Editor's Column

Guest Columns

Woods Wisdom

Notes From All Over

On January 5, 2006 EurekAlert, the news service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, announced that Science Magazine
(published by AAAS) would present, in ScienceExpress and later in the January 20 edition of the hard-copy journal Science, "research by scientists from Oregon State University and the Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry in Hawaii."

Entitled Post-Wildfire LoggingHinders Regeneration and Increases Fire Risk, by D. C. Donato, J. B. Fontaine, J. L. Campbell, W. D. Robinson, J. B. Kauffman, and B. E. Law; the finding was: "Unexpectedly, by disturbing the soil, salvage logging after a fire in a Douglas-fir forest reduced conifer seedling regeneration by 71% and also added kindling to the forest floor."

By January 10, fifty-eight newspapers and other news outlets had posted reports concerning the study on their websites. A typical headline was the Portland Oregonian's "Scorched Forests Best Left Alone, Study Says."

The Donato Report-as it is now widely known-made big news, not just in often cloistered forestry research circles, but in the public arena as well. Several environmental groups posted gleeful press releases lauding the Donato work. But the paper also stirred an unprecedented negative reaction from forestry professionals nationwide, including faculty at Oregon State and federal personnel officially involved with the study.

On January 17th, nine forest scientists subsequently labeled "The Gang of Nine" sent a letter to Science asking for a delay in publication in Science's January 20th issue until a response could be prepared. The attempted delay oxygenated matters into a political crown fire, an overheated shout-fest over "academic censorship" and "industry dominance" of the College of Forestry and what the editors of the Corvallis Times-Gazette sardonically called a "protracted lynching" of college Dean Hal Salwasser. Condemnations were made, apologies written and sent, funding withdrawn and restored, hearings held, witnesses grilled, resolutions were voted on, a "Committee on Academic Freedom and Responsibility" convened and "Recommendations" duly drafted.

Dr. Tom Sensenig “This is all new to me. I have never experienced anything like this before, hopefully never again. I was in this from the very beginning, I saw what happened, and what happened was unethical.”

Mercifully, a non-binding collegewide "vote of confidence" in Dean Salwasser's ability to lead the College of Forestry was conducted in early June. 66% of those who voted endorsed his ability "to lead the college into the future"-a political landslide by any measure, despite the fact that 10% abstained for reasons unknown. Perhaps they'd already finished their final exams and gone home for the summer.

Rivaling the strangeness of the seemingly unnecessary campus-wide vote of confidence was the reaction from U.S. Representative Baird, a Washington State Democrat with strong environmental credentials and a dislike for most things Bush.Congressman Baird, who was for a time chairman of Pacific Lutheran University's Department of Psychology, and taught statistics and methods at the McMinnville, Oregon school, waded into the fray with a blistering critique of the post-fire regeneration study, which had been conducted in plots burned by the 2002 Biscuit Fire on southern Oregon's Siskiyou National Forest, which was Ground Zero in the then widening debate over the veracity of HR 4200, a bill design to speed post-fire salvage and restoration work, co-sponsored by Oregon Congressman Greg Walden and, well, Congressman Baird.

Congressman Baird pilloried the study's authors, including two graduate students, Daniel Donato and J.B. Fontaine; two Oregon State University College of Forestry professors, Beverly Law and Douglas Robinson; a research associate, John Campbell; and one of the study's designers, J.B. Kauffman, a former OSU professor who now directs the Forest Service's Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry in Hawaii.

Congressman Baird hammered the study team for withholding data he and other scientists wanted to double-check, failing to address the limitations of their research and "inappropriately derived, selective and misleading statistics."

Particularly displeasing to Dr. Baird was the study's claim that post-fire salvage logging had reduced seedling regeneration by 71%-a statistic he summarily dismantled in calculations he completed after the study team reluctantly surrendered its data after HR 4200 hearings had adjourned.

If anything, he explained in his critique, the possible loss of 71% of seedlings [he estimates the number is closer to 51%] underscores the need for prompt salvage because "the seedling loss would likely have been minimal because no seedlings would have yet sprouted." Biscuit salvage was delayed over two years by protracted analysis and litigation, a time frame sufficient to allow some seedlings to sprout in burned areas,
only to be crushed beneath heavy equipment.

"If any summary statistic is chosen to indicate the seedling loss created by salvage logging two years after harvest, that statistic should actually best be understood as an index of the benefits of early, versus delayed harvest," Dr. Baird
wrote. "That interpretation, of course, is quite the opposite of the implication suggested by the report and by subsequent media coverage."

Dr. Paul Adams “Something really seems broken when reporters get advance copies of research findings before the scientific community can evaluate them.”

Marvin Brown “There’s never a study that will give you a final answer, and there are always studies that give conflicting information. Your job as a practicing forester is to sort through it all and make use of it as best you can.”

