In 2022 a group of 21 scientists, loggers, conservationists, and tribal and government representatives was convened for one simple task: decide the future of Northwest forests.

The 1994 Northwest Forest Plan was supposed to dictate how 24 million acres of federal forests were managed for the next century. Thirty years in, the plan has failed to meet most of its objectives. Even though timber harvest has been reduced, endangered species that depend on old-growth are still declining. Wildfires scorch the land. And many rural communities near federal forests are struggling to survive.

With the future of Northwest forests in jeopardy, the U.S. Forest Service decided to overhaul the plan, and the agency tasked the 21-member Northwest Forest Plan Advisory Committee to agree on recommendations for an amendment. In a historic display of collaboration, the committee published their recommendations in July of this year.

The committee was led by co-chairs Travis Joseph, president of the American Forest Resource Council, and Susan Jane Brown, chief legal counsel of Silvix Resources. Joseph represents the timber industry, and Brown, the environmentalists. The pair worked together under Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio, and their partnership traverses the divide between loggers and conservationists.

“It is no accident that Travis and I are co-chairs,” said Brown. “We disagree about a lot of things, but we recognize the momentous opportunity that we have to make a positive impact on forest management in this region.”

When the original plan was established in 1994, loggers and environments were embroiled in a bitter battle over Northwest forests following decades of unsustainable timber harvest. At the height of the conflict, loggers were slashing hundreds of millions of acres of old-growth a year, and activists were protesting in trees and blockading roads. An industry representative and an environmentalist like Joseph and Brown collaborating would have meant crossing enemy lines.

After the committee was commissioned in 2022, it was supposed to have two years to agree on recommendations. But, with the presidential election approaching, their timeline was accelerated. “We’re a part of the administration’s rush to the finish line,” said Brown.

Despite the abbreviated timeline, the pair steered a team of loggers, activists, scientists, Tribal members, and elected officials toward common ground. “It’s been a difficult process,” said Joseph. The committee met seven times and spent hundreds of hours deliberating. “But within one year, 21 very diverse people came to a consensus around a vision for our national forest. That’s a historic deal.”

The committee published 184 recommendations. The overwhelming majority – 113 recommendations – are dedicated to Tribal and Indigenous inclusion. The committee had ground to make up since the original plan failed to consult Tribes entirely. “We hope to correct that and make sure Indigenous voices are not just engaged, but actively involved in management,” said Joseph. Recommendations call for a “shift in tribal relations,” including contracts and agreements with Tribes, accommodating cultural burning, training on Indigenous culture and treaty rights, and a recurrent emphasis on co-stewardship of forests.

The committee’s recommendations also highlight the importance of supporting timber communities. Joseph believes the forest management recommendations will be the key to realizing the timber harvest targets the plan promised. “We’re so focused on restoring millions of acres at risk in the Northwest that it should lead to more timber volume, more jobs and more revenues for counties,” he said.

Committee members agreed that segmenting forests into Late Successional Reserves (LSRs), Matrix land, and Adaptive Management Areas (AMAs) – the foundation of the original plan – in retrospect was a mistake. However, the Forest Service prohibited the panel from changing the zoning. “So we said, ‘If we can’t change the lines, we can change the direction of the management within those lines,’ ” said Joseph.

The 1994 plan left mature and old-growth trees on Matrix land available for commercial harvest. This stipulation prompted backlash from environmentalists. In a step towards brokering peace, the committee defined old-growth as any stand established before the year 1825 and recommended prohibiting logging in those stands.

Recommendations also emphasize site-specific management, particularly in moist versus dry forest. “Sometimes conservation looks like passive stewardship. Just don’t touch it,” said Brown. “But sometimes, particularly in dry forests, it’s proactive stewardship, where we’re going to go into those stands.” The original plan neglected these nuances.

In many stands, proactive stewardship will mean reintroducing fire on the landscape through controlled burns. The 1994 plan followed an era of fire suppression that left Northwest forests overstocked with vegetation and susceptible to severe wildfire, and it failed to implement adequate thinning and prescribed burning regimens to address the damage. The committee provided 26 fire resilience recommendations to change that. “Proactive stewardship looks like cutting trees, and it looks like putting fire back on the ground,” said Brown.

The Forest Service released its Draft Environmental Impact Statement in November, and it incorporated many of the committee’s recommendations. Just 10 days before that, voters elected a new president who likely will impact the process of amending the Northwest Forest Plan.

It is unclear what the new administration’s approach to the plan will be. Some groups, like Oregon Wild, are already calling on the Forest Service to abandon the amendment and any changes to the management of these forests. However, to many other stakeholders, the status quo is no longer sustainable.

“We may never get another shot at revising or amending the Northwest Forest Plan,” Brown said before the election. “And things need to change if we want those forests to persist not only for our generation, but future generations.”

Joseph said the federal government needs to go further to reform a broken system of federal land management. “We can offer a great plan but there’s still going to be structural systemic issues in the way of actually doing that management,” Joseph said. Policies like the Endangered Species Act and The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) prevent work from happening at the pace and scale necessary to make enduring change in federal forests. “Ultimately, it’s going to be work outside of the amendment and pounding the pavement on Capitol Hill,” Brown said.

Regardless of what the Trump Administration may do with the Northwest Forest Plan, Joseph said the committee’s work shows it’s possible for diverse interests to come together. “I’m hopeful we can help turn the page to a different narrative, where our forests actually bring people together and we can find common ground on providing all of their extraordinary benefits to society. Instead of fighting about our forests, we should be coming together to manage and protect them and make them more resilient.”

(Sydney Gleason, a native of Seattle, is a student at Boston College. This past summer she served as an environmental journalism intern for Healthy Forests, Healthy Communities.)