The Magazine of the Evergreen Foundation Winter 2006-07

The Donato-Law FiascoMixing Politics & Science:

Alchemy at OSU

The Donato-Law FiascoMixing Politics & Science:

Alchemy at OSU

2 EVERGREEN

n this issue, we write about thestill unfolding scandal in theOregon State University Collegeof Forestry. It is meticulously

researched and, we hope a thoughtfullywritten assessment of the so-called“Donato controversy”—a lamentable ifnot inexcusable act orchestrated from theshadows by at least two OSU professorsand one Forest Service scientist.

That the shoddy and misdirectedwork of two graduate students—aidedby instructors and advisors with anti-forestry biases—could suddenly trumpthe quite-visible results of 75 years ofon-the-ground experience with salvagelogging and replanting bears testimonyto the country’s poisonous politicalclimate. And lest you think all’s fair inlove and war, consider how you mightreact on learning that experiments incancer research were being corruptedfor political purposes.

It will take you some time to getthough our essay, perhaps even a coupleof readings. But as you wade throughthe mountain of information we’veassembled, ask yourself this question:why did this investigation fall to a verysmall non-profit forestry foundationwhen either of Oregon’s major dailies-the Portland Oregonian or the EugeneRegister-Guard—could have more easilyunearthed the same information we’vegathered over the last five months? Thatthey didn’t bears witness to the infec-tious pus now oozing from the pages ofmany of this nation’s daily newspapers.

This isn’t the first time a majorforestry school has been rocked bycontroversy. Back in the 1970s, the lateArnold Bolle nearly wrecked the Univer-sity of Montana College of Forestrywhen, as its dean, he injected himselfpersonally into a rather nasty and highlypoliticized controversy involvingterraced clearcuts in the mountainssouth of Missoula. It took all of the wis-dom and diplomatic skills his replace-ment, Dr. Ben Stout, could muster torescue the school from self-inflicteddisgrace. OSU forestry dean HalSalwasser now faces the same challenge.

In the interest of full disclosure Iadmit that Hal is a friend, at least in a

professional sense. We met when he wasin the Forest Service’s Washingtonoffice, before he was named NorthernRegion One Regional Forester. I greatlyadmired his very public attempt todefine the term “new perspectives inforestry” after the Forest Service tossedit into the debating ring with preciouslittle explanation as to its philosophy orscientific underpinnings. I suspect hesensed that “new perspectives” neededto be defined quickly lest it be misrepre-sented by Forest Service critics whothen, as now, oppose both active man-agement and the large scale experimentsthat are needed to test the veracity ofnumerous unsubstantiated theoriessuggesting that forests are best left tonature’s whims.

Within a matter of hours after theDonato findings were leaked to the pressHal was publicly assailed for endorsingHR 4200, which mandates promptsalvage and restoration on federal landsfollowing catastrophic events. What thetwo events have in common are the2002 Biscuit Fire and the subsequentSessions Report, which laid out theprobable ecological consequences ofseveral post-Biscuit alternatives rangingfrom no action to a fairly aggressivesalvage of burned timber.

Not long after the first volleys werefired I sent Hal an email note in whichI expressed my belief that he’d been setup by critics on his own faculty whodisagreed with the findings of theSessions Report, opposed Biscuit Firesalvage, disliked HR 4200 for the samereason and were up to their armpits inthe Donato report. He responded in hisusual statesmanlike manner expressinghis hope that I was wrong. Nothing hashappened in the ensuing months tochange my mind. And while the cold,hard facts of the matter still aren’tavailable, and may never be, I will go tomy grave believing my friend Hal was setup by his enemies.

For a time during Hal’s NorthernRegion years I thought he might be thenext Chief of the Forest Service. Givenhis impressive scientific credentials andhis communications skills he wouldhave made a great one, but his honesty

got him in trouble with Vice PresidentAl Gore, who by then had turned thevenerable agency into his own fiefdom.So rather than be considered for theChief’s job when Dale Robertson wasforced out, he was banished to a ForestService research station at Albany,California. In due course another oldfriend, Dr. George Brown, who was thenDean of OSU’s forestry school, an-nounced his retirement. Sensing oppor-tunity, I asked Hal if he was interestedin applying at OSU. He was. The rest ishistory.

I don’t want to imply here that I am thereason why Hal got the OSU deanshipbecause I clearly am not, but I was happy tohelp in a small way because, for 20 years,OSU’s College of Forestry has held a specialplace in my heart. And I believe Hal was theperfect choice to compass the collegethrough what looked to be stormy politicalwaters. I still believe it, though I fear Halmay be a bit too trusting for his own good.

Witness his defense of his student in aforum where a lesser man surely wouldhave tossed him overboard: the AmericanForest Resource Council’s annual meetinglast April. After U.S. Representative BrianBaird (D-WA) took Mr. Donato’s researchpaper apart in a blistering critique of itsstatistical validity, Hal stood up anddefended both Mr. Donato and his motives,assuring all present—including me—thathis wayward student was not part of alarger conspiracy to disgrace the college orHal. Though I thought him wrong at thetime, and still do, I admired his courageand forthright defense of a student who,in my view, had hung both Hal and thecollege out to dry.

Off and on over the years I have wishedI could say I held an OSU forestry degree.It is—or was—the gold standard inforestry. I console myself in the fact thatI’m a fairly good writer who gets to writeabout forestry. When the late CarlStoltenberg was still dean he graciouslyallowed me to roam the halls any time Iwanted to. I was warmly welcomed by someof the finest forest scientists in the world.Most of what I know about forestry Ilearned from them. To this day, I callon them whenever I encounter forestryresearch I do not understand. Their interest

I

ON THE COVER: Lodgepole pine beetles are responsible for this massive timber kill on the Nez Perce National Forest east of Elk City, Idaho, primeelk and steelhead habitat. The Forest Service developed a restoration plan in concert with nearby community groups, but radical environmentalistsdelayed implementation until the timber rotted. Would society’s economic and intrinsic needs have been better served by harvesting these trees whilethey still had value, then promptly replanting this forest, or will society’s needs be better served by inevitable wildfire? More than 70 years of on theground experience with similar catastrophes makes clear the fact that we know how to speed natural recovery in devastated forests, but environmen-talists continue to argue that society should allow nature to take its course, no matter the economic or environmental costs.Jim Petersen photo

evergreenmagazine.com 3

in helping me hasbeen its ownreward.

Dave Skinnerhas done what Icould not havedone in mypresent frame ofmind. He hasobjectively sortedthe mess into itsvarious piles,providingnecessary context,fact, commentand perspective.Dave also gaveHal’s detractorsample opportu-nity to explaintheir roles in theDonato reportand the ensuingcontroversy. Notsurprisingly, theychose not torespond. Smallwonder: peer-reviewed sci-ence—asit has beenrecognized andaccepted for decades—is not on their sideand they know it.

Of course it is possible that my fears areover-blown. I hope so. A strong case can bemade for the fact that this is just the latestchapter in the 1919 debates betweenPinchot regulationists and Greeley co-operatists; debates that Greeley won whenCongress ratified the landmark Clarke-McNary Act in 1924, setting science-basedforestry on a sparkling 60-year journeyinto the future. But this much is differentthis time: news that traveled at the speed oftrains and telegraphs in 1919 travels at thespeed of light today, adding magnitude,urgency and unearned credibility to theentire Donato fiasco.

Some observers believe OSU hasemerged from its trial by fire stronger thanit was before. I hope they’re right. Onlytime will tell. Others believe Mr. Donatowas used by his faculty advisors. It’s astretch in my mind, and it does not alterthe facts of this case. At the very least, he isguilty of astonishingly poor judgment.

An old friend who just returned froma trip to Croatia, a country just nowemerging from its own darkness, sharedthis insight with me: “What taxpayers

have a right to expect from the OregonState College of Forestry is a disciplineddebate in which all sides are heard—andare themselves disciplined in theirresponses.” We aren’t there yet but Hal isthe only person I know who is capable ofrestoring order at OSU.

Before we knew what a fever swampthe Donato mess had become we hadintended for this issue to be more of aphoto essay featuring the human-aidedrecovery from landscapes savaged by theWest’s greatest natural calamities: theGreat 1910 Fire, the largest suchcatastrophe in our country’s history,Oregon’s well-chronicled Tillamookburns and the unforgettable 1980eruption of Mount St. Helens. Theseevents—and the years’ long salvage andrestoration crusades that followedthem—mock not just young Mr. Donatobut the professors and scientists whoconspired to embarrass Dean Salwasserand Oregon’s once Olympian forestryschool. Thus, you will find relevantphotographs scattered throughout ouressay—reminders of a wisdom sharedwith me a few years back by AlanHouston, a fine PhD wildlife biologist

who workson middleTennessee’s AmesPlantation:“When we leaveforests to nature,as so many nowseem to want todo, we getwhatever natureserves up, whichcan be prettydevastating attimes; but withforestry, we haveoptions, and adegree of predict-ability not foundin nature.”

I want topersonally thankthe many scien-tists who helpedMr. Skinnercompass his waythrough thismess, especiallymy old friend, Dr.Robert Buckman.I’ve known Bobfor many yearsand prize his

infrequent but always incisive counselmore than words can say. His wisdom,from a 1995 interview, seems as timelytoday as it was then:

“The bias favoring old growthresearch has spawned largely cosmeticterms like ‘ecosystem’ and ‘biologicaldiversity,’ which serve to promote theidea that ecosystem management isonly possible on a very large scale. Thisisn’t true. I want to promote the ideathat it is possible to increase theecological con-tent of almost any tractof land regardless of its size or manage-ment regime. There is a positive rolehere for everyone, from the backyardgardener to the largest industrial forestlandowner.”

“It is time for science to producesome defensible, reproducible experi-ments. It is imperative that we verifyor otherwise correct land policiesdecisions made on the basis of theories.The consequences of error—social,economic and environmental—aresimply too great to rest on conjecture.”

Onward we go,Jim Petersen, Publisher

Dav

e S

kinn

er

In a self-portrait, Evergreen writer Dave Skinner stands amid Biscuit Fire devastationbetween Burnt Ridge and Sugarloaf Mountain, at the headwaters of Indigo Creek. TheDonato-Law et al paper that is the subject of this special report argued against salvagingtimber from the Biscuit, alleging reforestation problems. But statisticians have since con-cluded their plot sampling data contains serious errors.

4 EVERGREEN

An essay by Dave Skinner, with postscript by Jim Petersen

The Donato-Law FiascoMixing Politics & Science: Alchemy at OSU

On January 5, 2006 EurekAlert, thenews service of the American Associa-tion for the Advancement of Science,announced that Science Magazine(published by AAAS) would present, inScienceExpress and later in the January20 edition of the hard-copy journalScience, “research by scientists fromOregon State University and the Insti-tute of Pacific Islands Forestry inHawaii.”

Entitled Post-Wildfire LoggingHinders Regeneration and IncreasesFire 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 loggingafter a fire in a Douglas-fir forestreduced conifer seedling regenerationby 71% and also added kindling to theforest floor.”

By January 10, fifty-eight newspapersand other news outlets had postedreports concerning the study on theirwebsites. A typical headline was thePortland Oregonian’s “Scorched ForestsBest Left Alone, Study Says.”

The Donato Report—as it is nowwidely known—made big news, not justin often cloistered forestry researchcircles, but in the public arena as well.Several environmental groups postedgleeful press releases lauding the Donatowork. But the paper also stirred anunprecedented negative reaction fromforestry professionals nationwide,including faculty at Oregon State andfederal personnel officially involved withthe study.

On January 17th, nine forest scien-tists subsequently labeled “The Gang ofNine” sent a letter to Science asking fora delay in publication in Science’sJanuary 20th issue until a responsecould be prepared. The attempted delayoxygenated matters into a politicalcrown fire, an overheated shout-festover “academic censorship” and “indus-try dominance” of the College ofForestry and what the editors of theCorvallis Times-Gazette sardonicallycalled a “protracted lynching” of college

Rivaling the strangeness of theseemingly unnecessary campus-widevote of confidence was the reaction fromU.S. Representative Baird, a WashingtonState Democrat with strong environ-mental credentials and a dislike for mostthings Bush. Congressman Baird, whowas for a time chairman of PacificLutheran University’s Department ofPsychology, and taught statistics andmethods at the McMinnville, Oregonschool, waded into the fray with ablistering critique of the post-fireregeneration study, which had beenconducted in plots burned by the 2002Biscuit Fire on southern Oregon’sSiskiyou National Forest, which wasGround Zero in the then wideningdebate over the veracity of HR 4200,a bill design to speed post-fire salvageand restoration work, co-sponsored byOregon Congressman Greg Walden and,well, Congressman Baird.

Congressman Baird pilloried thestudy’s authors, including two graduatestudents, Daniel Donato and J.B.Fontaine; two Oregon State UniversityCollege of Forestry professors, BeverlyLaw and Douglas Robinson; a researchassociate, John Campbell; and one ofthe study’s designers, J.B. Kauffman, aformer OSU professor who now directsthe Forest Service’s Institute of PacificIslands Forestry in Hawaii.

Congressman Baird hammered thestudy team for withholding data he andother scientists wanted to double-check,failing to address the limitations of theirresearch and “inappropriately derived,selective and misleading statistics.”

Particularly displeasing to Dr. Bairdwas the study’s claim that post-firesalvage logging had reduced seedlingregeneration by 71%—a statistic hesummarily dismantled in calculationshe completed after the study teamreluctantly surrendered its data afterHR 4200 hearings had adjourned.