Despite its statistical failings, nothing seems to have raised Congressman Baird's ire more than the study's frontal assault on HR 4200."Nowhere does the report mention the key fact that prompt removal of the timber, as compared to the two year post fire harvest of this study, could prevent seedling mortality." Equally disturbing, the study made no mention of the fact that single year seedling mortality was as high as 56% in five of seven unlogged study plots-a fact widely known to researchers more familiar with southern Oregon's reforestation challenges.

"They used a value from a different plot entirely to arrive at the post-logging value," Dr. Baird wrote of the study team's multiple errors. "Rather than comparing the pre and post-values from the same plot, they took the median pre logging value from one plot and compared that to the median post logging value form another plot which was much lower! This is such a fundamental violation of standard practice that it is astonishing the reviewers failed to identify it and allowed it to be published in Science."

You could be forgiven for believing that Congressman Baird's withering analysis settled the post-fire salvage debate once and for all. But our story does not end here. Rather, it begins. The underlying issues that fostered the subsequent blowup at Oregon State University have not been confronted, and may never be unless federal authorities subpoena the sworn testimony of the parties involved-in our view an unlikely event in the politically charged environment Donato has created.

Much of the public debate has thus far swirled about two red herrings: academic freedom and industry influence on academic work. Neither of these has much to do with the facts of this story or the underlying causes of the controversy.

Academic Freedom

As Dean of the OSU College of Forestry, Dr. Hal Salwasser bears responsibility for issues and events that positively or negatively impact the College. Put simply, the buck stops on his desk. It is a responsibility he has handled with remarkable public candor since he was appointed Dean in 2000. Indeed, it was his candor that landed him in the middle of the Donato controversy; specifically his willingness to take a public position favoring science-based salvage logging and restoration following catastrophic wildfire-a view opposite that espoused by Donato's authors, including two College of Forestry faculty members.

It may be that Dr. Salwasser's troubles actually began on Evergreen pages. In "Siskiyou Showdown," our July 2004 Biscuit Fire salvage issue, he observed: "There are some people in the ‘leave it alone to nature' camp who think that the science [on salvage] isn't clear. But the science is absolutely clear in southwest Oregon. If you don't intervene after a major transformation like the Biscuit, it's not going to come back as structurally complex conifers for a very long time."

To those who opposed Biscuit salvage, Dr. Salwasser's remarks were Strike One.

More than a year later, on November 10, 2005, Dr. Salwasser gave testimony endorsing HR 4200, the "Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act of 2005," FERRA for short. Evergreen also supports this pending legislation, in large measure because we have been at the forefront in the Siskiyou National Forest salvage debate since the 1987 Silver Complex Fire ravaged more than 100,000 acres of old growth timber.

Dr. Salwasser's nine pages of testimony touched all the stones, including the importance of timely, site-appropriate, cost effective salvage. He also endorsed the legislation's provisions for funding more research into restoration after catastrophic events. With characteristic candor he also called Congress's attention to the 5,000-pound elephant no one else seemed to want to acknowledge: "Those opposed to restoration and recovery have also argued against the experimental science or testing of traditional knowledge that would show everyone how to best achieve desired restoration or recovery outcomes. Resistance to a proposed Forest Service study on recovery options following the Biscuit fires is a classic example of opponents of active forest recovery blocking peer reviewed scientific studies. Why? Because they fear the results will not support their policy advocacy?"

Strike Two.

Two months later, on January 10, 2006, Dr. Salwasser wrote a letter to faculty that read in part: "When singlestudy,
short-term research results on a highly charged issue are controversial within the scientific community, it is important that scientific debate occur
on the full body of pertinent knowledge and that additional research be conducted if needed before drawing general conclusions is appropriate."

Dr. Salwasser briefly discussed academic freedom and debate; then wrote, "It is also not unusual for people to read a single report or newspaper article or opinion and accept its findings or conclusions without asking critical questions about the study and its interpretations or about other evidence pertinent to the issue. This is not the first time that has occurred and won't be the last."

Finally, he warned: "The proper role of science is to help inform people on the possibilities and consequences of those choices and to do that the science must be thorough and well tested. It is not the role of science to tell people what those choices should be."

Rich Drehobl “Let scientists practice honest science and let politicians practice honest politics.”

This would be Strike Three.

It could be argued that Dean Salwasser pushed his luck in not seeking a consensus view toward aspects of the bill outside the funding provisions that would fiscally benefit the College of Forestry. But leaders are expected to set the pace for the institutions they lead and Hal Salwasser has been a pace setter since his halcyon days as the Forest Service's Region One forester. What remains to be seen is whether events of the past two years have robbed him of his ability to swing for the fences. Industry Influence The second red herring pounced on by both the press and OSU's Academic Freedom and Responsibility Committee was whether academic freedom had been chucked in favor of industrial timber interests whose state-controlled private lands harvest tax dollars help fund research conducted by College of Forestry researchers.

