[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND THE KNOWLEDGE-BASE CONCERNING FOREST
MANAGEMENT FOLLOWING WILDFIRES AND OTHER MAJOR DISTURBANCES
=======================================================================
OVERSIGHT FIELD HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTS AND
FOREST HEALTH
of the
COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
Friday, February 24, 2006
__________
Serial No. 109-39
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Resources
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______
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COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
RICHARD W. POMBO, California, Chairman
NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia, Ranking Democrat Member
Don Young, Alaska Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
Jim Saxton, New Jersey Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, American
Elton Gallegly, California Samoa
John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii
Wayne T. Gilchrest, Maryland Solomon P. Ortiz, Texas
Ken Calvert, California Frank Pallone, Jr., New Jersey
Barbara Cubin, Wyoming Donna M. Christensen, Virgin
Vice Chair Islands
George P. Radanovich, California Ron Kind, Wisconsin
Walter B. Jones, Jr., North Grace F. Napolitano, California
Carolina Tom Udall, New Mexico
Chris Cannon, Utah Raul M. Grijalva, Arizona
John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Guam
Jim Gibbons, Nevada Jim Costa, California
Greg Walden, Oregon Charlie Melancon, Louisiana
Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado Dan Boren, Oklahoma
J.D. Hayworth, Arizona George Miller, California
Jeff Flake, Arizona Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts
Rick Renzi, Arizona Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon
Stevan Pearce, New Mexico Jay Inslee, Washington
Henry Brown, Jr., South Carolina Mark Udall, Colorado
Thelma Drake, Virginia Dennis Cardoza, California
Luis G. Fortuno, Puerto Rico Stephanie Herseth, South Dakota
Cathy McMorris, Washington
Bobby Jindal, Louisiana
Louie Gohmert, Texas
Marilyn N. Musgrave, Colorado
Vacancy
Steven J. Ding, Chief of Staff
Lisa Pittman, Chief Counsel
James H. Zoia, Democrat Staff Director
Jeffrey P. Petrich, Democrat Chief Counsel
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON FORESTS AND FOREST HEALTH
GREG WALDEN, Oregon, Chairman
TOM UDALL, New Mexico, Ranking Democrat Member
John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee Dale E. Kildee, Michigan
Wayne T. Gilchrest, Maryland Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii
Chris Cannon, Utah Dan Boren, Oklahoma
John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon
Vice Chair Jay Inslee, Washington
Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado Mark Udall, Colorado
J.D. Hayworth, Arizona Dennis Cardoza, California
Jeff Flake, Arizona Stephanie Herseth, South Dakota
Rick Renzi, Arizona Nick J. Rahall II, West Virginia,
Henry Brown, Jr., South Carolina ex officio
Cathy McMorris, Washington
Richard W. Pombo, California, ex
officio
------
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on Friday, February 24, 2006........................ 1
Statement of Members:
Baird, Hon. Brian, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Washington........................................ 9
DeFazio, Hon. Peter, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Oregon............................................ 6
Inslee, Hon. Jay, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Washington.............................................. 7
Walden, Hon. Greg, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Oregon............................................ 2
Prepared statement of.................................... 4
Forest Service document submitted for the record......... 125
Statement of Witnesses:
Atzet, Dr. Thomas, Atzet Ecological Consulting, Merlin,
Oregon..................................................... 75
Prepared statement of.................................... 77
Donato, Daniel C., Graduate Student, Department of Forest
Science, Oregon State University........................... 19
Prepared statement of.................................... 21
Drehobl, Richard John, Retired BLM Field Manager, Medford,
Oregon..................................................... 103
Prepared statement of.................................... 108
Franklin, Dr. Jerry F., Professor, College of Forest
Resources, University of Washington........................ 86
Prepared statement of.................................... 88
Hobbs, Dr. Stephen D., Chairman, Oregon Board of Forestry,
Executive Associate Dean, College of Forestry, Oregon State
University................................................. 13
Prepared statement of.................................... 14
Kolb, Dr. Peter F., Montana State University Extension
Forestry Specialist, Adjunct Professor of Forest Ecology,
College of Forestry and Conservation, University of Montana 24
Prepared statement of.................................... 26
Lorensen, Ted, Assistant State Forester, Oregon Department of
Forestry................................................... 35
Prepared statement of.................................... 38
Perry, Dr. David A., Professor Emeritus, Oregon State
University................................................. 97
Prepared statement of.................................... 99
Salwasser, Dr. Hal, Dean, College of Forestry, and Director,
Forest Research Laboratory, Oregon State University........ 80
Prepared statement of.................................... 82
Additional statement submitted for the record............ 83
West, Dr. Cynthia, Acting Director, Pacific Northwest
Research Station, Forest Service, U.S. Department of
Agriculture................................................ 16
Prepared statement of.................................... 18
Additional materials supplied:
Huso, Manuela M.P., Consulting Statistician, Department of
Forest Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon,
Statement submitted for the record......................... 119
OVERSIGHT FIELD HEARING ON SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND THE KNOWLEDGE-BASE
CONCERNING FOREST MANAGEMENT FOLLOWING WILDFIRES AND OTHER MAJOR
DISTURBANCES
----------
Friday, February 24, 2006
U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health
Committee on Resources
Medford, Oregon
----------
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:00 p.m., at
the Medford City Council Chambers, 411 West 8th Street,
Medford, Oregon, Hon. Greg Walden [Chairman of the
Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Walden, DeFazio, and Inslee.
Also Present: Representative Baird.
Mr. Walden. The Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health
will come to order.
The Subcommittee is meeting today to hear testimony on the
scientific research and knowledge base concerning forest
management following wildfires and other major disturbances.
Before we open our session, I would like to introduce the
fire chief for Medford, who has some words he needs to share
with us because of the capacity crowd here. So please join and
welcome Fire Chief Dave Bierwiler.
Chief.
Chief Bierwiler. Thank you, Congressman.
Mr. Walden. That was right on cue.
Chief Bierwiler. The occupancy limit here, once all the
chairs are filled, that's all the people we can have in here.
There's an exception that we're going to invoke today. We're
going to allow some people to be standing in three of the
corners. Because we have such a large crowd, we need to make
sure that everyone knows where the exits are. And in that rare
event we have an emergency and you have to leave, out this door
next to the elevator is a stairwell that goes down to the
bottom floor. Do not take the elevator if we should all have to
leave. Same thing over here for those of you on this side.
There's an elevator out here. There is a stairwell before you
get to the elevator. Use the stairwell and go to the bottom of
the building in some event we would have to leave.
Thank you.
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Chief.
Ladies and gentlemen, please stand for the posting of the
colors by the United States Naval Sea Cadet Corps, Higgins
Battalion, Central Point, Oregon.
Please be seated.
Thank you very much for your posting of the colors.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. GREG WALDEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF OREGON
I want to welcome everyone here today and thank you for
attending.
As you know, I've been working for nearly two years with
Congressman Brian Baird from Washington State, Stephanie
Herseth from South Dakota, Wayne Gilchrest from Maryland, and
Bob Goodlatte from Virginia and many other Members of Congress
to put together legislation to help land managers more
effectively restore forests after catastrophic events such as
wildfires, windstorms and hurricanes and ice storms. After
holding seven congressional hearings and reviewing thousands of
pages of reports, we introduced the Forest Emergency Recovery
and Research Act, H.R. 4200.
While some have attacked the bill even before it was
drafted, the overall response to the legislation since
introduction has been favorable, garnering support from diverse
groups such as the International Association of Fish and
Wildlife Agencies, the Society of American Foresters, the
Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, the Wildlife
Management Institute, former long time Oregon State Forester
Jim Brown, Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth, Department of
Interior, Associated Oregon Counties, the Evergreen Foundation,
the National Association of Forest Service Retirees, the United
Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, and other organizations.
There are nearly 150 cosponsors of the bill in the House of
Representatives.
And I believe the initial success of the bill has much to
do with the high quality of testimony that we have received in
previous hearings, which have greatly helped us to draft this
legislation. Virtually every provision in the bill came out of
testimony from the seven hearings we've had on this topic in
this Subcommittee over the last couple of years.
For example, we heard that the public wants to have the
ability to participate or comment on potential projects. That's
why we require the agencies to allow for public involvement,
comment and appeal. This process builds on the successful
Healthy Forests Restoration Act.
We heard there's no one-size-fits-all management
prescription for treating burned or damaged forests. That's why
our bill does not dictate any specific activity such as salvage
logging. And let me say that again. The legislation does not
mandate any particular activity take place on our forests.
Not only do forest conditions vary greatly from place to
place, and our Subcommittee has held hearings all across this
country looking at those different places, but catastrophic
events such as wildfire act unpredictably, each event requiring
a unique response. Our local land managers and scientists with
local knowledge probably have the best ability to prescribe
appropriate treatments. The only action we require in this
legislation is that the agencies do a rapid evaluation of the
area after a major disturbance event. Any actual project or
activity after that is up to the discretion of local managers
to put forward for public review, comment, and appeal.
We heard that more attention needs to be given to retaining
snags and downed woody debris for wildlife habitat and soil
stability. That's why we require peer-reviewed research
protocols be developed that include the retention of standing
dead and downed trees and why we require that the agencies
provide guidance to the field for updating their management
plans concerning dead tree retention and other restoration
activities.
We heard repeatedly that management objectives as stated in
forest plans need to be guidance for all restoration
activities. That's why we require that all management actions
following a catastrophic event comply with that area's forest
plan and be compliant with all environmental laws. If logging
is prohibited for an area in a forest plan, then nothing in our
legislation would change that.
We heard from numerous scientists and managers that if the
Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management decided they
wanted to harvest and reforest after a catastrophic event, then
it was essential that they move quickly while there was still
value in the trees and while reforestation was most likely to
be successful. This is why we provided expedited procedures and
timelines so the agencies could be more responsive and move
quicker, better mimicking more successful state and tribal
forest practices. And we've heard from both states and tribes
on different land management strategies and results.
The Government Accountability Office told us that there was
nearly a million acres backlogged of reforestation needs on
America's forests, almost all of which resulted from
catastrophic events. That's why our bill provides better
guidance and more funding for restoration and other
reforestation work.
We heard and we have observed that more scientific research
is needed on post-disturbance forest management. While there is
a tremendous amount of practical knowledge that's been built
from decades, if not centuries, of trial-and-error forest
management following fire and other events, there's not a large
amount of actual peer-reviewed science on the issue of how best
to manage our forests after catastrophic events. That's why a
major part of this legislation is dedicated to developing and
funding scientific research with university partners and other
qualified organizations. To insure the quality of such
research, we require that it be subject to independent, third-
party peer review. And to make sure that it's funded, we are
modifying the bill that was first introduced a month or two ago
to include a guaranteed stream of revenue.
All of us in this room today are aware that post-fire
scientific research has become a hot item, if you'll excuse the
pun, especially in recent months. Too often it's sometimes hard
to see the real science through the political smoke.
In particular, a short-term study that was recently
published in the journal Science has been touted by a few as
the definitive and final say on the effects of post-fire
harvest. And while I believe that most reasonable people
recognize that no single study provides all or even most of the
answers, each one, however, does offer some insight and does
help broaden our understanding and base of knowledge about what
happens in these forests after an event. I agree with my
colleague Mr. Udall, the Ranking Democrat on this Subcommittee,
that we as members of this committee and others who are
interested could benefit by actually hearing from the
researchers about their research, their findings, their
protocols. And that's what brings us here today.
Likewise, it's important that we all remember that academic
freedom is a crucial element of open scientific discourse.
Researchers have an obligation to follow agreed upon protocols
and sound scientific and ethical principles while policymakers
have an obligation to give researchers the support and freedom
to engage in their work, regardless of whether or not their
findings agree with anybody's political agenda. More
information, more scientific research can only help us achieve
the common goal of better forest and habitat stewardship.
At the same time we need to recognize that science is not
the final arbiter of forest management. Many societal values
that are cultural or economic, for example, must also be
considered in management decisions. As Dr. Jerry Franklin, whom
we'll hear from later this afternoon, has told this
Subcommittee before, science can help managers to make more
informed decisions, but the decisions are societal choices.
So today we're here to look at the level of knowledge
concerning post-disturbance forestry. What does the most recent
science tell us? How do we prioritize and fund more and better
research? How well is science applied by land managers and how
can this be improved? Or, in other words, what do we know? How
do we know it? And how do we apply it?
[The prepared statement of Mr. Walden follows:]
Statement of The Honorable Greg Walden, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Oregon
Welcome everyone and thank you for attending:
As you know, I've been working for nearly two years with
Congressmen Brian Baird from Washington, Stephanie Herseth from South
Dakota, Wayne Gilchrest from Maryland, Bob Goodlatte from Virginia, and
many other Members of Congress to put together legislation to help land
managers more effectively restore forests after catastrophic events
such as wildfires, windstorms, hurricanes and ice storms. After holding
seven congressional hearings and reviewing thousands of pages of
reports, we introduced the Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act,
H.R. 4200.
While some attacked the bill before it was even drafted, the
overall response to the legislation since introduction has been very
favorable, garnering support from diverse groups such as the
International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, the Society of
American Foresters, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership,
the Wildlife Management Institute, former Oregon State Forester Jim
Brown, Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth, the Department of the
Interior, Associated Oregon Counties, the Evergreen Foundation, the
National Association of Forest Service Retirees, the United Brotherhood
of Carpenters and Joiners, and many additional conservation and local
government organizations. The bill has strong bipartisan support with
nearly 150 cosponsors in the House.
I believe that the initial success of the bill has much to do with
the high quality of testimony we received in previous hearings, greatly
helping to guide us as we drafted the legislation. Every provision in
the bill came out of testimony or research findings.
For example, we heard that the public wants to have the ability to
participate or comment on potential projects; that's why we require
that the agencies allow for public involvement, comment and appeal.
This process builds on the successful Healthy Forests Restoration Act.
We heard that there's no one-size-fits-all management prescription
for treating burned or damaged forests; that's why our bill does not
dictate any specific activity, such as salvage logging. Let me say that
again. Our bill does not mandate salvage logging.
Not only do forest conditions vary greatly from place to place,
catastrophic events such as wildfire act unpredictably, each event
requiring a unique response. Only local managers and scientists, with
local knowledge, have the ability to prescribe appropriate treatments.
The only action we require in our bill is that the agencies do a rapid
evaluation of the area after a major disturbance event; any actual
project or activity after that is up to the discretion of local
managers.
We heard that more attention needs to be given to retaining snags
and downed woody debris for wildlife habitat and soil stability; that's
why we require peer-reviewed research protocols be developed that
include the retention of standing dead and downed trees, and why we
require that the agencies provide guidance to the field for updating
their management plans concerning dead tree retention and other
restoration issues.
