money to make a difference on the ground. We think that we've got a pretty good track record, and I think it's our pledge and I know it's our pledge to the citizens of Minnesota that we're going to keep changing, and we're going to continue to do the best job that we can.

We're not going to, you know, see massive dislocations of the people that we represent. We don't think that that's necessary. But we're going to continue to change as the knowledge changes and forest practices, which are different today than they were 10 or 20 years ago, will be different 10 and 20 years--

RACHEL REABE: Thank you, Wayne.

WAYNE BRANDT: --into the future.

RACHEL REABE: Let's go back to the phone call. Charles is waiting in Minneapolis to make a question or a comment. Good afternoon, Charles.

AUDIENCE: Yes. I'd like to comment in this very interesting program about a couple of things that I find myself listening to. It involves language and, as the speaker just was talking about, change. And your question actually, whether it's swinging towards industry. I mean, first of all, you have to imagine that all of Minnesota was mowed. It's pretty much been an industrial kind of a process that's been happening, and it still reflects in words that we use to describe nature, such as resources.

Though we use what we have around us, it's not just a resource, it's the source of life. And I'd like to ask the question that is in my mind that has to do with the wild, which I guess I would pick another word to use, and that would be free because it has a different connotation. The one we can think about hooligans with spray cans when we think of wild, but the unmanaged aspect of nature, that nature that got along for billions of years without us.

Don't you think that it would be more appropriate and don't you think this is happening now-- and this is the wonderful news, that we're starting finally to be forced by our limited amount of resources that we have on this planet to manage ourselves better? Isn't that what everybody is really talking about around that table right now that's so beautiful? Can you comment on this, everybody?

WAYNE BRANDT: Yeah, I think it's all our responsibility, whether it's in our recycling programs or the technology that's come to bear in how the logging practices or any other practice happens out on the ground or in how we use those resources we have. I mean, we consume more wood products by ton than any other raw material in the United States. And that's our challenge, is how to take and go farther.

Some of the earlier segments in the program talked about, they only took out the lower portion of the tree we use. The technology has expanded to wafer board, to particle board, to I-beam construction where it's not the solid 2 by 12 or 14 that goes into those floorboards. It's a whole combination across that. It's all our responsibilities to move forward and then talk about, what is it we want that landscape to look like, our forest to look like, and not so much the tools, how we get there.

RACHEL REABE: Time for one more phone call. We go to Minneapolis. Good afternoon, John.

AUDIENCE: Yeah. My question is, with taxpayers paying $800 million a year, according to Forest Service Figures to subsidize corporations logging on our national forests and 70% of the American public believing we shouldn't even be logging on national forests. Isn't it time we get the corporate interests out of our national forests and stop logging them?

RACHEL REABE: Jim, you want to respond to that?

JIM SANDERS: As far as our Minnesota National forest, they're operated on the lowest unit cost of any of the national forests in the country. And have been at or above cost on a timber sale perspective. I mean, we're looking at-- these are dynamic landscapes. They're going to change with us or without us, and it's how we deal with that.

RACHEL REABE: Betsy, quickly,

BETSY DAUB: If I can think as a parent, I think there's a lot of parents out there. I think we want our children to grow up with places where they can see the variety-- the marvelous variety of life around them, where they can follow in our footsteps and work in the forests, where they can form that spiritual, cultural connection with the land. And those are the variety of different things that our national public forests and our other public forest lands can do.

RACHEL REABE: We're out of time this afternoon. Wayne Brandt, Betsy Daub, and Jim Sanders, thank you for being with us today. This special Main Street radio broadcast is a production of Minnesota Public Radio. Our engineers are Rick [? Ovshinsky ?] in Duluth, Jenny Luebke in Saint Paul. Our producer is Sarah Meyer. Executive producer Mel Sommer, site producer, Bob Kelleher. We'd like to Thank the staff of WSCN and WSCND for allowing us to bring you this show from Duluth.

We invite you to visit the Main Street website. Go to www.npr.org. You'll be able to hear this broadcast as well as other Main Street reports. The address again, www.npr.org. NPR'S Main Street radio coverage of rural issues is supported by the Blandin Foundation, committed to strengthening communities through grant making, leadership training, and convening. Minnesota Public Radio's Main Street team consists of 12 reporters at NPR bureaus across Minnesota. I'm Rachel Rubi.

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On the next All Things Considered, our series, Our State, Our Forest continues with a look at Wildlife and logging. All Things Considered, weekdays at 3:00 on Minnesota Public Radio.

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