Interestingly, a Google search of reports implying possible corrupting influence in the harvest tax did not turn up a single press account revealing the amount of money involved or its use. So we called OSU public relations manager Todd Simmons for clarification. Mr. Simmons explained that of the College's current total budget of $26.1 million, roughly $2.8 million, or 11%, came from harvest tax revenue. The tax funds are pooled with Forest Research Lab appropriations and are distributed to all faculty members as base salary for the research part of their position. The only earmarked money is ten cents per thousand board feet of harvest, dedicated to a special program providing competitive grants for research on fish and wildlife habitats in managed forests. It may be that the no-harvest faction at OSU isn't interested in research that helps wildlife in harvested forests, but we know of no faculty member who has come forward to refuse the portion of their salaries paid by the harvest tax.

 

The Players

This is a complex story featuring as large a cast of characters as any we've encountered in our 20-year forest reporting history. We begin here with the names of those we interviewed or attempted to interview for this essay. Those marked with an asterisk (*) are co-authors of a Technical Comment response to the Donato paper to be published in Science, entitled More On Salvage.

We started on the ground in Montana's Bitterroot National Forest and the adjoining Sula State Forest. There we interviewed Peter Kolb, PhD, Extension Forestry Specialist and Associate Professor of Forest Ecology, Montana State University, faculty Associate Professor of Forest Ecology and Silviculture at University of Montana. Then it was off to Oregon to see John Sessions, PhD*, OSU Distinguished Professor of Forest Planning and Engineering; Michael Newton, PhD*, OSU Professor Emeritus Forest Ecology, Plant Interactions, Reforestation, Silviculture; Tom Atzet, PhD*, retired southwest Oregon area ecologist, US Forest Service; George Ice, PhD, Principal Scientist, National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, Corvallis, OR; Paul Adams, PhD*, OSU Professor and forest watershed extension specialist, Forest Engineering; Bob Buckman, PhD, retired U.S. Forest Service Deputy Chief for Research, OSU retired Professor of forest policy and international forestry at OSU, 2004 New Century of Service Chief's Award; Bob Ethington, PhD, retired USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station director, OSU retired Professor and Department Head, Forest Products.

We were on the ground twice in Oregon, first to attend the February HR 4200 hearing in Medford and later on the Deschutes NF with Stephen Fitzgerald, MS*, OSU Extension Specialist, Silviculture and Fire Science; and also got a look at the Tillamook State Forest and the wonderful new Tillamook Forest Center. While there, we spoke with Larry Fick, who supervised the Tillamook rehabilitation program and later developed recreation programs on the forest; Ross Holloway, Tillamook District Forester, Tillamook State Forest; Bob Gustavson, Assistant District Forester, Forest Grove, TSF; and Marvin Brown, Oregon State Forester and Society of American Foresters president.

We also attempted to contact and interview graduate student Daniel Donato, lead author of the report that bears his name; Beverly Law, PhD, OSU Associate Professor of Global Change Forest Science in the College of Forestry and Mr. Donato's advisor; K. Norman Johnson, PhD, Professor, Department of Forest Resources, OSU and chair of the Academic Freedom committee; and Jerry F. Franklin, PhD, Professor of Ecosystem Analysis, College of Forest Resources, University of Washington. In all cases our calls and/or emails were ignored, a fact that surprised us where both Dr. Johnson and Dr. Franklin were concerned because they have written for Evergreen in the past. Fortunately, we were able to get some collaborating information for other interviews they granted, and our federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request turned up further evidence of what really happened at OSU. (An Oregon FOIA request is still pending) ]

Dr. Peter Kolb “I like solutions that occur out there. We have shelves and shelves and shelves of technical papers that nobody but researchers look at. There is a huge disconnect between academic research and the people out in the real  world who face these problems and issues, who have to figure things out.”

Before we go further, we want to say that we believe the term "Donato Report" is a misnomer, first because it casts young Mr. Donato in a far more credible light than either he or his report deserve, and second because it is very clear that Mr. Donato had ample help from faculty members who oppose post-fire salvage logging, including Dr. Law and the aforementioned J. Boone Kauffman, the OSU fire ecologist who helped design the study. (More on Dr. Kauffman as our story unfolds)

With this perspective on the more appropriately named Donato-Law Report, we want to also tell you that this is not a story about academic freedom, as many have suggested. It is about academic rigor. Nor is it about industrial corruption of academia. It is about taxpayer funded academic corruption. It is not about science, but rather the abuse of science for political ends. It is about deceit, dishonesty and deception. It is about a terrible piece of research that is, at the same time, a political masterpiece. It is about those in the scientific community who have lost sight of their trust relationship with the larger society they serve. And it is about warring value systems. Indeed, it appears to us that the only thing Donato-Law is not about-is the environment.

