Winter 2003 Feature

What’s a Biology Professor Doing
Running a Timber Company?

by Elizabeth Gardner, Professor of Biology

In 1967, my husband Wil was sent out to Idaho to investigate the source and value of shares of a company represented by his law firm. Coincidentally, this same company was connected to my Boston-based family, so I accompanied him. We found a land where trees grew tall and beautiful, where there was a history that dated back to the Gold Rush days, and, most significant to me, where the land was proximate to one of the ugliest Superfund sites in the United States. We found that we loved the land and no one wanted the shares. So we bought them, and that was the beginning of Coeur d’Alene Placer Mining Company.

We decided that our tasks would be to assemble more land to make a difference, and to buy and trade with the various government agencies (Bureau of Land Management, US Forestry Service, etc.), which had the same goals. We wanted to be a presence in the area, to make a difference, to preserve the history of the area, and to conserve the land, the animals, and to help engineer the long-term solutions to significant environmental problems. As indicated above, the smelter in Kellogg, Idaho, was one of the most ugly areas: barren, no vegetation, significant pollution, and a major impact on the people in the area. Yet 26 miles away from the smelter, the land was beautiful; productive, clean, and potentially sensitive to environmental change. We were also fascinated by the history of the area, the impact of placer mining for gold, the lack of conservation of artifacts, and the lack of education about how these two issues interacted both then and for the future.

Over the next ten years, we added to our land base in Shoshone County—putting acreage together along the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River, along the principal interior road connecting Idaho to Montana, and to Washington, and going up the Bitter Root Mountain foothills—until we built up nearly 3,000 acres in holdings. We then turned our attention to what to do with this land. We knew we had tasks ahead of us: reclamation and productivity, as well as the conservation of history. We started with resuming placer mining. Placer gold is surface gold and can be found with a minimum loss of land. We actually worked on and around the old dredge piles, turning them back over. The end result was reclamation of a rock-strewn “desert,” where the land again became productive, but we did not generate sufficient cash flow for expenses. We also realized that our company’s efforts reawoke the sleeping “gold bugs” who thought nothing of trespassing and making their own fortunes at our expense. To prevent further incursions we had to become very unpopular and shut down the placer mining. We also used the appropriate agencies to keep people off the land. This is still a recurring issue, but we now have processes in place to prevent people from coming on the land illegally. We are an effective presence in the area!

Professor Beth Gardner and her Idaho land.

Concurrent with our interest in the productivity of the land was our interest in its history both past and present. The towns of Prichard and Murray were significant in the development of the panhandle of Idaho, but from the sixties on, interest in history by the current landowners all but disappeared. Also, there was a drop in tourism despite a recurring interest in the Gold Rush days. We researched the history of the towns, looked at old documents of the company, and tried to access extant documents. Wil, whose passion was history and whose gift was organization, got to know the people, what was left of the towns, and what would be most appropriate, without being domineering and telling people what to do. He and I worked to ignite the same passion that would have the benefit of both retaining historical buildings and documents but also restoring tourism. The government was also supportive in this area. This was our liberal arts background raising its head. Crossing our land was the town cemetery where “Terrible Edith and Molly be-Damn’d” camp followers worked tirelessly to nurse mine workers through a typhus epidemic. We cleaned up this cemetery and encouraged the people in the area to make it a part of their history once again. Wil was also instrumental in putting together a coalition of town and government resources to rebuild the Murray courthouse. We spent time with some of the local old-timers, listening to their stories and getting them to tell them to their children and pass them on. Connections to the land and its history are a major form of conservation.

Until 1998, we rocked along enjoying our time out in Idaho, feeling good about our productivity, and raising our son, James, with that same sense of history and conservation that is so important to all of us, especially today. I confess that I was enjoying the property and being in Idaho while Wil did the important documentation, management, and integration of the property. My major contribution was in the areas of appropriate timber management practices and long-term planning for the conservation of the land, the animals, and the timber for the future. I pushed hard on long-term issues as opposed to short-term cash flow. I truly felt that we had a commitment to the future of the land, its history, and assets beyond our lifetimes. It was here that I was actively applying my knowledge base to such courses as Environmental Problems and Accounting, as well as my overall liberal arts background and interests.

In 1998, my world turned upside down with the sudden death of my husband. All of a sudden my role changed from supporter to sole owner, from commentator to implementer, and from participant to active controller. I had to be responsible for laws and accounting practices, to the subcompanies Wil and I had set up, and also for long-term planning. I felt as though I had been dropped into a vast whirlpool of bureaucracy about which I had blithely learned very little. I relied on my ability to learn by osmosis, on my commitment to being a lifelong learner, and on my innate sense of what is good and worthwhile for the land, the space, the timber, and the organisms that are an integral part of the land. This is what governed my thinking and directed my planning.

My first goal was to organize and simplify so that I could understand all the parts of the company. Wil loved complexity; I hated it; Wil could multistream; I am a single tasker; but both of us believed in our obligation to the future of the company and of the land. Liberal arts skills and learning and the tasks and goals that I had set myself at Pine Manor College stood me in good stead and directed me to the future. In retrospect, I was amazed at how well the skills that I had learned and used in my teaching and administrative work at Pine Manor could be translated into such different efforts.

Current company practices include: no involvement with gold mining; care and respect for the animals—moose, bison, turkeys, bear, and Rocky Mountain sheep. This means that I work closely with appropriate government agencies and restrict, insofar as possible, hunting, trapping, and trespassing. I also work with our experienced and highly involved Forestry agent to plan where and how to timber, to do no harm, to cut trees selectively—not to clear-cut—to put roads in that will benefit, not harm, the land, to leave the land better off, leaving nurse trees, to replant on an annual basis, to monitor who goes there, and to be an active participant in the overall management of the land. My best present to my son, James, was a picture of a replanted young tree with the caption “Put This in Your 401k!” This is thinking for the future, and it is a wonderful occupation. All of these issues I bring back to my classes because they apply to my teaching and to the College’s mission of social responsibility.

For the future, I see this land, its history, and the plants and animals continuing to prosper. I will continue to work to integrate these two passions in my life as I educate my son for his future role in the company. I work “outside the box” and am prepared for additional challenges. My overarching concerns will always be land, history, conservation, and education.