Sometimes it’s hard to peg Dr. Peter Bates when he’s talking about forestry and the environment.

He says the forest is a living organism and should be viewed holistically. He talks about protecting the mountainsides from development, believes in global warming, worries about acid rain and sounds for all the world like an environmentalist.

But he also says it’s OK to cut trees and sell them for a profit, straddling both sides of the fence that usually separates environmentalists and loggers.

Bates, a professor at Western Carolina University, will likely be selected next week by Waynesville town aldermen to conduct an ecological assessment of Waynesville’s 8,400-acre watershed. Waynesville aldermen passed a conservation easement on the watershed last fall, one that protects it from future development while allowing limited logging.

But first, the easement requires the town to develop a forest management plan. That’s where Bates comes in. He has assembled a team of university experts from across the country willing to do a plan practically pro-bono in exchange for creating a model forest in Waynesville.

While the decision to allow forest management has proven controversial — it passed the town board by a narrow 3-2 margin — Bates said aldermen made the right choice.

Tunnel vision that focuses on whether to cut a tree — rather than doing what’s best for the whole forest and all its species — could constrain the town in the future, Bates said. In the past, conservation easements have gone into minute detail about what couldn’t be done — no replanting, no trimming, no cutting, no thinning, no burning, no spraying.

“They are well meaning but very rigid,” Bates said. “There are some cases where there was an insect or disease problem and there was treatment for it, but the easement prevented it.”

The new strategy in forest conservation easements is to focus on overall strategies and philosophies, allowing flexibility under the umbrella of conservation, Bates said.

“The goal is to create and maintain a healthy forest in that watershed, but it doesn’t say how to do that,” Bates said. “It’s causing the town to cross that hurdle and think about the forest in a holistic way, as opposed to the alternative, which is to not even think about it, and say ‘we’re just going to let what happens and let nature run its course.’”

The latter is the easy route politically, but it’s not necessarily smarter, Bates said.

“What management is, is actually thinking about your land base and making some decisions about what you want to do. It’s really about being pro-active,” Bates said.

So what does the town want its watershed forest to look like? Bates said there are some choices to make.

The state has given the town’s drinking water source the highest quality ranking it assigns to watersheds, so the end goal of any management plan is to maintain water quality. But there’s room for a lot more than that, Bates said. A healthy forest also means having a mix of gigantic 200-year-old oaks and young maple saplings, bogs for turtles and nesting trees for owls, woodland patches of ginseng and ramps, and a few clearings conducive to blueberry bushes.

“Everyone agrees on these big picture kind of things and that they are good goals. But how do you get there? When you get into the nitty gritty of what is a healthy forest, there are all sorts of value judgments,” Bates said.

The first job is collecting baseline data. That is the primary goal of the 18-month study Bates and his team are proposing. Plant and animal species, habitat types, soil types, and archaeology sites will be surveyed — and, of course, water quality.

“Water quality is ultimate barometer of how you are doing managing your forest,” Bates said.

The team will also develop a proposed forest management plan. If the plan is approved, the process will be slow and deliberate, Bates said. The watershed would be divided into 20 tracts of 400 acres. Every year one tract would be reviewed and trees chosen for logging. The town would have an active role in the decision-making process every step of the way and could say “no” at any time, Bates said.

“The town could let this plan sit on the shelf,” Bates said. “But the benefit is to have all these scientists in there quantifying their watershed. They are going to get a tremendous data set.”

What’s in a word

In recent years, private loggers, timber advocates and even the U.S. Forest Service have capitalized on the concept of sustainable forestry. Oftentimes, however, what has been pitched as a form of stewardship hasn’t been much different than traditional logging.

The claim by advocates of sustainable forestry is that logging makes for better forests by thinning out less desirable trees. They claim creating openings in the forest bolsters wildlife and bird populations that love clearings. Some argue that building new roads to reach trees slated for logging has the added bonus of clearing the way in case a forest fire needs fighting in the future. President George Bush even co-opted the term Healthy Forests to describe an initiative environmentalists claim is just a kick-back to loggers.

Now, Bates and other forestry environmentalists are using those same arguments and terms to describe their ideas for Waynesville’s watershed, and that’s posed a challenge for town leaders who support forest management.

“It’s kind of like the word zoning,” said Alderwoman Libba Feichter, who supports a forest management plan. “When you say the word logging, people immediately get the picture of great big skidders coming in and hauling out monstrous trees and destroying the top soil and destroying streams and that is not at all what we have in mind.”

Garrett Smathers, a Haywood County resident who was a former ecologist with the National Park Service and professor at UNC-Asheville, said any justification for logging is just that — a justification.

“The forest service has to continue to sell forestry and that is to grow and harvest and sell trees. They have to justify that they don’t rape the side of the mountains. So they say they do it in stages to create a quote ‘healthy forest,’” Smathers said. “It is not a healthy forest. It is a forest that is on life support.”

Alderman Gavin Brown, who supports forest management in the watershed, said there’s a key difference between the town’s version of forest management and a logger’s version of forest management. The logger’s end goal is to sell trees. The town’s is to maintain water quality.

“The easement states the primary purpose of this is to maintain a high quality of water and quantity of water. We don’t do anything in that forest that is not consistent with that — period,” Brown said.

“Our number one goal is water quality protection. Number two is a managed forest,” Mayor Henry Foy said.

A real live model

Bates said Waynesville’s watershed could become a national model and influence both private and public forest stewardship.