The Beginning

Our search for background material for this essay took us to Medford, Oregon in February to observe the HR-4200 Congressional field hearing. The media package included a tour of the Timbered Rock fire area northeast of Medford. Our seatmate was Tom Sensenig, PhD, formerly-BLM/now-Forest-Service ecologist and Project Inspector/Principal Investigator for Joint Fire Science (JFS) Research Cooperative Agreement, NO.HAA003D00, Date (9/9/03) the Donato-Law study. We quite naturally struck up a conversation.

Dr. Sensenig explained that he had not been informed of, nor had he seen any drafts, prior to reading the Donato-Law report in Science. "It was a complete surprise," he said. No kidding.

Equally surprising was the quite forceful hearing testimony of just-retired BLM Ashland Resource Area Manager Rich Drehobl. We made arrangements to get his version of events as well. Mr. Drehobl told us the brouhaha began in an unlikely place-the aftermath of the Quartz Fire, which burned 6,170 acres of private, Bureau of Land Management, and National Forest lands ten miles southwest of Ashland, Oregon in August 2001.

"I was manager at the time," he recalled. "We wanted to explore some different, more ecological approaches to fire salvage."

At the time there was a lively debate between staff members about the wisdom of post-fire grass seeding. "Grass drives silvicultualists nuts," Mr. Drehobl explained. "The soil scientists want to protect the soils, while the silviculturists are concerned about grass competition with trees, so they fight like crazy. So we started cross-falling snags and all, but we were catching so much heat that I asked Tom [Sensenig] to check out the research. Most of it was done on non-federal lands, so we needed to see what the results were with all the mitigation we do. That was the objective."

"There was very little published information on the effects of salvage like we were hoping to do it," recalls Dr.Sensenig, "so they decided to arrange and fund new research. Boone Kauffman, OSU's fire ecologist at the time, was invited down the season after the fire in 2002 to brainstorm research opportunities. We went through the fire, looked it over and he said, ‘Well, let's put something together and apply to Joint Fire Science to get this rolling.' From 2002 to 2003, Doug [Robinson, an OSU avian biologist] and Boone were involved in getting the project written up and submitted to JFS. At that time there were only three principal investigators."

In the meantime, the nearby Biscuit and Timbered Rock fires burned a half-million acres of new potential study ground in 2002. "Consequently," says Dr Sensenig, "the study plan included both of these areas in addition to the Quartz as potential study sites." However, the Quartz salvage proposal went no-bid (unsold) because, explains Drehobl, "we had too much mitigation in it" for the low value of the timber, plus imminent litigation kept bidders away.

After a very competitive process the study was selected September 9, 2003 using $307,149 in JFS funds plus $78,000 in-kind for Dr. Sensenig's contribution. The funds were awarded to him and he, in turn, transferred the entire amount directly to OSU.

With the study plan ready, Messrs Robinson and Kauffman selected two graduate students, Daniel Donato and Joe Fontaine, to help gather field data. In March 2004, the students met Dr. Sensenig twice, selected the sites, and went to work. Fortuitously, they chose the Biscuit area sites, as Timbered Rock came under litigation that led to a permanent injunction from U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken in November of 2004. It was never salvaged.

Dr. George Ice “Everyone is plagued with their own biases, we know that, but you have to be as open as you can about it, and provide the reproducible, defensible, verifiable science others can use.”

The units selected for the study were(to the best of Evergreen's knowledge) those in the Fiddler salvage units on the Biscuit west of Selma. Over the course of the summer, Messrs Donato and Fontaine conducted their respective research on birds, small mammals, terrestrial amphibians, plus vegetation and coarse woody debris. In September 2004, they conducted a field trip with Sensenig before returning to school. In the fall, Dr. Sensenig transferred fromthe Bureau of Land Management to the Forest Service, assuming the position vacated by Tom Atzet's retirement, but his status as JFS liaison to the OSU team remained unchanged.

In summer 2005, after the logging operations had been conducted, Messrs Donato, Fontaine, and other undergraduate students returned to the survey area. This year, there were some permitting and crew behavioral issues involving law enforcement that Dr. Sensenig had to smooth over. He subsequently found it necessary to halt all work on the project for the first time on August 15, 2005. "These problems were later resolved, or so I thought," he explains.

In September 2005, Sensenig was emailed a one-paragraph progress report, which he says is normal for research at such an early point in the process: "The data was preliminary, very preliminary. I didn't see any numbers, never reviewed it, I didn't suspect, you know, that any kind of paper was being done on it." At this point, roughly October and November, the stories told by the Donato-Law team and Tom Sensenig diverge. The reason, apparently, was the impending introduction of HR-4200, the FERRA bill, which we will discuss later.