We heard repeatedly that management objectives as stated in forest
plans need to guide all restoration activities. That's why we require
that all management actions following a catastrophic event comply with
the area's forest plan, and be compliant with all environmental laws.
If logging is prohibited for that area in the forest plan, then nothing
in our legislation changes that.
We heard from numerous scientists and managers that if the Forest
Service or BLM decide they want to harvest and reforest after a
catastrophic event then it is essential that they move quickly while
there is still value in the trees and while reforestation is most
likely to be successful. This is why we provide expedited procedures
and timelines so the agencies can be more responsive and move quicker,
better mimicking more successful state and tribal forest practices.
The Government Accountability Office told us that there was nearly
a million-acre backlog of reforestation needs on our national forests--
almost all of which results from catastrophic events; that's why our
bill provides better guidance and more funding for reforestation and
other restoration work.
We heard and observed that more scientific research is needed on
post-disturbance forest management. While there is a tremendous amount
of practical knowledge that has been built from decades, if not
centuries, of trial and error forest management following fire and
other events, there is not a large amount of actual peer-reviewed
science on this issue. That's why a major part of our bill is dedicated
to developing and funding scientific research with university partners
and other qualified organizations. To insure the quality of such
research, we require that it be subject to independent, third-party,
peer-review.
All of us in this room today are aware that post-fire scientific
research has become a very hot item (pardon the pun), especially in
recent months. Too often it's hard to see the real science through the
political smoke.
In particular, a short-term study that was recently published in
the journal Science has been touted by a few as the definitive and
final say on the effects of post-fire harvest. While I believe that
most reasonable people recognize that no one study provides all or even
most of the answers, each one however does offer some insight and helps
to broaden our base of knowledge. I agreed with my colleague Mr. Udall
that the Subcommittee members could benefit by actually hearing from
the researchers about their research, their findings and the protocols
they followed.
Likewise, it is important that we all remember that academic
freedom is a crucial element of open scientific discourse. Researchers
have an obligation to follow agreed upon protocols and sound scientific
and ethical principles, while policy makers have an obligation to give
researchers the support and freedom to engage in their work, regardless
of whether or not the findings of that research agree with anyone's
political agenda. More information, more scientific research can only
help us achieve the common goal of better forest and habitat
stewardship.
At the same time we need to recognize that science isn't the final
arbiter of forest management. Many societal values, that are cultural
or economic, for example, must also be considered in management
actions. As Doctor Jerry Franklin has told this Subcommittee before,
science can help managers to make more informed decisions, but the
decisions are societal choices.
So today we are here to look at the level of knowledge concerning
post-disturbance forestry--what does the most recent science tell us?
How do we prioritize and fund more and better research? How well is
science applied by land managers and how can this be improved? Or in
other words: What do we know? How do we know it? And how do we apply
it?
______
Mr. Walden. Now, before I ask other Members for their
opening remarks, I ask unanimous consent that Representative
Brian Baird of Washington have permission to sit on this dais
and participate in the hearing. Hearing no objection, it is so
ordered.
Now, I would like to welcome my neighbor, my colleague, and
my friend from the Fourth District of Oregon, Peter DeFazio,
for an opening statement.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. PETER DeFAZIO, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OREGON
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really appreciate
your providing us this opportunity. I am always pleased to be
able to try and make policy and understand things here at home
as opposed to inside the Washington, D.C. Beltway, which seems
to be a different reality.
You know, I think there's substantial grounds for agreement
here. I mean 40 years ago we were telling people operating
logging shows to get all those logs out of the stream, and we
paid them to do it in fact. Then we figured out that no,
actually structure in the stream is really important, and now
we pay people to put logs in streams, or we require it. In the
case of the site we visited this morning involving private
lands, a condition of their post-fire efforts on their property
with--where substantial salvage logging was conducted was to
also put structure in the stream and protect the stream as best
they could against sedimentation with other--with other
methods.
So I think when we say we don't know everything we should
know or need to know, it's really true. I mean it's a lot like
the Woody Allen movie where they find out 50 years from now
that chocolate really is really good for you and we should all
be eating a lot more of it. You know, we don't know everything
we need to know. So that's--that's absolutely key.
As a policymaker, you know, we ultimately--and I think
people need to understand this--we need to be informed by the
science, but the science is never going to be definitive
because there are social choices to be made once we have the
science. Once we understand the range of options that are
available for post-catastrophic event recovery, as policymakers
we have to decide where on the spectrum you're going to fall.
You know, do you--and it depends to a great deal upon the
classification of that land that--going into the fire. The
private land we saw this morning, they want to maximum timber
production. That's their right under state forest practices,
and that's how they conduct their activities.
On the Federal land it becomes a more complex issue, and
that's where the U.S. Congress and particularly this committee
comes in. You know, what was the classification of that land?
What was the intention for the future? What objectives do we
want to accomplish with that? Which could require more or less
intervention after an event.
And not all land will be treated the same, as the Chairman
said. You know, lands that were intended to, you know, continue
basically totally unmanaged, such as wilderness areas, will be
left as wilderness areas. But there are a lot of other Federal
lands in the gray area, and then the overlay of the Clinton
forest plan, editorial comment, of which I was not a big fan,
end of editorial comment, you know, really complicates things
here in the Pacific Northwest, particularly when it comes to
the issue of late successional reserves. Many late successional
reserves are not what people would envision. They're not a
bunch of big old trees that we've draw a line around. Some of
them are actually quite young tree plantations, many of them
overstocked, that they drew lines around in the idea or hope
that some day they might be old growth. But in some cases where
man has interfered, then man is going to need to carefully
manage to move back toward what we think was a natural state.
And that's why we're here today, to hear from a range of
opinions on science, you know, and try and become better
informed, because we're going to make policy. We're going to
try and make it in the most informed manner possible. And, you
know, our job is to understand the implications of what we're
doing. We won't always agree totally on the objectives, but we
need to know where we're leading with any legislation we might
impose.
So thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Mr. DeFazio.
Mr. Inslee from Washington State, thanks for coming down
and joining us in your participation in our Subcommittee every
time. So welcome and your opening remarks.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. JAY INSLEE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON
Mr. Inslee. Thank you. Thanks for letting me join you. I
spent three years up in Salem and I just love this country, and
I appreciate you letting me join you.
We share something. We share in Washington your national
forest, and you share ours up in here. And I think we equally
love and care for each.
I really appreciate Mr. Walden holding this hearing. And I
was thinking about sort of why we're here today, and I came
across a quote I wanted to share that--it says it's from some
old social commentator. He says: ``It's not what we don't know
that gets us into trouble; it's what we think we know that just
ain't so that's the problem.''
And now the only problem is I can't remember whether that
was Will Rogers or Yogi Berra or Mark Twain. But it still
applies no matter who it was.
And I think it's kind of a comment, as Peter suggested,
that getting to the bottom of the science and the new science
is very important. That's why I appreciate Mr. Walden's holding
this hearing.
I also appreciate his efforts to have reinstated this study
that has been in the news lately out of OSU, to get that
research going again. And I think that's important to clear the
decks, because I think we all agree on a hopefully bipartisan
basis that censorship is not going to be an effective way for
us to get to the bottom of the science associated with this.
If there are critiques of science, it's important that we
all look at the critiques, but let's get the information out so
we can all have a healthy debate. So I appreciate Mr. Walden's
efforts in that regard.
I wanted to make just a comment what I think about the big
issues here. I think it's important to say. One is during our
discussion today I hope we will--we will focus on the
difference between replanting and salvage logging of standing
dead timber. And the reason I say that is in discussions with
my constituents I found a lot of confusion about that, that
people sort of just wash them all together. And I hope during
our discussion we will segregate revegetation replanting from
the issue of whether or not we remove standing dead timber. I
think if we focus on that difference that will help in our
discussion.
Second thing is that I hope that we'll also focus on the
fact that we have different values about what we want to see
the forest do. And all of them that are sincere, we got to work
out as a community which ones we want to follow. Some are
economic. Some ecosystem. Some are simply aesthetic. And I hope
we focus on the difference between those.
Having said that, I wanted folks to know Tom Udall, Ranking
Member in our committee, and I have also submitted a bill. It
is designed to do some of the things that Mr. Walden and Mr.
Baird would do, which is to enhance and improve our scientific
understanding of things in the forest. And we take a little
different approach how to do that.
I wanted to comment on three things just so the witnesses
might address themselves to this. I do have some concerns about
Mr. Walden and Mr. Baird's bill that I wanted to address.
One, I am concerned that the bill as drafted today would
reduce the degree of scientific inquiry on the specific
proposals, management proposals we have for these forests. What
we have learned is we have made collectively on a bipartisan
basis enormous mistakes in the forest, starting with Yogi Bear
who taught us to put out all forest fires and now we have thick
forests as a result.
Peter suggested some of the other----
Mr. DeFazio. Smokey the Bear, not Yogi the Bear.
Mr. Inslee. Smokey the Bear, not Yogi the Bear.
Mr. DeFazio. Yogi the Bear, Smokey the Bear.
Mr. Inslee. Well, you know, actually----
Mr. Walden. That was clearly a partisan thing there.
Mr. Inslee. There's a certain irony because actually Yogi
the Bear had better scientific advice, actually.
Mr. DeFazio. He had better food.
Mr. Inslee. He had better food, yeah.
Thank you for that editorial comment. I appreciate that,
Peter. I know that didn't sound right.
But we made mistakes. And one of the mistakes we've made is
not doing enough science when we make these decisions. And I am
concerned about the underlying bill would in its noble effort
to reduce the time period to make decisions reduce the
available science that is available to decisionmakers to make
these decisions. And I hope that as this thing moves forward
that we can find a way to have adequate scientific inquiry,
including following the standards and the rigorous science
involved in the EIS process and somehow to meet that standard
before we make management decisions here.
Second, I'm concerned that the bill would essentially
severely damage the roadless area policy that we have adopted,
or at least many of us believe have adopted in this country,
that 96 percent of the public wants to see these roadless areas
respected. There--we have found it's very rare to find
something called a really temporary road because we have a ten
billion dollar backlog of decommissioning roads already. So I'm
very concerned in that respect.
Third, I think all of us need to be concerned of lack of
funding to do any of these mandates of the Forest Service. It
doesn't matter how brilliant any of us are on this panel to
adopt a statute involving this unless we provide these agencies
the funding to get these jobs done. They're simply not going to
be able to get the job done. In fact, they are being starved.
They can't meet their legitimate obligations they have today.
And until that focuses, until we have a higher priority in
funding the Forest Service rather than tax cuts in this
country, we're not going to get this job done.
Thank you, Mr. Walden.
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Mr. Inslee. Thanks for joining us.
And now I'm pleased to welcome another Congressman from the
great State of Washington. It's a great state. Not quite as
great as Oregon, but, you know, kind of carved it out of our
side. Brian Baird from the Fourth District, right?
Mr. Baird. Third.
Mr. Walden. Third District of Washington State. Welcome.
STATEMENT OF THE HON. BRIAN BAIRD, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS
FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON
Mr. Baird. Thank you, Mr. Walden.
I want to thank the Chairman and all of you for being here.
This is obviously an important issue. I am pleased to have
worked with your congressman, Greg Walden, on this legislation.
And I'll tell you why I do.
I represent a district that is one of the ten most forested
districts in the entire country. Thousands of people depend on
forest products for their livelihood, and at the same time
there are many people there who care very passionately, as do
I, about protecting and preserving the environment.
The hearing today was called by our friend and colleague,
Mr. Udall, in order to address the recent study by Mr. Donato.
And regarding that study, I must tell you that I am actually
quite disappointed. And I'll tell you why I'm disappointed.
A little bit about my background. Before I worked in this
job, I chaired the Department of Psychology at Pacific Lutheran
University. I hold a doctorate and taught statistics and
research methods.
I want to be absolutely blunt. I have placed a high premium
on scientific integrity. I have risked my political career on
votes defending scientific integrity. I have spoken out and
written repeatedly on the importance of scientific integrity.
And I would tell you that I believe scientific integrity is a
two-way street.
My judgment is that in this case Mr. Donato, the journal
Science, and the reviewers of this article did not do their
job. I'll articulate why in a moment, but I will tell you that
quite frankly I don't think that this----
Mr. Walden. Can you hold on one second.
I just want so the audience knows, the protocols in our
hearings are not to have audience reaction.
Mr. Baird. But if you're going to react, applause beats the
heck out of laughter.
Mr. Walden. A little laughter is fine. But just so we set
the parameters.
Mr. Baird. I appreciate that, Mr. Chairman.
I am also disappointed because I sought sincerely in
preparation for this hearing to examine the study pretty
carefully. That's why we're having the hearing. If we're going
to put forward scientific studies and suggest that they should
inform public policy, it's incumbent on the authors of those
studies and on those of us who would consume it to carefully
look at the design and the conclusions that they're drawing.
I repeatedly asked Mr. Donato for his raw data and was
repeatedly denied that request. Now, you should know that your
taxpayer dollars funded this study. Frankly, studies should let
the chips fall where they may as far as what the outcome is.
But to suggest that a fellow scientist, which I consider
myself, and a representative of the people, the taxpayers who
fund your studies, should not have access to the data to
evaluate the merits or demerits of your study I think is absurd
and beyond what I think.
The policies of Science magazine itself are as follows:
When a paper is accepted for publication in Science, it is
understood that any reasonable request for materials, methods,
or data necessary to verify the conclusions of the experiment
must be honored. As a condition of publication, authors must
agree to honor any reasonable request for materials and methods
necessary to verify the conclusion of experience--experiments
reported and must agree to make the data upon which the study
rests available to the community in some form for purposes of
verification and replication.
Now, on our side of the aisle, the Democratic side, we have
repeatedly and I think rightfully challenged the administration
to provide information on everything from how they developed
their energy policy to pre-Katrina information to pre-9/11
information. And yet when I asked a very simple request of an
individual who has offered a study up to inform public policy
to give me his data, that's been rejected. Data that were
funded, the collection of which was funded by the taxpayers. So
I am to say the least disappointed by that.
Mr. Chairman, as I mentioned before, scientific integrity
goes both ways. We have not only a right but a responsibility
to carefully evaluate not only this particular study but the
entire breadth of studies.
Today we had the opportunity, this group and a host of
others, to go visit real world sites, not in the abstract, not
in some photo, but a real world site where you had seen post-
fire logging and reforestation and post-fire situation where
there was no harvest.
We have data to inform this debate. There is no such thing
as the science says logging always harms restoration.
Scientists will tell you that it depends on the nature of the
fire. It depends on the nature of the vegetation. It depends on
the goals of the purpose of the land. It depends on what you
would replant and why and how you would do it and importantly,
vis-a-vis this study, when you would do it.
So the notion that one position exists on this I think is
specious. And I'm proud that as part of our legislation we've
included extensive discussion of including science and
preapproved management plans and in funding science, further
scientific research as part of actual harvest efforts.
