Flying Finns
In This Issue
 Jim Petersen |
That the shoddy and misdirected work of two graduate students-aided by instructors and advisors with antiforestry biases-could suddenly trump the quite-visible results of 75 years of on-the-ground experience with salvage logging and replanting bears testimony to the country's poisonous political climate. And lest you think all's fair in love and war, consider how you might react on learning that experiments in cancer research were being corrupted for political purposes.
It will take you some time to get though our essay, perhaps even a couple of readings. But as you wade through the mountain of information we've assembled, ask yourself this question: why did this investigation fall to a very small non-profit forestry foundation when either of Oregon's major dailiesthe Portland Oregonian or the Eugene Register-Guard-could have more easily unearthed the same information we've gathered over the last five months? That they didn't bears witness to the infectious pus now oozing from the pages of many of this nation's daily newspapers.
This isn't the first time a major forestry school has been rocked by controversy. Back in the 1970s, the late Arnold Bolle nearly wrecked the University of Montana College of Forestry when, as its dean, he injected himself personally into a rather nasty and highly politicized controversy involving terraced clearcuts in the mountains south of Missoula. It took all of the wisdom and diplomatic skills his replacement, Dr. Ben Stout, could muster to rescue the school from self-inflicted disgrace. OSU forestry dean Hal Salwasser now faces the same challenge. In the interest of full disclosure I admit that Hal is a friend, at least in professional sense. We met when he was in the Forest Service's Washington office, before he was named Northern Region One Regional Forester. I greatly admired his very public attempt to define the term "new perspectives in forestry" after the Forest Service tossed it into the debating ring with precious little explanation as to its philosophy or scientific underpinnings. I suspect he sensed that "new perspectives" needed to be defined quickly lest it be misrepresented by Forest Service critics who then, as now, oppose both active management and the large scale experiments that are needed to test the veracity of numerous unsubstantiated theories
suggesting that forests are best left to nature's whims.
Within a matter of hours after the Donato findings were leaked to the press Hal was publicly assailed for endorsing HR 4200, which mandates prompt salvage and restoration on federal lands following catastrophic events. What the two events have in common are the 2002 Biscuit Fire and the subsequent Sessions Report, which laid out the probable ecological consequences of several post-Biscuit alternatives ranging from no action to a fairly aggressive salvage of burned timber.
Not long after the first volleys were fired I sent Hal an email note in which I expressed my belief that he'd been set up by critics on his own faculty who disagreed with the findings of the Sessions Report, opposed Biscuit Fire salvage, disliked HR 4200 for the same reason and were up to their armpits in the Donato report. He responded in his usual statesmanlike manner expressing his hope that I was wrong. Nothing has happened in the ensuing months to change my mind. And while the cold, hard facts of the matter still aren't available, and may never be, I will go to my grave believing my friend Hal was set up by his enemies.
For a time during Hal's Northern Region years I thought he might be the next Chief of the Forest Service. Given his impressive scientific credentials and his communications skills he would have made a great one, but his honesty got him in trouble with Vice President Al Gore, who by then had turned the venerable agency into his own fiefdom. So rather than be considered for the Chief's job when Dale Robertson was forced out, he was banished to a Forest Service research station at Albany, California. In due course another old friend, Dr. George Brown, who was then
Dean of OSU's forestry school, announced his retirement. Sensing opportunity, I asked Hal if he was interested in applying at OSU. He was. The rest is history.
I don't want to imply here that I am the reason why Hal got the OSU deanship because I clearly am not, but I was happy to help in a small way because, for 20 years, OSU's College of Forestry has held a special place in my heart. And I believe Hal was the perfect choice to compass the college through what looked to be stormy political waters. I still believe it, though I fear Hal may be a bit too trusting for his own good.
Witness his defense of his student in a forum where a lesser man surely would have tossed him overboard: the American Forest Resource Council's annual meeting last April. After U.S. Representative Brian Baird (D-WA) took Mr. Donato's research paper apart in a blistering critique of its statistical validity, Hal stood up and defended both Mr. Donato and his motives, assuring all present-including me-that his wayward student was not part of a larger conspiracy to disgrace the college or Hal. Though I thought him wrong at the time, and still do, I admired his courage
and forthright defense of a student who, in my view, had hung both Hal and the college out to dry.