The Donato-Law team claims they were fully up-front in advising Sensenig about their intentions to publish in Science. They claim they sent another progress report email to Dr. Sensenig on December 2, 2005, and informed him of their publication intentions at a face-to-face meeting in Corvallis on December 15 that Dr. Sensenig had scheduled as preparation for an upcoming Biscuit Fire science meeting in February 2006. But his records indicate he got the email on December 20, after the Corvallis meeting, and the message contains only camping permit information and the previous September 2005 progress report. "I was unaware that they had prepared anything for Science," declares Dr. Sensenig. "Science never contacted me. You'd think they would have contacted me if they had something up for review."

Dr. Sensenig's first inkling that something was afoot came when, on January 4, 2006, he dropped by his office from vacation to check his email after getting phone calls from Forest Service staffers Pam Bode and Robert Shull asking about a study showing that Biscuit salvage was a fire hazard. Dr. Sensenig immediately called Mr.Donato, who chose to respond via an email with the report attached. "Here's the paper," he wrote. "Do read it with an open mind."

Rich Drehobl guessed that he first read about the report in the newspaper. "I called Tom and asked, ‘What the hell is going on? This isn't our study, is it? Holy cow: no way, Jose!" Sensenig was "Seeing bars on my windows."

After all, the 15-page Joint Fire Science contract has very specific cooperative and publication requirements:

Recipients must: "Provide timely review and comments on the document produced by this study andwork in partnership on the project.

"Recipients must obtain prior Government approval for any public information releases concerning this award, which refers to the Department of Interior or any employee.

"The specific text, layout, photographs, etc., of the proposed release must be submitted with the request for approval.

"Recipients shall not use any part of the Government's funds for any activity or the publication of the literature that in any way tends to promote public support or opposition to any legislative proposal on which Congressional action is not complete."

It was clear to Sensenig and Drehobl that "the violations in the contract were very serious, particularly the Hatch Act violations" in the last clause.

The Shouting Begins

Needless to say, the fur was flying up at OSU, too. The paper was out in the world for all to see, and many people didn't like what they saw. Why not?

First, of course, was the paper's political slant through its specific mention of pending legislation. While Dr. Sensenig had his hands full with a possible contractual violation, his first response to Mr. Donato also expresses his "perception of a political stunt." And what a grand stunt it was nationwide coverage the first day in almost all major metropolitan newspapers.

But there was an almost-instant tide of criticism about the paper's scientific merit, too. As matters began to boil, in preparation for a meeting at the college regarding Donato and its release, Beverly Law e-mailed a copy to respected ecologist Tom Atzet, retired from 30 years with the Forest Service in southwest Oregon, for his commentary. "Right away, I thought it was political rather than science," he says, "so my first thought was let's take the politics out and stick to the science."

"I just wrote down what I saw as the flaws. Maybe because I sent a copy to the Dean it was seen as political, I don't know. But I did that, because it was so flawed and I was so critical, I thought that I better make sure someone else sees the criticisms. The next thing I know, there were a lot of people saying the same things, and I thought it would be a good idea to write Science and say, ‘wait a minute, let's take care of these flaws before going further.'"

And there were many flaws, including one that may have ruined the applicability of this paper to any environment. "I was reading it and I saw the term ‘stocking density,' observes Stephen Fitzgerald. "There's no such thing. It was hard for me to determine from that short paper exactly how they measured for the seedlings. I guess they measured on a transect two meters wide. You can get density per hectare using a transect, but it won't tell you how the seedlings are distributed across the unit."

For a hundred years, foresters have not only counted gross seedling numbers, but checked their distribution. Two hundred seedlings under the lone surviving tree on an acre is not the same thing as two hundred seedlings spread out over the same acre.

Dr. John Sessions “They needed to strengthen the paper, something that would ordinarily happen in peer review. Our feeling was the authors were not well-served by the peer review process. If they had knowledgeable peer reviewers, the paper would have been strengthened.”

Therefore, stocking surveys are properly conducted using the "stocked quadrat" method. Using a wire frame or similar device, random plots (typically 1/500th of an acre) are sampled across the test area in order to determine if each random plot is "stocked," that is, if there are one or more trees in the plot, or none. The result is tabulated as a percentage of the plots taken, and this stocked/not-stocked percentage in turn tells foresters how the seedlings are distributed.

The original JFS study plan agreed to by Messrs Kauffman, Robinson and Sensenig outlines a conventional stocking survey methodology. Dr. Atzet also "Went out on the ground with Messrs Donato and Fontaine, looked at the study design [and] before they were in the field went over sampling in a very general" way.

"There were some things," Dr. Atzet recalls. "For example, I told them ‘You need to stratify correctly so you understand population variability.'"

