Just over a week after the U.S. Forest Service surprised many with the cancellation of the second phase of one of the country’s largest forest restoration projects, local stakeholders, environmentalists and industry leaders found themselves chewing over the implications of the change Wednesday.
The meeting was largely forward-looking as groups endeavor to make the Four Forest Restoration Initiative achieve its end goals: treating millions of acres of forests across the Coconino, Kaibab, Apache-Sitgreaves and Tonto national forests in order to improve forest health and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires.
Nonetheless, some stakeholders questioned whether the initiative, often referred to as 4FRI, should change the strategy to best achieve those goals moving forward.
Others called for much more transparency about what went so wrong that it led to the canceled Phase 2 after so many years of work, and the creation of a more open process moving forward.
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“It seems to me that there is this line where some information needs to come out so that we can actually understand, because I’ve been scratching my head a little bit over the last week,” said Pascal Berlioux, executive director at the Eastern Arizona Counties Organization. “If we don’t know what did not work out, do we fix it?”
The Forest Service had listed several challenges that had led it to cancel the Phase 2 contract, including road maintenance, compensation for companies’ investments should the project end early, the destination for biomass created, and determining the number of acres and location for the project.