Off and on over the years I have wished I could say I held an OSU forestry degree. It is-or was-the gold standard in forestry. I console myself in the fact that I'm a fairly good writer who gets to write about forestry. When the late Carl Stoltenberg was still dean he graciously allowed me to roam the halls any time I wanted to. I was warmly welcomed by some of the finest forest scientists in the world. Most of what I know about forestry I learned from them. To this day, I call on them whenever I encounter forestry research I do not understand. Their interest in helping me has been its own reward.
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| In a self-portrait, Evergreen writer Dave Skinner stands amid Biscuit Fire devastation between Burnt Ridge and Sugarloaf Mountain, at the headwaters of Indigo Creek. The Donato-Law et al paper that is the subject of this special report argued against salvaging timber from the Biscuit, alleging reforestation problems. But statisticians have since concluded their plot sampling data contains serious errors. |
Of course it is possible that my fears are over-blown. I hope so. A strong case can be made for the fact that this is just the latest chapter in the 1919 debates between Pinchot regulationists and Greeley cooperatists; debates that Greeley won when Congress ratified the landmark Clarke-McNary Act in 1924, setting science-based forestry on a sparkling 60-year journey into the future. But this much is different this time: news that traveled at the speed oftrains and telegraphs in 1919 travels at the speed of light today, adding magnitude, urgency and unearned credibility to the entire Donato fiasco.
Some observers believe OSU has emerged from its trial by fire stronger than it was before. I hope they're right. Only time will tell. Others believe Mr. Donato was used by his faculty advisors. It's a stretch in my mind, and it does not alter the facts of this case. At the very least, he isguilty of astonishingly poor judgment. An old friend who just returned from a trip to Croatia, a country just now emerging from its own darkness, shared this insight with me: "What taxpayers have a right to expect from the Oregon State College of Forestry is a disciplined debate in which all sides are heard-and are themselves disciplined in their responses." We aren't there yet but Hal is the only person I know who is capable of restoring order at OSU.
Before we knew what a fever swamp the Donato mess had become we had intended for this issue to be more of a photo essay featuring the human-aided recovery from landscapes savaged by the West's greatest natural calamities: the Great 1910 Fire, the largest such catastrophe in our country's history, Oregon's well-chronicled Tillamook burns and the unforgettable 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. These events-and the years' long salvage and restoration crusades that followed them-mock not just young Mr. Donato but the professors and scientists who conspired to embarrass Dean Salwasser and Oregon's once Olympian forestry school. Thus, you will find relevant photographs scattered throughout our essay-reminders of a wisdom shared with me a few years back by Alan Houston, a fine PhD wildlife biologist who workson middle Tennessee's Ames Plantation: "When we leave forests to nature, as so many now seem to want to do, we get whatever nature serves up, which can be pretty devastating at times; but with forestry, we have options, and a degree of predictability not found in nature."
I want to personally thank the many scientists who helped Mr. Skinner compass his way through this mess, especially my old friend, Dr. Robert Buckman. I've known Bob for many years and prize his infrequent but always incisive counsel more than words can say. His wisdom, from a 1995 interview, seems as timely today as it was then:
"The bias favoring old growth research has spawned largely cosmetic terms like ‘ecosystem' and ‘biological diversity,' which serve to promote the idea that ecosystem management is only possible on a very large scale. This isn't true. I want to promote the idea that it is possible to increase the ecological content of almost any tract of land regardless of its size or management regime. There is a positive role here for everyone, from the backyard gardener to the largest industrial forest landowner."
"It is time for science to produce some defensible, reproducible experiments. It is imperative that we verify or otherwise correct land policies decisions made on the basis of theories. The consequences of error-social, economic and environmental-are simply too great to rest on conjecture."
human need to use natural resources is fundamental to our continued presence on earth."