If anything, he explained in hiscritique, the possible loss of 71% ofseedlings [he estimates the number iscloser to 51%] underscores the need forprompt salvage because “the seedling

Dean Hal Salwasser. Condemnationswere made, apologies written and sent,funding withdrawn and restored,hearings held, witnesses grilled, resolu-tions were voted on, a “Committee onAcademic Freedom and Responsibility”convened and “Recommendations” dulydrafted.

Mercifully, a non-binding college-wide “vote of confidence” in DeanSalwasser’s ability to lead the College ofForestry was conducted in early June.66% of those who voted endorsed hisability “to lead the college into thefuture”—a political landslide by anymeasure, despite the fact that 10%abstained for reasons unknown. Perhapsthey’d already finished their final examsand gone home for the summer.

Dr. Tom Sensenig

“This is all new to me. I havenever experienced anything likethis before, hopefully never again.I was in this from the very begin-ning, I saw what happened, andwhat happened was unethical.”

Dav

e S

kinn

er

evergreenmagazine.com 5

loss would likely have been minimalbecause no seedlings would have yetsprouted.”

Biscuit salvage was delayed over twoyears by protracted analysis and litiga-tion, a time frame sufficient to allowsome seedlings to sprout in burned areas,only to be crushed beneath heavy equip-ment. “If any summary statistic is chosento indicate the seedling loss created bysalvage logging two years after harvest,that statistic should actually best beunderstood as an index of the benefits ofearly, versus delayed harvest,” Dr. Bairdwrote. “That interpretation, of course,is quite the opposite of the implicationsuggested by the report and by subse-quent media coverage.”

Despite its statistical failings,nothing seems to have raised Congress-man Baird’s ire more than the study’sfrontal assault on HR 4200. “Nowheredoes the report mention the key factthat prompt removal of the timber, ascompared to the two year post fireharvest of this study, could preventseedling mortality.” Equally disturbing,the study made no mention of the factthat single year seedling mortality wasas high as 56% in five of seven unloggedstudy plots—a fact widely known toresearchers more familiar with southernOregon’s reforestation challenges.

“They used a value from a differentplot entirely to arrive at the post-loggingvalue,” Dr. Baird wrote of the studyteam’s multiple errors. “Rather thancomparing the pre and post-values fromthe same plot, they took the median prelogging value from one plot and com-pared that to the median post loggingvalue form another plot which wasmuch lower! This is such a fundamentalviolation of standard practice that it isastonishing the reviewers failed toidentify it and allowed it to be publishedin Science.”

You could be forgiven for believingthat Congressman Baird’s witheringanalysis settled the post-fire salvagedebate once and for all. But our storydoes not end here. Rather, it begins.The underlying issues that fostered thesubsequent blowup at Oregon StateUniversity have not been confronted,and may never be unless federal authori-ties subpoena the sworn testimony ofthe parties involved—in our view anunlikely event in the politically chargedenvironment Donato has created.

Much of the public debate has thusfar swirled about two red herrings:academic freedom and industry influ-

ence on academic work. Neither of thesehas much to do with the facts of thisstory or the underlying causes of thecontroversy.

Academic Freedom

As Dean of the OSU College ofForestry, Dr. Hal Salwasser bearsresponsibility for issues and events thatpositively or negatively impact theCollege. Put simply, the buck stops onhis desk. It is a responsibility he hashandled with remarkable public candorsince he was appointed Dean in 2000.Indeed, it was his candor that landedhim in the middle of the Donatocontroversy; specifically his willingnessto take a public position favoringscience-based salvage logging andrestoration following catastrophicwildfire—a view opposite that espousedby Donato’s authors, including twoCollege of Forestry faculty members.

It may be that Dr. Salwasser’stroubles actually began on Evergreenpages. In “Siskiyou Showdown,” ourJuly 2004 Biscuit Fire salvage issue, heobserved: “There are some people in the‘leave it alone to nature’ camp whothink that the science [on salvage] isn’tclear. But the science is absolutely clearin southwest Oregon. If you don’tintervene after a major transformationlike the Biscuit, it’s not going to comeback as structurally complex conifers fora very long time.”

To those who opposed Biscuitsalvage, Dr. Salwasser’s remarks wereStrike One.

More than a year later, on November10, 2005, Dr. Salwasser gave testimonyendorsing HR 4200, the “Forest Emer-gency Recovery and Research Act of2005,” FERRA for short. Evergreen alsosupports this pending legislation, inlarge measure because we have been atthe forefront in the Siskiyou NationalForest salvage debate since the 1987Silver Complex Fire ravaged more than100,000 acres of old growth timber.

Dr. Salwasser’s nine pages of testi-mony touched all the stones, includingthe importance of timely, site-appropri-ate, cost effective salvage. He alsoendorsed the legislation’s provisions forfunding more research into restorationafter catastrophic events. With charac-teristic candor he also called Congress’sattention to the 5,000-pound elephantno one else seemed to want to acknowl-edge: “Those opposed to restoration andrecovery have also argued against the

Dr. Paul Adams

“Something really seems brokenwhen reporters get advancecopies of research findings beforethe scientific community canevaluate them.”

Marvin Brown

“There’s never a study that willgive you a final answer, and thereare always studies that give con-flicting information. Your job as apracticing forester is to sortthrough it all and make use of itas best you can.”

Dav

e S

kinn

erD

ave

Ski

nner

6 EVERGREEN

experimental science or testing oftraditional knowledge that would showeveryone how to best achieve desiredrestoration or recovery outcomes.Resistance to a proposed Forest Servicestudy on recovery options following theBiscuit fires is a classic example ofopponents of active forest recoveryblocking peer reviewed scientific studies.Why? Because they fear the results willnot support their policy advocacy?”

Strike Two.Two months later, on January 10,

2006, Dr. Salwasser wrote a letter tofaculty that read in part: “When single-study, short-term research results on ahighly charged issue are controversialwithin the scientific community, it isimportant that scientific debate occuron the full body of pertinent knowledgeand that additional research be con-ducted if needed before drawing generalconclusions is appropriate.”

Dr. Salwasser briefly discussed aca-demic freedom and debate; then wrote, “Itis also not unusual for people to read asingle report or newspaper article oropinion and accept its findings or conclu-sions without asking critical questionsabout the study and its interpretations orabout other evidence pertinent to theissue. This is not the first time that hasoccurred and won’t be the last.”

Finally, he warned: “The proper roleof science is to help inform people onthe possibilities and consequences ofthose choices and to do that the sciencemust be thorough and well tested. It isnot the role of science to tell peoplewhat those choices should be.”

This would be Strike Three.It could be argued that Dean

Salwasser pushed his luck in not seekinga consensus view toward aspects of thebill outside the funding provisions thatwould fiscally benefit the College ofForestry. But leaders are expected to setthe pace for the institutions they leadand Hal Salwasser has been a pace settersince his halcyon days as the ForestService’s Region One forester. Whatremains to be seen is whether events ofthe past two years have robbed him ofhis ability to swing for the fences.

Industry Influence

The second red herring pounced onby both the press and OSU’s AcademicFreedom and Responsibility Commit-tee was whether academic freedom hadbeen chucked in favor of industrialtimber interests whose state-controlled

private lands harvest tax dollars helpfund research conducted by College ofForestry researchers.

Interestingly, a Google search ofreports implying possible corruptinginfluence in the harvest tax did notturn up a single press account reveal-ing the amount of money involved orits use. So we called OSU publicrelations manager Todd Simmons forclarification. Mr. Simmons explainedthat of the College’s current totalbudget of $26.1 million, roughly $2.8million, or 11%, came from harvest taxrevenue. The tax funds are pooled withForest Research Lab appropriationsand are distributed to all faculty

members as base salary for the re-search part of their position. The onlyearmarked money is ten cents perthousand board feet of harvest, dedi-cated to a special program providingcompetitive grants for research on fishand wildlife habitats in managedforests. It may be that the no-harvestfaction at OSU isn’t interested inresearch that helps wildlife in har-vested forests, but we know of nofaculty member who has come forwardto refuse the portion of their salariespaid by the harvest tax.

The Players

This is a complex story featuring aslarge a cast of characters as any we’veencountered in our 20-year forestreporting history. We begin here withthe names of those we interviewed orattempted to interview for this essay.Those marked with an asterisk (*) areco-authors of a Technical Commentresponse to the Donato paper to bepublished in Science, entitled More OnSalvage.

We started on the ground inMontana’s Bitterroot National Forestand the adjoining Sula State Forest.There we interviewed Peter Kolb, PhD,Extension Forestry Specialist andAssociate Professor of Forest Ecology,Montana State University, facultyAssociate Professor of Forest Ecologyand Silviculture at University of Mon-tana. Then it was off to Oregon to seeJohn Sessions, PhD*, OSU Distin-guished Professor of Forest Planningand Engineering; Michael Newton,PhD*, OSU Professor Emeritus ForestEcology, Plant Interactions, Reforesta-tion, Silviculture; Tom Atzet, PhD*,retired southwest Oregon area ecologist,US Forest Service; George Ice, PhD,Principal Scientist, National Council forAir and Stream Improvement, Corvallis,OR; Paul Adams, PhD*, OSU Professorand forest watershed extension special-ist, Forest Engineering; Bob Buckman,PhD, retired U.S. Forest Service DeputyChief for Research, OSU retired Profes-sor of forest policy and internationalforestry at OSU, 2004 New Century ofService Chief’s Award; Bob Ethington,PhD, retired USDA Forest Service PacificNorthwest Research Station director,OSU retired Professor and DepartmentHead, Forest Products.

We were on the ground twice inOregon, first to attend the February HR4200 hearing in Medford and later onthe Deschutes NF with StephenFitzgerald, MS*, OSU Extension Special-ist, Silviculture and Fire Science; andalso got a look at the Tillamook StateForest and the wonderful new TillamookForest Center. While there, we spokewith Larry Fick, who supervised theTillamook rehabilitation program andlater developed recreation programs onthe forest; Ross Holloway, TillamookDistrict Forester, Tillamook StateForest; Bob Gustavson, Assistant DistrictForester, Forest Grove, TSF; and MarvinBrown, Oregon State Forester andSociety of American Foresters president.

Rich Drehobl

“Let scientists practice honestscience and let politicians practicehonest politics.”

Dav

e S

kinn

er

evergreenmagazine.com 7

We alsoattempted tocontact andinterview gradu-ate student DanielDonato, leadauthor of thereport that bearshis name; BeverlyLaw, PhD, OSUAssociate Profes-sor of GlobalChange ForestScience in theCollege ofForestry and Mr.Donato’s advisor;K. NormanJohnson, PhD,Professor,Department ofForest Resources,OSU and chair ofthe AcademicFreedom commit-tee; and Jerry F.Franklin, PhD,Professor ofEcosystemAnalysis, Collegeof Forest Re-sources, Univer-sity of Washing-ton. In all cases our calls and/oremails were ignored, a fact that sur-prised us where both Dr. Johnson andDr. Franklin were concerned becausethey have written for Evergreen in thepast. Fortunately, we were able to getsome collaborating information forother interviews they granted, and ourfederal Freedom of Information Act(FOIA) request turned up furtherevidence of what really happened atOSU. (An Oregon FOIA request is stillpending)

Before we go further, we want to saythat we believe the term “DonatoReport” is a misnomer, first because itcasts young Mr. Donato in a far morecredible light than either he or hisreport deserve, and second because it isvery clear that Mr. Donato had amplehelp from faculty members who opposepost-fire salvage logging, including Dr.Law and the aforementioned J. BooneKauffman, the OSU fire ecologist whohelped design the study. (More on Dr.Kauffman as our story unfolds)

With this perspective on the moreappropriately named Donato-LawReport, we want to also tell you that thisis not a story about academic freedom,

as many have suggested. It is aboutacademic rigor. Nor is it about industrialcorruption of academia. It is abouttaxpayer funded academic corruption.It is not about science, but rather theabuse of science for political ends. It isabout deceit, dishonesty and deception.It is about a terrible piece of researchthat is, at the same time, a politicalmasterpiece. It is about those in thescientific community who have lostsight of their trust relationship with thelarger society they serve. And it is aboutwarring value systems. Indeed, itappears to us that the only thingDonato-Law is not about–is the envi-ronment.

The Beginning

Our search for background materialfor this essay took us to Medford,Oregon in February to observe the HR-4200 Congressional field hearing. Themedia package included a tour of theTimbered Rock fire area northeast ofMedford. Our seatmate was TomSensenig, PhD, formerly-BLM/now-Forest-Service ecologist and ProjectInspector/Principal Investigator for Joint

Fire Science (JFS)Research Coop-erative Agree-ment, NO.HAA003D00, Date(9/9/03) theDonato-Lawstudy. We quitenaturally struckup a conversa-tion.

Dr. Sensenigexplained that hehad not beeninformed of, norhad he seen anydrafts, prior toreading theDonato-Lawreport in Science.“It was a com-plete surprise,”he said. Nokidding.

Equallysurprising wasthe quiteforceful hearingtestimony ofjust-retired BLMAshland Re-source AreaManager Rich

Drehobl. We made arrangements toget his version of events as well. Mr.Drehobl told us the brouhaha beganin an unlikely place—the aftermathof the Quartz Fire, which burned6,170 acres of private, Bureau ofLand Management, and NationalForest lands ten miles southwest ofAshland, Oregon in August 2001.