“There is no example of this in the Southern Appalachians,” Bates said. “This will be an opportunity to demonstrate what sustainable forest management truly is, because that’s a buzz word that everyone is using to describe what they are doing.

“All of us in that larger movement realize the only way to demonstrate what it really is, is to get it on the ground so people can see it,” Bates said.

Bates said students would participate in the work, allowing the next generation of foresters to be trained in stewardship and conservation-minded forestry.

According to Bates, Waynesville’s watershed would become a national model of how ecologically-based forest management can be compatible with environmental ideals.

“One of the things we do hope to accomplish is develop a truly state-of-the-art management plan,” Bates said. “These are world class people and they are very excited about it.”

At $50,000, the study aldermen will vote on next week is beyond a bargain. Collaborators include five professors from Western Carolina University, a Yale University researcher, a Duke University researcher and the president of Interforest in Connecticut. The plan would include an extensive “State of the Watershed” assessment and a forest management proposal.

Foy said the study will provide ecological and water quality data that is crucial to understanding the watershed.

“We want to have their expertise on board,” Foy said of Bates’ team.

Gordon Small, a Waynesville resident who is retired from the U.S. Forest Service and serves on the Haywood Waterways Association board, said the team sounds impressive.

“I know their intentions are good on this. They seriously want to demonstrate you can do forest management in a truly responsible manner. They want to restore trust in the concept of forest management,” Small said.

Brown said if the board doesn’t like the team’s recommendations following the 18-month study, they don’t have to take them.

“It would be beneficial of us to do the study even if we come back and say we never want to do anything,” Brown said.

Aldermen Kenneth Moore and Gary Caldwell — who oppose any forest management plan for the watershed that includes logging — said the 18-month study sounds like a good deal. They are for the study, but say they won’t endorse a final recommendation that calls for cutting trees.

“I would like for them to come in and do the study about the plants and stuff. I think that would be good,” Caldwell said. Caldwell said maybe once the scientists realize how precious the watershed is, they won’t recommend logging after all.

Charles Miller, a Waynesville resident and staunch opponent of logging in the watershed, asked why Waynesville should sacrifice its watershed to be a national model for forestry.

“They are just using it for an experimental study up there,” Miller said. “How can they prove they can do it if it’s a model that’s never been done? I don’t think we need to use the watershed as an experimental project.”

Feichter said that’s not the case.

“There are so many people involved in this project who just have a huge volume of knowledge about how to protect the forest and make sure it is a diverse forest, and that’s what we would like very much to see, is that this forest continues to grow and thrive in the most productive way,” said Feichter.

Brown agreed.

“I do not want this to be a laboratory,” Brown said. “I don’t want us to be some kind of guinea pig out there to test things out.”

Smathers said why risk it?

“The watershed is not a place where you manage for timber operations,” Smathers said. “So leave it alone to nature.”

Miller put it this way: “What’s the use mucking with it?”

Policing the loggers

Cutting a tree here and there without damaging the forest around it is one thing in theory, but turning men with chainsaws loose in the watershed is another story altogether.

“Do not think because we write something on paper that’s how it will come out on the ground,” said Gordon Small with Haywood Waterways.

Miller said the loggers can’t be trusted. You can tie a red flag around the trees to be cut, but sometimes they “accidentally” cut more than you mark. The trees can’t be put back afterwards.

“Who’s going to police this if it ever takes place?” Miller asked

The town aldermen said they will appoint a watershed committee.

“There is no way in the world we will go through with a forest management plan without appointing a group of people with the knowledge we need who can help us manage it,” Feichter said.

Small said the committee should serve more than the aldermen. It should keep the public informed, too.

“You need up front public involvement on how much is going to be cut, where it is going to be cut, what is going to be cut — so the public is very well aware of how much is harvested and how much was brought into the town,” Small said.

The profit motive

Brown said profit won’t be a motive for cutting trees. Revenue will simply be an added bonus, while the primary litmus test is water quality benefits.

But the revenue will be helpful.

“It would be a great thing for the town each year to make some money from the timber harvest,” said Mayor Henry Foy. Foy said the money could be reinvested in the watershed or used for replacing old waterlines.

“We want to have good conduits carrying the water through town,” Foy said.

Caldwell and Moore doubt logging would even pay for itself. If only a handful of trees are cut each year here and there using environmentally sensitive techniques, like helicopter logging, where’s the revenue in the end?

“Money’s the whole problem. How are you going to make money when a helicopter is anywhere from $25,000 to $30,000?” Moore said.

Moore said if money is what the town’s after, perhaps it could get a pay-off from the state to put a forever wild easement on it. Other towns have gotten payoffs in the millions for locking up their watersheds.

“Why did these other towns get all this money? Bryson City got a trunk full of money. Canton got a trunk full. Woodfin got a trunk full,” Moore said.

Just how big were those trunks? Bryson got $1.5 million, Woodfin got $4.1 million and Canton got $690,000, Miller said. And all those watersheds put together don’t even equal half the size of Waynesville’s.

Miller said the town could have made far more by placing the watershed in a “forever wild” easement than trying to make money off timber.

Bates said it goes to show the town leaders aren’t out to profit off the watershed, but placed it under a conservation easement that protects it from development, sale or irresponsible logging of their own accord.

“They could have said we are going to clean up on this, but they said ‘We are going to do things right. We are donating this easement,’” Bates said.