Framing Our Community is a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to foster the sustainability of the natural resources that surround us and eliminate the rural poverty inherent to communities dependent on federally managed natural resources. Our mission is to foster sustainability of the natural resources that surround us, while investigating the opportunity of value-added wood products developed from small diameter, dead and diseased timber and to develop and implement on-the-ground techniques and training for forest restoration, fuels reduction and defensible space programs. FOC's focus with area youth is through projects that support natural resource and art education in our local schools as they directly relate to understanding, planning and living within the National Forest lands around us and that foster working together as a community to meet local needs.

In the mid 1990's a group of people, who possessed the strength, education and experience to address these problems, decided that it was time to become proactive and break the cycle of rural poverty. They recognized that in these hard times laid many opportunities and the resulting efforts have produced projects that range from a ten-day timber framing workshop to construct an outdoor learning center, testimony to the Senate and House of Representatives, an in depth feasibility study for a Small Timber Business Incubator, two Regional Rural Community Development Forums and a Teacher's Workshop. Financial support has come from private foundations, as well as the public sector. Partners include, the University of Idaho, The Aspen Institute, Sustainable Northwest, the Timber Framers Guild of North America, American Forest and a wide range of individuals, communities and local/regional/national organizations.

Our town, Elk City, lies within the boundaries of 2.2 million acres of Nez Perce National Forest and is part of Idaho County, a county larger than the state of Connecticut and is eighty three percent federal or state land. The 1990 census shows Elk City and the surrounding township with a population of 1,500, we now number approximately 500 residents. Idaho County has been identified by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (REIS, May, 2001) as low income and high unemployment. Our poverty level sits at sixty-four percent (64%), fifty percent (50%) more young people in Idaho County live in poverty than those in the rest of the state and eighty-four percent (84%) of the students in our local K-8 school are enrolled in the school free and reduced lunch program. With the decline in population that accompanies job loss, other impacts occur, like a decline in the school's student population. Our school now has three full time teachers, combined elementary classes and no high school. This means that our high school children must attend one of two schools 50 or 63 miles away, board out with relatives or a willing family, leave home on Monday morning and return Friday afternoon.

In the last century, our surrounding forests - which consist primarily of 80-year-old lodge pole pine, as well as other softwoods have fallen on hard times. Timber harvests have been largely curtailed by the elimination of logging in the national forests while our lodgepole pine has reached its maturity: now, those lodgepole pines are dying of old age as well as by attacks of the mountain pine beetle. There is increasing fire danger from dead timber and the forest has become more, unhealthy each year. The result of all this has been a severe decline in the physical and economic health of the region.

In 2001, FOC conducted a business-feasibility study to determine if the small-diameter softwood timber that was going to waste in the forests could become a profit center for the community. Importantly, we wanted to utilize any infrastructure that was already in place, and grow it from there, utilizing businesses and workers that were established. The organization's goals were:

• to create year around employment that paid a living wage and had health benefits
• to set up a business incubation company that fosters secondary wood manufacturing operations that would become independent and profitable
• to offer marketing and business management training and support for business owners
• to improve the health of the local forests through fuels reduction and restoration projects
• to implement a monitoring and verification system
• and, to create a process that could be tailored to the assets and strengths of and used by other rural communities

This study confirmed FOC's initial thoughts. Lodgepole pine is one of the straightest-growing trees in the North American softwood forests and the large amounts of standing dead timber would not require kiln drying to make into timbers for timber frame buildings and other value-added products. A Small Timber Business Incubator project would allow us to develop multiple businesses that manufacture products whose production needs are less than 10% of the raw material required to run a standard saw mill for one year.

The feasibility study was followed by a five-year business plan for a Small Timber Business Incubator that would help established businesses grow, recruit new businesses into the region and create new businesses that utilize materials derived from the fuels reduction and understory thinning necessary to improve the health of the forest. This incubator is expected to generate millions of dollars for the region annually, restore the health of our forest, and make FOC self sufficient within five years, a true Win-Win situation.

FOC is using sound business strategy and planning techniques to utilize available timber resources, to develop markets and to develop products and that can be produced at a profit. Committed partners for the incubator project are the Idaho Department of Commerce, USDA Rural Development, U. S. National Fire Plan, Idaho County, the Steele-Reese Foundation, Weyerhauser Family Foundation, Wells Fargo, Sterling Savings Bank, Avista Utility Corporation, as well as local organizations, and businesses.

FOC has entered into Multi-year Agreements with the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to develop a model for the restoration of federal forest lands that suffer from high fuel loads, deteriorated watersheds and insect infestation. Conservation and environmental organizations, Universities, Bennett Forest Industries and other organizations with specific areas of expertise, like the Nez Perce Tribe and the Clearwater Elk Resource Team, will be consulted throughout project planning and implementation stages.

We have an opportunity to "Teach New Tools for New Times" while creating secondary products that add value to wood that was once thought to have little or no value. Through our forest restoration, retraining program we expect to restore habitat, mitigate forest and watershed deterioration, train displaced workers in methods of forestry that create the least amount of disturbance, study new methods of extraction and develop new equipment, all of which will be monitored and assessed. This will create jobs and give small independent business owners the new tools and skills they need to become prosperous again.

Framing Our Community's integrated approach to community-based forestry creates a process that begins in the woods with forest and watershed restoration, low impact methods of extraction, and fuels reduction for fire safety, to the manufacturing of value-added wood products, to the development of urban markets and the use of remaining biomass for the generation of electric power. This integrated process of vital and innovative projects will develop a model that would be shared with other natural resource-based communities. Sustainable Northwest's "Healthy Forest Healthy Partnership," the University of Idaho's Community Development Institute and twelve State of Idaho economic development centers would allow FOC to share lessons learned throughout the Pacific and Inland Northwest region. It is initiatives like these that will allow rural natural resource-based communities to break the cycle of poverty, dependence on outside resources and end the depletion of their natural capital.