“I was manager at the time,” herecalled. “We wanted to explore somedifferent, more ecological approachesto fire salvage.”

At the time there was a lively debatebetween staff members about thewisdom of post-fire grass seeding. “Grassdrives silvicultualists nuts,” Mr. Drehoblexplained. “The soil scientists want toprotect the soils, while the silviculturistsare concerned about grass competitionwith trees, so they fight like crazy. So westarted cross-falling snags and all, butwe were catching so much heat that Iasked Tom [Sensenig] to check out theresearch. Most of it was done on non-federal lands, so we needed to see whatthe results were with all the mitigationwe do. That was the objective.”

“There was very little publishedinformation on the effects of salvage like

Dr. Peter Kolb

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

Dav

e S

kinn

er

8 EVERGREEN

Dav

e S

kinn

er

we were hoping to do it,” recalls Dr.Sensenig, “so they decided to arrangeand fund new research. BooneKauffman, OSU’s fire ecologist at thetime, was invited down the season afterthe fire in 2002 to brainstorm researchopportunities. We went through the fire,looked it over and he said, ‘Well, let’s putsomething together and apply to JointFire Science to get this rolling.’ From2002 to 2003, Doug [Robinson, an OSUavian biologist] and Boone were involvedin getting the project written up andsubmitted to JFS. At that time therewere only three principal investigators.”

In the meantime, the nearby Biscuitand Timbered Rock fires burned a half-million acres of new potential studyground in 2002. “Consequently,” says DrSensenig, “the study plan included bothof these areas in addition to the Quartzas potential study sites.” However, theQuartz salvage proposal went no-bid(unsold) because, explains Drehobl, “wehad too much mitigation in it” for thelow value of the timber, plus imminentlitigation kept bidders away.

After a very competitive process thestudy was selected September 9, 2003for research to be completed in 2008,using $307,149 in JFS funds plus$78,000 in-kind for Dr. Sensenig’scontribution. The funds were awarded tohim and he, in turn, transferred theentire amount directly to OSU.

With the study plan ready, MessrsRobinson and Kauffman selected twograduate students, Daniel Donato andJoe Fontaine, to help gather field data.In March 2004, the students met Dr.Sensenig twice, selected the sites, andwent to work. Fortuitously, they chosethe Biscuit area sites, as Timbered Rockcame under litigation that led to apermanent injunction from U.S. DistrictCourt Judge Ann Aiken in November of2004. It was never salvaged.

The units selected for the study were(to the best of Evergreen’s knowledge)those in the Fiddler salvage units on theBiscuit west of Selma. Over the courseof the summer, Messrs Donato andFontaine conducted their respectiveresearch on birds, small mammals,terrestrial amphibians, plus vegetationand coarse woody debris. In September2004, they conducted a field trip withSensenig before returning to school. Inthe fall, Dr. Sensenig transferred fromthe Bureau of Land Management to theForest Service, assuming the positionvacated by Tom Atzet’s retirement, buthis status as JFS liaison to the OSU

team remained unchanged.In summer 2005, after the logging

operations had been conducted, MessrsDonato, Fontaine, and other under-graduate students returned to the surveyarea. This year, there were some permit-ting and crew behavioral issues involv-ing law enforcement that Dr. Sensenighad to smooth over. He subsequentlyfound it necessary to halt all work onthe project for the first time on August15, 2005. “These problems were laterresolved, or so I thought,” he explains.

In September 2005, Sensenig was e-mailed a one-paragraph progress report,which he says is normal for research at

such an early point in the process: “Thedata was preliminary, very preliminary. Ididn’t see any numbers, never reviewedit, I didn’t suspect, you know, that anykind of paper was being done on it.”

At this point, roughly October andNovember, the stories told by theDonato-Law team and Tom Sensenigdiverge. The reason, apparently, was theimpending introduction of HR-4200, theFERRA bill, which we will discuss later.

The Donato-Law team claims theywere fully up-front in advising Sensenig

about their intentions to publish inScience. They claim they sent anotherprogress report email to Dr. Sensenig onDecember 2, 2005, and informed him oftheir publication intentions at a face-to-face meeting in Corvallis on December15 that Dr. Sensenig had scheduled aspreparation for an upcoming BiscuitFire science meeting in February 2006.But his records indicate he got the e-mail on December 20, after the Corvallismeeting, and the message contains onlycamping permit information and theprevious September 2005 progressreport. “I was unaware that they hadprepared anything for Science,”declares Dr. Sensenig. “Science nevercontacted me. You’d think they wouldhave con-tacted me if they had some-thing up for review.”

Dr. Sensenig’s first inkling thatsomething was afoot came when, onJanuary 4, 2006, he dropped by hisoffice from vacation to check his emailafter getting phone calls from ForestService staffers Pam Bode and RobertShull asking about a study showingthat Biscuit salvage was a fire hazard.Dr. Sensenig immediately called Mr.Donato, who chose to respond via anemail with the report attached. “Here’sthe paper,” he wrote. “Do read it withan open mind.”

Rich Drehobl guessed that he firstread about the report in the newspaper.“I called Tom and asked, ‘What the hellis 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 FireScience contract has very specificcooperative and publication require-ments:

Recipients must: “Provide timelyreview and comments on thedocument produced by this study andwork in partnership on the project.

“Recipients must obtain priorGovernment approval for any publicinformation releases concerning thisaward, which refers to the Depart-ment of Interior or any employee.

“The specific text, layout, photographs, etc., of the proposed releasemust be submitted with the requestfor approval.

“Recipients shall not use any part ofthe Government’s funds for anyactivity or the publication of theliterature that in any way tends topromote public support or opposition

Dr. George Ice

“Everyone is plagued with theirown biases, we know that, but youhave to be as open as you canabout it, and provide the repro-ducible, defensible, verifiablescience others can use.”

evergreenmagazine.com 9

to any legislative proposal on whichCongressional action is not com-plete.”

It was clear to Sensenig and Drehoblthat “the violations in the contract werevery serious, particularly the Hatch Actviolations” in the last clause.

The Shouting Begins

Needless to say, the fur was flying upat OSU, too. The paper was out in theworld for all to see, and many peopledidn’t like what they saw. Why not?

First, of course, was the paper’spolitical slant through its specificmention of pending legislation. WhileDr. Sensenig had his hands full with apossible contractual violation, his firstresponse to Mr. Donato also expresseshis “perception of a political stunt.”And what a grand stunt it was—nationwide coverage the first day inalmost all major metropolitan news-papers.

But there was an almost-instant tideof criticism about the paper’s scientificmerit, too. As matters began to boil, inpreparation for a meeting at the collegeregarding Donato and its release,Beverly Law e-mailed a copy to re-spected ecologist Tom Atzet, retiredfrom 30 years with the Forest Servicein southwest Oregon, for his commen-tary. “Right away, I thought it waspolitical rather than science,” he says,“so my first thought was let’s take thepolitics out and stick to the science.”

“I just wrote down what I saw asthe flaws. Maybe because I sent a copyto the Dean it was seen as political, Idon’t know. But I did that, because itwas so flawed and I was so critical,I thought that I better make suresomeone else sees the criticisms. Thenext thing I know, there were a lot ofpeople saying the same things, and Ithought it would be a good idea towrite Science and say, ‘wait a minute,let’s take care of these flaws beforegoing further.’”

And there were many flaws, includ-ing one that may have ruined theapplicability of this paper to anyenvironment. “I was reading it andI saw the term ‘stocking density,’observes Stephen Fitzgerald. “There’sno such thing. It was hard for me todetermine from that short paperexactly how they measured for theseedlings. I guess they measured on atransect two meters wide. You can get

density per hectare using a transect,but it won’t tell you how the seedlingsare distributed across the unit.”

For a hundred years, foresters havenot only counted gross seedlingnumbers, but checked their distribu-tion. Two hundred seedlings under thelone surviving tree on an acre is not thesame thing as two hundred seedlingsspread out over the same acre.

Therefore, stocking surveys areproperly conducted using the “stockedquadrat” method. Using a wire frame orsimilar device, random plots (typically1/500th of an acre) are sampled acrossthe test area in order to determine if

each random plot is “stocked,” that is, ifthere are one or more trees in the plot,or none. The result is tabulated as apercentage of the plots taken, and thisstocked/not-stocked percentage in turntells foresters how the seedlings aredistributed.

The original JFS study plan agreedto by Messrs Kauffman, Robinson andSensenig outlines a conventionalstocking survey methodology. Dr. Atzetalso “Went out on the ground withMessrs Donato and Fontaine, looked at

Dr. John Sessions

“They needed to strengthen thepaper, something that wouldordinarily happen in peer review.Our feeling was the authorswere not well-served by the peerreview process. If they hadknowledgeable peer reviewers,the paper would have beenstrengthened.”

Dav

e S

kinn

er

the study design [and] before they werein the field went over sampling in a verygeneral” way.

“There were some things,” Dr. Atzetrecalls. “For example, I told them ‘Youneed to stratify correctly so you under-stand population variability.’”

“You can’t get a valid sample of theheight of Portland residents by going tothe Blazers’ locker room,” Dr. Atzetexplained. And, of any one site on theBiscuit fire, say the Babyfoot Lake area,“does that reflect all of what the Biscuitlooks like? Noooo.”

Why was stocking and distributionnot tested using standard methods? Whydidn’t Mr. Donato or his academicadvisor, Dr. Beverly Law, who bore directresponsibility for the quality and vera-city of his work, catch this error in thefirst year when the correct baseline hadto be established?

Then there is the matter of naturalseedling survival in salvaged and unsal-vaged burned forests. First was the title,claiming in part that “Logging HindersRegeneration.” Stephen Fitzgerald “wasdumbfounded. My first thought was, ‘weknew this,’ if you have seedlings and runover them with equipment, some willdie,” a fact known, studied, and pub-lished almost exactly 50 years ago, in:Salvage Logging May Destroy Douglas-fir Reproduction, by D.F. Roy, forester,Forest Service Division of Forest Man-agement Research. In the wake of the1951 Three Creeks burn on the SixRivers National Forest, “two linetransects were sur-veyed and 103milacre [1/1000 acre] quadrats wereestablished” in 1954 by Roy—theaccepted standard.

Seed from nearby unburned timberhad come in and was doing well. Thenthe loggers came in 1955, four yearsafter the fire. Mr. Roy’s subsequentsurvey found that salvage logging killed80% of the regeneration, not a surprise.

Comparing the titles and findings ofboth the Roy and Donato-Law papers aswell as their overall findings of logging-related mortality (80 versus 71% loss),both conducted in Klamath provinceforest types 50 years apart, is a classicYogi Berra moment, “deja voo all overagain.” And what did Mr. Roy suggestas a response for protecting regen-eration? “The most obvious measureis to salvage fire-killed timberimmediately.” That hasn’t changed,either. (More on this later)

As for the regeneration in unloggedareas, Donato advisor-author Beverly

10 EVERGREEN

Dav

e S

kinn

er

Law told reporters: “What this studydoes make clear is that natural regen-eration does not necessarily fail toachieve our goal for conifer establish-ment. Strong numbers of seedlingsregenerated naturally, and they have agood foothold. So far, so good.”

But Mike Newton asks: “What is thelife expectancy of those seedlings if youdon’t run over them? It turns out thelife expectancy of those seedlings is very,very short. First year germinants have aless-than-5% chance of surviving to thenext year. That was left out.”

Dr. Newton further pointed outanother tree killer—the sun—which“comes burning in late in August, andthe soil gets so hot, (150-170 degrees,140 is lethal) it girdles the tree whichdies within a day or two. I wrote my PhD42 years ago on that, I have photographsof the girdling taking place, even withplanted seedlings.”

Mr. Fitzgerald explains: “You can’tbase future potential forest developmenton two-year-old germinants in a highly-competitive environment. Even thoughthey may have adequate germinants, it’spremature to say the site may notrequire reforestation.”

Perhaps this is why Dr. Law qualifiedher press statement with an escapeclause: “Only time will tell how theconifers will compete with shrubs inthe long run.”

Actually, we don’t need to wait forthat. There’s already a book out on it:Reforestation Practices in SouthwesternOregon and Northern California. This465-page epic is the result of the 13-yearForestry Intensified Research Program,FIR for short. FIR, which ran from 1978until 1991, sprang from the fact thatthe “Klamath province” forests ofsouthwest Oregon—private, BLM andForest Service—don’t play by the rules.As Dr. Atzet put it, a lot of researchconducted elsewhere “doesn’t applydown here. It’s kind of, ‘What happensin Vegas stays in Vegas.’”

Indeed, the Mediterranean climateof the Klamath province, especially thehot, dry summers, makes it difficult, yetcertainly not impossible, to re-grow forestsfollowing harvest, wildfire or other naturalcatastrophe. The difficulties pushedOregon State University, the ForestService, and the Bureau of Land Manage-ment to embark on a cooperative researchprogram to find out how to bring theseforests back, what Bob Buckman charac-terized as “$25-30 million worth ofresearch in the past three decades.”

What about the “Increases Fire Risk”aspect of the Donato-Law report? Was itsloppy loggers leaving a mess? No. TheFiddler Salvage Unit 1 (as with all theFiddler salvage units) prescription statesthe project objectives. One is to “Provideadequate amounts and distribution oflarge, down wood and snags to achievehabitat requirements of dependentspecies.” The contractor is to “Maximizequality of habitat for animals that areprey for northern spotted owls byretaining moderate to high amounts

of deadwood adjacent to spotted owlforaging habitat.”

