More Junk Science from OSU

I write this essay with a heavy heart. As a professional forester for 35+ years, I have always professed good forest stewardship backed up by the best forest science. But over the last 20 years or so, forest science has been polluted and degraded by political advocacy of a pernicious and destructive nature, and so too have our priceless, heritage forests been destroyed by horrendous and catastrophic fires.

There is a crisis in our forests and in our forestry schools and those crises are interconnected. Bad forest science, junk or pseudoscience if you will, has sunk to the level of promoting forest destruction. Instead of commitment to saving forests from destruction, our forestry schools now promote that destruction on the most tenuous and disingenuous grounds.

The root cause of both crises is a corrupt political movement ... read more

Analysis Paralysis Cure Found

Our colleagues from the National Association of Forest Service Retirees have come up with a remarkable cure for Analysis Paralysis, a dreadful disease that has crippled the U.S. Forest Service for the last 20 years. They describe their cure in a February 12, 2010 letter to the Forest Service – a letter in which they critique the agency’s proposed new planning rule.

Pardon our cynicism, but the mere fact that this letter is addressed to “Forest Service Planning NOI, C/O Bear West Company 172 East 500 South, Bountiful, Utah, 83010” should tell you everything you will every need to know about how hopeless this exercise is and how detached the Forest Service has become from the rest of the country. Time was when such a letter would have been addressed to the Forest Service Chief (Tom Tidwell, who’s actually a pretty nice guy) at his office in Washington, D.C. But no more.

The planning rule s what it says it is – a rule that describes the Forest Service’s planning process. The problem is that this process is little more than a feeding ground for lawyers representing environmental groups who oppose any and all forms of management in our national forests. Worse, the process is perpetual, and it no longer produces a product or a service that most Americans would recognize. Hence, the shop-worn term, “Analysis Paralysis.” Click here to read NAFSR’s nonetheless thoughtful comments concerning the proposed Forest Service planning rule.

Click here for John Marker’s comments concerning the proposed new planning rule. John is a long-time Evergreen contributor (and supporter) and is a NAFSR founder.

If you seek a better understanding of the ideological cause of this unfolding environmental disaster, look no further than the Wildlands Project, a loopy Hard Left environmental group that is hell bent on “re-wilding” much of the western United States. Click here for the Montanans for Multiple Use site.  They are a fairly reasonable outfit that clings to the notion that public forests should be managed for the public good. Be sure to click on the map showing Wildlands’ vision of what the west should look like. And don’t forget to read the quotes from the organization’s founders. While you’re reading this nonsense, keep in mind that these folks have considerable influence in the current Congress. They’re also favorites with New York’s wealthy Park Avenue set...

The Story of “This is My Office!” (a video)

The Pacific Logging Congress and its Pacific Forest Foundation have a long history of involvement in educational projects designed to assist loggers, foresters and the public.

When PLC was founded in 1909, its main missions were logger safety and logging camp sanitation – critically important goals that put the newly minted organization at the educational forefront in the lumber industry’s westward expansion. 

Provider Pals students, Marni Zaoner, Eureka, Montana and Shani Gardner, New York City, happily mugged for the camera on a TBC Logging Company site near Libby, Montana in the summer of 2005. Provider Pals is an award winning educational program designed to build bridges of understanding and respect between the cultures of urban and rural youth and their natural resource providers. The non-profit Evergreen Foundation has been a strong supporter of Provider Pals, also a non-profit, for more than a decade. Learn more at www.providerpals.com.