So I thank the Chairman for convening this and look forward
to actually getting some serious discussion of a study and of
the broader issue.
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Mr. Baird. I appreciate working with
you and appreciate you having the opportunity to come and sit
with our Subcommittee today. It is helpful to have somebody who
actually taught statistics as well as understands them be on
our panel.
Mr. Baird. Well, that's not necessarily synonymous.
Mr. Walden. I know. We appreciate it.
We'd like to--OK. Now we go into the--just so the audience
knows, we'll invite our witnesses up to present their findings
to us, and then we'll each have an opportunity on the
Subcommittee to ask questions.
If our witnesses would make their way up over here, I'll
read a little about your background as you make your way up.
Dr. Stephen D. Hobbs is the Executive Associate Dean,
College of Forestry at Oregon State University. Dr. Hobbs has
been on the faculty for 28 years. He has a Bachelor of Science
in Forest Management from the University of New Hampshire, a
Ph.D. in Forestry Science from the University of Idaho. He's a
Fellow in the Society of American Foresters and is currently
Chair of the Oregon Board of Forestry.
Dr. Cynthia West, Acting Director, Pacific Northwest
Research Station, has oversight responsibilities for research
programs across ten laboratories and eleven experimental
forests in Alaska, Washington and Oregon. She acts as a liaison
between the Pacific Northwest Research Station and land
management agencies in the region. Prior to joining the PNW
Station in 2002, Dr. West led a comprehensive program in forest
products research, education, and technical assistance as
Department Head of Forest Products at Mississippi State
University. Prior to her appointment with MSU, Dr. West served
for nine years with the USDA Forest Service in the Northeastern
Research Station as a Researcher and Project Leader. She was
co-located at the Forestry Sciences Lab in Princeton, West
Virginia and Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, where she
served as an Adjunct Faculty in the Wood Science Department.
Dr. Dave Peterson, Fire Ecologist, USDA, has been engaged
in forest and ecology research for more than 25 years after
receiving his Ph.D. in Forest Ecology from the University of
Illinois. He has worked with the USDA Forest Service's Fire
Management Planning Research Work Unit and Atmospheric
Deposition Effects Research Work Unit, the U.S. Geological
Survey's Cascadia Field Station and, currently, at the USDA
Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station with the
Fire and Environmental Research Applications Team. That's a
mouthful. He's been a Professor at the College of Forest
Resources at the University of Washington since 1989.
Daniel Donato, Graduate Student, Oregon State University.
Mr. Donato is a graduate student in the Forest Sciences
Department at Oregon State University. He earned a Bachelor of
Science degree from the University of Washington in forestry
and has about a decade of experience in forest and fire
ecology. He's been collecting field data on the ecosystem
response to the Biscuit Fire in southwestern Oregon for
approximately three years.
Dr. Peter F. Kolb, Montana State University Extension
Forestry Specialist; Adjunct Professor of Forest Ecology,
College of Forestry and Conservation, University of Montana.
Dr. Kolb earned his Ph.D. from the University of Idaho in
forest and range ecophysiology, his M.S. from Idaho in
silviculture, and his B.S. in Forestry from Michigan State
University. His past research emphasis includes the effects of
heat and water stress on conifer seedling establishment, the
role of soil characteristic, forest pests, pathogens and
wildfire on forest succession dynamics, the impacts of forest
thinning on root diseases, woody debris treatments and their
effects on forest and range restoration, cultural practices to
enhance woody debris decomposition, and plant community
recovery following wildfires and salvage logging. During the
past six years he has worked extensively with wildfire-affected
private forest landowners in both assessing fire impacts as
well as developing restoration treatment guidelines.
And Ted Lorensen, Assistant State Forester, Oregon
Department of Forestry. Mr. Lorensen is currently Assistant
State Forester for the Department of Forestry's Resource Policy
Division. In this role he oversees the Forest Resources
Planning and Private and Community Forests Program. He received
a Bachelor of Science in Forest Management from the University
of Washington in 1977 and has been employed by the Oregon
Department of Forestry since then. Past positions within the
Department have included a range of field and staff posts,
including forest practices forester, protection from fire
program staff, policy analyst/land use planning coordinator,
and forest practices program director.
I have one thing I need to take care of here.
Now then, if you would all please stand and raise your
right hand and repeat after me. We'll swear you in for the
testimony you're going to give today.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Walden. Let the record show they all indicated
affirmatively. Please be seated.
Now, let me remind our witnesses that, under the Rules of
the Committee, you must limit your oral statements to five
minutes, but as you know your entire statements will appear in
our hearing record.
So we welcome all of you, and we have your testimony. And
we appreciate the work you've put into providing us with your
insights into these issues.
I'd like to now start by recognizing Dr. Hobbs for his
statement. Dr. Hobbs, welcome. Thank you for joining us today.
And just one mike check issue. If the light is on, your
mike is off. If the light is off, your mike is on. So you want
them lit if you don't want to be heard.
STATEMENT OF STEPHEN D. HOBBS, EXECUTIVE ASSOCIATE DEAN,
COLLEGE OF FORESTRY, OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
Mr. Hobbs. Well, good afternoon, Chair Walden and Members
of the Committee. My name is Steve Hobbs, and I'm the Executive
Associate Dean of the College of Forestry at Oregon State
University.
Mr. Walden. You might pull that just a little closer I
think.
Mr. Hobbs. Can you hear me OK now.
Mr. Walden. That's better.
Mr. Hobbs. During my career as an OSU faculty member, I
have had the very good fortune to have been stationed right
here in Medford as a leader of an interdisciplinary team of
scientists working on reforestation problems in southwest
Oregon.
What I'd like to do this afternoon is briefly describe the
program that I worked on while I was here in Medford, because I
think it has applicability to the subject of this hearing. I'll
also summarize some of the broader findings of the program and
make recommendations about how to develop the knowledge base
necessary to address post-wildfire restoration issues.
Now, in 1978 the Forestry Intensified Research Program,
commonly referred to as the FIR Program, if you will, was
formed to find solutions to the region's widespread
reforestation problems associated with timber harvest and brush
field reclamation. Now, this was a cooperative
interdisciplinary and interagency program that integrated
fundamental and applied research with an intensified outreach
education program.
Now, one of the very unique aspects of this program was
assigning an interdisciplinary team of OSU scientists to
actually live and work in southwest Oregon. And this I think is
a very important point and one of the reasons why this program
was so successful.
Now, the FIR Program was conducted over a 13-year period of
time and involved probably more than a hundred studies. The FIR
Program was highly successful in addressing the reforestation
problems of the region.
Now, what I'd like to do now is summarize some of the key
results from this very extensive research and outreach
education effort. Some of the more important findings were:
First, that most of the forest lands can be successfully
reforested with planted seedlings following timber harvest and
site preparation, and included in that is prescribed fire, or
brush field reclamation.
Second, successful reforestation requires achieving certain
standards in a carefully choreographed sequence of events
appropriate to site conditions and the management objectives to
be achieved for those lands.
Third, the landscape and environmental conditions are
highly variable in space and time. Thus treatments must be
tailored to fit site conditions to achieve management
objectives.
Fourth, competition from woody and herbaceous plant species
well adapted to site conditions can delay stand development.
Fifth, if intervention is necessary to achieve management
objectives, the timing and sequence of operations is crucial.
Delays in particular can often have unintended consequences,
for example, competition from associated vegetation or logging
damage to regeneration.
And, finally, establishing an interdisciplinary team of
scientists and educators in the problem area on a year round
basis greatly enhanced the applicability of the research to
management problems and the acceptance and implementation of
new knowledge by practitioners.
Now, given the current threat of wildfire and the need for
better information about post-wildfire restoration, salvage
logging, and other effects these practices have on resource
values, it is of--this is of critical importance.
To develop the knowledge base that will provide resource
managers and policymakers with credible information upon which
to base decisions both they and the public can have confidence
in, I'd like to make the following four recommendations to the
Subcommittee.
First, establish a long-term research and outreach
education program that is specifically focused on post-wildfire
restoration, including salvage logging.
Second, insure that universities and Federal agencies are
full partners in this program. Universities are uniquely
equipped to provide a broad range of interdisciplinary
expertise and research and outreach education, and university
involvement would also provide the training for the next
generation of forest resource scientists and managers to better
deal with these problems that we face.
Third, use the FIR model as a basis for this program.
Integrating fundamental and applied research with outreach
education, using interdisciplinary teams stationed in the
geographic problem areas creates huge advantages over the
traditional research and outreach education model and greatly
speeds the transfer of new information to decisionmakers.
And my final point. Sufficient flexibility should be built
into the planning and management of Federal forests to permit
the kind of rigorous scientific experimentation needed to
generate credible, scientifically sound information for
policymakers and resource managers.
Thank you very much for providing me with an opportunity to
testify before this Subcommittee today.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hobbs follows:]
Statement of Stephen D. Hobbs, Executive Associate Dean,
College of Forestry, Oregon State University
The occurrence of wildfire is a major forest health issue facing
resource managers and policy-makers throughout the western US. In
Oregon the hazard is particularly severe on overstocked federal
forestlands. Management actions surrounding post-fire restoration
activities, including salvage logging, are controversial and often the
subject of heated debate and litigation. Frequently these situations
are characterized by lengthy delays of management actions which
sometimes result in unintended consequences. A major contributing
factor is the lack of credible information about the effects on
resource values of post-wildfire restoration practices, including
salvage logging that might be used to achieve management objectives.
Although a great deal is known about subjects such as reforestation, it
is clear adequate information is still not available. To build the
knowledge base necessary for managers and policy-makers to have a wider
range of options and greater confidence in the decisions they make and
to gain public trust, a significant research and outreach education
effort is required. We need search no further than southwestern Oregon
to find an example of what can be accomplished when leaders have a
vision and take action to solve a serious forest resource management
problem.
For many years forest managers in southwestern Oregon were plagued
by serious reforestation problems following timber harvest. In the
1970s this resulted in the USDI Bureau of Land Management withdrawing
significant acreage from the allowable cut land base. As a result,
federal agencies, the forest industry, and county governments
approached Oregon State University (OSU) about forming a new research
and outreach education program focused on finding solutions to the
reforestation problems. In 1978 the Forestry Intensified Research (FIR)
Program was launched. This program integrated fundamental and applied
research with outreach education. The FIR Program was conducted
cooperatively by scientists from the OSU College of Forestry and the
USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station. Researchers
based in Corvallis and Medford worked closely with local managers and
resource specialists to address critical questions related to the
reforestation problems. An important and innovative aspect of the
program was the location of an interdisciplinary team of OSU scientists
in Medford for the duration of the program (1978-1991) to conduct
research and outreach education programs. When the FIR Program was
completed in 1991, new information had been developed from more than
100 studies spanning 13 years. These studies conclusively demonstrated
the vast majority of forestland could be reforested. This information
was summarized in the book Reforestation Practices in Southwestern
Oregon and Northern California published in 1992. 1
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Hobbs, S.D., S.D. Tesch, P.W. Owston, R.E. Stewart, J.C.
Tappeiner II, and G.E. Wells. Eds. 1992. Reforestation Practices in
Southwestern Oregon and Northern California. Forest Research
Laboratory, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon. 465 p.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although post-wildfire restoration and salvage logging were not the
focus of the FIR Program, much of what was learned does have
applicability. For example, in southwestern Oregon it is clear that:
1. Lands can be successfully reforested with planted seedlings
following timber harvest, site preparation (including prescribed
burning) or brush field reclamation.
2. Successful reforestation requires achieving certain standards
in a carefully choreographed sequence of events appropriate to site
conditions and the management objective(s) to be achieved.
3. The landscape and environmental conditions are highly variable
in space and time. Thus treatments must be tailored to fit site
conditions to achieve management objectives.
4. Competition from woody and herbaceous species well-adapted to
site conditions can delay stand development.
5. If intervention is necessary to achieve management objectives,
the timing and sequence of operations is crucial. Delays in particular
can often have unintended negative consequences (e.g., competition from
associated vegetation, logging damage to regeneration).
6. Establishing an interdisciplinary team of scientists and
educators in the problem area on a year round basis greatly enhanced
the applicability of the research to management problems and the
acceptance and implementation of new knowledge by practitioners.
Despite the many achievements of the FIR Program, it did not
directly address questions related to post-wildfire restoration per se
or salvage logging and although some work was done on natural
regeneration, this was a relatively small part of the program. Given
the current threat of wildfire, the need for better information about
post-wildfire restoration, salvage logging, and the effects these
practices have on resource values, is of critical importance. To
develop the knowledge base that will provide resource managers and
policy makers with credible information upon which to base decisions
both they and the public can have confidence in, the following steps
are recommended.
1. Establish a long-term research and outreach education program
specifically focused on post-wildfire restoration, including salvage
logging.
2. Insure that universities and federal agencies are full partners
in the program. Universities are uniquely equipped to provide a broad
range of interdisciplinary expertise in research and outreach
education. University involvement would also provide for training the
next generation of forest resource scientists and managers to better
deal with these problems.
3. Use the FIR model as the basis for the program. Integrating
fundamental and applied research with outreach education using
interdisciplinary teams stationed in the geographic problem areas
creates huge advantages over the traditional research and outreach
education model and greatly speeds the transfer of new information to
decision-makers.
4. Sufficient flexibility should be built into the planning and
management of federal forests to permit the kind of rigorous scientific
experimentation needed to generate credible, scientifically sound
information for policy makers and resource managers.
______
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Mr. Hobbs, for being here, Doctor.
We appreciate your comments and the work that you do.
I now recognize Dr. West for her statement.
Good afternoon. Welcome. We look forward to hearing your
comments.
STATEMENT OF CYNTHIA WEST, ACTING DIRECTOR, PACIFIC NORTHWEST
RESEARCH STATION; ACCOMPANIED BY DAVID PETERSON, TEAM LEADER,
FIRE AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH APPLICATIONS TEAM
Ms. West. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the
Subcommittee, for the opportunity to talk to you today about
scientific research concerning forest management following
wildfires and other major disturbances.
I am Dr. Cynthia West. I'm Acting Director of the Pacific
Northwest Research Station. And I would like to summarize my
remarks, and you have my written testimony submitted for the
record.
I'm accompanied here today by Dr. David Peterson, who is
the Team Leader of our Fire and Environmental Research
Applications Team at the Pacific Wildland Research Fire
Sciences Laboratory in Seattle, Washington. Dr. Peterson will
be able to answer more specifically your questions about
current and ongoing post-fire management research.
First, I would like to talk a little bit about the role of
science, the process of scientific debate and discourse within
our science community, and the role of science in land
management decisionmaking.
Scientists help managers interpret what they're seeing on
the ground and help evaluate the environmental effects, social
and economic costs and benefits, and the effectiveness of
potential management programs and activities toward reaching
some set of management objectives.