The recommended silviculturaltreatment is salvage of commercialwood, “leaving sufficient down wood tomeet wildlife habitat requirements andfacilitate stand regeneration activities,”which will be to “[r]eplant site withspecies mix favoring shade intolerant ormid tolerant with emphasis on resistant

sugar pine and Port-Orford-cedarplanting stock. Utilize natural regenera-tion where reasonable.”

If year 0 (Zero) was the salvage, inYear One, “micro-site” planting wasplanned to a 150 trees-per-acre stockinglevel, followed by a “Survival Exam” and“Stocking Exam” to determine if furtheraction will be needed in years 2-5. Then,in years 3-5, a “Certification Exam” andgrid survey will be done “to determine ifthe stand can be certified stocked withthe objective of 60-80 healthy andvigorous free-to-grow trees per acre ofdesirable tree species.”

In other words, the prescriptioncalled for leaving a lot of wood on theground in preparation for replantingwith desired species at a density anddistribution appropriate for maintainingLate Successional Reserve structure(owl habitat). The increased fuel cited byDonato was specifically left there notonly in compliance with what the FIRprogram had learned was good reforesta-tion practice in the tough Mediterraneanenvironment of southwest Oregon, butalso to provide the sort of “biologicallegacy” called for by Dr. Jerry Franklinin his recent congressional testimony.Furthermore, no matter the rate ofseedling survival, the Forest Service hadalready planned and budgeted forplanting the future forest, if monitoringfound it necessary.

Puts everything in a different light,doesn’t it? It certainly isn’t difficult tosee why so many scientists with experi-ence in southwest Oregon were able toagree in only twelve days on a joint callfor a publication delay of Donato until itcould be revised.

The Gang of Nine

Besides Messrs. Sessions, Newton,Atzet, Fitzgerald and Adams, four otherpeople agreed to contribute to theTechnical Comment More On Salvage:Robert Powers, PhD, Program Managerand Senior Scientist, Ecology & Man-agement of Western Forests Influencedby a Mediterranean Climate, PSWResearch Station, USDA Forest Service;Robin Rose, PhD, Professor, ForestRegeneration, and Director NurseryTechnology Cooperative and VegetationManagement Research Cooperatives,Oregon State University; Carl Skinner,Geographer and Science Team Leader,Ecology & Management of WesternForests Influenced by a MediterraneanClimate, PSW Research Station, USDA

Stephen Fitzgerald

“As a scientist, salvage doesn’tmatter to me one way or theother. Salvage on federal land is asocial decision, and everyone seesit differently. So you want goodinformation to base the decisionupon.”

evergreenmagazine.com 11

Forest Service; and Steve Tesch, PhD,Professor, Silviculture, and DepartmentHead, Forest Engineering, Oregon StateUniversity. Dr. Tesch also directed FIRprogram administration while Drs.Atzet and Newton contributed heavily tofield research. Put simply, the Gang ofNine either wrote the book on reforesta-tion in southwest Oregon, or they haveit on the shelf in the office.

Twisting in the Wind

As the press-driven Donato-Lawtornado spun its way through theforestry school, Dr. Sensenig asked whyhe had been kept in the dark by thereport’s authors. To date, he has notreceived a satisfactory explanation. Inthe ensuing silence, he asked BLMcontracting officer Velvette Clayton toissue a second stop-work order on thestudy on February 1. That order inturn spurred Congressmen Jay Insleeand David Wu, both Democrats, todemand investigations into whetherthe Bush Administration was involvedin suspending the funding.

Just prior to a February 8 BiscuitFire science meeting in Gold Beach, ameeting at which the Donato team hadbeen scheduled to present their projectto a gathering of USFS and BLM staff,Messrs Donato, Campbell and Fontaineasked Dr. Sensenig about the circum-stances of the suspension: “When askedabout the potential consequences, Iexplained that the contracting officerhas the authority to terminate theagreement if these violations were notsatisfactorily explained.”

But after high-level communicationsbetween lead HR-4200 sponsor Con-gressman Greg Walden and BLMDirector Kathleen Clarke, Dr. Sensenigwas overruled. The money was restoredFebruary 8, as announced in happy-talkletters about “miscommunication” fromthe Bureau of Land Management andOregon 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 teamcharacterized the decision to restorefunding as vindication, and that “far toomuch” was made of “simple miscommu-nication.” Further, “[s]peculations ofsome motivation behind the level ofinteraction are entirely unfoundedspeculation [sic]. This has been satisfac-torily resolved […]”

Later, the IG team called up by

Representative Inslee paid Dr. Senseniga visit, and grilled him only on whetherthe Administration had in fact told himto cut the funding. When Sensenig triedto explain that he had done so on hisdue authority as Project Inspector inlight of the failure of the Donato teamto comply with the JFS contract consul-tation and review requirements, theinvestigators explained that was “outsidethe limits of the investigation.”

On February 15, 2006, Dr. Sensenigwrote Joint Fire Science ProgramManager Erik Berg to resign from theDonato-Law study, which had beenpublished “without my knowledge,consent, review or approval. I believethat both the science and the processhad extraordinary flaws. Because thecreditability of this research has beenseriously compromised, continued workand subsequent reports relative to thisJFS will be suspect as well.”

“In their recent public release theauthors stated, ‘We the authors firmlystand behind our science and our paper.’This indicates to me [Dr. Sensenigwrote] that they firmly decline toacknowledge these flaws. This creates anenvironment outside the ethical boundsof which I’m willing to perform.”

Perhaps Representative Walden didsome political calculus and decided thefirestorm of “censorship” put hislegislation at risk. After all, the publicdebate was already hopelessly off-trackand the street media was doing nothingto correct it.

Whatever the case, Dr Sensenig hasnever had the chance to make his caseand Evergreen is still waiting on aFreedom of Information Act request forthe full docket of communications thatpassed between the Donato-Law part-ners, Dr. Sensenig and other agencypersonnel.

A Question of Values

Two years ago, when we whereworking on Siskiyou Showdown weasked Dr. Robert Buckman, formerDeputy Chief of Research for the ForestService and retired OSU professor, if hecould explain what factors were drivingthe salvage debate. Was it a scientific ortechnical disagreement or somethingelse entirely?

“In the end it is not the technicalissue that is central to the debate, butthe deeply-held values that underliethem,” he explained. “Scientists,including academics, have their own

Dav

e S

kinn

er

Dr. Robert Ethington

“Sometimes it is hard to tell whatthe issue is, with so many othersfalling on the table.”

Dr. Michael Newton

“The Code of Ethics for theSociety of American Foresterssays that if you see incorrectscience being used in support ofpolicy, you will take measures tocorrect it.”

Dav

e S

kinn

er

12 EVERGREEN

Dav

e S

kinn

er

values and beliefs. I have them too. Butwe try as best we can not to let valuesoverride facts. In so far as we are able,science findings must be repeatable,verifiable and defensible, or it is notscience. My concern is that if scientists,including academics, depart from thesestandards, the science loses its value.”

Dr. Sensenig agrees. “There is no‘good’ or ‘bad’ to salvage.” Humans putvalues 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.”

Values in the Ivory Tower

We tracked down Dr. Buckman againfor this essay. He invited Dr. BobEthington to join in what turned outto be a lively discussion of possiblereasons why the Donato-Law debate,which should have been centered onacademic rigor, so quickly led to callsfor a complete restructuring of theCollege of Forestry.

Dr. Buckman described the intellec-tual separation that often distancestheorists from those whose workcenters on the real life application oftheory. Purely academic schools “tendto be in conflict with the professionalschools,” he observed. “That’s happen-ing right here. People who follow amore fundamentally intellectualpursuit, like botany or ecology, areuncomfortable with some of theprofessional aspects of the school, the‘service to humanity’ side. The profes-sional schools—engineering, medicineand forestry, for example—tend to havea much closer touch with the sectorthey’re engaged with in the real worldthan core faculty.”

Dr. Ethington responded “That mustbe a conflict in every land grant schoolin the country.”

Dr. Buckman: “I think it goes beyondjust land grant schools.”

Dr. Ethington: “It’s more a questionof philosophy rather than loyalty toone’s discipline, and it just struck methat almost all land grant schools musthave this internal conflict because bythe nature of the school, they have thisprofessional need along with providingtraining in the core sciences. And thecore practitioners tend as individuals torelate to their science. That’s wheretheir focus lies.”

Dr. Buckman: “I sense that ecologyis attempting to become a stand-alone

discipline. I would argue that forestrywas one of the first fields that picked upecology. But now ecology is attemptingto sequester itself without reference tothe applied side, forestry.”

“Every professional school is sensi-tive to its customers,” Dr. Buckmancontinued, “whether it’s medicine orengineering, forestry, or students whoneed jobs. The school simply wouldnot survive without its customers.”

Dr. Ethington: “You’re doingresearch you hope will be applied bysomebody and that isn’t just people inthe street. Basic research is needed, ofcourse. But it’s probably easier to getfunding for research that has a fore-seeable application. And when moneygets tight, [and money is tight at theCollege] the competition between thebasic and academic research sidesintensifies.”

The applied versus basic researchissue surfaced many times in inter-views conducted for this story. “Whyare we here, and what are we doing,”was an oft-repeated question. PeterKolb: “Science plays a very importantrole in supporting the people who aredoing the applied work in helpingthem do their job better. In thatsense, I think it’s ludicrous to indi-cate that if industry donates money toresearch, that it’s tainted. Why shouldindustry not pay for research thatbenefits them by helping them do abetter job?”

Stephen Fitzgerald observed thateven “public” universities don’t relycompletely on the public sector forsupport: “Our university systemwould fall apart is it weren’t forprivate donations. The College ofEngineering has a multimillion-dollarfacility funded in part by private do-nations. Look at U of O, Phil Knightand Nike.” Never mind OSU’s ReserStadium, named for the Beaverton-based salsa and snack food distributor.

For those in academia who see acompromising influence in industrialcontributions, OSU’s Dr. Adams positsthis reminder: “We’re a land-grantuniversity, and I don’t think a lot ofour faculty members are aware of theland-grant university mission. Thisconcept was established during AbeLincoln’s administration to bring theuniversity to the people in rural areasto deal with rural concerns. That’s whythe strong emphasis on agriculture,economics and extension; to better thelives of rural Americans in practical

Dr. Robert Buckman

“Academic freedom is essential,but with academic freedom goesacademic responsibility.”

Dav

e S

kinn

er

Dr. Tom Atzet

“I don’t give a rip if HR 4200passes or fails, or what they dowith the Biscuit. We need torefocus this whole debate on theresponsibility of research to putout excellent science. That’s why Ihaven’t disengaged. My best hopeis that science is not kicked in theface and that people still respectthe protocol, the tradition ofexcellence in science.”

evergreenmagazine.com 13

One of the most impressiveexamples of post-fire forest restora-tion in America is located west ofPortland, Oregon on State Highway6: The Tillamook State Forest.Making it even more impressive isthe new $10 million TillamookForest Center on the Wilson River athighway mile marker 22.3. In aword, “Go.” Evergreen went, andwe’re going back.

The Center has a wonderful arrayof interactive and static displayitems along with historic photo-graphs that are sure to give thetraveling public something to thinkabout when it comes to the value offorestry and forests.

For Ross Holloway, TillamookDistrict Manager, the constructionof the Center is “very timely, aneducational tool that is needed.Public awareness of wildfire salvagehas increased so much, and here isan example of a large wildfire, where50-60 years later, you have thisforest. I’d bet there are a lot ofpeople who drive through here, theBurn never enters their mind.”

The Tillamook burns, in 1933, 1939, 1945, and 1951,together burned and re-burned a total of 355,000 acres in a“six-year-jinx” cycle, the worst year being 1933 when 240,000acres burnt before the rains came. The private ownerssalvaged what they could over the years and then abandonedthe land to the counties. In 1951, a statewide ballot issue wasbrought before Oregonians, who voted to assume the landsand back $12 million in bonds for a huge replanting effortthat today is a huge success.

While touring the Tillamook Center we were treated tosome living history in the form of Larry Fick, who worked offand on for the Oregon Department of Forestry for 50 years,retiring in 1986 to another ten years of forestry research andbook writing. An Oregon State College of Forestry alumnus,Mr. Fick came out of the Army Air Corps after World WarTwo “concerned about getting out of college with enougheducation to get a good job.”

So, forestry it was. Mr. Fick got his forestry degree andthen joined the Oregon Department of Forestry in 1947,coming to the Tillamook Burn as a Rehabilitation Assistant inJanuary 1956. “After I got the job, my boss took me up tocamp at South Fork. I thought that was the most miserableplace I had seen in my entire life. There was about a foot of

snow on the ground, there wereonly two colors, black and white.When we got there I thought I wasback in the Army, with tarpapershacks.”

Mr. Fick notes the total invest-ment in the camp was $14,600.“Wow…but I began to figure it allout. I had inmate and hired plantingcrews, inmates and contractorsfalling snags, road crews, the works.”

Planting a forest on such amassive scale was new. For example,when you visit the Tillamook ForestCenter, there is a display of hoedadplanting tools, the design of whichwas changed as reforestation crewslearned the hard way what shapesworked, and which ones didn’t.Another lesson quickly learned waslatching on to every advantage to givetree seedlings a chance. “We preachedto our planters, go for the deadshade,” what is today called a “micro-site.” Fancier words, same deal.