"You can't get a valid sample of the height of Portland residents by going to the Blazers' locker room," Dr. Atzet explained. And, of any one site on the Biscuit fire, say the Babyfoot Lake area, "does that reflect all of what the Biscuit looks like? Noooo."

Why was stocking and distribution not tested using standard methods? Why didn't Mr. Donato or his academic advisor, Dr. Beverly Law, who bore direct responsibility for the quality and veracity of his work, catch this error in the first year when the correct baseline had to be established?

Then there is the matter of natural seedling survival in salvaged and unsalvaged burned forests. First was the title, claiming in part that "Logging Hinders Regeneration." Stephen Fitzgerald "was dumbfounded. My first thought was, ‘we knew this,' if you have seedlings and run over them with equipment, some will die," a fact known, studied, and published almost exactly 50 years ago, in: Salvage Logging May Destroy Douglasfir Reproduction, by D.F. Roy, forester, Forest Service Division of Forest Management Research. In the wake of the 1951 Three Creeks burn on the Six Rivers National Forest, "two line transects were surveyed and 103 milacre [1/1000 acre] quadrats were established" in 1954 by Roy-the accepted standard.

Seed from nearby unburned timber had come in and was doing well. Then the loggers came in 1955, four years after the fire. Mr. Roy's subsequent survey found that salvage logging killed 80% of the regeneration, not a surprise.

Comparing the titles and findings of both the Roy and Donato-Law papers as well as their overall findings of logging-related mortality (80 versus 71% loss), both conducted in Klamath province forest types 50 years apart, is a classic Yogi Berra moment, "deja voo all over again." And what did Mr. Roy suggest as a response for protecting regeneration? "The most obvious measure is to salvage fire-killed timber immediately." That hasn't changed, either. (More on this later)

As for the regeneration in unlogged areas, Donato advisor-author Beverly Law told reporters: "What this study does make clear is that natural regeneration does not necessarily fail to achieve our goal for conifer establishment. Strong numbers of seedlings regenerated naturally, and they have a good foothold. So far, so good."

But Mike Newton asks: "What is the life expectancy of those seedlings if you don't run over them? It turns out the life expectancy of those seedlings is very, very short. First year germinants have a less-than-5% chance of surviving to the next year. That was left out."

Dr. Newton further pointed out another tree killer-the sun-which "comes burning in late in August, and the soil gets so hot, (150-170 degrees, 140 is lethal) it girdles the tree which dies within a day or two. I wrote my PhD 42 years ago on that, I have photographs of the girdling taking place, even with planted seedlings."

Mr. Fitzgerald explains: "You can't base future potential forest development on two-year-old germinants in a highly competitive environment. Even though they may have adequate germinants, it's premature to say the site may not require reforestation."

Perhaps this is why Dr. Law qualified her press statement with an escape clause: "Only time will tell how the conifers will compete with shrubs in the long run."

Stephen Fitzgerald “As a scientist, salvage doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. Salvage on federal land is a social decision, and everyone sees it differently. So you want good information to base the decision upon.”

Actually, we don't need to wait for that. There's already a book out on it: Reforestation Practices in Southwestern Oregon and Northern California. This 465-page epic is the result of the 13-year Forestry Intensified Research Program, FIR for short. FIR, which ran from 1978 until 1991, sprang from the fact that the "Klamath province" forests of southwest Oregon-private, BLM and Forest Service-don't play by the rules. As Dr. Atzet put it, a lot of research conducted elsewhere "doesn't apply down here. It's kind of, ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.'"

Indeed, the Mediterranean climate of the Klamath province, especially the hot, dry summers, makes it difficult, yet certainly not impossible, to re-grow forests following harvest, wildfire or other natural catastrophe. The difficulties pushed Oregon State University, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management to embark on a cooperative research program to find out how to bring these forests back, what Bob Buckman characterized as "$25-30 million worth of research in the past three decades."

What about the "Increases Fire Risk" aspect of the Donato-Law report? Was it sloppy loggers leaving a mess? No. The Fiddler Salvage Unit 1 (as with all the Fiddler salvage units) prescription states the project objectives. One is to "Provide adequate amounts and distribution of large, down wood and snags to achieve habitat requirements of dependent species." The contractor is to "Maximize quality of habitat for animals that are prey for northern spotted owls by retaining moderate to high amounts of deadwood adjacent to spotted owl foraging habitat."

The recommended silvicultural treatment is salvage of commercial wood, "leaving sufficient down wood to meet wildlife habitat requirements and facilitate stand regeneration activities," which will be to "[r]eplant site with species mix favoring shade intolerant or mid tolerant with emphasis on resistant sugar pine and Port-Orford-cedar planting stock. Utilize natural regeneration where reasonable."

