Rick Meis

I was intrigued by the column Mark Webb wrote recently about collaboration. He makes common mistakes in his less-than-accurate description of what a collaborative should be if they are going to be done inclusively and effectively.

If Mr. Webb believes what he stated in his opinion piece, he would understand that when it comes to public lands management, a collaborative would be unnecessary.

In practice, collaboration has become a process of playing two sides off against each other in order to create enough guilt in one or more parties that compromise is reached. The primary problem is that it is not based on sound science or best available data, thus eliminating the concept of best management practices and the long term needs of the resource to maintain the natural values of the landscape into the future.

The use of collaboration has become a cop-out on the part of public land managers to not have to do the work required of them in order to achieve good management decisions. Agency budgets have been slashed repeatedly making it difficult to do a good job, thus making collaboration a fallback tool.

Collaboration has become a process that gives validity to those whose activities are either illegal, incompatible or damaging to public resources. Those types of activities, using sound management principles, should be restricted. The goal of the normal data- and science-driven decision-making process of land management agencies is to filter out input that lacks substance and thus should not be incorporated into management decisions.

Public land management decisions should be made using well-established legal and regulatory processes. So-called public interest groups on all sides use it as a way to raise money and their profile. The politically motivated use it to reach another successful failure by achieving the lowest common denominator.

Our public lands are integral to maintaining viable natural ecosystems. The most guilty players in collaborations are the so-called environmental groups who have chosen to defy everything they claim to stand for in order to curry political favor, new donations or something equally as shallow. It is unconscionable. These groups should not be selling the future of our natural heritage down the river.

High-impact activities, whether industrial or recreational, have intensified to the point where they’re no longer compatible with long-range goals of agencies to meet their obligations of conserving the resource. A collaboration justifies misuse of the landscape. Best management practices, using science and best available data, should not allow high-impact users the unlimited access they desire which squanders public land values.

Collaboration can only work if everyone agrees that it is about what is best for the long-term values of the resource. There are infinite examples of those entering into collaborative processes for all the wrong reasons, thus collaborations give bad results.

A retired educator and political science professor wrote that if the future is to be determined by citizen collaborations, then a parallel track should be implemented based on science that would evaluate natural characteristics of the landscape. This track should consider the long-term future of the natural resources and recommend management actions to protect and maintain these values so future generations will experience a natural landscape as we did because of the efforts of those who have gone before.

Wait! Isn’t that what current laws and regulations already require of land managers? Isn’t that what groups involved in collaborations say they believe in?