Today, Mr. Fick is “happy I got toget involved in this program. Withreforestation, you can see theaccomplishments. I can go out there

today and get lost, and it’s great.”That it is.There are two lessons to be learned from the Tillamook that

apply to the Donato-Law debate. First, the Donato-Law papersays that logging hinders regeneration. Salvage logging wasconducted in the Tillamook from 1933 until 1958 when thedecision was made to stop salvaging, a span of 25 years. By allaccounts, the forest turned out fine—so fine that in 2004,environmentalists offered Ballot Measure 34, a proposal to turnhalf of this man-made forest into a wilderness. The measurewas soundly defeated.

The other lesson of Tillamook concerns capturing thevalue of burned timber—either by cutting and running, oras is the problem today, not cutting at all. The privateowners of the land and the logs captured the salvage valueand left Oregonians with the reforestation bill. While thelast bonds are to be paid off this year, the interest on thosebonds has been forgiven. In short, if salvage operations arenot conducted and natural regeneration is delayed orthwarted, any future reforestation will be a fiscal loser. In1951, because the previous owners didn’t reinvest in theland as they should have, Oregon voters made a sacrifice forfuture generations.

Tillamook

Larry Fick

“I look at what is today, andremember what was, 50 years ago.”

Dav

e S

kinn

er

14 EVERGREEN

Evergreen toured the Tillamook State Forest with forester Bob Gustavson, who worked briefly onthe Tillamook in the 1970s and didn’t return for 34 years. This setting gives an indication of whatthe Tillamook Country was like before the fires. As for today and tomorrow, Gustavson lays it out:“In the span of all I’ve done in my career, in coming back to the Tillamook, the whole thrust ofwhat we foresters and the public have done to create the Tillamook Forest from the TillamookBurn, is probably the capstone of my career. To see that and understand that, it really givesvalidity to everything I’ve done in my work. It’s awe-inspiring to see what it is and what it’s takento get there, to think of what it is possible to do.” Indeed.

Dav

e S

kinn

er

ways. We have a mission of service tothis state and its people.” Service, ofcourse, should be the mission of alleducational institutions.

Values as Advocacy

Some academics clearly haveanother mission of service in mind, andPaul Adams has given this matter a lotof thought over the years. “My back-ground and most of my work is alongthe line of keeping forests and water-sheds together,” explains Dr. Adams,“basically it amounts to environmen-tally sound timber harvesting and roaddesign.” But he alsohas “pretty broadinterests. I teach aclass in forestoperations, regula-tions and policyissues, and I’m alsointerested in howthese things blowup into big publicissues.”

Dr. Adams traceshis interest in theintersection ofscience, advocacyand policy to thecreation of theNorthwest ForestPlan in the early1990s. During apanel discussionhe participated in,Adams was espe-cially struck notonly to hear straightfacts, but also“casual thoughtsand anecdotes, allpresented in thelanguage of science.What you hear fromscientists can be any of these things,and you need to be careful.”

Dr. Adams has gone so far as tosenior-author a peer-reviewed journalarticle about sifting facts from opinion.He’s also created a handy “Shades ofGrey” scale upon which “scientific”statements can be evaluated, running ahierarchy of rigor from a peer-reviewed“Universal Fact” down to such greyareas as “Hearsay”—unvalidatedobservations or comments “repeatedas if actually a fact,” and “Value”—an“expression of personal preference (i.e.how I would like the world to be).”

Values presented as “Science” have

polluted the landscape for a long time,of course, probably as long as theinstitution of politics has existed. Manyscientists and policy makers are able topick the gems from the slop, but not all.

“Resource Management by Epistle:The Use of Facts and Values in Policy-Related Communications” by Dr. JayO’Laughlin and Philip S. Cook of thePolicy Analysis Group at the University ofIdaho documents how eighty natural-resources graduate students reacted to a“Scientists on Postfire Salvage Logging”letter written to President Clinton by fivescientists affiliated with the Pacific RiversCouncil environmental group in 1994.

After analyzing the 30 sentencesin the letter to determine fact/valuecontent (it contained a mix of thetwo), students were asked to identifythe scientists’ role as either policyanalysts, advocates, entrepreneurs, oreducators. A majority of the students,80%, tagged the five authors aspolicy advocates. None selected thepolicy educator role, even though allfive authors signed the letter asuniversity employees and currentlyteach. And three of the policy advo-cates, Chris Frissell, James R. Karr,and G. Wayne Minshall, play otherparts in this story.

Science as Politics

It is not possible to understand howDonato-Law found its way to the pagesof Science without first understandinghow the two best known fire-salvagestudies—polar opposites of one an-other—were conducted, who conductedthem and how they eventually wentthrough two very different peer reviewprocesses leading to their publicationin very different journals. Ironically,current and emeritus faculty in OSU’sCollege of Forestry played central rolesin both of these studies, which arewidely regarded as the “intellectual

bookends” on thesalvage/restorationdebate.

One bookendis the SessionsReport, formallytitled “Hasteningthe return ofcomplex forestsfollowing fire: Theconsequences ofdelay” by Dr. JohnSessions, P.Bettinger, R.Buckman, M.Newton, and J.Hamann, all ofOSU. The reportoutlined a seriesof post-firemanagementalternatives forSiskiyou NationalForest landsburned by the2002 Biscuit Fire.It then waded intomore controver-sial environs bydescribing theprobable ecologi-

cal consequences of each alternative,including a no-action alternative. Tothis day, critics incorrectly claim theexhaustive report did nothing morethan advocate aggressive salvage ofBiscuit timber.

The other bookend is the “BeschtaReport,” formally titled, “Wildfire andSalvage Logging; Recommendations forEcologically Sound Post-Fire SalvageManagement and Other Post-FireTreatments On Federal Lands in theWest,” by Dr. Robert L. Beschta, OSU;Dr. Christopher A. Frissell, OSU andUniversity of Montana (UM); Dr. RobertGresswell, U.S. Fish and Wildlife

evergreenmagazine.com 15

Dav

e S

kinn

er

professional society for foresters inthe world. SAF has almost 13,000professional members. SAF’s Codeof Ethics, among other things,declares: “Sound science is thefoundation of the forestry profes-sion,” and furthermore, members“pledge to use our knowledge andskills to help formulate sound forestpolicies and laws; to challenge andcorrect untrue statements aboutforestry; and to foster dialogueamong foresters, other profession-als, landowners, and the publicregarding forest policies.”

The Society forConservation Biology

Just as SAF reflects the utilitarianvision of its founder, Mr. Pinchot, theSociety for Conservation Biology (SCB),co-founded by Michael E. Soule’ andothers in 1978, reflects the vision of itscreators. Soule’ is a PhD populationbiologist and generally credited withinventing the field of conservationbiology. Soule’ is also credited withhelping to found the Wildlands Projectwith Earth First founder Dave Foreman,after a 1991 meeting in San Franciscohosted by Doug Tompkins. Mr.Tompkins, who enjoyed wild financialsuccess as owner and founder of TheNorth Face and Esprit, plowed much of

his fortune into both Ted-Turner-styleland acquisitions in South America andthe Foundation for Deep Ecology.

The Encyclopedia of Religion andNature, edited by Bron Taylor, Professorof Religion and Environmental Ethics atthe University of Florida, explains howEarth First beliefs can be integratedwith peer-reviewed science by discuss-ing the professional evolution ofReed Noss from Earth First memberto PhD conservation biologist, SCBjournal editor and college professor.Mr. Taylor writes that, as Mr. Nossevolved, he “continued to work with

Dave Foremanand other radicalenvironmentalactivists whoappreciatedconservationbiology, many ofwhom also quitEarth First whileretaining theirecocentric valuesystems, in whichnature is consid-ered to be ofintrinsic, moralvalue.” Put simply,some radicalenvironmentalistslearned early onthat getting anadvanced degreeand then produc-ing “peer-re-viewed” papers isfar, far moreeffective politi-cally than sweaty,howling baccha-

nalia in the desert. Today, they makeup at least part of SCB’s 9000 mem-bers in 120 nations.

Eco-centrism orAnthro-centrism?

Close scrutiny of the SAF and SCBjournals, their mission statements andethics codes suggests that their differ-ences can be boiled down to a choicebetween two vastly different intellectualpursuits: anthro-centrism and eco-centrism. Anthro-centric SAF operatesin an overtly social context while eco-centric SCB operates within an overtly“natural” context.

SAF adheres to Pinchot’s utilitarianmodel, declaring right up front that

Tillamook District Manager Ross Holloway (left) and construction project manager Frank Evansvisit on the balcony of the restored lookout tower that greets visitors to the spanking-new ForestCenter. Behind the center is a modern laminated-wood suspension bridge over the Wilson River.

Service; Dr. Richard Hauer, UM; Dr.James R Karr, University of Washing-ton; Dr. G. Wayne Minshall, Idaho StateUniversity; Dr. David A. Perry, OSU; andJonathan J. Rhodes, Columbia RiverInter-Tribal Fish Commission.Beschta’s authors drew an oppositeconclusion to that reached by Sessionsauthors: To wit: “Human interventionshould not be permitted unless anduntil it is determined that naturalrecovery processes are not occurring.”

It is a given that both the Sessionsand Beschta reports have politicalorigins. Sessions was requested pub-licly through OSUby the DouglasCounty (OR) Boardof Commissioners(a bunch of politi-cians). Beschta wasprivately paid for bythe Pacific RiversCouncil,an environmental(political) group.

The differencebetween the two is,as Rich Drehoblputs it, the Sessionsteam “put theirobjectives right upfront, to recoverdollars from theirlosses. They didn’tcall it research, itwas an assessment:How can we dothis?”

By contrastBeschta’s authorsclaimed moralsuperiority as apure “science”paper, not the epistle it in fact was.

After their respective politicalmotives were satisfied, both Sessionsand Beschta underwent revision andpeer review leading to publication—Sessions by the Society of AmericanForesters and Beschta by the Societyfor Conservation Biology: organizationswith two very different missions andmemberships steeped in deeply differ-ent philosophies.

The Society ofAmerican Foresters

Founded in 1900 by GiffordPinchot, first Chief of the ForestService, the Society of AmericanForesters (SAF) is the largest

16 EVERGREEN

Lookout Pass along Interstate 90 near the Idaho-Montana state line: among the many locations wherethe Great 1910 Fire crossed from Idaho into Montana.This forest is partly the handiwork of nature and partlythe work of tree planters who worked in this area formany years following what is believed to be the largestforest fire ever to burn in the United States. More thanthree million acres of old growth timber were de-stroyed when high winds drove several hundredsmaller fires into a mid-August firestorm that lastedtwo days and nights. Lodgepole pine forests alongInterstate 90 are again reaching maturity and begin-ning to die. Minus thinning, another conflagration islikely to claim this forest. Would it be better to thin thisforest or let nature take its fiery course and accept thecentury-long consequences?Ji

m P

eter

sen

evergreenmagazine.com 17

18 EVERGREEN

“Service to society is the cornerstoneof any profession.” By contrast SCB’smission and ethics statements mentionsociety only in the context of impacts onthe natural environment, expressed as“biodiversity.”

SAF members pledge to “manageland for present and future generations.”SCB members pledge “To advance thescience and practice of conserving theEarth’s biological diversity.” “[SCB’s] vision for the future takes aglobal perspective both in how we wantthe world to be and how we, as aSociety want to be. In these visions wesee: A world where people understand,value, and conserve the diversity of lifeon earth.”

Earth First or Not?

Which approach—SAF’s or SCB’s—is more mainstream? The “book” onmainstream scientific ethics andpractice is probably On Being a Scien-tist, first published by the National

Academy of Sciences in 1989 andrevised in 1995. This booklet is so well-known in the scientific community thatits title is often abbreviated to “OBAS”in documents that refer to it.

OBAS dedicates an entire section,entitled “The Scientist in Society,”to the social context of science. TheOBAS authors warn that “scientistsmust seek to avoid putting scientificknowledge on a pedestal above knowl-edge obtained through other means”—such as that pesky real life stuff. “[T]he core values on which(scientific) enterprise is based-honesty,skepticism, fairness, collegiality,openness-remain unchanged. Thesevalues have helped produce a researchenterprise of unparalleled productivityand creativity. So long as they remainstrong, science—and the society itserves—will prosper.” There’s also the matter of whatsociety’s core values may be, andwhere science fits. As Oregon StateForester Marvin Brown sees it, “sci-

ence informs policy. Policy is anexpression of the values people have.Values fit within a very broad range,from those who value economics tothose who value preservation andnaturalness. What policy does is figureout the societal priorities within thatrange of values.”

What values and priorities dopeople express about forests, morespecifically salvage? A poll conductedin August 2005 of Oregon residents bythe independent polling company ofDavis, Hibbits & Midghall, revealednearly three-quarters of those sur-veyed supported restoring federalforests after wildfires by removingdead trees and planting seedlings.Over half felt fires are growing out ofcontrol and causing too much damage.74% of the public surveyed think ittakes too long for un-restored foreststo return. Conversely, 56% felt theenvironmentalist argument—thatforests should be left alone becausemore damage would be done by

Montana State University Extension Forester Peter Kolb amid burned lodgepole on upper Warm Springs Creek in the Bitterroot National Forest in May2006. This area burned in 2000. Six years out, there is still very little ground cover and only marginal recruitment of new lodgepole from a relatively closegreen patch. Minus the helping hand of man, it will take many years for this area to recover.

Dav

e S

kinn

er

evergreenmagazine.com 19

equipment and roads, a main point ofBeschta—was a poor one.

