We started the settlement talks by driving to Springfield, Illinois to meet with the Forest Service to discuss "groundrules" of the talks. When we got there, it was just us, the Sierra Club folks, and the Forest Service. We learned that a mediator, Ty Tice, from the northwest, had been contracted by the Forest Service to chair the proceedings. Personally, I don't care how "objective" a mediator thinks they are, they know who signs their paychecks.

The groundrules meeting didn't amount to much - a wasted drive to Springfield. Fortunately, gas wasn't nearly as expensive as it is now. The one groundrule that was meaningful and which Tice had a hard time enforcing in the end was that negotiators that represented organizations would not be held to any agreements until they had time to take the proposed agreements back to their organizations. Another I remember is that we couldn't discuss the fact that the Forest Service lost money on their timber sales. We set the next meeting for Harrisburg, Illinois, the location of the Shawnee's supervisor's office in about a week or so, the best of my recollection.

So we showed up for the next meeting in Harrisburg, and low and behold, the place was crawling with people. There were logging company representatives, loggers, off-road vehicle riders, mining company representatives. Some of them had appealed the plan, some had intervened, and some just were there. I guess the Forest Service had been on the phone a lot between the two meetings.

At that meeting, the logging company representatives got the floor early on. The company with the biggest influence was East Perry lumber, a Missouri lumber exporting company that coveted the big trees on the Shawnee. In fact, their spokesperson was a guy named Brian Unnerstall. Mr. Unnerstall had just recently at that time left his job as a forester for the Forest Service on the Shawnee and gone to work for East Perry. Can anyone say "revolving door?"

Unnerstall got up and said that if there weren't continual timber sales on the Shawnee, that a hundred or more jobs would be lost. It was great theater. It scared the Sierra Club folks. The Sierra Club was already the "enemy" in the rural counties that had many of the most scenic areas, biggest blocks of forest, and oldest trees, as well as depressed economies. Being "blamed" for job losses in these counties was something that the Sierra Club wanted to avoid. And us too. Only we were living the depressed economy of the rural counties, and thus, had a bit more legitimacy speaking up for a different kind of economy. And we pointed that out during the proceedings.

It all made us uncomfortable, though, because while we didn't believe that not getting to cut on the Shawnee was going to be that big of deal to the region's economy, we knew that the issue could be demagogued - and it was. It probably would mean timber prices going up and more cutting on private land, and that seemed a better option to us. But money talks. And, the talk of the need for continued timber sales while we were negotiating became a main early topic of discussion, and remained that way through the entire settlement negotiations. The only thing that rivaled it as the negotiations continued was the infamous 286 miles of Off Road Vehicle trails. That comes up a little later.

I guess it is worth it to note that later, when we started looking into how the Forest Service actually sold their timber, we discovered that the Forest Service's attempted "compliance" with the National Environmental Policy Act (the federal law that requires environmental impact statements for "major federal acctions) was a one page Environmental Assessment, a one page Finding of No Significant Impact, a one page Decision Notice, and a page stapled to those three with a list of the timber sales for the year. Now, by comparison, they often take many hundreds of pages to make a Finding of No Significant Impact for one individual project. This comes up later in the chronology of events.

The fact is that the Forest Service was, in the 60s and 70s, and still is, but with a lot more eyes on it, selling off prime timber from national forests in sweetheart deals in which taxpayers had to ante-up to cover the costs, not including the environmental ones. They were used to doing this little public scrutiny. They did this routinely, never mind that it lost money.

And so when Unnerstall got up there in the crowded room and talked about having to have timber sales in the interim - what was going to be called, creatively enough, the "interim timber sales," I think the Forest Service was just of the mind that this is how it was going to be. And to be honest, there was a governmental agency institutional coersion that had some effectiveness that persuaded even strong, progressive environmental organizations like Sierra Club that timber sales were somehow inevitable on national forests - beyond challenge in an existential way. That wasn't just locally either - it was a national phenomenon.

We were soon faced with the question of whether or not we could accept "interim" timber sales. At first, they didn't have the specific sales, but I think some volumes were bantered around. Then they came out with specific areas to be logged - Those were Town Hall, Fairview, Possum Trot, Alcorn Creek, and Quarrel Creek, to the best of my recollection. There was no way that ACE as an organization would accept that. There was a lot of pressure though. And I think that there was a general expectation between the Forest Service, the loggers, and the Illinois Dept. of Natural Resources, that ACE was not something that would stand in the way of their plans. They were right for the moment.

These negotiation sessions went on for half a year or more. Sometime not that far into it, but not right at the beginning, we met a lady, Margaret Hollowell, from Bloomington, Illinois, representing the Illinois Audubon Council. Margaret told us that she had heard that a controversy was brewing in southwestern Illinois over logging in Cave Valley, one of the prime warbler areas on the Shawnee. She mentioned Joe Glisson's name. It wasn't long after that we drove over there. We communicated what was going on with us, and eventually, we established a good working relationship.

Joe came into the proceeding as they were already going. He hadn't known about the plan at the time and appeals and now the settlement. But through us, he could be involved, and likewise, we could be involved in what he and his neighbors were doing to try and stop the clearcutting that was occurring rampantly in their neighborhood - right out in plain sight. It was a good fit at the time.

Joe and all of the western Shawnee folks, wanting to learn as fast as they could what was going on and maximize their influence, saw immediately that it was in their interest to stop or at least seriously slow down the proceedings so they could get caught up on everything and be on equal footing. We were their best tool, and shared their belief that it was best slowed down or stopped, although we were in the middle of it all and finding it difficult if not impossible to control.

While all this was going on, the president of the Illinois Sierra Club, Evan Kurrasch, who, with Jim Bensman, was the Sierra Club's negotiating team, started behaving strangly during negotiating sessions. She was obviously flirting with the Shawnee Planning Officer, Sam Emmons. There were cute jokes, faces, notes, signs, and Kristi and I talked about it frequently when we were away from the proceedings, but no one said anything to us.

One day, during crucial negotiations, probably having to do with Off Road Vehicles, Ms. Kurrasch was having problems keeping her composure. My recollection is that Bensman asked for a caucus, and he and Kurrasch and Kristi and I went into this closet in the back corner of the Pruitt-Harris building in Harrisburg, where she proceeded to break down crying, never saying exactly why. It was obvious to us that our side had big problems and we weren't being told what they were.

We never were to find out why until we learned that Mr. Emmons had split up with his wife (and there were children is what we heard) to live with Ms. Kurrasch, and if I'm not mistaken, marry. I have to admit to being shocked when I heard this, because it wasn't mentioned at all during the negotiations, although all of the things I mentioned aboved were ongoing. Talk about a conflict of interest on both the Sierra Club and Forest Service's part!

Can you believe that? The Sierra Club state president and one of two negotiators for the state Sierra Club started having an affair with the Shawnee Planning officer during "settlement negotiations" in which there were co-appelants, and none of the co-appelants were ever notified of any conflict of interest? That should be enough to nullify the entire proceedings in my opinion.
To be continued.