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Mar 29th, 2006 - 17:00:21
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Voices of the Northwest
In the twilight of an epochal career as a forest scientist, Dr. Jerry Franklin can still cut through the fog of rhetoric to the heart of a controversy.
Near the end of last week's Medford hearing of the U.S. House subcommittee on forests and forest health, chaired by Rep. Greg Walden (R-Oregon). Franklin, now a professor of ecosystem science at the University of Washington's College of Forest Resources, quietly urged lawmakers not to legislate salvage logging as a cure for every forest fire.
Salvage logging, said Franklin, was useful only if the goal was to replace a burned forest with a tree farm for commercial logging. If the goal was to encourage ecologically sound recovery of a natural forest, the weight of scientific research suggests that "salvage logging is not going to be appropriate."
And the difference between those two goals -- a tree farm for commercial logging or the ecologically sound recovery of the natural forest -- is at the root of the controversy over salvage logging vs. more limited regeneration methods.
A study published by Oregon State University graduate student Daniel Donato in the journal Science, contradicting a study by veteran OSU faculty members on the effects of salvage logging after the 2002 Biscuit Fire, was the specific trigger for this controversy.
Forest management, the concept that human intervention in natural processes will actually create a better forest, is little more than 100 years old. The "father" of American forest management was Gifford Pinchot, who became the federal government's first Chief Forester in the early 1900s following the establishment of Forest Reserves.
The concept of tree farms developed in the 1930s as private timber owners sought tax laws that would reduce their taxes until trees were actually cut, rather than pay annual property taxes like other property owners.
The Weyerhaeuser Timber Company began a marketing campaign entitled "Timber Is A Crop" in 1937. The first private "tree farms" were certified in 1941.
So the agricultural metaphor for industrial foresters is just a little over 60 years old. Many industrial foresters and academics in colleges of forestry are still very invested in the notion. These veterans, and many of the lawmakers they have influenced, are still believers in aggressive human intervention in forest management.
Old growth forests were regarded as "dead, dying and decadent, biological deserts" and needed to be clearcut to make way for "vigorous, young forests." In the 1960s the emerging science of ecology began the serious research that would challenge this article of faith of industrial forestry. Jerry Franklin was one of the pioneers.
More than 40 years ago, working for the U.S. Forest Service and later Oregon State University, Franklin and his colleagues began studies in the Willamette National Forest east of Eugene that demonstrated that freshly replanted clearcuts were biological deserts and old growth forests were the most biologically diverse parts of the forest.
Industrial foresters were aggressively liquidating their old growth forests and replanting them only with trees that had a commercial value -- just like farmers growing a single commercial crop, fence row to fence row. Industrial foresters assumed the federal forests would be managed the same way.
Public opinion began to change in the 1960-70s as the lessons of ecosystem science and the importance of biological diversity began to creep into the popular imagination through such books as Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring."
The issue became whether national forests would become national tree farms or would be managed to protect whole ecosystems rather than just produce lumber. Public opinion decided they would remain National Forests and logging was dramatically reduced. Technological and economic changes in the timber industry make it unlikely logging in the National Forests will return to the levels of the 1970-80's.
Now we are witnessing much the same thing happen to the idea that aggressive intervention after wildfires will "help restore the forest" better than a more limited approach.
Donato was supposed to be the sacrificial lamb at Walden's hearing. Despite boorish bullying by Rep. Brian Baird (D-Washington), Donato refused to play the role.
Baird, a former psychology professor, read a litany of Donato's alleged character flaws, professional inadequacies, inadequate understanding of statistics and lack of humility that would constitute libel in any other forum but a congressional hearing. Donato competently -- if nervously -- defended his work.
In an age where more work and more decisions are made collaboratively in groups, task forces and committees, the bullying tactics of the authoritative "sage on the stage" are becoming obsolete whether its the seminar room or the congressional hearing.
Daniel Donato and Jerry Franklin emerged from that hearing with quite dignity. After more studies are done, I suspect that Donato's views on fire restoration, like Franklin's views on forest diversity, will come to dominate the field.
Copyright © 2006 by Russell Sadler
Russell Sadler is a journalist and a lecturer at Southern Oregon University. You may write him c/o publisher at westbynorthwest.org. Visit Sadler's Sense column's at West By Northwest.org:
Sadler's Sense: Who Can Bridge the Great Divide?
Sadler's Sense: Peer Review and Politics
Sadler's Sense: Of Forests and The River
Sadler's Sense: Development and Belief --Who Pays?
Sadler's Sense: Time Out of Mind
Sadler's Sense: Draining America First Oil Policy Inadequate to the Energy Challenge
Sadler's Sense: Holly, Folly and Why Its Ok to Cut Christmas Trees
Sadler's Sense: We Need the Constitutional Limits of the Initiative Process
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Sadler's Sense: The Birth Tax
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Sadler's Sense: Gas Policy After Katrina-- Oregon Can Lead the Way Again
Sadler's Sense: Oregon's Supreme Court Take on "Takings" Flies on Eagle Wings
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Sadler's Sense: Credibility or State of Our State
Sadler's Sense: Look in the Mirror, Oregon
Sadler's Sense: Why We Must Pay the Piper Now
Sadler's Sense: A Short History of Measure 30
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