If year 0 (Zero) was the salvage, in Year One, "micro-site" planting was planned to a 150 trees-per-acre stocking level, followed by a "Survival Exam" and "Stocking Exam" to determine if further action will be needed in years 2-5. Then, in years 3-5, a "Certification Exam" and grid survey will be done "to determine if the stand can be certified stocked with the objective of 60-80 healthy and vigorous free-to-grow trees per acre of desirable tree species."

In other words, the prescription called for leaving a lot of wood on the ground in preparation for replanting with desired species at a density and distribution appropriate for maintaining Late Successional Reserve structure (owl habitat). The increased fuel cited by Donato was specifically left there notonly in compliance with what the FIR program had learned was good reforestation practice in the tough Mediterranean environment of southwest Oregon, but also to provide the sort of "biological legacy" called for by Dr. Jerry Franklin in his recent congressional testimony. Furthermore, no matter the rate of seedling survival, the Forest Service had already planned and budgeted for planting the future forest, if monitoring found it necessary.

Puts everything in a different light, doesn't it? It certainly isn't difficult to see why so many scientists with experience in southwest Oregon were able to agree in only twelve days on a joint call for a publication delay of Donato until it could be revised.

Besides Messrs. Sessions, Newton, Atzet, Fitzgerald and Adams, four other people agreed to contribute to the Technical Comment More On Salvage: Robert Powers, PhD, Program Manager and Senior Scientist, Ecology & Management of Western Forests Influenced by a Mediterranean Climate, PSW Research Station, USDA Forest Service; Robin Rose, PhD, Professor, Forest Regeneration, and Director Nursery Technology Cooperative and Vegetation Management Research Cooperatives, Oregon State University; Carl Skinner, Geographer and Science Team Leader,

Dr. Robert Ethington “Sometimes it is hard to tell what the issue is, with so many others falling on the table.”

Dr. Michael Newton “The Code of Ethics for the Society of American Foresters says that if you see incorrect science being used in support of policy, you will take measures to correct it.”

Ecology & Management of Western Forests Influenced by a Mediterranean Climate, PSW Research Station, USDA Forest Service; and Steve Tesch, PhD, Professor, Silviculture, and Department Head, Forest Engineering, Oregon State University. Dr. Tesch also directed FIR program administration while Drs. Atzet and Newton contributed heavily to field research. Put simply, the Gang of Nine either wrote the book on reforestation in southwest Oregon, or they have it on the shelf in the office.

Twisting in the Wind

As the press-driven Donato-Law tornado spun its way through the forestry school, Dr. Sensenig asked why he had been kept in the dark by thereport's authors. To date, he has not received a satisfactory explanation. In the ensuing silence, he asked BLM contracting officer Velvette Clayton to issue a second stop-work order on the study on February 1. That order in turn spurred Congressmen Jay Inslee and David Wu, both Democrats, to demand investigations into whether the Bush Administration was involved in suspending the funding.

Just prior to a February 8 Biscuit Fire science meeting in Gold Beach, a meeting at which the Donato team had been scheduled to present their project to a gathering of USFS and BLM staff, Messrs Donato, Campbell and Fontaine asked Dr. Sensenig about the circumstances of the suspension: "When askedabout the potential consequences, I explained that the contracting officer has the authority to terminate the agreement if these violations were not satisfactorily explained."

But after high-level communications between lead HR-4200 sponsor Congressman Greg Walden and BLM Director Kathleen Clarke, Dr. Sensenig was overruled. The money was restored February 8, as announced in happy-talk letters about "miscommunication" from the Bureau of Land Management and Oregon State, an interpretation Dr. Sensenig responds to with a slow shakeof his head.

In a February 9 "We the authors" media statement, the Donato-Law team characterized the decision to restore funding as vindication, and that "far too much" was made of "simple miscommunication." Further, "[s]peculations of some motivation behind the level ofinteraction are entirely unfounded speculation [sic]. This has been satisfactorily resolved [...]"

Later, the IG team called up byRepresentative Inslee paid Dr. Sensenig a visit, and grilled him only on whether the Administration had in fact told him to cut the funding. When Sensenig tried to explain that he had done so on his due authority as Project Inspector in light of the failure of the Donato team to comply with the JFS contract consultation and review requirements, the investigators explained that was "outside the limits of the investigation."

On February 15, 2006, Dr. Sensenig wrote Joint Fire Science Program Manager Erik Berg to resign from the Donato-Law study, which had been published "without my knowledge, consent, review or approval. I believe that both the science and the process had extraordinary flaws. Because the creditability of this research has beenseriously compromised, continued work and subsequent reports relative to this JFS will be suspect as well."

"In their recent public release theauthors stated, ‘We the authors firmly stand behind our science and our paper.' This indicates to me [Dr. Sensenig wrote] that they firmly decline to acknowledge these flaws. This creates an environment outside the ethical bounds of which I'm willing to perform."

