Smith’s decision to stop logging when he was 37 years old came not only because logging was destroying the forest but also because it was destroying his body. There was the time a cable snapped, sending a 44 foot fir tree soaring down a steep hill into his friend and fellow logger, crushing his pelvis and ribs and spilling open his insides. His friend said two things before he died. "He said he wanted a drink of water, and he said he was sorry. Then he went into shock," Smith recalls. There was the time Smith sliced an inch-deep chunk off his thigh when his chainsaw slipped — but that happens all the time, he says. And then there was the time in 1981 when he was struck by lightning during a logging operation. "It threw my feet straight out and blew my tin hat off my head." Climbing trees, pulling rigging, setting chokers and tending hook were no longer options for him after such intense physical strain and countless injuries. On top of it all, jobs in the timber industry were harder and harder to find. He had spent the last 15 years moving from town to town chasing down dwindling logging operations, only to be laid off every five to six months. Smith still bears the scars after years of logging accidents. The EWP gave Smith a chance to continue his work in the forest but with significantly less physical demand. He became a crew leader for an ecosystem management training program in Tillamook County in 1995. His crew of 12 spent one day a week at a local community college learning math, writing and government contracting in order to help them develop needed business skills. The other days they were out in the woods studying forest and stream ecology, habitat restoration, fire fighting and land and stream surveying — all skills that built on Smith’s knowledge of the forest. Before his training in ecosystem management, Smith remembers how "big timber companies [would] go in there and scalp a whole hillside. They log everything — no matter if it’s alder or hemlock — and just replace it with fir." But during the training program his crew would go in and plant aspen, alder and cedar because, as he says, "all the animals don’t just live on fir trees." Smith’s crew also climbed high into treetops to build bald eagle nests on the fringes of logged areas. They created structures made out of boulders and logs to protect fish threatened by nearby logging roads. And while they still did some logging, they embraced the same environmental concerns that, in part, led to the loss of their jobs only years before. "I could honestly say that I was involved in something I believed in," Smith says. Though Smith had always known clear-cutting was bad for ecosystems, other members of his crew learned for the first time how damaging the timber industry can be. Jim Fisher joined the EWP in 1996 after two years of struggling to find work in logging. "We used to clear all the logs out of the streams after a clear cut. During the EWP, we worked to put them back in to create habitat. It makes sense," he says. "What we used to do doesn’t." in ecosytem managemnet since the training. Fisher was awarded a total of three contracts from the BLM: in 1997, 1998 and 1999. The first two contracts paid well, Fisher says, and provided steady work. But when the BLM cut funding for the third, Fisher was discouraged about the prospects for continuing work. He is now a mechanic for an excavating company in Tillamook, Oregon. But despite the fact he wasn’t able to continue as a private contractor, he's happy with the impact the EWP has had. "We almost waited until it was too late to start caring [about the forest]," he says. "But it’s not too late, and programs like the EWP prove that." The greatest challenge for these training programs is convincing federal agencies and private landowners that it is beneficial to employ highly skilled workers such as Smith and Fisher. According to Spencer, it is not that people don’t want to better manage their resources, it is that "the social and economic institutions we’ve built only work in one direction: toward short term gain, the bottom line." As a result, he says, the training programs have not entirely met their goals of economic and environmental restoration. Part of the problem is that federal land management agencies have had to scale back their operations during the last decade. The Forest Service has slashed its workforce by 40 percent since the early nineties. Another problem is that forest management agencies typically award jobs to private contractors for the lowest cost and the fastest result rather than to well trained workers from the EWP programs. Because federal agencies are having trouble adopting the concept of ecosystem management, the EWP’s new goal is to work with legislators and agency officials to demonstrate the need for an ecosystem management workforce. The Salem and Eugene, Oregon, BLM offices, along with the Willamette and Mt. Hood National Forests, are currently working to provide ecosystem management contracts to EWP workers. Even if the EWP fails in its current mission, Smith believes the concept will eventually take hold. "It’s a snowball effect happening everywhere," he says. "I can share what I’ve learned with other people, and they can in turn instill their own knowledge in others." Programs like jobs in the woods do not give former loggers a new perspective on the forest; they build on what the loggers already know. Ecologists such as Bart Johnson, assistant professor of landscape architecture at the University of Oregon, have also hailed the unique goals of ecosystem management as steps in the right direction. But Johnson acknowledges that creating an industry of environmental restoration will naturally take time and effort. "Are we going to shift to an economy that restores ecosystems?" he asks. "Or will people continue to believe that protecting the environment means taking away jobs?" Even though job placement among the EWP graduates has been low, similar programs in California, Washington and throughout the country see it as a successful model and look to it for assistance. EWP manager Spencer is optimistic about the future and believes that people, if given the right opportunity, will look beyond short-term obstacles and do what's best. "What we’re inviting federal agencies to do is challenging," he says. "But communities are saying, ‘We’re ready.’" A native Oregonian, Amy Horton has always been interested in the issues that shape the Northwest - especially where the environment and the economy intersect.