Regardless, the Society of Conser-vation Biology actively seeks to changethose numbers. SCB’s 2006 StrategicPlan, Enhancing the Impact ofConservation Science; states that“powerful constituencies, interestgroups, and institutions should lookto us as sources of sound informationthat will help them solve problems ina way that serves our values [emphasisadded]. Effectiveness with importantconstituencies in part hinges on ourability to work well with the media andtargeted constituencies.”

Incidentally, Hal Salwasser is afounding member of the Society forConservation Biology—and a memberof the Society of American Foresters.

Ethics

According to OBAS, peer revieworiginated to address the problem ofscientists stealing each other’s work andhogging credit. Henry Oldenburg, thesecretary of the Royal Society of London“won over scientists by guaranteeingrapid publication” in the Society’sjournal, as well as introducing “thepractice of sending submitted manu-scripts to experts who could judge theirquality. Out of these innovations roseboth the modern scientific journal andthe practice of peer review.”

While the general public sees “peerreview” as a rigorous process, peerreview of scientific and academic workis not always so. Dr. George Ice finds thelevel of uneven peer review “astound-

ing.” However, being an associate editorof the Western Journal of AppliedForestry as well as Forest Science hasgiven him an appreciation for both howcritical and how flawed the peer reviewprocess can be.

“It’s hard to find good peer review-ers,” observes Dr. Ice. “People areincredibly busy. Plus, you get a lot ofcredit for the paper, but almost none fordoing the review. Surveys show thatthose who write the papers are muchmore senior than those doing thereviews.” Ice has concerns about abreakdown in the review processbecause “there’s so much demand forreview and not that many qualifiedpeople doing reviews.”

A special issue of Forest Science thatDr. Ice was working on when Evergreen

The 27,000 acre Timbered Rock Fire has cost taxpayers $17 million since 2002: $13.7 million in suppression costs, $1.1 million for emergency rehabilita-tion, $1.2 million for seedlings, $1 million on an environmental impact statement needed before salvage could begin on 8% of the dead trees, plus$121,000 in litigation costs. Expected revenue was $14.7 million. The sale now has a permanent injunction against it, has been appealed to the NinthCircuit, and may never be salvaged. BLM planted trees on 5,000 acres, at an estimated average cost of $240 per acre. It is not known how much it willcost to get the planted stock above the brush, or if funds will be available given the litigation outcome. The right-side photo shows how BLM contractorshand cleared competing vegetation on 1,670 acres to allow seedlings the opportunity to get established. The photo on the left shows a seedling onnearby Forest Capital land. Notice the planting is near a felled log in order to capture runoff moisture and also to block the evening sun’s rays (this shotwas taken in the morning). Forest Capital’s expected five year cost per acre to have free-to-grow trees is $380.

Dav

e S

kinn

er

Dav

e S

kinn

er

20 EVERGREEN

visited contains 14 papers. With threereviewers for each manuscript, Dr. Icehas “gotten one Accept, one Reject, andone Accept with Major Modificationsrecommendation.” While rejections andmodifications slow the process, hepoints out these recommendations“provide the most improvement inthe papers.” Even peer review at Science has hadproblems. The very same day the hardcopy of Science containing Donato-Lawhit the newsstands, Science announced“the authors of two papers published inScience have engaged in research mis-conduct and that the papers containfabricated data.” Those papers, ofcourse, were on human cloning. “Wetherefore retract these two papers andadvise the scientific community that

the results reported in them are deemedto be invalid.”

As On Being a Scientist warns, “Ifpublication practices, either new ortraditional, bypass quality controlmechanisms, they risk weakening con-ventions that have served science well. “An example is the scientist whoreleases important and controversialresults directly to the public before sub-mitting them to the scrutiny of peers.If the researcher has made a mistake orthe findings are misinterpreted by themedia or the public, the scientificcommunity and the public may reactadversely. “When such news is to be released tothe press, it should be done when peerreview is complete—normally at the timeof publication in a scientific journal.”

What happened with Donato-Law isa textbook example of what On Being aScientist warns against.

A Lesson Learned

The story of how Beschta came to bepeer-reviewed nine years after it was firstwritten is a classic example of iterativelearning inasmuch as the lessons learnedby Beschta’s proponents seem to havebeen directly applied to presentingDonato-Law in a way that would maxi-mize its impact in the political arena.

In June 2002, testifying before theHouse Resources Committee Subcom-mittee on Forests & Forest Health onthe subject of agency gridlock, ForestService Chief Dale Bosworth’s testi-mony singled out the Beschta “com-

Oregon State University extension forester Stephen Fitzgerald (facing page) took Evergreen on a tour of several burn sites of various vintages in theDeschutes National Forest around La Pine. One location we visited was the Newberry II site, a 548-acre August 2000 arson fire east of town that waspartly salvaged the next spring. OSU and the Forest Service cooperated in setting up two test plots on the north and south slope aspects in the basin totest the survival and growth performance of six different types of planting stock with and without herbicides, in order to find the most cost-effectivecombination. The picture above is the north-facing plot, the picture on the facing page is the south-slope aspect. Overall, the most expensive stock, withthe longest roots, did the best. Some of the least expensive seedlings “did fine on the north slope,” says Fitzgerald, “but on the south, they were toast.When planning for regeneration, you really have to look at the worst-case scenario.”

Dav

e S

kinn

er

evergreenmagazine.com 21

mentary” as having “never beenpublished in any scientific or profes-sional journal, nor has it been subjectto any formal peer review.”

“Nonetheless,” Mr. Bosworthcontinued, “interest groups have filednumerous lawsuits challenging post-fire recovery projects in part on thegrounds that the associated NEPAdocuments fail to adequately documentthe agency’s consideration of theBeschta Report.” Chief Bosworth’s testimony spurreda revealing response from six of theoriginal Beschta participants, MessrsKarr, Frissell, Rhodes, Beschta, Perryand Minshall. Their letter of July 3,2002 to the Subcommittee complained“the Chief’s testimony incorrectlyasserts that our 1995 report was notpeer-reviewed. Our 1995 report waspeer-reviewed, prior to issuance, byother scientists with expertise in fireecology, including Dr. J. B. Kauffman,a Professor of Riparian Ecology atOregon State University in Corvallis,

OR.” (Kauffman was actually theBeschta paper’s editor, not a reviewer.)

“Further,” they wrote, “in March1995, more than 50 scientists withexpertise in biology, fisheries, wildlife,ecology, and geology endorsed ourreport in an open letter to PresidentClinton”—again, that’s not peer review,but a petition.

So, why was there no peer review in1995? “[W]e decided to forego present-ing our conclusions and recommenda-tions in a form suitable for a technicaljournal for two reasons. First, we feltthat it was crucial to rapidly injectsound science into the discourseregarding post-fire salvage practices[and] second, we decided to issue aconcise and policy relevant document ina form understandable to a wide audi-ence, including citizens, agency person-nel, and scientists, rather than issue areport full of the often ponderouslanguage of technical papers publishedin peer-reviewed journals with theirlimited, but specialized audience.”

But because Chief Bosworth calledthem on it, the authors, seven yearsafter the fact, declared “accordingly weare taking steps to pursue publicationin a scholarly journal.” Two years later,in August 2004 the Society for Conser-vation Biology finally “published”Beschta. The report was edited byDominick DellaSala, a biologist withthe World Wildlife Fund [WWF], anSCB partner and long time Siskiyousalvage critic. And should you wonderwhy, there is a likely reason whyBeschta’s authors felt the need to“rapidly inject sound science into thediscourse” in March of 1995. At thetime, Congress was debating the so-called “Salvage Rider,” which PresidentClinton signed into law in July 1995.

Dude, Sign My Petition?

“Scientist” petitions seem to be allthe rage these days when environmentalissues are involved, whether it’s roadlessareas, global warming, wolves in Alaska,

Dav

e S

kinn

er

22 EVERGREEN

or, yep, salvage logging.Donato was no excep-tion. Just as Beschtahad a “fifty scientists”endorsement sent toPresident Clinton backin 1995, Donato-Lawgot backing from 169“scientists.” Among the169 signatories wereMessrs Beschta, Frissell,Karr, Perry and Rhodes,five of the originalBeschta participants.The other four took apass, two most likelybecause they are federalagency employees atthis time, and one,obviously, because hewas a Donato-Law co-author.

Peter Kolb drylyadds, “Incidentally, Ilooked through thatpetition and about 90%of them were biologiststhat had no backgroundin forestry or forestmanagement, so I’mnot sure what sort ofexpertise they werereferring to when theysigned.”

When Evergreenasked its cadre ofscientists if any hadsigned a “scientist”petition, the responsewas an instant and flat“No.” Mike Newton says“the only thing I’m prepared to advocateis high-quality research. Scientifically,a politically-correct question cannotbe answered correctly.”

George Ice observes, “Oftentimes,the scientists don’t have any morecredibility on the issue they areaddressing than anyone in the generalpublic.” For Bob Ethington, “as ascientist, the most important thingI’ve got to protect is my reputation forobjectivity. You can’t sign petitionsand stick your biases out there forpeople to see. From then on, you’reviewed against that bias. I’d ratherpeople look to me as a source ofinformation.”

The only exception: Bob Buckman’sviews on political suppression of soundscience. “On certain fundamentalissues I would sign a petition,” heexplained. “If, for example, the Admin-

istration said you can’t publish ascientifically-sound document, I’dsign.” So would Tom Atzet, but only insuch a narrow circumstance.

The Lesson Applied

Given all its scientific shortcomings,summed up by Bob Buckman as “woe-fully inadequate in terms of context, atravesty,” how could Donato-Law havepassed peer review? Here’s how: Whenthe report was first released, the PortlandOregonian interviewed Jerry Franklin, aforestry professor at the University ofWashington. The Oregonian reportedthat Dr. Franklin, “an authority onNorthwest forests, said charred trees areespecially important because they are theonly source of wood to nourish forestrecovery and lend shelter to wildlife.”

Dr. Franklin told the Oregonian “it’s

usually far betterecologically to take agreen tree from a liveforest than a dead treefrom a burned forest.”He also stated “salvagealmost never achievesany ecological goal. Italmost always is a taxon the ecologicalprocess,” wordingwhich, upon furtherresearch, is almostidentical to that inCongressionaltestimony Franklingave—on November10, 2005—regardingHR 4200. Dr. Franklin laterlet it slip to Sciencereporter ErikStokstad that he“reviewed” theDonato paper,possibly making himone of the two peerreviewers of Donato-Law. Fine, but given atimeline of submis-sion on November 21,2005, distribution topeer reviewers,revision and publica-tion of roughly eightweeks going backfrom January 4-5,2006, then Dr.Franklin was asked topeer review theDonato document for

Science after he gave testimonyregarding HR-4200. That alone is agood basis for recusal. Besides, Dr. Franklin’s congres-sional testimony warned that “genericresponses to large catastrophic dis-turbances are not appropriate.” As “anauthority on Northwest forests,” howcould he find the generic nature of theconclusions reached in Donato-Lawacceptable?

We tried to contact Dr. Franklin toask if he had actually peer-reviewedDonato-Law, but he did not respond. Butthanks to a federal response to our FOIArequest, we do have his January 13, 2006e-mail message to Beverly Law. It reads:“I obviously thought and still think thatthe results of the study are importantand need to be out there. Science gotmy review of the paper within 90”[minutes] of the time that I got it!”

Jim

Pet

erse

n

This beautifully thinned red pine stand in the George Washington Grove in Minnesota’sSuperior National Forest was planted by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.For a time the Superior produced timber for sawmills in the Grand Marias area, alongLake Superior, but it is now mainly a recreation area, as this bicycle trail suggests.

evergreenmagazine.com 23

Jim

Pet

erse

n

Southern Oregon’s Siskiyou National Forest in better days: aftermath of an early 1990s selective harvest that was designed by Mel Greenup, a legendarySiskiyou silviculturist for many years. Mr. Greenup wanted to increase age and species diversity in the stand, while recovering some economic value fromolder trees that were dying—unthinkable amid the serial litigation now controlling the Forest Service’s every action.

24 EVERGREEN

best described as the ranching equiva-lent of Clearcut, the anti-forestry tomereleased by Sierra Club. It is equivalentin another way, as the publication ofboth these books was financed by DougTompkins’ Foundation for Deep Ecology.Dr. Kauffman’s essay said that “given theinestimable natural values” of grass-lands, grazing must go.

On the timber side, in August of 2002,

in response to Forest Service Chief DaleBosworth’s criticism of the Beschtareport, Drs. Kauffman and Beschta co-wrote an op-ed defending their work as“simply a reiteration of increasinglyaccepted forest management andecological principles.”

