Document text
Program aims to retrain loggers By JOHN DARLING ASHLAND � Forests thrive on diversity, and so do foresters. That�s the philosophy of Lomakatsi Restoration Project as it launches its $9,000 Multicultural Workforce Training program, teaching workers to plant and thin forests for species diversity and fire protection. Lomakatsi, an Ashland-based non-profit forest-worker collective specializing in ecosystem restoration, will train seven interns for four Saturdays this spring. They will train at seven of Lomakatsi�s 100 or so work sites in Southern Oregon and Northern California. Their skills later will be put to use once a $1.8 billion federal appropriation is given to agencies for fuel (brush) reduction, fire suppression and replanting burned forests following last summer�s large Western fires, said Lomakatsi director Marko Bey. Lomakatsi trains and uses volunteers and some paid staff to demonstrate alternatives to private landowners who are wary of fuel buildup in their forested lots, especially during a drought year like this one, but are just as wary of conventional harvesting, which clearcuts everything then replants in one marketable species, Bey said. "We get a couple hundred volunteers together on weekends and do community ecology restoration forestry," said Bey. "We try to restore diversity to the land so there are about 20 species of trees growing." The Multicultural Workforce Training is funded by $5,000 from Lomakatsi and a $4,000 grant from the Alliance of Forest Workers and Harvesters in Eugene. Lomakatsi hopes to obtain governmental grants and double the program next year. The program was made necessary, Bey said, when the decline of logging on public lands put low-income, mobile forest workers out of jobs. Whites were able to retrain and find other work, while Latinos, who made up most of the workforce, were not retrained, he said. "The landscape has been devastated and so has the workforce. But the industry is changing and turning away from the industrial model of forestry," Bey said. "We want to set up a workforce of people who understand the technology and biology of diverse forests so they�re in place when the money comes down. They�re going to be needed over the next couple centuries as we restore forests. They will become the mentors of the next wave of interns." The training program is not just about trees and habitats, Bey said, but aims at community building between ethnic and cultural groups. "At our first day of training," said Lomakatsi Community Development Director Oshana Catranides, "it was amazing to see our intern from Jamaica and our Native American intern talking excitedly about how each of their ethnic groups feels about the land and how it�s all woven into their ways of life � and they jumped up and hugged each other with happiness." Lomakatsi also seeks to train displaced blue-collar logging families, helping to resolve differences between environmentalists and timber workers. Intern Charles Mayer learned forestry with another community program called the Regional Ecosystem Applied Learning Corps (REAL Corps). But he sees the Lomakatsi program as an "exciting chance to learn a new perspective on other cultures and pick up biodiversity skills they didn�t teach in Real Corps." Intern Misty Boos, another former Real Corps forest worker, said she�s picking up knowledge about forest restoration and fire control she couldn�t get anywhere else. "As a woman, it�s harder to break into forest work. Getting these skills will help me � and it�s wonderful to be part of an organization that�s helping fix all the damage we�ve done." On the net: [email protected]. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.