For example, many managers in recent fire seasons have
reported dramatic reductions in fire spread and intensity as
fires entered stands that have been thinned or previously
burned. In recent years research results from carefully
designed scientific studies on a number of sites has supported
and actually added specificity to these observations.
We know that the scientific basis for land management
decisionmaking is more complete for some areas than for others.
We acknowledge that we have much to learn. There are important
knowledge gaps that exist that we should and must address.
Scientific research is a process of building knowledge
study by study. As we are able to integrate results from
multiple studies, we increase our understanding of where
responses differ and where they can be generalized. Scientists'
ability to provide information will aid decisionmakers in the
future.
Information and technology produced through basic and
applied science programs, like the Forest Service Research and
Development programs and our partners, can be found on our
Forest Service Web site and publications and through other
sources.
Scientists through the peer review process and often
vigorous discussion seek to continually evaluate and improve
the scientific body of evidence and the strength and range of
applicability of their conclusions and results. Results are
affected by the specific geographic area or forest type,
variability in weather and climate conditions, and variability
in the way management treatments are applied. Active discussion
and debate within the science community can help sort out the
reasons for differences in results and help build scientific
consensus on important issues. To external observers, this
debate can be seen as an argument for or against a certain
management practice or policy. But the best scientific debates
lead to refinements in our understanding, new research to
answer remaining questions, and better information for
managers. Scientific debates are focused on competing results
or differences in possible explanations or theories for those
results. This contrasts with public policy debates, which often
derive from different philosophies of the role of government or
of the desired social outcomes.
Management of fire and the effects of fire on the landscape
raises many questions of policy in addition to the questions of
science. Although policy questions may often be framed as
science questions, many nonscientific considerations, such as
societal goals, current law, economics, must be part of the
answer to these policy questions. And while science can provide
a solid foundation for management and policy decisions, science
alone is not sufficient to determine policy.
Adaptive management by land managers is a useful tool that
combines emerging research with evaluation of management
practices. This approach enables managers to modify practices
as our understanding of management impacts and opportunities
improve.
While many managers and scientists consider post-fire
logging as part of a suite of appropriate restoration
techniques after wildfire, others argue that it causes damage
to burned sites sufficient to outweigh potential benefits.
These discussions have often been carried on with a notable
absence of balanced evaluation of the available science. Some
of these arguments have at their root different core
philosophies on what constitutes appropriate management.
Managers and policymakers need the best possible information
presented in an unbiased manner to support them in developing
sound and supportable recommendations for post-fire management
activities. The appropriate role of science is to provide such
information while avoiding participating in policy or political
debates.
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss with you the role
of science in management decisionmaking and policy development.
Dr. Peterson and I will be happy to answer any questions you
may have.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. West follows:]
Statement of Dr. Cynthia West, Acting Station Director,
Pacific Northwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service
INTRODUCTION
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today about scientific
research concerning forest management following wildfires and other
major disturbances.
I am Dr. Cynthia West, Acting Director of the Pacific Northwest
Research Station. The Station is one of eight research facilities in
the Research and Development branch of the USDA Forest Service. These
facilities collectively conduct the most extensive and productive
program of integrated forestry research in the world. Our mission is to
synthesize and communicate scientific knowledge that helps people
understand and make informed choices about society, natural resources,
and the environment. Our researchers work with a range of partners
including scientists in other agencies, universities, nonprofit groups,
and industry as well as community groups and state, local, and federal
land managers. The information and technology produced through basic
and applied science programs are available to managers, policy makers,
and the public through many outlets.
The headquarters for the Pacific Northwest Research Station is in
Portland, Oregon. The Station has 10 laboratories located in Alaska,
Oregon, and Washington and employs about 95 scientists, and 400
technicians and support staff. Our research program includes studies on
impacts and management of disturbances such as fire; interactions
between upland management and aquatic systems; forest inventory and
analysis, and social and economic impacts of resource management.
I am accompanied today by Dr. David L. Peterson, team leader of the
fire and environmental research applications team at our Pacific
Wildland Fire Sciences laboratory in Seattle, Washington. Dr. Peterson
will be able to answer your questions about current and ongoing post
fire management research.
First I would like to talk a little about the role of science, the
process of scientific debate and discourse within the science
community, and the role of science in land management decision-making.
THE ROLE OF SCIENCE
Science can describe the connections between human and ecological
systems, develop methods to forecast the occurrence of damaging fire
events and other disturbances, and characterize the possible outcomes
of alternative management options. Scientists can help managers
interpret what they are seeing on the ground and can help evaluate the
environmental effects, social and economic costs and benefits, and
effectiveness of potential management programs towards reaching
management objectives. This scientific information can help managers
and policy makers to decide the most appropriate management strategies
for specific situations.
For example, many managers in recent fire seasons have reported
dramatic reductions in fire spread and intensity as fires entered
stands that have been thinned or previously burned. In recent years,
research results from carefully designed scientific studies on a number
of sites have supported and added specificity to these observations.
Scientists continue to work closely with managers to better interpret
these events, improve models for predicting and visualizing fire
behavior in modified fuels, and set up landscape scale experiments.
We know that the science basis for land management decision-making
is more complete for some areas than for others. The PNW Station, along
with its sister facilities, and other scientists are working to improve
information so that managers and the public are able to evaluate
alternatives using the best technical knowledge and expertise. We
acknowledge that we have much to learn--important knowledge gaps that
we must address. Scientific research is a process of building knowledge
study by study. As we are able to integrate results from multiple
studies, we increase our understanding of where responses differ, and
where they can be generalized. Scientists' ability to provide
information will aid decision-makers.
DEBATE WITHIN THE SCIENCE COMMUNITY
Scientists, through the peer review process and often vigorous
discussion, seek to continually evaluate and improve the scientific
body of evidence and the strength and range of applicability of their
conclusions and results. Studies, especially in resource management,
often vary greatly in scope and objectives, apply different methods,
and control for different variables. Results are affected by the
specific geographic area or forest type, variability in weather and
climate conditions, and variability in the way management treatments
are applied. Active discussion and debate within the science community
can help sort out reasons for differences in results, and build
scientific consensus on important issues. To external observers, this
debate can be seen as an argument for or against a certain management
practice or policy. But the best scientific debates lead to refinements
in our understanding, new research to answer remaining questions, and
better information for managers on the effects of management options
under a range of scenarios. Scientific debates are focused on competing
results or different possible explanations (theories) for those
results. This contrasts with policy debates, which often derive from
different philosophies of the role of government or of the desired
social outcomes.
THE ROLE OF SCIENCE IN LAND MANAGEMENT DECISION-MAKING
Management of fire and the effects of fire on the landscape raises
many questions of policy in addition to questions of science. Although
policy questions may often be framed as science questions, many non-
scientific considerations--such as societal goals, law, and economics--
must be part of the answer to these policy questions. While science can
provide a solid foundation for management and policy decisions, science
alone is not sufficient to determine policy. Adaptive management by
land managers is a useful tool that combines emerging research with
evaluation of management practices. This approach enables managers to
modify practices as our understanding of management impacts improves.
Debate over the effects and appropriate use of post fire
management, including logging, has intensified in recent years as the
sheer size of wildfires has grown. While many managers and scientists
consider post fire logging as part of a suite of appropriate
restoration techniques after wildfire, others argue that it causes
damage to burned sites sufficient to outweigh potential benefits. These
discussions have often been carried on with a notable absence of
balanced evaluation of the available science. Some of these arguments
have at their root different core philosophies on what constitutes
appropriate management. Managers and policy makers need the best
possible information, presented in an unbiased manner, to support them
in developing sound and supportable recommendations for post fire
management activities. The appropriate role of science is to provide
such information while avoiding participating in policy or political
debates.
SUMMARY
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss with you the role of
science in management decision-making and policy development. Dr.
Peterson and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
______
Mr. Walden. Thank you very much, Dr. West. We appreciate
you and Dr. Peterson for being here today.
I now recognize Mr. Donato for your statement today.
Good afternoon. Thanks for joining us. We appreciate your
taking time away to be with us and actually talk about your
findings with this Subcommittee. So welcome.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL DONATO, GRADUATE STUDENT, OREGON STATE
UNIVERSITY
Mr. Donato. Good afternoon, Chairman Walden and members of
the Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.
My name is Dan Donato. I'm a graduate student in Forest
Science at Oregon State University. I am representing a team of
senior ecologists and research associates conducting an
extensive field study of post-fire vegetation and fuel dynamics
in southwestern Oregon. For the past three years we've been
collecting data on forest structure and composition in
especially cogent, rigorously selected set of recent and older
fires that have experienced post-fire management.
The recent publication of a paper from our study has
generated some intense discussion. And the very fact that a
one-page paper has generated this level of discussion
underscores the paucity of direct scientific information that
exists on the effects of management intervention following
disturbances.
Before moving on to the specifics of our paper, I do want
to note that--and this is a repeating theme I'm sure you're
familiar with--decisions regarding intervention after
disturbance are driven by management objectives. The relevance
of science is to provide information within this context.
What does this study contribute?
Previous to our research, very few published studies
existed on the effects of salvage logging with respect to
forest regeneration and fire hazard. Of the very limited number
of studies, most have been retrospective and confounded. They
could not disentangle the effects of logging from those of
slash treatments or tree planting. Moreover, none of these
prior studies implemented an experimental design that included
pretreatment data, replication and controls. Pretreatment
measurements and short-term data provide critical reference
points for understanding long-term processes. This study
contributes these aspects.
What are the limitations of this study?
In our paper we presented data on the immediate effects
only of salvage logging two to three years after the Biscuit
Fire in southwestern Oregon. Strictly speaking, the scope of
inference of this study is limited to that timeframe and set of
conditions, although it is likely relevant in some capacity to
other fires.
And I think you worded it well yourself, Chairman Walden,
that no study's ever meant to be the final word, and certainly
we make no inferences to longer term processes in this paper.
Our study employs a replicated and statistically rigorous
design known as a before/after control intervention framework
to assess the effects of management treatments across a broad
portion of the burn targeted for salvage.
In our study we have sampled five of the seven east side
salvage units on the Biscuit Fire, large enough to accommodate
study plots. And this included all five that were available for
sampling as of the summer of 2005. This includes a
representative cross-section of Biscuit salvage operations.
We sampled the burn on portions that were expected to be
the most problematic for conifer establishment and the critical
first years following the burn. We found substantial conifer
establishments two and three years after the fire and that
seedlings were surviving multiple years. Mature trees
distributed throughout the burn that had not been killed by the
fire probably acted as seed sources, and this underscores the
importance of surviving trees to forest regeneration. The
seedling densities we observed thus far exceed what would be
planted under current management plans, although appreciate
that other factors other than density are also important.
These findings highlight a need for caution in
extrapolating knowledge gained from post-timber harvest studies
to post-disturbance ecology. Much of what we have learned
indicates that ecosystem response to harvest and disturbance
differs in fundamental ways. This cannot be stressed enough.
Now, with respect to the salvage effects, we conducted our
measurements after logging and prior to subsequent fuel
treatments. The regeneration we observed was reduced by 71
percent as a result of the salvage operations. This was due to
soil disturbance and burial by woody materials. We also saw an
increase in the amount of surface fuels of a magnitude that may
well be significant with respect to reburn potentials. This
simply underscores the importance of subsequent fuel treatments
if mitigation of short-term fire risk is an objective.
While the results are not necessarily surprising, they
raise some important questions. For example, does the increase
in fire hazard associated with salvage slash exceed acceptable
levels? And how will these fuel loads compare between logged
and unlogged stands over time? What might the specific effects
be of subsequent slash treatments in post-fire ecosystems? And
what role might natural processes play in attaining management
objectives?
Where management objectives include rapid reforestation as
a goal, it is useful to note that salvage has consistently been
shown to reduce natural regeneration that is underway by two
years after the fire. This was shown in the 1930s on the
Tillamook burn and again in the '50s in California and with
this study as well.
We do not know of any evidence of an ecological need to log
a burned site in order to plant it. To the contrary, studies to
date indicate a need to replant because of the logging.
However, this does not preclude salvage as a management option.
Rather, with information from this study and additional ones
that isolate the effect of different harvest techniques and
timing, any undesirable impacts of salvage could be minimized.
In closing, while there is a large body of knowledge,
observational knowledge on the part of land managers, which is
an extremely important piece, our scientific understanding of
the effects of post-fire interventions is weak at best.
Moreover, because the knowledge base from timber harvest has
limited inference to post-fire ecology, our understanding of
the effects of post-fire intervention will only advance with
well-designed experiments that include controls and
pretreatment data. Also, quantifying short-term responses and
isolating individual management actions provide critical
reference points for understanding long-term processes. In
light of this, our team intends to expand its research across a
broad range of time scales, ecosystems and fires in order to
address many of the questions currently being raised as a
result of our paper.
Thank you to the Committee for the opportunity to present
my findings today.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Donato follows:]
Statement of Daniel C. Donato, Department of Forest Science, Oregon
State University; Joseph B. Fontaine, Department of Fisheries and
Wildlife, Oregon State University; John L. Campbell, Department of
Forest Science, Oregon State University; W. Douglas Robinson,
Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Oregon State University; J. Boone
Kauffman, Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry, USDA Forest Service,
PSW Research Station; and Beverly E. Law, Department of Forest Science,
Oregon State University
Introduction
Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I am a graduate
student in the Forest Science Department at Oregon State University,
and have a Bachelor of Science degree in forestry and about a decade of
experience in forest and fire ecology.
For the past three years our team has been conducting an extensive
field study of vegetation and fuel dynamics following the Biscuit Fire.
Our study employs a replicated and statistically rigorous design to
assess the effects of individual management treatments across the broad
portion of the burn targeted for salvage.
Paucity of studies
The recent publication of a paper\1\ from our study has generated
intense discussion in the public and scientific communities. The very
fact that a one-page paper has generated this discussion underscores
the paucity of direct scientific information that exists on the effects
of management intervention following natural disturbance events.\2\
By way of example, consider two important works germane to this
topic. The first is considered the bible of fire ecology in the Pacific
Northwest, containing much of what we know about fire in forests of the
region.\3\ The second exemplifies a vast body of knowledge regarding
reforestation after timber harvest in the region of our study.\4\
Salvage logging and post-fire management are arguably where these two
bodies of knowledge meet. Yet neither text has a chapter on salvage.
Before moving on to the specifics of our paper, I want to note that
decisions regarding intervention after disturbance are driven by
management objectives. The relevance of science is to provide
information within this context.
Results and implications of the recent Science paper\1\
What this study contributes
Previous to our research, very few published studies existed on the
effects of salvage logging with respect to forest regeneration and fire
hazard. Of the very limited number of studies, most have been
retrospective and confounded--they could not disentangle the effects of
logging from those of slash treatments or tree planting.\5\ Moreover,
none of these prior studies implemented an experimental design
including pre-treatment data, replication, and controls. Pre-treatment
measurements and short-term data provide critical reference points for
understanding long-term processes. This study contributes all of these
aspects.