Also in August of 2002, the daybefore President Bush unveiled hisHealthy Forests Initiative while touringsouthern Oregon’s Squire Peak Fire, Dr.Kauffman was alongside Sierra Club’sCarl Pope at a Portland press confer-ence. Reporters wrote that Dr. Kauffmandeclared that logging, livestock grazing

and roads have proven to be moredamaging than fires by making thedenuded forest floor susceptible toerosion and flood damage. Allowingthinning in the backcountry couldexacerbate those problems: “If this actfocused on these lands and the urban-wildland interface, we’d address theproblems facing firefighters and wild-land managers,” he said. “Thinning with

chain saws isn’tnecessarily the bestapproach. Reintro-ducing fire may bethe best restorationeffort.” In October 2002,Dr. Kauffman was apanelist at the OregonWilderness Confer-ence. The panel,“Smoke and Mir-rors—Fire Science vs.Political Opportun-ism” discussed “howthe conservationcommunity is movingbeyond the inflamma-tory rhetoric of the2002 fire season.” Dr.Kauffman’s fellowpanelists includedWWF’s Dr. DellaSala. Dr. Kauffman’saffiliation with Dr.DellaSala also yieldedthe August 2, 2003Oregonian op-ed thatcriticized theSessions report as“scientificallyindefensible.” Theessay, which Dr.DellaSala apparentlywrote and Dr.Kauffman co-signed,characterizes JohnSessions as a “forest

engineer” in contrast to “scientists”who, of course, feel the Biscuit shouldbe “protected from logging:” a strangetactic given that Beschta’s lead author,Robert Beschta, recently retired fromOSU’s School of Forest Engineering,where Dr. Sessions works. It seems clearthat Dr. Kauffman’s public persona isthat of a “noninterventionist,” whobelieves in the no-management-is-the-best-management model espoused bythe Society for Conservation Biology’s“precautionary principle” paradigm.

Oddly, Dr. Kauffman falls off theInternet radar screen immediately

An R.B. Slagle truck loaded with old growth Douglas fir rumbles across the Siskiyou NationalForest in the halcyon days when timber was still being harvested. For years, the Siskiyouyielded a quite sustainable 125-150 million board feet annually. Not anymore. In fact, notimber is harvested from the Siskiyou, save for small thinnings that somehow survive theappeals process. As testament, Evergreen writer Dave Skinner (page three) stands amongdead trees killed in the 2002 Biscuit Fire. These trees will never be harvested, nor will theforest you see there be replanted—in our view two terrible losses for the American taxpayer.

Jim

Pet

erse

n

The Cipher

The great unknown in the Donato-Law controversy is OSU fire ecologist J.Boone Kauffman. Although Dr. Kauffmanwas the original university participant inthe JFS project, and has loudly pro-claimed ownership of Donato-Law inacademic communications, his name hasbeen absent from press coverage. Nordoes anything signifi-cant appear in e-mailtraffic obtainedthrough FOIA.

Besides hisparticipation in theBeschta report, whichhe edited, Dr.Kauffman provided asworn affidavit in afederal lawsuitbrought againstgrazing in easternOregon by the OregonNatural DesertAssociation andCenter for BiologicalDiversity, organiza-tions known for their“zero-cows” activism.In sum, Kauffman’sview of “propermanagement” in histestament was“cessation of livestockgrazing.”

In May 1997, Drs.Kauffman and Beschtapublished a journalarticle in Fisheriesabout riparian zonerecovery. HighCountry News, anenvironmentalistnewspaper, reported itas: “A report from theOregon State Univer-sity Department ofFisheries says that current salmonhabitat and river restoration efforts willfail unless they focus on entire water-sheds or landscapes, rather than on asingle process or species. For such aholistic approach to work, the reportsays, overgrazing, pollution and toomuch water consumption must stop andriparian areas must be allowed to healthemselves.”

Also on the grazing front, Dr.Kauffman contributed an essay toWelfare Ranching, edited by long time“deep ecology” advocate and Earth Firstmember George Wuerthner. The book is

evergreenmagazine.com 25

following August 2003 publication ofthe op-ed piece he and Dr. DellaSalasigned. Why? Perhaps because thatmonth he was hired as director of theUSDA Forest Service’s Pacific South-west Research Station Institute ofPacific Islands Forestry.

A Rapid Injection of Science

As earlier noted,the timelines givenby Donato-Lawpartners and federalproject inspectorTom Sensenigdiverged in mid-October.

HR 4200 wasintroduced in theHouse of Representa-tives on November 2,2005. But even beforebills are introduced,draft language iscirculated widely.Congressman GregWalden, R-OR, thelead sponsor of HR4200, stated the billwent through fiftydrafts over a period ofmonths before theintroduced versionhit the legislativecalendar.

The environmen-tal communityobviously had time toprepare a response.By November 3, theWilderness Societyhad posted its first“analysis” attackingthe legislation, andTWS was only thefirst. Putting “HR4200” plus Congressman Walden in theGoogle search window rings up 13,700web pages, with TWS, Earthjustice,Unified Forest Defense Campaign,Defenders of Wildlife, EPIC, SouthernAppalachian Forest Campaign and theleft-wing Daily Kos blog hogging the topten, with the exception of CongressmanWalden’s website at No. 9.

Furthermore, when witnesses arecalled to provide testimony, they aregiven time to prepare. Evergreen brieflyspoke with House Resources Committeeaide Doug Crandall, who explained thatin general, about two to four weeks ofnotice is given prior to a Congressional

hearing to witnesses as well as thegeneral public. So given a November 10hearing date, a mid-October decision byparties unknown to accelerate Donato-Law toward publication is not out of thequestion.

Ethics and Hatch Act aside, thedecision to use Donato-Law in this wayis a political no-brainer. What could bemore applicable than “new” taxpayer-

funded research (with the associatedneutrality versus an industry- orenvironmentally-supported project)being conducted in the lead sponsor’shome district?

And none of Donato-Law’s authorscan claim they were not fully involved.The SCB Code of Ethics reads thatscientists may “Claim authorship of apublication or report only when theyhave contributed substantially to theconception, design, data collection,analysis, or interpretation, or havehelped draft or revise the article, andapprove of the published version.”

Then the question becomes a matter

of venue for maximum impact. Conserva-tion Biology, the SCB journal? No, giventhe lessons of Beschta, it couldn’t bepublished in a peer-reviewed journal witha “limited, but specialized audience” suchas CB. But the lack of peer-review hadharmed the social credibility of theoriginal Beschta paper. Donato-Law stillneeded peer-review. To “issue a conciseand policy relevant document in a form

understandable to awide audience,including citizens,”without peer review,would be just anotherpress release.

The answer:Science Brevia.According to theScience website,“Brevia presentresearch results onsubject matterattractive to, andunderstandable by,scientists from awide range of fields.Interdisciplinarywork, or experi-ments or analysesthat produce aresult of generalinterest, are espe-cially appropriatefor this section.Authors shouldavoid highly techni-cal presentationsand jargon specificto particular disci-plines. Manuscriptsare peer-reviewed inthe usual manner.”

The usual manneris: “Papers arereviewed in depth[for at least 90

minutes] by two or more outsidereferees. It is the policy of Science thatreviewers are anonymous. Reviewersare contacted before being sent a paperand asked to return comments withinone to two weeks for most papers. Weare able to expedite the review processsignificantly for papers that requirerapid assessment.”

Science also has its Express route:“Each week, up to four papers areselected by Science editors for rapidonline publication in advance of theirscheduled print publication date. Onlinepublication on ScienceExpress allowsparticularly interesting or topical papers

Jim

Pet

erse

n

The Forest Service has been studying relationships between forests and human disturbancesince it established the Fort Valley Experimental Station west of Flagstaff, Arizona in 1908.The massive ponderosa pines are part of the agency’s ongoing research program, which, oflate, has turned its attention toward determining optimal stand densities under various forestconditions. In the aftermath of the Donato fiasco, the agency is reviewing years of dataconcerning post-fire treatments.

26 EVERGREEN

to become availableto Science readerstwo to six weeksbefore these articlesappear in print.”

Science had alsorecently proved auseful forum to anti-salvage environmen-talists. In February2004, Sciencepublished a one-pagePolicy Forum itemwritten by Australianecologist DavidLindemayer, ReedNoss, Jerry Franklin,David Perry and twoothers on the effectsof salvage harvest onthe “biologicallegacy” of naturaldisturbance events.The Policy Forum isnot peer reviewed,but rather a platformfor issues commen-tary. This itemwound up being citedas a full paper byenvironmentalgroups seeking aninjunction againstthe Timbered Rocksalvage sale, as wellas self-cited byFranklin in histestimony regardingHR 4200.

Significantly,“most items in thesesections [includingPolicy Forum] arecommissioned by theeditors, but unsolic-ited contributionswill be considered onoccasion.” Further-more, Science warns prospectiveauthors “[b]ecause of the stiff competi-tion for space in the journal, Sciencecan accept less than 10% of the originalresearch papers submitted.”

Getting past a 90% rejection ratebefore formal review, then past peer-review, and into the elite three or fourExpress items as “particularly interest-ing or topical” is quite a coup, is it not? Could there have been favorabletreatment? It is hard to say, as Sciencehas 100 members on its Board ofReviewing Editors. They are listed, butonly by university or other affiliation,

and not by academic specialty. But ashas been discussed above, whateverreview this paper had was demonstrablyweak, and certainly not objective. Nor is the Chief Editor of Science,Donald Kennedy, completely disinter-ested. Dr. Kennedy is a Bing ProfessorEmeritus of Environmental Science atStanford, as well as former president ofthe University. Dr. Kennedy left theStanford presidency in the wake of ascandal over research funding. At thestart of his tenure at Science, Dr.Kennedy was introduced to readersby his faculty colleague, Paul Erlich,

Jim

Pet

erse

n

These two photographs, taken in the Black Hills National Forest, illustrate the power ofthinning in overstocked forests. The top photo shows how sickly forests become whendrought and disease overtake a forest that has grown too dense. The bottom photo revealsnature’s remarkable recovery powers in the aftermath of thinning. The first timber sale everconducted by the U.S. Forest Service—called “Case No.1”—was conducted near this site inNovember 1899. Over the next 86 years, five billion board feet of timber was harvested fromthis forest. Between 1899 and 1986, as much timber grew on this forest as was harvested:5.1 billion board feet.

Jim

Pet

erse

n

the Malthusian1970s “globalwinter” advocateturned 1990’s“global warming”expert; PhD advisorfor Society forConservationBiology founderMichael Soule’s’doctorate in Popula-tion Biology; andpresident of theStanford Center forConservationBiology. Donato-Lawseems to have beenon a fast track fromthe beginning. Thefinal hard copy inScience states thepaper was submit-ted November 21,2005 and acceptedDecember 21 forpublication. JohnSessions notes thatfor the Gang ofNine technicalcomment More onSalvage, “It tooktwice as long to getthe peer review as itdid for the Donatopaper.”

The GreatSecret

Science further-more has a pressembargo policy.Advance notice isgiven to mediaoutlets so whenScience breaks thenews, the coverage is

“broad and accurate.” Authors, how-ever, are not supposed to spill the beansbefore “2:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. Time onthe Thursday before your paper’spublication”—which in this case wasJanuary 5, 2006.

In order to learn who may have hadprior knowledge of the release ofDonato-Law, Evergreen spoke withDavid Stauth, an Oregon State Univer-sity Public Relations staffer whoprepared the initial EurekAlert pressrelease in January. It turns out thatdue to spam-blocker problems, theOSU PR department had had no prior

evergreenmagazine.com 27

notice from Sciencethat Donato was tobe published. Mr.Stauth told Ever-green his firstknowledge was upona call from themedia. At that pointhe contacted theauthors of the paperand prepared therelease.

Science’s em-bargo rule doesallow scientists to“present the resultsof their upcomingScience papers atprofessional meet-ings to colleagues. Ifthe paper has beenaccepted for Sciencepublication, we askthat you inform theAAAS News andInformation officethat you are plan-ning to make sucha presentation.”

Why the secrecyif Science’s embargopolicy allowssharing the goodnews with col-leagues at a profes-sional meeting?Well, as Dr. Atzetput it, “if any of thenine of us had seenit before it went intoBrevia, it neverwould have hap-pened.”

It wasn’t untilJanuary 3, at 4:39p.m., that Mr.Donato sent an e-mail out to DeanSalwasser and Dr.Sessions. It read: “Attached is an articlethat Bev Law, myself and several othersare publishing in Science magazine.You will almost certainly be hearingabout this in the next day or two […]”

“Note that it is not quite the finalversion yet; some edits remain yet, soof course it’s not for distribution.

“I’m being flooded with requests forinterviews, but would be very open tomaking time for us to chat about allthis in the near future.”

Paul Adams cynically observes:“Welcome to the brave new world of

Small diameter logs harvested from the Clearwater Stewardship Project on the Lolo NationalForest near Seeley Lake, Montana. Most of these trees are too small for lumber manufactur-ing, so they will be sold to furniture makers or post and pole manufacturers. This project wonseveral awards and kudos from local environmental groups that worked hand-in-glove withthe community, the Forest Service and locally-owned Pyramid Lumber Co. The thinning workwas done to protect the neighboring Seeley Lake community from wildfire, improve wildlifehabitat and generate in-kind revenue for a series of recreation and habitat projects. SeeleyLake District Ranger, Tim Love, stands on an overlook constructed as part of the project.Before the trees in the background were thinned, the mountains beyond were not visible.

science publicity—science headlineshappen before scientists get a look atthe work. Never mind the shortcom-ings of editing the paper post-facto aswas done in this case.”

There’s another aspect to the “bravenew world” which some may finddisturbing. On January 11, a seminardiscussing Donato-Law was held oncampus. Joe Campbell’s talking pointssheets (a FOIA item) indicate “the earlyrelease by Science of what is essentiallya draft was not expected nor evenunder our control.”

As for the politicallanguage about HR-4200 in the draft, Mr.Campbell’s pointsread: “Editors wantedpolicy in, then allinvolved decided totake it out. Got left ina couple of places byScience.” A brave newworld indeed…ofactive political spin?Editorial negligence?Both? Perhaps in theNational Enquirer,but in America’s mostprestigious scientificjournal? And yet it isScience editor DonaldKennedy who wrote“The authors of the(Gang of Nine) letterto Science may getsome counselingabout collegialbehavior, which theysurely need.”

