Eliminating the Gold Standard

It's rare that a tidy story with so much clarity falls into our lap, but this one did. It's an email exchange between our long-time colleague, Michael Rains, whose Call to Action appeared regularly on our website for several years, and Phil Aune, an Evergreen Foundation board member.

Both Michael and Phil were heavily involved in Forest Service research for decades, so they know a great deal about what we are losing as a direct result of congressional refusal to fund the agency's research and development budget.

We tell more about this punishing failure in What Were They Thinking! our June 21 post - easily the most widely read essay we've ever posted on our website.

First, Michael's very timely assessment titled Eliminating the Gold Standard in Conservation Science, then Giant Minds, Giant Ideas, Phil's reply to Michael.

Phil replies to Michael's assessment: 

The House version of the Big Beautiful Bill for the 2026 Appropriations basically zeros out both the State and Private and the Research and Development branches of the USFS.  Gone with a stroke of pen is over a 100 years of cooperative forestry efforts with the States and over a 100 years of Research and Development efforts. 

We both spent a great part of our careers in R&D and the collective R&D efforts have led to the vast scientific knowledge base for management of federal, state, and private forest lands.  One of the key features of our R&D work was our abilities to establish long term data sets that most universities cannot do considering the shorter-term nature of their Masters and PhD efforts. 

Some examples of long term research that I was personally involved with in our Redding, California silviculture sab's efforts:

1. 50 year results of the Blacks Mtn. Experimental Forest Methods of Cutting Trials initiated in the late 30's.  
2. Blacks Mtn Interdisciplinary Biodiversity Study initiated in the early 1990's involving large scale plots utilization two vastly different forest management treatments featuring high structural diversity and low structural diversity, subdivided by grazing/no grazing, and subdivided by prescribed fire/no fire.  These studies are now approaching 30 years of response measurements.
3. Garden of Eden fertilizer trials initialed in 1985 by Dr. Robert Powers where fertilizers, insect control, and brush/grass control were established on multiple sites throughout California.  
4. Long Term Soil Productivity Studies.  The National Forest Management Act calls for the agency to do research and monitoring on the long-term productivity effects of their management practices (paraphrased). 
5. In the late 80's a group of soil scientists met with Chief F. Dale Robertson to express their concerns that nothing had been done about this mandate since the passage of FNMA.  The Chief agreed to a proposal they presented and found several million dollars to establish the National Long-Term Soil Productivity Research effort. 
6. The same research design was established in just about every forested region of the U.S.  As an example, three loblolly pine locations were established including east Texas (dry sites), Louisiana (high sites), and South Carolina (coastal plains).  These were set up as 30 to 40 year efforts to determine short-rotation effects on soil productivity. 
7. We had five major mixed conifer sites focusing on a 100 year rotation cycle.  All of the sites were established in the early 1990's across the nation.  They are all approaching 25 to 30 years of age.  Publications have been presented posting results at age 5, 10, and 20 years.
8. Swain Mtn Experimental Forest Shelterwood regeneration experiments initiated in the 1960's and 1980'.
9. Levels of Growing Stock studies for Ponderosa Pine and True Firs in the 1970's.  The Ponderosa Pine LOGS study covered the entire ponderosa region.  
10. Similar to all of these long term studies were other local efforts across every USFS Experimental Forest in the nation.  The Madison Forest Products Lab has developed studies in all aspects of wood and cellulose utilization. 

Last year I was at the Lab in Madison and as I approached the parking lots there were a couple of truck loads of Vaagen Timbers mass timber panels at the testing lab. As we move into nano technology and cell level wood technology, the national need for a large wood technology is needed more than ever.

The stupidity of canceling out the all R&D efforts of the USFS is staggering.  It reminds me of German Scientist Heinrich Cotta who said in 1816 (paraphrased):  "Amongst the problems in forestry are:

1. The many sites our crop grows on.
2. The long time it takes to grow our crop.
3. Those who practice much write little.
4. Those who practice little, write much.  

Over 200 years later, those who practice little are writing much to destroy not only USFS Research and Development, but USFS efforts for continuing cooperative efforts with the States. 

Those who have practiced much have collectively also written much, but after the Big Beautiful Bill, the USFS research and development effort will be silent if things stays the same in the final big but not so beautiful fill.

Editors final note:

The Forest Service cannot function without the kind of boots-on-the-ground research Michael and Phil describe. The much ballayhooed Fix Our Forests Act will never make it to first base. Certainly not with the badly misused Equal Access to Justice Act standing on the first base bag. Cue the serial litigators.