Limitations
In our paper we presented data on the immediate effects of salvage
logging two to three years after the Biscuit Fire in southwestern
Oregon. Strictly speaking, the scope of inference of this study is
limited to that timeframe and set of conditions. Like all fire studies,
it is a case study in time and space. The long-term effects of salvage
logging on the Biscuit Fire remain unknown.
Rather than characterizing the entire Biscuit Fire, we conducted
our research in mature forest stands that were identified as potential
logging units following the fire. Similarly, we did not set out to
measure all different logging methods, but measured representative and
commonly employed practices (helicopter and cable yarding).
Conifer Regeneration
In this study we sampled the Biscuit Fire on portions that were
expected to be the most problematic for conifer establishment in the
critical first years following the burn. One source of that problem was
thought to be a lack of seed source in large burned areas with no
surviving trees.\6\ However, we found substantial conifer establishment
2 and 3 years after the fire and that seedlings were surviving multiple
years. The wildfire area is a mosaic of live and dead trees. Mature
trees distributed throughout the burn that were not killed by the fire
probably acted as seed sources, underscoring the importance of
surviving trees to forest regeneration.\7\ The seedling densities
observed thus far exceed what would be planted under current management
plans. Other factors in addition to density are important in
determining whether regeneration is ``adequate,'' but this too depends
on management directives.
These findings suggest a need for caution in extrapolating
knowledge gained from post-timber harvest studies to post-disturbance
ecology. Much of what we have learned indicates that ecosystem response
to harvest and disturbance differs in fundamental ways.\8\ Examples of
post-fire conditions that may differ from post-harvest conditions
include the following:
Abundant on-site seed from stress cone crops, canopy seed
banks, and surviving trees dispersed throughout the disturbed area\7\
\9\ \10\ \11\
Favorable soil seedbed conditions (exposed mineral soil)
Temporary reduction in competing ground vegetation
Increases in nutrient availability
Differences in microclimate afforded by the dead trees
Salvage Effects
We conducted our measurements after logging and prior to subsequent
fuel treatments. The regeneration we observed was reduced by 71% as a
result of the salvage logging operations. This was due to soil
disturbance and burial by woody materials. We also, to the best of our
knowledge, published the first study quantifying the effect of logging
fire-killed trees on surface fuel loads. We saw an increase in the
amount of surface fuels of a magnitude that may well be significant
with respect to fire potentials. This underscores the importance of
subsequent fuel treatments if mitigation of short-term fire risk is an
objective.
While the results are not necessarily surprising, they raise
important questions. For example:
1. Does the increase in fire hazard associated with salvage slash
exceed acceptable levels?
2. How will fuel loads and fire hazard compare between logged and
unlogged stands over time?
3. What are the specific effects of subsequent slash treatments in
post-fire ecosystems?
4. What role might natural processes play in attaining management
objectives?
A mechanistic understanding of the effects of post-fire management
activities will emerge from studies that isolate the effects of each
step, followed by re-integration of the knowledge gained to form a
complete picture. This approach will vastly improve our ability to
predict whether various strategies will succeed in achieving management
objectives. Our study represents a beginning to such a process.
Salvage logging as a management tool
Our study was not designed to critique salvage logging as a
management tool; it serves only to provide information on the immediate
ecological response.
Where management objectives include rapid reforestation as a goal,
it is useful to note that salvage has consistently been shown to reduce
natural regeneration that is underway by 2 years after the fire.\1\
\7\ \12\ The implications of this depend on the specific objectives
for a site. We do not know of any evidence of an ecological need to log
a burned site in order to plant it. To the contrary, studies of salvage
and regeneration indicate a need to replant because of the
logging.\1\,\7\,\12\ These studies underscore a need to conceptually
separate the activity of salvage logging from reforestation activities,
which can occur with or without salvage. However, this does not
preclude salvage as a management option. Rather, with information from
this study and additional ones that isolate the effect of different
harvest techniques and timing, any undesirable impacts of salvage could
be minimized.
In Closing
Because the knowledge base from timber harvest has limited
inference for post-fire ecology, our understanding of the effects of
post-fire intervention will only advance with well-designed experiments
that include controls and pre-treatment data. Furthermore, quantifying
short-term responses and isolating individual management actions
provide critical reference points for understanding long-term
processes. In light of this, we intend to expand our research across a
broad range of time scales, ecosystems and fires in order to address
many of the questions currently being raised as a result of our paper.
Some additional closing remarks:
Retention of surviving trees and other legacies will
likely contribute to ecosystem response following disturbance.
Knowledge of ecosystem responses must be combined with
management objectives to determine whether actions need to be taken
following disturbance.
Considerations of post-disturbance intervention should be
placed within the context of fire regime, landscape conditions, and
forest type.
Thank you again for the opportunity to present our findings.
Citations
1. Donato, D.C., J.B. Fontaine, J.L. Campbell, W.D. Robinson,
J.B. Kauffman, B.E. Law, 2006. Post-wildfire logging hinders
regeneration and increases fire risk. Science 311: 352.
2. McIver, J.D. and L. Starr, 2001. A literature review on the
environmental effects of postfire logging. W. J. Appl. For. 16, 159.
3. Agee, J.K. 1993. Fire ecology of Pacific Northwest forests.
Island Press, Washington, D.C. 493 p.
4. Hobbs, S.D., S.D. Tesch, P.W. Owston, R.E. Stewart, J.C.
Tappeiner, G.E. Wells eds., 1992. Reforestation practices in
southwestern Oregon and northern California. Forest Research
Laboratory, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR.
5. Stuart, J.D., M.C. Grifantini, L. Fox, 1993. Early
successional pathways following wildfire and subsequent silvicultural
treatment in Douglas-fir/hardwood forests, NW California. For. Sci.
39(3): 561-572.
6. Sessions, J., R. Buckman, M. Newton, J. Hamman 2003. The
Biscuit Fire: Management options for forest regeneration, fire and
insect risk reduction, and timber salvage. Department of Forest
Resources, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR. 65 p.
7. Isaac, L.A. and G.S. Meagher, 1938. Natural reproduction on
the Tillamook Burn four years after the fire. 15 p. Pacific Northwest
Forest and Range Experiment Station.
8. Franklin, J.F., T.A. Spies, R. Van Pelt, A.B. Carey, D.A.
Thornburgh, D.R. Berg, D.B. Lindenmayer, M.E. Harmon, W.S. Keeton, D.C.
Shaw, K. Bible and J. Chen, 2002. Disturbances and structural
development of natural forest ecosystems with silvicultural
implications, using Douglas-fir forests as an example. For. Ecol.
Manage. 155: 399.
9. Larson, A.J. and J.F. Franklin, 2005. Patterns of conifer tree
regeneration following an autumn wildfire event in the western Oregon
Cascade Range, USA. For. Ecol. Manage. 218: 25-36.
10. Gray, A.N. and J.F. Franklin, 1997. Effects of multiple fires
on the structure of southwestern Washington forests, Northwest Sci. 71:
174-185.
11. A.N. Vagle, Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest
Silviculturalist, personal communication, 2006.
12. Roy, D.F., 1956. Salvage logging may destroy Douglas-fir
reproduction. Research Note No. 107. USDA Forest Service, California
Forest and Range Experiment Station.
______
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Mr. Donato. We appreciate your being
here.
Dr. Kolb, welcome. We look forward to your comments this
afternoon. Please find a microphone and go ahead. Maybe Mr.
Donato's can be moved. Actually, that's the public broadcasting
mike, so it doesn't do the P.A. System any good.
Mr. Kolb. I usually don't have a problem being heard, so
I'll----
Mr. Walden. Well, but they are cable--somebody's audio
system.
STATEMENT OF PETER KOLB, EXTENSION FORESTRY SPECIALIST AND
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF FOREST ECOLOGY, MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY
Mr. Kolb. OK. Well, I would like to draw your attention to
the screen as I have prepared a PowerPoint program for you. And
as that comes up, I'll be glad to continue.
OK. I would like to present to you some research that we
conducted upon fires of the southern Bitterroot Valley in which
356,000 acres burned in 2000, of which roughly half burned
severely or moderately.
We scrambled pretty quick and established eight study
blocks that looked at fire severity or vegetative response on
severely burned, moderately burned, and lightly burned areas as
might be demonstrated by this transect. We also established
plots on adjacent state forest land that was salvage logged
within six months following the fire, again represented by
these transects. Twenty million board feet or, in addition to
that, fire killed or harvested within six months of fire on
this study area.
This is what the study area looked like prior to salvage
logging, immediately after the fire. This is what it looked
like one year afterwards. Trees that had any propensity to
survive were left with a pretty liberal margin. Many of them
have subsequently died.
Logging debris was left to maximize soil stabilization. As
you can see, debris was left on the contour to slow down water
movement. As opposed to natural forest land where in the first
year nothing happened with the exception of some road
rehabilitation, as might be shown here.
Briefly, before fire many of these forested sites had heavy
organic layers. In this case here's an example of four inches.
Light or low severity burn does not consume that, for the most
part, as is demonstrated. Here is one of our plots in a light
burn one year after the fire, three years after the fire. This
is the stand where it occurred in, and revegetation was very--
very good, pretty much back to prefire situations. And this is
what we call beneficial fire, as opposed to severely burned
areas where the entire organic layer is consumed.
This is a study plot on an unsalvaged log site one year
post-fire, three years post-fire. You see a lot of noxious
weeds moving into these zones.
This is a salvage log site, severely burned, one year post-
fire. The repeat photo three years later is in the red square.
And I made this a little bit larger because these severely
burned areas that don't recover are typically where we saw
large diameter fuels consumed, generating a lot of heat and
essentially baked the soils underneath. And the recovery is
very slow.
Just for reference, this is--tree species respond
differently. This is a ponderosa pine seedling, which can
handle the high soil surface temperatures following fire.
Here's a Douglas fir seedling that does not handle these high
temperatures very well and many of these die. This is an area
where we did see natural regeneration, and I'd like to point
out that we often see the less heat tolerant seedlings
regenerating underneath logging debris in the shade. And the
difference in temperature when measured can be 80 degrees
difference, wherein the open soil surface can be up to 180
degrees Fahrenheit, which is lethal, whereas under the shade of
this debris it will be 100 degrees, which these seedlings can
tolerate.
So our results:
One, we found no difference in vegetative recolonization
between salvage logged and nonsalvage logged sites. More
extensive data is presented in the written testimony.
Second, 57 percent of our sample area, which included equal
amounts of low severity and moderate severity and high
severity, had scarce conifer natural regeneration three years
afterwards. This is supported by a parallel independent survey
by the Department of Natural Resources in conservation of
12,000 acres. 2,910 sample points showed that 87 percent of the
area had scarce or no conifer regeneration.
The response was affected by at least eleven variables,
independent of salvage logging, fire severity, aspect,
landscape position, et cetera. So, yeah, these are complex and
variable systems affected by a lot of different things.
All study plots on lower elevation Doug fir sites showed
good recovery rates of grasses, forbs and brush, indicating
they are not as fragile as might be suggested. However, with
the exception of erosion potential during the first year.
And, finally, salvage logging restoration plan that was
developed and administered by professional foresters did no
harm to natural revegetation establishment on salvage log sites
and assisted the recovery of the burned area to forest.
Now, there's a key point, because if you leave them alone,
they'll do just fine, but they may not come back to forest. So,
yes, this is a social decision: Do you want forest or do you
want conversion to grass or shrubland.
So--and the final point I'd like to make on this is I'm a
strong advocate of science and scientific research. However, we
train people in colleges to go out there and be able to think
critically, observe, and adapt their management. These are very
intelligent people.
If we wait for science to solve every answer that we have
out there, consider the complexity of these systems. A common
quote is that one teaspoon of biologically active top soil can
have 20,000 organisms. To fully comprehend every little thing
that happens out there, we could study these things for 100
years and not be sure.
So we need to know how much science do we need to have
before we proceed and not neglect the experiential knowledge
and the ability of management actions to coincide with
scientific studies.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kolb follows:]
Statement of Dr. Peter Kolb, Extension Forestry Specialist and
Associate Professor of Forest Ecology, Montana State University
Good afternoon.
For the past 21 years I have studied and worked in the forests of
Idaho and Montana specializing in forest regeneration, restoration, and
the roles of disturbance processes on forest ecosystem health. Over the
past 9 years I have worked specifically on applied research and
restoration practices following wildfires and insect and disease
outbreaks with private landowners, industry foresters, and public land
managers. I would like to present the results of post-fire vegetation
research conducted following the Bitterroot fires of 2000.
First, I'd like to point to a few general observations that can be
made about post-fire recovery, based on my experience, the scientific
literature, and the experience of other forestry professionals:
Harvesting fire killed trees before natural revegetation
takes place would have the least impact on plant recolonization. There
is a wealth of research examining natural post-fire plant recovery, the
effects of prescribed fire on forest plant communities and impacts of
various harvesting practices on natural tree regeneration. This
literature provides significant information that is needed to make good
decisions about post-fire management practices.
Furthermore, research examining the conditions that favor
tree seedling regeneration and survival indicates that some disturbance
of the of soil surface organic layers, including ash, that exposes
mineral soil might favor natural tree regeneration.
A comprehensive literature review of post-fire mitigation
impacts was published in 2000 that indicated contour felling, often
part of salvage operations, had been shown to have the greatest impact
on soil stabilization, often a major concern after wildfires.
Although scientific experimentation is a critical
component, and requires adequate funding, it is important to recognize
the experiential expertise and knowledge that exists in the current
forestry workforce.
To demonstrate these points and other information about the forest
recovery and reforestation following wildfires, I'll share with you
findings from a study conducted following the Bitterroot fires in
Montana. In 2000, approximately 356,000 acres burned across the
Bitterroot National Forest (307,000 ac), the Sula State Forest, and
private ownerships in Montana. The southern Bitterroot Valley provided
a remarkable opportunity as a post- fire study area because of the
large area affected by the 2000 wildfires that burned in diverse
topography at various levels of fire severity. Approximately 101,000
acres of this area burned with high severity, 71,500 acres with
moderate severity, and 183,500 with low severity effects (USDA Forest
Service 2000).
Following the fires, a team of professional foresters consulting
with scientists and logging practitioners developed a salvage plan for
post-fire management in Douglas-Fir forest types in western Montana. We
conducted a study after the management plan was implemented. Our
findings include:
There are many variables that affect post-fire recovery.
Salvage logging implemented under the specific conditions
specified by the post-fire recovery management plan, did achieve a
desirable outcome with respect to vegetative recovery and soil
stabilization.
That the forest ecosystem we sampled appears to have a
natural resilience to disturbance, whether it is natural or human
related. Although without human intervention a significant portion of
the study area will convert from forest to grass and shrubland, from an
ecological perspective this is not destructive. From a human
perspective it may, however, be undesirable.