More Secrets

Post-publication,the Gang of Ninerespondent team hasrepeatedly asked foraccess to theDonato-Law studyunits. For example,the biggest baselineflaw in the report isapparently themethod used todetermine theseedling stocking inthe research units.The quickest way toclear up the situa-tion either waywould be to allowother researchers,

not only the Gang of Nine, access tothe units. Denying access is not acceptedpractice for repeatable, defensiblescience. On Being a Scientist reads:“After publication, scientists expectthat data and other research materi-als will be shared with qualifiedcolleagues upon request.” Further-more, Science specifies, “When apaper is accepted for publication inScience, it is understood that: Anyreasonable request for materials,methods, or data necessary to verify

Jim

Pet

erse

nJi

m P

eter

sen

28 EVERGREEN

No salvage and restoration project in America rivals the work done by the WeyerhaeuserCompany on the southwest Washington lands following the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St.Helens. Within the blast zone, 68,000 acres of timberland and hundreds of miles of roads werecovered with volcanic ash up to three feet deep. Trees were killed by searing heat or blown overby the force of 100 mile an hour winds generated by the blast. But by November 1982, companylogging crews had salvaged sufficient timber to build 85,000 three-bedroom homes. More than18.4 million Douglas and noble fir seedlings were planted by June of 1987. Today, what was lost isagain a productive forest. Forests on the adjacent Gifford Pinchot National Forest were set asidein a research area so scientists would have the opportunity to observe a completely naturalrecovery. If you haven’t visited the area, you should—if only to discover that nature is indifferent tohuman need, and that those who claim man cannot help speed natural recovery are wrong.

Jim

Pet

erse

nJi

m P

eter

sen

the conclusions of the experimentsreported must be honored.”

However, the requests of the Gangof Nine for access to materials andunit locations have been rebuffed.Evergreen also asked to see theground where the Donato transectswere, if only to have photographs forour readers of the general condi-tions. As it was, we had to plead andcajole just to get the harvest plansfrom the Forest Service office inMedford. John Sessions says “we aredisappointed and frustrated. We haveasked the authors, while they areworking down there this summer, ifwe could have a field trip to see whatthe conditions are. The grad studenthas agreed, but the major professorsrefused.” Several reasons for the refusalhave been given. One is public safety.Another is that the research is stillongoing. Tom Sensenig responds:“They’ve made statements insistingthat it is not preliminary, but final,therefore they published it. However,they’re back out there continuingthe study!” The last, best reason,given by Beverly Law to Sciencereporter Erik Stokstad, is “There hasbeen a history of sabotaged researchplots in this region.” No one weasked, including Messrs Atzet,Sensenig or Newton, all of whomknow the Siskiyou well, couldconfirm Dr. Law’s assertion.

Now What?

When Evergreen first looked atDonato-Law affair, the reporting tasklooked fairly straightforward. Muchado about nothing we thought; asuspicion re-affirmed when, after thereport was released, it became soobvious that this was nothing morethan another attempt by the usualsuspects to sabotage national forestpolicy by creating cannon fodder forlawyers. As it appeared in Science, ajournal read by few outside thescientific community, Donato-Lawspanned a single page, including onechart, some footnotes. It was hardlyearth-shattering. As for the JointFire Science grant, $380,000 in cashand labor over several years ischump change. Congressmen havebeen known to try to stuff more cashthan this into their freezers. Also as usual, the public debate

evergreenmagazine.com 29

Dav

e S

kinn

er

Naturally-regenerated seedlings are doing well on this “micro-site” created by a log purposefullyfelled by salvage loggers on the Sula State Forest in the French Basin near Sula, Montana. Thisarea was part of a study conducted by Dr. Peter Kolb after the Bitterroot fires of 2000. His objectivewas to “see what sort of impact salvage would have on the natural re-vegetation and recovery ofthose sites.” On state lands, the salvage was conducted the winter of 2000-2001 and, despite thinsnow cover and some muddy work in the early spring, after three years, Kolb’s research teamfound “no difference in natural vegetation recovery between salvaged and unsalvaged plots.”

over Donato-Law was framed in“industry versus ecology” terms. Buta more realistic assessment wouldhave at least acknowledged that mostof the “industry” exited this debateten years ago. And most of thesawmills that survived the spotted-owl-precipitated collapse of thefederal timber sale program havesecured other log sources and nolonger have much interest in doingbusiness with the federal govern-ment. There are exceptions, but evenamong these no one is counting onrenewed federal timber sales.

Moreover, when fires burn onprivate, tribal or state-owned timber-lands, there is no crisis visceralresponse, no gnashing of teeth andno hand wringing. Merchantabledead trees go to a mill and new greentrees are planted. Applicable stateand federal laws insure that soil,water quality and fish and wildlifehabitat are protected throughout thesalvage process. Where salvage isecologically unwise or economicallyimpossible, the landscape is left torecover on its own. Life goes on.

But as Evergreen waded moredeeply into this controversy itbecame clear that we were gazing atthe surface of a much deeper pond,one that certainly deserves to bemore fully investigated if onlybecause public funds are involved.But equally if not more importantthan the debate over whether federaltimber should be salvaged is thecomplete absence of an discussionconcerning the intellectual andcultural health of the institutionsinvolved: the press, the publicagencies, elected officials, OregonState University, Science, forestry,even science in its broadest context.And the question that ought to beasked is, “If these institutions are ashealthy as they should be, would theindividual acts that led us to thispoint ever have occurred?

As forester Bob Gustavson pointsout: “Science gives us knowledge andinformation. It is used by people tomake decisions on how to achievetheir objectives. Good sciencesupports informed decision-making.More and more now, we find sciencethat is political. The way a subject isstudied and written is biased andseems intended to influence deci-sions toward a particular outcome.”Does this matter? We think it

30 EVERGREEN

This ponderosa pine thinning is west of Flagstaff, Arizona, just outside the boundary of the Fort Valley Experimental Station. The logger reported that thestand was so dense on the day he started he had to use the cab lights on his harvesting machine. By noon, he heard birds calling for the first time, andby the next morning, deer were following behind his machine, eating the moss from felled tree limbs. While these thinnings do wonders for forests andwildlife, few log markets remain in the Southwest, a direct result of the litigation-driven collapse of the federal timber sale program.

Jim

Pet

erse

n

should. Moreover, we believe all theinstitutions involved in this brou-haha have a shared basic mission toprovide information, investigate anddisseminate new knowledge, makesound decisions based on thatinformation, and train people howto handle information effectivelyand, dare we say, honestly. As ourworld becomes more complex,handling information effectively andhonestly becomes an imperative, notan option.

Postscript

The Gang of Nine finally got theirday in court in the August 4 edition ofScience, eight months after they firstrequested equal access to the journal’s

pages. They used their 29.5 columninches of space (Donato-Law got69.75 inches to rebut their rebuttal)to systematically critique the study,just as they did in their January 4,2006 “Comments on the Donato et alPaper.” They again pointed out thatmuch is already known aboutSiskiyou vegetation ecology and thechallenges associated with bothnatural and planted reforestation insouthern Oregon’s Klamath prov-ince—and that the Forest Service hadmade generous use of this researchwhen it laid out its plan for salvageand reforestation following theBiscuit Fire.

In their rebuttal to the Gang ofNine rebuttal, Donato-Law failed toacknowledge or correct any of the

sampling errors uncovered by Dr.Baird in his analysis and critique oftheir study. Once again, the writersseemed bent on simplifying bothactive management and the oftencounter-intuitive nature of southernOregon forest ecology, complexitiesdescribed and measured in numerousvastly more authoritative studiesdating back at least two decades. Andthey again sought to minimize thedamage done by their report, suggest-ing that the Gang of Nine were guiltyof a disproportionate response totheir work. “A short-format papersuch as ours is not intended toreview or explore every angle but topresent key data that will stimulatediscussion and further research,”they wrote.

evergreenmagazine.com 31

A naturally-germinated ponderosa pine with a new lodgepole germinant inthe Bitterroot National Forest on the Laird/Warm Springs creek divideshows how ponderosa seedlings require mineral soil for best results. Dr.Peter Kolb showed Evergreen many cases of successful germination oncooked-bare patches, in skidder ruts (on salvaged areas only, of course)and along log lines where down logs had burned partially or completely.

This larch and pine stand on Salish-Kootenai timberland south of Polson,Montana has been thinned to promote tree growth, natural regenerationand wildlife habitat, while also providing a source of revenue for tribalprojects, including the tribe’s college at Pablo. Radical environmentalistsoppose such thinnings in federally-owned forests. Court rulings have sodisheartened Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management managersthat few such thinnings are now being proposed in diseased and dyingfederal forests that would benefit from treatment.

Dav

e S

kinn

er

Indeed. But we are left to wonderhow often Donato-Law will be cited inlegal briefs filed by lawyers seeking toblock publicly popular salvage andrestoration work; or how long it willtake Oregon State University to repairthe damage done, not just to its ownreputation, but to decades of researchin the Klamath province.

“Perhaps one of the most signifi-cant but unheralded outcomes of allof this is that it fired up a bunch ofdueling statisticians and got themexcited for 15 minutes before theysank back into their cubicles,” Gangof Nine scientist, Dr. Robert Powerswrote in an August 3 email note tocolleagues. Dr. Powers is Senior

Scientist and Program Manager forEcology & Management of WesternForests Influenced by MediterraneanClimate, a research program housedat the Pacific Southwest ResearchStation in Redding, California.

“Their argument on how best toanalyze the same data set was mildlyinteresting, but most of them missedthe larger point of whether or notbrief findings from a limited situationtruly carry any cosmic meaning,” Dr.Powers observed. “I didn’t realize howmuch fun statisticians were to watch,to which our Station statistician, JimBaldwin said: ‘If you want fun, youshould watch when Bayesians andFrequentists argue. Now that’s fun!’ “

We know something about Baye-sian statistics, having just last monthinterviewed Dr. Edwin Green, theRutgers University biometrician who,in 1991, used Bayesian methodology todismantle the U.S. Fish & WildlifeService’s 1990 Status Review of theNorthern Spotted Owl, the report onwhich the June 26, 1990 owl listingdecision was based. Fearing academicand government reprisal, a muchyounger Dr. Green regretfully with-drew his stinging critique the daybefore it was to be made public. Wehave a copy of the report—and Dr.Green’s permission to publish it atour leisure—but that is a story foranother time.

Jim

Pet

erse

n

The Evergreen Foundation: Exploring the art and science of forestry

PRSRT STDUS POSTAGE

P A I DForest Grove, ORPermit No. 248

The Evergreen Foundation is anon-profit forestry research and educa-tional organization dedicated to theadvancement of science-based forestryand forest policy. To this end, we publishEvergreen, a periodic journal designed tokeep Foundation members and othersabreast of issues and events impactingforestry, forest communities and theforest products industry.

In our research, writing and publish-ing activities, we work closely withforest ecologists, silviculturists, soilscientists, geneticists, botanists,hydrologists, fish and wildlife biologists,historians, economists, engineers,chemists, private landowners and stateand federal agencies responsible formanaging and protecting the nation’spublicly owned forest resources.

All statistical information appearingin Evergreen is taken from publicly

supported federal and state forestdatabases in place since the

1950s. Industry informa-tion is also used, but

only when itcan be

independently verified.All Evergreen manuscripts are

reviewed before publication to ensuretheir accuracy and completeness.Reviewers include those interviewed aswell as scientists, economists and otherswho are familiar with the subject matter.While not a peer review, this rigorousprocess makes for strong, fact-basedpresentations on which the EvergreenFoundation stakes its reputation.

Evergreen was founded in 1986.Initial funding came from a small groupof southern Oregon lumber companiesinterested in promoting wider citizeninvolvement in the federal government’scongressionally mandated forest plan-ning process. In the years since itsfounding, Evergreen has assumed amuch wider role, providing publicforums for scientists, policymakers,landowners, federal and state resourcemanagers and community leaders acrossthe nation.

Support for our educational missioncomes from Foundation members andother public and private sector organiza-tions that share our commitment to

science-based

forestry. We also generate revenue fromreprint sales and from “Our DailyWood,” a hand-finished four poundwood block that is the volumetricequivalent of the amount of wood fiberconsumed every 24 hours by eachperson on the Earth.

The Foundation operates underInternal Revenue Service 501(c)(3)regulations that govern the conduct oftax-exempt organizations created forcharitable, religious, educational orscientific purposes. As such, we do notlobby or litigate. Forestry education isour only business. Contributions to theFoundation are tax deductible to thefull extent the law allows. To becomea member or order reprints ofthis issue, please log on toour website:www.evergreenmagazine.org.For more informationconcerning our work,contact Kathleen Petersen,Development Director, TheEvergreen Foundation, P.O.Box 1290, Bigfork,MT 59911.

The September 1967 Sundance Fire, on northern Idaho’s PriestRiver Divide, incinerated more than 50,000 acres of old growthhemlock, fir, cedar and pine. At its worst, the blaze wasreleasing 500 million BTU’s of energy every second, theequivalent of a 20-kiloton nuclear explosion every two minutes.But quick salvage and replanting work by the Forest Service,Idaho Department of Forestry and neighboring private landown-ers—actions forbidden in today’s litigious world—helped speedthe recovery. This 1996 photo looks northward, up the PackRiver drainage toward Chimney Rock, seen in the distance.Ji

m P

eter

sen