Perhaps Representative Walden did some political calculus and decided the firestorm of "censorship" put his legislation at risk. After all, the public debate was already hopelessly off-track and the street media was doing nothing to correct it.

Whatever the case, Dr Sensenig has never had the chance to make his case and Evergreen is still waiting on a Freedom of Information Act request for the full docket of communications that passed between the Donato-Law partners, Dr. Sensenig and other agency personnel.

A Question of Values

Two years ago, when we where working on Siskiyou Showdown we asked Dr. Robert Buckman, former Deputy Chief of Research for the Forest Service and retired OSU professor, if he could explain what factors were driving the salvage debate. Was it a scientific or technical disagreement or something else entirely?"

In the end it is not the technical issue that is central to the debate, but the deeply-held values that underlie them," he explained. "Scientists, including academics, have their own values and beliefs. I have them too. But we try as best we can not to let values override facts. In so far as we are able, science findings must be repeatable, verifiable and defensible, or it is not science. My concern is that if scientists, including academics, depart from these standards, the science loses its value." Dr. Sensenig agrees. "There is no ‘good' or ‘bad' to salvage." Humans put
values on these decisions, he explained. They assign labels based on their values, perceptions, experience and knowledge, or lack of it. "That's where the ‘good' or ‘bad' comes from."

Dr. Robert Buckman “Academic freedom is essential, but with academic freedom goes academic responsibility.”

Dr. Tom Atzet “I don’t give a rip if HR 4200 passes or fails, or what they do with the Biscuit. We need to refocus this whole debate on the responsibility of research to put out excellent science. That’s why I haven’t disengaged. My best hope is that science is not kicked in the face and that people still respect the protocol, the tradition of excellence in science.”

Values in the Ivory Tower

We tracked down Dr. Buckman again for this essay. He invited Dr. Bob Ethington to join in what turned out to be a lively discussion of possible
reasons why the Donato-Law debate, which should have been centered on academic rigor, so quickly led to calls for a complete restructuring of the College of Forestry.

Dr. Buckman described the intellectual separation that often distances theorists from those whose work centers on the real life application of theory. Purely academic schools "tend to be in conflict with the professional schools," he observed. "That's happening right here. People who follow a more fundamentally intellectual pursuit, like botany or ecology, are uncomfortable with some of the professional aspects of the school, the ‘service to humanity' side. The professional schools-engineering, medicine and forestry, for example-tend to have discipline. I would argue that forestrya much closer touch with the sector they're engaged with in the real world than core faculty."

Dr. Ethington responded "That must be a conflict in every land grant school in the country."

Dr. Buckman: "I think it goes beyond just land grant schools."

Dr. Ethington: "It's more a question of philosophy rather than loyalty to one's discipline, and it just struck me that almost all land grant schools must have this internal conflict because by the nature of the school, they have this professional need along with providing training in the core sciences. And the core practitioners tend as individuals to relate to their science. That's where their focus lies."

Dr. Buckman: "I sense that ecology is attempting to become a stand-alone was one of the first fields that picked up ecology. But now ecology is attempting to sequester itself without reference to the applied side, forestry."

"Every professional school is sensitive to its customers," Dr. Buckman continued, "whether it's medicine or engineering, forestry, or students who need jobs. The school simply would not survive without its customers."

Dr. Ethington: "You're doing research you hope will be applied by somebody and that isn't just people in the street. Basic research is needed, of course. But it's probably easier to get funding for research that has a foreseeable application. And when money gets tight, [and money is tight at the College] the competition between the basic and academic research sides intensifies."

The applied versus basic research issue surfaced many times in interviews conducted for this story. "Why are we here, and what are we doing," was an oft-repeated question. Peter Kolb: "Science plays a very important role in supporting the people who are doing the applied work in helping them do their job better. In that sense, I think it's ludicrous to indicate that if industry donates money to research, that it's tainted. Why should industry not pay for research that benefits them by helping them do a better job?"

Stephen Fitzgerald observed that even "public" universities don't rely completely on the public sector for support: "Our university system would fall apart is it weren't for private donations. The College of Engineering has a multimillion-dollar facility funded in part by private donations. Look at U of O, Phil Knight and Nike." Never mind OSU's Reser Stadium, named for the Beavertonbased salsa and snack food distributor.

For those in academia who see a compromising influence in industrial contributions, OSU's Dr. Adams posits this reminder: "We're a land-grant university, and I don't think a lot of our faculty members are aware of the land-grant university mission. This concept was established during Abe Lincoln's administration to bring the university to the people in rural areas to deal with rural concerns. That's why the strong emphasis on agriculture, economics and extension; to better the lives of rural Americans in practical ways. We have a mission of service to this state and its people." Service, of course, should be the mission of all educational institutions.