Study Background and Design
The Bitterroot Valley is located in western Montana nestled between
the Bitterroot Mountains to the west and the Sapphire Mountains to the
east (see below). The Bitterroot National Forest (BNF) surrounds the
valley like a large horseshoe, encompassing both mountain ranges above
the wildland/urban interface. The Sula State Forest (SSF) is located in
the southeastern portion of the valley between the privately owned
French In the spring of 2001, eight post-fire study blocks were
established within the 2000 Bitterroot fires perimeter, where each
block consisted of a 0.5--0.75 mile transect with three 1/10 acre plots
and twelve 50-ft subtransects. Four of the eight blocks were located in
the Bitterroot Mountains within Sula Ranger District of the Bitterroot
National Forest (BNF) in the Laird and Warm Springs drainages (Picture
1). The remaining four blocks in the Sapphire Mountains were above
French Basin in the Cameron Creek drainage, with one block on the BNF
and three blocks on Sula State Forest (Picture 2). Since the Valley
complex fire burned in a mosaic of severities, each block was located
to cross all three fire severities along one contour (Picture 3). The
study area encompasses approximately 20,000 acres of fire affected
landscape. Fire severity and vegetation recovery were sampled within
these blocks in 2001 and again in 2003 (Pictures 4-12).
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6461.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6461.003
All blocks were located within the Douglas-fir habitat type series.
The five study blocks located on the Bitterroot National Forest (BNF)
had a broad spectrum of past management activities including no past
management, thinning treatments, shelterwood, seed tree, and overstory
removal harvests. None of the study areas on the Bitterroot National
Forest experienced immediate post-fire salvage harvesting prior to the
2001 sampling. Several of the study plots were salvage logged during
2002 and 2003 prior to their remeasurement in the summer of 2003. These
treatments were not statistically comparable since they occurred on
only a few plots. A non-statistical comparison of these later salvage
logging impacts did not show any differences from comparable non-
salvage logged plots. Three study blocks within the Sula State Forest
crossed severely burned sites that had been salvage logged during the
winter of 2000 to 2001 on snow-covered ground with a ground based
mechanical harvesting system, rubber tired skidders, and cable yarding
on steeper slopes.
The purpose of this study was to investigate post-fire vegetation
recovery in western Montana by exploring the influence of fire
severity, topography, and management. The specific research objectives
included:
1. Compare post-fire vegetation recovery on severely scorched
soils based on the influence of independent variables such as
topographic position, forest structure, habitat type, tree fire
impacts, etc.
2. Compare individual plant species ability to colonize across
severe, moderate and mildly fire impacted soils.
3. Compare the vegetation recovery of salvaged with unsalvaged
sites to determine if there are any differences in plant species
occurrence, distribution, overall plant cover, and natural conifer
regeneration.
4. Model plant recovery to determine which independent variables
(fire severity, topographic position, plant community type, etc.) best
predict understory vegetation cover by the third year post-fire.
Summary of Results
Fire severity and forest plant community type affected plant
recolonization. The plant colonization results varied significantly for
each species and across fire induced variables such as overstory
severity, understory severity, and by existing plant community type.
Numerous species showed affinities for certain environmental factors
and fire effects as demonstrated by successful colonization.
There is much variability in the initial recovery and subsequent
rate of recovery of vegetation due to naturally occurring gradients
across the landscape. Overall plant resprouting and colonization can be
summarized by the amount of total vegetative cover present on sampled
sites. Table 1 shows a summary of vegetative cover as stratified by
some of the variables encountered in a post-fire landscape.
Much of the initial post-fire vegetation recovery occurs within the
first growing season following a fire event for the sites we studied,
and then increases at a much slower rate. This point is demonstrated in
Table 2. In general, the 40% average plant cover occurred on patches of
soil that had not been severely scorched within the first year. By year
three, moderately scorched soil surfaces had been colonized. Severely
scorched soils had a very slow rate of vegetative recovery on them with
many of the more severe patches showing minimal recovery even 3 years
post-fire.
Colonizing plants originate from a variety of sources. Table 3
shows sources of plants that sprouted in the sites, including on-site
and off-site sources. Three survival strategies describe the immediate
response following a disturbance. On-site species are represented by
two forms: survivor and residual colonizer. Survivor plants have fire
avoidance mechanisms that enable species to resprout from the root
crown, stolons, or rhizomes. Residual colonizers include germinating
seeds and fruits that survived the fire through heat resistant
properties or by being located in fire avoidant sites. Off-site sources
include seeds and fruits that are transported by wind, animals, or
water, and is often the means by which exotic weedy species invade. On-
site sources dominated the post-fire community in 2001 and 2003. This
leads us to conclude that a healthy pre-fire understory plant community
can ensure a faster plant recovery following a fire.
Salvaged logged sites showed similar vegetation recovery as
unsalvaged logged sites, indicating that salvage does not necessarily
damage vegetation recovery (see Table 4). It is critical to point out
that for this analysis to be meaningful, sites that had similar burn
severities must be compared. Therefore, only sites that had experienced
similar fire impacts and no post-fire manipulation were used for
comparison. Salvage logging occurred on sites within the Sula State
Forest that had experienced severe overstory fire effects where more
than 80% of the trees had been killed. Salvage logging encompassed
approximately 10,000 acres with an average of 5,000 board-feet per acre
removed (DNRC harvest statistics). Although logging occurred during the
winter using a combination of mechanical harvesting and skidding along
with cable yarding on steeper slopes, mild conditions often resulted in
minimal snowpack and unfrozen ground, thus some soil disturbance
occurred. This was actually favorable for our study since we had
speculated that disruption of the thick organic ash layer by equipment
travel would actually enhance vegetative recovery. Although there is
some evidence of higher plant cover on salvage logged sites the
differences are not statistically different. Similarly several of the
plots on the Bitterroot National Forest experienced selective salvage
harvesting two and three years after the fire. We did not have enough
of these plots to make statistically valid comparisons; however, the
limited data did not show any observable differences on these plots
with associated plots on similar fire severities without salvage
logging. Considering the number of variables that affect post-fire
recovery more study plots would have been needed to make meaningful
statistical comparisons among all variables.
Natural conifer regeneration was closely correlated to the
occurrence of seed producing mature trees, and the prevalence of shade
from either surviving trees or northern aspects. A record was kept of
residual tree cover survival for both 2001 and 2003 sample periods,
natural conifer tree seedling abundance, insect and disease activity,
and presence of invasive exotic weeds (Table 5). Only 19% of our sample
area had abundant conifer natural regeneration (more than 49 seedlings
per 1/10 acre plot), 24% of our sample area had moderate natural
regeneration (between 21 and 49 seedlings per 1/10 acre plot), and 57%
of our sample area had scarce natural regeneration (1--20 seedlings per
1/10 acre plot). There was no correlation between salvage logging and
seedling abundance, nor was there any correlation between the presence
of invasive weeds and salvage logging.
Bark beetle activity on residual surviving trees was present on 76%
of the plots.
Corroborating data
In 2002, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and
Conservation conducted an independent survey of the 12,000 acres of
fire affected lands within the Sula State Forest. A survey sample grid
of 2,910 plots that were 1/300 acre in size was measured. The results
showed that only 13.3% of the area had naturally establishing seedlings
and that 18.9% of the area was within 200ft of trees capable of
producing seed. This survey indicated a need to plant tree seedlings
across 86.7% of the fire affected forest to ensure adequate tree
regeneration.
An additional study conducted by the Montana DNRC monitored soil
erosion on burned sites across the Sula State forest in the year
following the fires. Although there were areas that exhibited severe
post-fire erosion, salvage logged sites did not show any greater
propensity for erosion than sites that were not salvaged. In a second
study of salvage logged areas following the 2003 Moose fire in northern
Montana, soil impacts from salvage logging were found to be ``less than
15% of detrimental affect considered to acceptable...Levels of soil
erosion and disturbance observed on logged sites are not expected to
affect long-term soil productivity compared to unlogged sites.''
Conclusions
The study of trends within nature is very difficult because of the
many variables that influence a single event. Wildfires across a
forested landscape add another dimension of variability by burning in a
mosaic that is influenced by topography, wind, fuel, fuel
characteristics, and past human management activities. Once these fires
have stopped burning, the vegetation response is equally variable, and
depends on seed availability, microclimate, animal influences, weather
trends, and continued disturbance processes. The ash left by a wildfire
may be a good seedbed for some tree species, and a poor seedbed for
others. On some sites the burn severity has affected the soil surface
to such a degree that it presents an inhospitable seedbed. In other
instances the desired tree species may no longer be in the vicinity to
provide seed or even capable of producing viable seed. For forested
sites that are water limited and prone to high summer temperatures,
even adequate seed may not ensure a desired survival rate.
Alternatively, cooler moist sites with a good seed source may
regenerate with an over abundance. Considering that we have been
experiencing a warm dry climatic trend, which is partially responsible
for the wildfires in the first place, it should come as no surprise
that natural regeneration is severely inadequate on many sites that
formerly supported trees within our study area.
It is important to note that this study is based on one forest type
in one ecological region. However, its findings combined with other
scientific analysis and practical experience demonstrates:
A need for localized management prescriptions based on
local experiential knowledge of site conditions and vegetation
responses, professional forestry expertise, and scientific data.
A need for additional research that is conducted
cooperatively with applied land managers to help refine management
prescriptions.
Timely salvage, using the appropriate equipment and
management prescriptions can produce desired outcomes while limiting
the negative consequences of wildfires.
Natural regeneration, while desirable, does not always
occur following wildfires in forests. Tree planting may be needed to
return an ecosystem into a forested condition.
This study was initiated to add basic knowledge of how vegetation
recovers following wildfires across a mosaic of severities on the
Douglas-fir habitat type of western Montana. It was also designed to
measure if salvage logging, combined with logging debris manipulation
to stabilize soil would impact natural vegetation recovery. Although
the desire was to establish more study plots, the data we gathered was
adequate. Although not yet published in a peer reviewed journal, the
study was the basis for the Master's Thesis of LaWen Hollingsworth and
was reviewed by three other well respected and prominent scientists
with expertise in statistics, fire behavior and fire ecology.
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______
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Dr. Kolb. We appreciate the research
you do and your time here with us today.
Mr. Lorensen, welcome. We look forward to your comments
this afternoon. Thanks for joining us. And I assume your mike's
turned on.
STATEMENT OF TED LORENSEN, ASSISTANT STATE FORESTER, OREGON
DEPARTMENT OF FORESTRY
Mr. Lorensen. Chairman Walden, Members of the Subcommittee,
I'm Ted Lorensen, Assistant State Forester, Oregon Department
of Forestry.
One nice thing about going last is I can respond to some of
the earlier comments, and they were very thoughtful and did
perk my interest in making some deviation from my written
remarks.
Representative DeFazio talked about removal of wood from
streams for the purpose of fish restoration back in the '50s,
'60s, '70s, '80s, '90s. That was done and it was done despite a
substantial body of science that showed the importance of wood
in streams. In fact, in the '30s and '40s in Pennsylvania they
were starting to put wood back in streams to recover fish.
The science that was applied in this case was not thorough
nor well tested. And the experience that was applied and used
in making the decisions was also based upon fairly unique and
localized circumstances that have been applied to the
landscape. So that's kind of a bad example maybe of the use of
science and experience in making some inappropriate and
overextended decisions.
Mr. Donato had mentioned the Tillamook burn. I do need to
explain a bias here. I come from an agency that is--took on the
Tillamook burn back in the '50s and restored it after a series
of fires that were called the six-year jinx. And we do have a
lot of experience about what we can expect in some cases in
terms of reburn of the large-scale intense fires. And, again,
these forests reburn on a six-year period. It wasn't until we
did some snag management, created corridors and salvage logging
and then took on the first massive reforestation project really
in the world that that became the forest that it is today.
And so seeding and planting were both done. We learned a
lot from that. There's a tremendous amount of information that
supports opportunities, but it is one issue and one experience
that's--that isn't applicable to a broader scale, but certainly
has some importance in this topic.
The Board of Forestry, of which Dr. Hobbs is Chair, clearly
works on a range of forest issues; really have to separate
values and science. The only scientific uncertainty is a key
part of using science. And as we looked at this issue, the
Board of Forestry is exploring a number of ways to better
address science and dealing with uncertainty, in setting
policy.
And I think you've heard from a number of folks about the
notion of active adaptive management. And, again, that's a
concept in your bill. We believe very strongly that active
adaptive management is a way to apply a diverse set of
treatments and allow us to learn from a range of actions on a
diversity of sites. This approach recognizes there's no single
best option to achieve all our values, but it does speed up our
learning process by placing multiple treatments across the
landscape, much the same way that a scientific experiment
would.
We can place a range of active and passive management
options side by side in a landscape, measure the outcomes over
time, and compare how the results of each option match our
values. This is a key component of the Board of Forestry's
Forest Management Plan for the Tillamook and Clatsop and other
state forests.
However, to be successful, the resources must be in place
and ready to go to capture learning moments like the Biscuit
Fire. And my experience is that that's often not the case, and
hopefully your bill will address that.
Another process the Board of Forestry's been looking at is
what's called systematic evidence review. It's a new way of
dealing with conflicting science. It provides a systematic
approach for reviewing or synthesizing scientific literature.
Many different management situations like post-fire recovery
conflicts over what is or what is not best available science
frequently occur. Problems also arise when interest groups use
selective studies with conflicting results to challenge public
land management decisions.
Former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber suggested to the
Oregon Board of Forestry that natural science--natural resource
decisions might strongly benefit from developing a process
similar to the systematic evidence review process used in the
medical field. This process differs in some important ways from
additional literature review by using a preestablished explicit
protocol for finding, screening, grading and integrating
primary research studies to answer specifically narrow, defined
question.
A key difference with systematic evidence review is that
the protocol spells out in advance how information will be
gathered to reduce bias in the selection and inclusion of
studies. Plus it indicates an evidence quality hierarchy to
guide researchers in assessing the quality applicable with
different studies. The Board of Forestry is looking at this
process and we'd welcome involvement of Federal agencies in its
use. We have presented background on that to the regional
forester, and I think we're going to continue to use this as a
way of exploring some better opportunities in the use of
science.
I do provide some comments on the importance of expedited
salvage process, and again a lot of the study that you've heard
about today, some of the outcomes depended upon when they
started it and what were the circumstances. Our view of the
world as an expedited salvage process gives you a whole lot
more options, may reduce some of the value conflicts, and we
encourage again that process being improved.
Very clearly in time further scientific studies will likely
calm the scientific divide over post-fire forest response if
the studies are sufficiently broad and long term. The science
alone will not settle this policy choice. It is a choice that
reflects public policy in the case of public lands and desires
of forest owners in the case of private lands.
