Finding a balance between groups with conflicting ideals is often difficult, but officials from the Gila National Forest have found a way to overcome the differences between themselves and other groups to devise a plan that is increasing the health and productivity of the forests.

Working with small businessmen, environmental acti-vists, local officials and the federal government, the Gila National Forest in New Mexico is sustaining several small businesses that use small-diameter trees as their raw material.

Graham County Super-visors Mark Herrington and Jim Palmer, County Manager Terry Cooper, Coronado National Forest Safford District Ranger Bill Schuckert, Coronado National Forest silviculturist Craig Willcox and a representative from the Apache Nation recently traveled to Silver City, N.M., to observe the practices and business activities occurring in the Gila National Forest.

Local officials observed the practices put into place about five years ago when the Gila Wood Net was created. The Gila Wood Net is a nonprofit corporation designed to develop methods to remove and utilize small trees resulting from forest restoration thinning projects.

According to www.gilawoodnet.com, there is widespread agreement among most interest groups that the forests are generally overcrowded with small trees, a result of 100 years of management practices that removed larger trees while preventing most natural fires. Gila Wood Net's role in the forest is to bring back a more natural forest structure by thinning and removing smaller trees.

Herrington, who has been involved with healthy forest actions for many years, saw the Gila Wood Net project as a possible model for the forests of Mount Graham.

“We are doing research on the topic (of adding industry to the forest),” he said. “The forest rangers were working in collaboration with businesses, environmental specialists, economic developers and others to make this happen. They had good, working relationships and no lawsuits.”

Cooper said he liked to see people of differing viewpoints work together.

“The thing that I was impressed with was they had a lot of cooperating partners and people of differing views coming together to make this work,” he said. “I would like to see that in Arizona. Everyone had to think outside the box, which they were willing to do for the good of the forest.”

The logging practices undertaken by the businesses in the Gila National Forest are creative and have a low impact on the forest, Herrington said. The logs are not dragged out of the forest - they are lifted - which is a different kind of operation

“They are using prototype equipment designed to cut and pick up the logs without causing a lot of damage to the forest,” he said. “There were no tire tracks, and it was virtually undetectable that machinery had been through the area.”

Within months, vegetation had started to grow back in the areas where trees had been removed, Herrington said.

“The landscape was really impressive,” he said. “You could see through the grasses, and the other vegetation was flourishing because the sun could come through the canopy, but there were still a lot of trees.”

The Gila Wood Net has about six small businesses with a couple of employees each that use tree trunks with diameters of 16 inches or less to create various items. The products made by the businesses include rustic veranda and porch kits and doors and trusses for barns or rustic houses. Some businesses are also working on making log cabins out of the smaller trees.

“There was a real sense of an entrepreneurial effort,” Cooper said, “and that's what could set apart a successful community.”

The businesses are supplemented by a $5-million federal grant that was issued for the purposed of increasing the health of the forests, but officials are hoping that the businesses will eventually be able to operate without the federal aid.

“(The Gila Wood Net) is very engaged in developing treatments and reducing costs in the national forest,” Willcox said. “They are working on something that will be sustainable in the long term.”

Arizona will be eligible for grant money to improve the forests in 2006, but how much of that will come to the Safford district is unknown.

“It has potential if we can find the right partners, so we are looking for people in the wood products industry who are willing to take a chance,” Herrington said. “We don't know the outcome of a project such as this, but all the partners would need to move forward in the spirit of cooperation.”

Graham County has yet to begin a project of this magnitude, but the trip was designed to give officials an idea of what can be done, Herrington said.