Last week, the Delta Stewardship Council announced the selection of Chris Knopp as the new Executive Officer to replace the retiring Joe Grindstaff.
Filling Mr. Grindstaff’s shoes won’t be easy, but Mr. Knopp seems up to the task. A pilot and a longtime California resident, he earned his BS in Forestry at UC Berkley and his MS in Watershed Science at University of Utah. His 34 years of service with the U.S. Forest Service include management positions in California, Arizona, and Washington, DC.
Mr. Knopp is no stranger to large-scale collaborative restoration projects. In his previous position as Forest Supervisor with the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests, he led the Four Forests Restoration Initiative, a collaborative restoration plan involving federal, state and local government agencies, environmental organizations, fish and wildlife agencies and other stakeholder groups with the goal of improving vegetation biodiversity, wildlife habitat, soil productivity and watershed function on 2.4 million acres of forest degraded by unsustainable land use and fire exclusion.
He is, however, someone who is relatively new to the Delta. “Chris is not an aging water warrior, but a smart guy who can take a fresh look at old problems,” said DSC Chair Phil Isenberg in an agency press release announcing Mr. Knopp’s appointment. “The Council is very impressed with his management style, sense of humor and judgment, as well as his ability and experience in dealing with complex natural resource issues,” continued Mr. Isenberg.
I had a chance to chat with the Chris Knopp on his busy first day on the job. I began by asking him if he was up for the challenge of dealing with the Delta:
“Oh you bet. I’m looking forward to it. I was telling a lot of employees this morning, I’ve been asked, why do you want this job? Well, who wouldn’t want it? To be positioned and to be able to participate in probably the greatest ecological challenge on the West Coast right now – It’s is a phenomenal opportunity to do something meaningful with your life.”
How familiar are you with the Delta stakeholders?
“I’m coming mostly with a fresh slate. I know a few, but I have to say the majority I have not had the pleasure to meet and talk to yet. One of the things I’d like to do is be working on that for the next three months, meeting as many folks as I can, listening and just trying to understand their perspectives.”
Your work on the Four Forests Restoration Initiative seems to share a lot of the same characteristics as the Delta Plan. Was that a contentious project, or were stakeholders on board from the start?
“It was contentious initially, and over time, the participants, through a lot of internal work on their own, decided that the conflict was going to cause them to lose attainment of the goal, and they decided the higher benefit was in agreeing than in getting their individual ways. I like that idea, and it mostly worked that way, but of course, that’s easy when it’s not my little piece of the pie that’s being affected. And when one of the more vocal members felt that their position was being slighted, it changed things.
Perhaps one of the most interesting pieces of that dynamic was that the group that probably caused the most disruption was the forest service itself, the agency I worked for, because ultimately there were some things we could not give up authority for, such as federal contracting rules and regulations, that are not open to a collaborative decision … I don’t think we ever really satisfactorily resolved that other than finally accepting that was the case and just moving on.”
Was combat science an issue with the forest initiative?
“There was some combat science, but not so much as there was with the owl issues in Northern California which I was heavily involved in, or sometimes salmon and steelhead restoration issues, or the Pacific Fisher. All of those, that’s where the phrase ‘combat biologist’ came from.”
So how do you sort out the science issue? How do you decide what you’re going to listen to?
“My theory is straightforward, I hope. Let the science work and develop its perspective free from the political intrigue. I don’t want the scientists to start solving the problem, I want them to describe the science and when they are at a stopping point, that’s the time you start looking at compromise. But so often and in so many different areas, Lake Tahoe being a good example where I worked before, you would find people trying to solve the problem prematurely, and modifying the position they might take from a scientific perspective or even from a management perspective before either side had a chance to do their job. When you do that, you curtail more effective solutions, so I really want and argue for an independent scientific approach that is free to do their job, but ultimately at the end, the realization – not only among the scientists but among the community – that compromise is going to be an essential components of achieving the coequal goals.
I asked him what he saw as his biggest challenge ahead:
“Achieving coequal! [laughing] Honestly, I don’t know yet. I’m going to try and be a good listener for awhile. I hope that doesn’t frustrate too many people, but I think this is a complicated series of problems and there are real values involved with the different perspectives. They are valid perspectives, and trying to develop something that is coequal is going to require some sensitivity to those values. And if you can’t reflect the values in a solution, we’re going to be left without a solution.”