Policy seeks certainty of outcome for complex issues.
Science cannot deliver either certainty or solutions to complex
problems that are beyond the realm of science or outside the
daily gathered, analyzed and debated. The proper role of
science is to help inform people on some of the possibilities
and consequences of choices. To do that, science must be
thorough and well tested. People must understand and accept the
limits of what science can do to inform complex social choices
that must consider other nonscientific factors.
In closing, I just offer one thought. In my experience with
scientists, and I'm one non-Ph.D. here probably and maybe Mr.
Donato will become one eventually, but I have been in the
interface between policy and science for a long, long time, and
I've always been amazed at how often we invite scientists to
speak to policymakers. And the first thing they want to do is
go off task and talking about science to telling people what
should be done. And I think it's also incumbent upon
policymakers to say hold it, stop, let's get back to the
science. And, again, I think that's an important corrective
measure. And I encourage that all policymakers think about
their role in the use of science as well.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lorensen follows:]
Statement of Theodore Lorensen, Assistant State Forester,
Oregon Department of Forestry
Introduction
Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for
inviting me to talk with you today about science and forest management.
Policy makers must consider both science and values in setting
policies. Forest managers must consider science, experience and values
to get their job done. Based on the values reflected in federal policy,
federal forests produce a wide range of outputs including water,
wildlife, timber, and recreation. In hotly debated policy issues, like
the issues surrounding post-fire salvage, there is a tendency to mix
science and values.
The controversy about the new study provides a perfect object
lesson in the need to distinguish between science and values, each of
which must play a role if we are to derive the greatest possible
benefit from the richness of our forests. The experts who carry out
forest management on the ground use science and their experience to
achieve objectives that are based on values--the values of landowners,
shareholders, or those of policy-makers like Congress who craft the law
and policy that guide the management of public land. If a landowner
wants to emphasize a particular forest objective--or to achieve a broad
range of benefits--and is willing to leave the details to the forester,
in most cases we have ample science and experience to provide
satisfactory results.
However, science will not decide whether to salvage log and
reforest, or not. That choice is not a scientific issue, but one of
values. It is a choice that must reflect public policy in the case of
public lands and the desires of forestland owners in the case of
private lands. The proper role of science is to help inform people on
the possibilities and consequences of those choices, and to do that the
science must be thorough and well tested. It is not the role of science
to tell people what those choices should be.
As the Oregon Board of Forestry has worked on a range of forest
issues, they have strived to separate values and science while setting
policy. In this effort they have recognized that scientific uncertainty
is part of the problem and they have explored ways to better address
science and its uncertainty in setting policy.
Dealing with Scientific Uncertainty
Science is often incomplete and sometimes even contradictory.
Ecosystems are very complex, and there remains some scientific
uncertainty about how to provide the values we want from our forests
after a large fire or other disturbance. Some scientists suggest that
aggressive salvage and reforestation will provide the ``best'' recovery
of a burned area, while others suggest that the area will ``best''
recover without human intervention. While what is ``best'' is primarily
a value based decision, scientific uncertainty has also played a role
in the current debate.
There are many sources of uncertainty surrounding post-fire
recovery. There is a degree of uncertainty related to our ability to
predict future outcomes in the forest. Events like weather and climate
introduce a range of random elements. Natural reforestation success and
future stand development contain large random components that are not
predictable at every scale. While we might be able to predict the
average development of a large number of forest stands, we might not
predict with certainty the outcome in any one particular stand.
Ecosystems are dynamic and forest stands that start with similar
characteristics can take a number of different successional pathways
and end up with very different characteristics depending on random
events like fire, wind-throw, and insect epidemics. There are
substantial differences in the scientific community over how post-fire
logging and reforestation studies should be designed and interpreted.
All this adds to uncertainty.
Active Adaptive Management
Even though there is uncertainty about the outcomes of using
different forest management treatments, there are ways that
policymakers, scientists, and managers can deal with this uncertainty.
Active adaptive management applies a variety of diverse treatments and
allows us to learn from a range of actions on a diversity of sites.
This approach recognizes that there is no single best option to achieve
all our values. Active adaptive management speeds up our learning
process by placing multiple treatments across the landscape in much the
same way that a scientific experiment would. We can place a range of
active and passive management options side-by-side on the landscape,
measure the outcomes over time, and compare how the results of each
option match our values. To be successful the resources must be in
place and ready to go to capture learning moments like the Biscuit
Fire.
``Systematic Evidence Review''
Another way to deal with conflicting science would be to develop a
systematic approach for reviewing and synthesizing scientific
literature. In many different management situations, like post-fire
recovery, conflicts over what is or is not the ``best available
science'' frequently occur. Problems also arise when interest groups
use selective studies with conflicting results to challenge public land
management decisions. Former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber suggested
to the Oregon Board of Forestry that natural resource decisions might
benefit from developing a process similar to the Systematic Evidence
Reviews used in the medical field. This process differs from a
traditional literature review by using a pre-established, explicit
protocol for finding, screening, grading and integrating primary
research studies to answer specific narrowly defined questions. A key
difference with a Systematic Evidence Review is that the protocol
spells out in advance how information will be gathered to reduce bias
in the selection and inclusion of studies, plus it includes an evidence
quality hierarchy to guide researchers in assessing the quality and
applicability of different studies. The Oregon Board of Forestry is
currently evaluating the usefulness of incorporating a systematic
approach into their decision-making and would welcome the participation
of the federal agencies. Attached is the Executive Summary of an
evaluation done about the applicability of Systematic Evidence Review
to natural resource issues prepared for the Oregon Board of Forestry by
the Institute for Natural Resources at Oregon State University.
Importance of an Expedited Salvage Process
If salvage is going to be a viable option, the processes leading to
approval of a salvage operation needs to be expedited or the economic
values will greatly diminish or be lost entirely. Post-fire salvage
operations on federal lands have become increasingly contentious and
difficult for federal forest managers to implement. The complexity and
length of Environmental Impact Statements and other NEPA documents has
grown to the point where post-fire salvage operations normally take
between one and three years to implement. Because of this delay in
implementation, much of the salvageable value in the burned timber
stands is being lost to decay. It is worth noting that on state-owned
land in Oregon, salvage can and does commence within a few weeks of a
fire.
The merchantable value of small and mid-sized diameter trees is
especially time sensitive, and delays in harvesting may result in
substantial or complete loss of value from these trees. The reduced
value of the smaller trees means that most or all of the economic value
in the stand is contained in the larger trees that are also most
valuable as future stand structure and wildlife habitat. This basic
relationship of the large trees being the major source of both the
economic and the environmental values is part of the value based
controversy over recent salvage sales.
One way to help address this issue is to reduce the time associated
with planning and implementing salvage sales. Reducing the time it
takes to plan and implement a salvage sale would allow more of the
value of the small and mid-diameter trees to be captured and allow
greater flexibility to leave larger trees, while still maintaining the
economic viability of the timber sale. However, to be socially
acceptable, reducing the time it takes to implement a salvage operation
must not cause a corresponding reduction in environmental protection.
Therefore, a carefully crafted set of design criteria needs to be
developed that will ensure both the provision of economic benefits and
environmental protection.
Another value at the heart of this debate is reducing the risks of
future wildfires. Speeding up the decision to salvage burned timber has
the advantage of reducing the standing fuel load while leaving options
to use natural regeneration available. If salvage is done promptly,
natural regeneration can be used if it is desired. Experience with
wildfire has taught us that snags are lightning ignition sources, burn
for long periods of time, and increase fire spread though torching and
spotting. Therefore, managing standing fuels through salvage logging
can reduce both fire risk and hazard to some degree. If the salvage
logging is done promptly, before natural regeneration occurs, land
managers can take advantage of natural seedlings without causing the
mortality that can be associated with logging equipment.
In Conclusion
Forests touch us all, providing benefits that contribute to our
economic well-being, the health of our environment and the quality of
our lives. Consequently, we are all *obligated to remember that science
is always evolving, and to maintain a clear distinction between science
and values. Conflicts over forests have often been perpetuated by
ignoring this distinction.
In time, further scientific studies will likely calm the scientific
divide over post-fire forest responses if the studies are sufficiently
broad and long term. But science alone will not settle this policy
choice. It is a choice that reflects public policy in the case of
public lands and the desires of forestland owners in the case of
private lands. Policy seeks certainty of outcome for complex issues.
Science cannot deliver either certainty or solutions to complex
problems that are beyond the realm of science or outside the data
gathered, analyzed and debated. The proper role of science is to help
inform people on some of the possibilities and consequences of choices;
to do that the science must be thorough and well tested. People must
understand and accept the limits of what science can do to inform
complex social choices that must consider other non-scientific factors.
The lesson is this: Science must be addressed distinct from values.
Science and values each have an important role to play if we are to
agree on a course for managing our forests to provide a sustainable
flow of a wide variety of benefits. Values shape our views about what
we expect and cherish in our forests. Science, as it evolves, helps us
achieve those results. Blurring the difference between science and
values only fuels the conflict and rancor that is gripping our forest
management decisions.
This concludes my statement, and I am glad to answer questions.
Appended Material
Behan, Jeff. December, 2005. Executive Summary: Applying systematic
evidence reviews in Oregon forest policy: Opportunities and challenges.
Institute for Natural Resources, Oregon State University, Corvallis
Oregon. 10 pp.
______
[Additional information submitted for the record by Mr.
Lorensen follows:]
Applying Systematic Evidence Reviews in Oregon Forest Policy:
Opportunities and Challenges
december, 2005
Institute for Natural Resources
210 Strand Ag Hall
Oregon State University
Corvallis OR 97330
Lead Preparer: Jeff Behan
Graduate Research Assistants: Seth Crawford and Erica Kleiner
Executive Summary
Use of ``best available science'' to inform natural resource
policies is codified in federal and state statutes. Forest management
stakeholders consistently agree that the best available science should
be used in policymaking. But conflicts over what is, and is not
``good'' science and selective use of studies with different
conclusions by competing interest groups continue to challenge public
land managers. These conflicts point to a need to develop a method of
synthesizing technical information that relates to particular forest
management questions in a way that will be more readily accepted as
objective and definitive.
In June 2004, former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber presented
testimony to the Oregon Board of Forestry (BOF) on a number of forest
policy issues, including the problem of ``dueling science''. Dr.
Kitzhaber introduced the Systematic Evidence Review (SER) process and
explained how it is used to rigorously evaluate evidence on treatment
efficacy in clinical medicine. He suggested that this process could be
adapted and brought to bear on developing a more credible evidence base
for forest policy making.
The BOF subsequently incorporated exploration of the SER process
into the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) State Forests Program work
plan. ODF contracted with the Institute for Natural Resources (INR) at
Oregon State University (OSU) to prepare a report on SERs. The
Institute works to provide Oregon leaders with ready access to current,
science-based information and methods for better understanding our
resource management challenges and developing solutions. The BOF and
ODF requested that INR develop:
Background information on SERs;
A comparison of medical research studies and natural
resource research studies to identify any differences that affect the
ability to develop methods for evaluating the quality of research
evidence; and
Proposed principles for a simplified SER-like research
evidence evaluation process for ODF to use to organize, present, and
synthesize scientific information for use in BOF decision making.
How does ODF currently gather and assess scientific information to use
in forest management policies?
ODF utilizes scientific knowledge in its duties to (1)
manage Oregon state forests for the ``greatest permanent value'' to the
people of Oregon, and (2) regulate commercial forest operations on non-
federal forests through the Oregon Forest Practices Act.
ODF policies are informed by science through (1) internal
science reviews, (2) external reviews commissioned by the agency to
assess the scientific validity of its planning documents and regulatory
proposals.
Despite well-intentioned and in many cases quite involved
efforts to use the ``best science available,'' ODF is regularly
challenged by groups suggesting that they really are not doing so.
These challenges may stem from disputes over which pieces
of technical evidence were, or were not considered, or over how
particular pieces of evidence were interpreted, weighed and applied in
policymaking.
The core of disputes over use of technical information
may involve broader disagreements over forest policy goals, and the
appropriate course of action when outcomes are uncertain, rather than
disputes over scientific evidence per se.
What is a ``Systematic Evidence Review'' and how do SERs work?
An SER is rigorous, transparent, reproducible process for
assessing scientific and technical information, used primarily in
clinical medicine.
An SER focuses tightly on a specific question, or small
set of questions, which frame decisions about what evidence is relevant
to the review, and what is not.
SERs differ from traditional literature reviews in their
use of pre-established, explicit protocols for finding, screening,
grading and integrating primary research studies.
SERs are designed to be as comprehensive, exhaustive and
objective as possible, which means they are typically time consuming
and expensive.
Systematic Evidence Reviews and evidence based medicine
have been described as a ``paradigm shift'' in healthcare, but there is
still considerable debate about how SERs are conducted and used.
Costs of medical SERs range from $50,000-$250,000. A
natural resource SER may cost considerably less because the evidence
base is likely to be smaller, but this would depend on the nature of
the question.
History of Systematic Evidence Reviews
Since emerging in the 1980's the SER approach has been
widely adopted in the fields of clinical medicine and public health,
and continues to expand rapidly.
The largest international entity that conducts and
disseminates SERs is the Cochrane Collaboration, which maintains a
database of over 2000 SERs, develops and refines review methods, and
offers training on conducting SERs.
In the United States, SERs are conducted and disseminated
by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) through its 15
designated Evidence-based Practice Centers. Oregon Health Sciences
University in Portland is one such center.
Interest is growing in adapting the SER approach to other
areas of public policy, including wildlife conservation, but SERs are
not well suited for all policy areas, or to all questions within a
particular field.
The Systematic Evidence Review process in clinical medicine
SERs require specific, tightly focused review questions
to (1) clarify the purpose and delimit the scope of the review, and (2)
strengthen linkages between the questions and subsequent steps in the
review process.
SERs use explicit protocols that spell out in advance
exactly how evidence will be gathered, assessed, collated and
summarized. Documenting all steps in the SER ensures that it is
transparent, replicable and can be updated later if necessary.
SERs are characterized by vigorous and thorough efforts
to compile all available research and technical information that
pertains to the review question(s), including unpublished and ``gray''
literature.
Quality assessment of individual studies is a key
characteristic of SERs, providing more rigor than traditional reviews.
Quality assessments are used to (1) decide whether a relevant study
should be included in the review, and (2) to rank included studies in
an evidence quality hierarchy, usually based on study design and
methods.
Quality assessment is labor intensive and remains
controversial. Random controlled trials and other tightly controlled
study designs are favored in medical SERs, but there is no general
consensus on standardized quality assessment criteria.
Synthesis consists of tabulation of study
characteristics, quality and outcomes for the primary purpose of
investigating whether results are consistent across included studies,
and if not, investigating reasons for apparent differences.
