March
7, 1999, Sunday
Money and Business/Financial
Desk
Copyright 1999 The New
York Times Company
PRIVATE SECTOR;
Seeing a Forest to Save the Trees
By
JON CHRISTENSEN
WHILE environmentalists
were chained to thousand-year-old redwood trees in the Headwaters forest of northern
California, Thomas S. Reid was chained
to his computer. He was putting those same trees, along with seabird nesting areas
and salmon streams, into a simulation that proved essential to protecting the
forest, the largest privately owned grove of ancient redwoods.
Last
week, the towering trees were saved from the saws in a last-minute deal involving
the Federal Government, the state of California, and the Pacific Lumber Company,
owned by Maxxam, a holding company based in Houston.
The Federal Government agreed to pay $250 million and California $242 million
to acquire the Headwaters forest -- at 10,000 acres, two-thirds the size of Manhattan.
The company also agreed to forgo logging for at least 50 years on 7,900 acres
in a dozen other old-growth groves.
The day after the deal was reached, Mr. Reid, dressed as usual in casual pants
and running shoes, was on the phone trading congratulations and gossip with key
negotiators. He is on good terms with all of them, in no small measure because
he says he is not one of them. But all sides agree that his contribution was crucial.
His richly detailed, computerized maps with color overlays showing those trees,
bird habitats and fish streams gave the players a common ground.
''We weren't at the negotiating table,'' Mr. Reid said, ''but we helped build
the table back in the shop so that others could negotiate.''
Quiet, but earnest and direct, Mr. Reid in fact conducted the negotiations behind
the negotiations. He shuttled among the California officials who hired his environmental
consulting company, their Federal allies and company executives to secure common
understandings on environmental and economic facts and consequences.
Mr. Reid, 51, is one of a new breed of environmentalists who rely on the power
of scientific and economic information in their quest to save endangered species
or limit pollution.
Using software
originally developed for the oil industry, he enabled the negotiators to calculate
precisely the trade-offs between cutting timber and saving birds and fish. As
each proposal was mapped on his laptop, they could see the economic and environmental
gains and losses.
His firm, TRA Environmental Sciences, is based in a warren of offices in a rundown building in downtown
Palo Alto. Its space is crowded with three computers, boxes of documents and a
library of environmental regulations.
The only sign of Mr. Reid's passion for the environment is an inconspicuous poster
of a redwood tree that says in small type: ''Should something that has lived for
2,000 years die for next quarter's earnings?''
Mr. Reid is proud of his ability to keep his passion out of his work.
''I was not out in the woods hugging trees,'' he said. ''The role that is more
useful for us to play is to sustain some objectivity and perceived independence,
so that we could give information and not have anybody worry that we're cooking
the books.''
The agreement, called
a habitat conservation plan, was designed to protect coho salmon and the marbled
murrelet, a seabird that lays its eggs only on the huge branches of redwood trees
that are hundreds of years old. Both are listed as threatened under the Endangered
Species Act.
Dozens of participants
framed the agreement, from Charles Hurwitz, Maxxam's chairman, to the Interior
Secretary, Bruce Babbitt, to the teams of Federal, state and corporate officials,
lawyers and biologists.
But those involved
say Mr. Reid's work was the foundation for their own.
''It was a tremendously powerful tool,'' said Phillip J. Detrich, a biologist
with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the lead scientist on the
Federal negotiating team. ''Without it, I can't envision how we could have done
this whole process. Those maps that Tom made were the core of that negotiation.''
John Campbell, president of Pacific
Lumber in Scotia, Calif., said Mr. Reid's work allowed the balancing of competing
interests.
''He produced an image that
people could interpret and understand,'' Mr. Campbell said.
Mr. Reid is no stranger to such deals. He left a graduate program in biology at
Stanford University in 1972 to start his own consulting company. In 1983, he developed
the nation's first endangered-species habitat conservation plan to save the Mission
Blue butterfly on San Bruno Mountain in South San Francisco, Calif. A result was
2,750 acres of open space, but also eight development projects -- including homes,
offices and hotels -- that were approved on 600 acres. His firm still manages
this grassy habitat and its restoration for San Mateo County.
MR. REID'S company has helped create nine other conservation plans in California.
His consulting business has grown to about $1.2 million in annual billings, with
16 employees. The Headwaters project was done under a $470,000 contract with the
California Department of Forestry.
The Sierra Business Council, representing 500 businesses in the Sierra Nevada
region, recently hired Mr. Reid to help plan for economic development and growth
while protecting open spaces and threatened species. ''He's a biologist, but he's
a realist,'' said the council's director, Lucy Blake. ''He understands the economics.
He is committed to habitat planning within the constraints of landowners. He is
trying to get as much for the resource as he can without having a deal fall apart,
which is tricky.''
Still, some environmentalists
deride the results of Mr. Reid's efforts. The Environmental Protection Information
Center in Garberville, Calif., is considering a lawsuit to stop the Headwaters
plan, which allows logging on some land in order to protect the rest. ''Close
to 9,000 acres of marbled murrelet habitat will be liquidated under this plan,''
said Kevin Bundy, a spokesman for the organization. ''Killing endangered species
in order to save them doesn't seem that rational.''
But even Mr. Bundy praised Mr. Reid's expertise. ''I found his work more useful
than anyone else's in figuring out what this plan will do,'' Mr. Bundy said. 'I
think he did a good job of making clear what this plan sacrifices. The numbers
don't lie.''