A narrative synthesis is used to qualitatively compare
and synthesize included studies. Qualitative synthesis may be all that
is possible if differences in population, intervention, outcome
measures, designs and quality preclude meta-analysis.
Quantitative synthesis, such as meta-analysis may be used
to statistically combine study findings, as long as the studies are
similar with regard to population and intervention under study, outcome
measures, study design and quality.
The strength of a body of evidence (all included studies)
is assessed by examining aggregate study quality, the quantity of
evidence (number of studies, sample size), consistency of findings
across studies, and coherence of the evidence as a whole.
SERs obtain their rigor partly through efforts to
identify and explicitly acknowledge ways in which bias could enter into
and affect results in primary studies, and to reduce bias during
selection and review of these studies.
SERs can be, and often are updated when new information
emerges that will significantly strengthen or change the outcome of an
existing review. Explicit documentation of how the review was conducted
makes updating possible.
A key use of SER information is developing clinical
practice guidelines: ``systematically developed statements to assist
practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for
specific clinical circumstances.''
More progress has been made in rigorously assessing
available evidence through SERs than in incorporating this evidence
into medical policy due to problems accessing clinical guidelines and
because many patients prefer tailored care.
Critiques of SER methods and cautions about using SER information
Research quality assessment criteria are a cornerstone of
SERs, but there is still no consensus on what these criteria should be
and how different types of quantitative evidence should be weighed.
There is growing criticism within the medical community
of rigid study exclusion criteria and the practice of ranking evidence
quality on the basis of research methodology alone.
There are growing calls for including a broader range of
evidence in SERs, including qualitative evidence and expert opinion,
but finding ways to include, and weigh, such disparate types of
evidence are major challenges.
Framing questions in the tightly focused, specific way
that current systematic review methods require may skew the review away
from important issues that are more difficult to focus.
Absence of evidence regarding the effectiveness or safety
of a health care treatment or medication does not mean that the
intervention is not safe or effective. In other words, ``absence of
evidence is not evidence of absence''.
Strength of evidence in and of itself is not related to
the magnitude of effectiveness of an intervention. There may be very
strong evidence that the intervention has little impact or, conversely,
the apparent impact of the intervention may be large but the evidence
regarding the impact may be weak.
How strong the evidence needs to be when making a
particular type of decision should depend, at least in part, on the
potential consequences if assumptions about the outcomes of an
intervention turn out to be wrong.
Applying SERs to Natural Resource Issues: Challenges and Opportunities
Disentangling questions about evidence from those about values and
preferences
Forest and ecosystem managers usually lack the widely
agreed upon single objective (better human health) that clinical
medicine practitioners enjoy.
Clarifying and obtaining consensus on the underlying
objective (e.g., the proposed management action about which the
information is being collected) may be critical to conducting a
successful natural resource SER.
Differences between medical science and ecosystem science as fields of
inquiry
Compared to clinical medicine, ecology is a younger
science that involves a greater proportion of observational field-based
studies to laboratory experiments.
Ecological research typically involves greater
methodological diversity, fewer laboratory controls, less replication
and more ``nuisance'' variables than medical research.
Ecology deals with larger spatial scales, longer
timeframes and more complexity associated with multiple interacting
species, habitats and ecological processes than medicine, which is
focused on a single species.
In general, there is less certainty about scientific
conclusions in ecological studies than in clinical medicine.
The challenge of delimiting evidence that applies to a forest
management question
SERs are best suited to synthesizing research focused on
whether a single medical intervention ``works'' or ``doesn't work''. In
the natural resources arena, SERs would be best suited to analogous,
single variable questions.
Complex, multifaceted forest management questions might
be difficult to address using the SER approach, and for simpler
questions, there may be little focused research evidence available.
Much evidence concerning forest ecosystems consists of
studies in which several variables are considered simultaneously in
order to accurately describe real world ecological relationships.
Synergies among species and processes are common in
forest ecosystems. Thus, it may be impossible or misleading to isolate
a single ecosystem component or single outcome of a management action
as the focus of an SER.
Delimiting the evidence that applies to a forest
management question may also be challenging due to uncertainty about
extrapolating results from studies to other areas with significant
biological, physical, climatic or land use history differences
For a forest management question structured as suggested
by SER guidelines, there is likely to be a range of tangentially
related research that falls somewhere between direct relevance and
complete irrelevance.
A feasible natural resource SER may require a compromise
between a holistic approach that is closer to reality, but impractical
for defining relevant studies, and a reductionist approach that may
limit the review's relevance.
A related challenge may lie in structuring a question
with a degree of specificity that allows inclusion of enough evidence
to make the review worthwhile, but also limits it to a manageable
scope.
The challenge of assessing evidence quality in forest ecosystem science
There is likely to be a paucity of relevant, focused
experimental research and a greater proportion of potentially diverse
observational evidence available to address a natural resource
question.
This type of evidence is typically graded as ``low''
quality in medical SERs, e.g., often observational with few controls,
frequently with confounding interactions.
If the same criteria used to assess evidence quality in
medical SERs are deemed appropriate for a natural resource SER, these
criteria would probably need to be applied less stringently to assess
forest ecosystem research.
Depending on the nature of the SER question and evidence
available to address it, it may also be necessary to develop
significantly different criteria for assessing the quality of forest
ecosystem research.
There is a lack of consensus on quality assessment
criteria used in medical SERs. Achieving consensus on if, and how, such
criteria should be used in forest ecosystem SERs may prove difficult.
There may be no single set of quality assessment criteria
that will work for all natural resource SERs. Assessment criteria may
need tailoring to fit the evidence that pertains to a particular SER
question.
In cases where the evidence consists of studies and
monitoring with disparate methods, locations and outcome measures,
there may be no clear rationale for saying that one piece of evidence
is ``higher'' or ``lower'' quality than another.
With all else being equal, studies that involve
relatively larger spatial scales, more replication, more controls and
longer timeframes are likely to produce the most reliable results.
However, ``all else equal'' assumptions often don't hold
true. Greater complexity and diversity at larger scales can introduce
more, rather than less uncertainty.
Locating the evidence
Archiving of medical research abstracts and peer reviewed
papers is more organized and standardized than in ecosystem science.
Comprehensive literature searches in a natural resource SER may be
harder to achieve than in clinical medicine.
The role of qualitative research, expert judgments and experience
Expert knowledge and experience play a greater role in
ecosystem research than in medicine because investigators must rely
more heavily on expert judgment when interpreting results.
Natural resource management also involves high levels of
expert judgment because scientific information is often not available.
Experiential knowledge may constitute an important part
of the overall evidence base, but incorporating this evidence into
quality assessment and ranking framework in the context of an SER
remains problematic and controversial.
One potential way around this debate is to understand
scientific and expert knowledge as complementary, and equally important
in ecosystem and natural resource management.
Opportunities for applying Systematic Evidence Reviews to natural
resource issues
Applying SERs to natural resource issues will be
challenging, but early proponents of the SER approach in medicine faced
significant challenges as well.
Despite differences, there are a number of similarities
between clinical medicine and aspects of conservation and natural
resource management.
These similarities include the common use of
interventions (essentially experiments in progress), the need to make
decisions on the basis of imperfect information, and the complementary
role of evidence and experience.
Some components of SERs could be incorporated into
science reviews (e.g., better documentation of how studies were
selected for inclusion, investigation of quality differences) in order
to increase their objectivity and transparency.
Conducting a synthesis of available science on a natural
resource topic using SER techniques could highlight gaps in the
evidence base and suggest relevant areas for future research.
In combination with ecological monitoring and incremental
updates, a synthesis of available science using SER techniques would
mesh well with landscape-level adaptive management.
Principles, Guidelines and Considerations for Applying Systematic
Evidence Reviews to Forest Management in Oregon
``Evidence,'' in an ecosystem management context, is more
than just data and hard facts. It involves contextual information and
interpretation. Scientific evidence consists of scientifically guided
empirical observations combined with background information, logic, and
scientific expertise.
Sweeping generalizations about the appropriateness of
particular statistical or research methods over others are unwarranted,
and laboratory experiments do not necessarily carry greater weight than
field experiments in forest ecology. All types of data can add to the
evidence base.
Evidence does not have to be quantitative or gathered by
a scientist. The key is that the information was collected and
interpreted as objectively as possible and can somehow be verified.
The weight given to a particular piece of evidence should
not depend on the type of observation but on the match between the
observation and the question being asked.
Medical SERs are, by design, rigorous, exhaustive and
comprehensive, and thus time consuming and costly. A ``small scale,
practical approach'' to science assessment is fundamentally different
than SERs as they are defined in the medical field.
Despite this inconsistency, some aspects of SERs could be
readily adopted and incorporated into the internal and external science
reviews that ODF already conducts.
A systematic review of evidence pertaining to a forest
management question may be feasible for ODF if (1) the question is
tightly focused, (2) the evidence base pertaining to the question is
not large, and (3) there is consensus on the boundaries of the evidence
base.
Natural resource SERs are more likely to be feasible for
focused questions involving a single intervention and/or a single
species. Multifaceted questions that involve more than one species or
more than one outcome would be more difficult to address using the SER
process.
Independence from stakeholders is a fundamental aspect of
SERs. An SER is more likely to be considered objective by all
stakeholders if it is conducted by an independent entity, rather than
internally by ODF.
An SER process may reveal general consensus on the
scientific evidence that is masked by fundamental differences of
opinion on what outcomes are most important and what actions are
appropriate in the face of imperfect evidence.
Three options for using the SER approach in Oregon forest management
A full-scale SER on a complex forest ecosystem science question
could be a major undertaking compounded by the need to recruit and
train an external SER team before commencing the review itself. The
feasibility of natural resource SERs and circumstances in which they
would be most useful are not clear. Much could be learned by testing
the SER approach, which offers some clear improvements over traditional
literature reviews.
ODF could take an incremental approach to adapting the SER process
to forest policy making in Oregon. Three tiered options for doing so
are outlined below. These options roughly parallel the three existing
approaches to science review at ODF: (1) routine internal reviews, (2),
external reviews commissioned by ODF to review long-term planning
documents, and (3) other external reviews completed as part of broader
policy initiatives such as IMST reports for the Oregon Plan.
The form and details of each option are provided as a starting
point and could benefit from further management and stakeholder review
and discussion. The agency could develop a hybrid approach tailored to
its needs in a particular circumstance.
Option 1: Incorporate SER techniques into ODF's ``in-house''
science assessments and any external review of this work. The primary
aim here would be to make existing ODF internal science review
processes more transparent. This could be achieved with adjustments to
what is already being done, primarily by adopting components of SERs to
better document how science information is gathered and reviewed.
Under this scenario, ODF would not be rigidly bound to assuring
that the review was an absolutely exhaustive and complete examination
of all available evidence. As with all science reviews however,
credibility would be predicated on perceptions of the degree to which
the review was thorough and objective. This option would be best suited
to cases where the available evidence is relatively clear,
uncontroversial and limited in scope.
Option 1a: Conduct the science assessment ``in house'' as
described above, with the additional step of soliciting
external review of the draft final document. This process would
approximate that used during the Independent Scientific Review
of the Draft Western Oregon State Forests Habitat Conservation
Plan, as described in Section II. The key differences would be
use of SER procedures during the ``in house'' phase, and that
external reviewers would be asked to assess the quality of
evidence used and upon which they base their review and
comments.
Key components of Option 1:
To the degree possible, develop tightly focused, specific
questions to delineate the purpose and scope of the review.
Develop a simplified SER-like protocol to explain how the
review will be conducted, using the example shown in Appendix 2 as a
starting point. Development and use of a formal evidence quality
hierarchy and ranking system is probably not be feasible at this level
of review, but a narrative discussion and comparison of study quality
could strengthen the review.
Document in a systematic way which studies were included,
what they said and how the information was interpreted. If studies were
identified as relevant, but not included for quality or other reasons,
document these reasons.
If/when documents are sent out for external review,
include in the review process an expectation that reviewers will also
provide a quality assessment of the information upon which they based
their review comments.
More specific guidelines for how this option might be implemented
are offered in Appendix 4.
Option 2: Commission an SER by an external, independent entity.
Under this scenario, a review of evidence would be contracted to a
qualified independent entity. Such a review might be triggered by
politically sensitive or difficult scientific questions about which ODF
staff sought external scientific review. External review should assume
impartiality and take advantage of academic expertise in specialized
subdisciplines within ecological science.
The overall aim would be to prepare a defensible SER for a natural
resource question, or a limited set of questions, with corresponding
effort to obtain all relevant evidence and review it in formal,
documented fashion. As with Option 1, this would not require an
entirely new process. Existing external science review entities would
consider using the SER approach.
Key components of Option 2:
ODF would develop tightly focused questions to frame the
purpose and scope of the SER. The additional step of vetting the SER
questions with stakeholders could be considered. Questions would be
refined in collaboration with stakeholders and SER review team.
Develop a protocol that explicitly lays out how the
review will be conducted. The external SER team should take the lead,
or at least be included, in this process. If the review team believes
it is feasible, develop and apply a formal set of evidence quality
assessment and ranking criteria to the included studies.
Publish results of review on ODF website and in academic
journals.
Option 3: Collaborate with other state and federal agencies to
address regionally significant, highly policy relevant questions of
using the SER process. Many forest management issues transcend agency
boundaries and should be addressed at the landscape scale. Some of
these issues are controversial and challenging, and more than one
agency could benefit from synthesis of all available evidence into a
package of ``best available science'' that all participating agencies
could then use. Post-wildfire ``salvage'' logging and restoration is an
example of a topic for which it may be worthwhile for ODF to initiate
and/or participate in multi-agency efforts to identify key questions
and support an SER process to address them.
Topics would need to be carefully considered because of the time
and effort that would likely be required to coordinate a multi-agency
SER. Various approaches are possible. For example:
Option 3a: Bring together an SER team comprised of technical
specialists from within different agencies (e.g., ODF, Oregon
Department of Fish and Wildlife, USDA Forest Service, USDI
Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, National
Park Service, NOAA Fisheries) to develop questions, a protocol
and conduct the review.
Option 3b: Conduct an external SER as described in Option 2,
but solicit and coordinate support from other agencies.
Key components of Option 3:
Similar to Option 2, but with interagency collaboration
in (1) identifying and refining questions and vetting them with
stakeholders, and (2) locating evidence, particularly unpublished
monitoring data and other agency-specific information that may not be
widely available, and (3) providing support to conduct the SER.
Conclusions and looking ahead
A pilot test of a modified SER process could shed light on the
accuracy of many of the untested perspectives and assumptions in this
report regarding the potential for SERs in natural resources. There is
no way to really know how accurate the analysis contained here is
without testing it in practice. The best way to do this is by applying
a modified SER process in a pilot test on a carefully selected but
relevant natural resource question. It would be important to start with
a question that is limited in scope and for which it is reasonably
certain that enough evidence exists to conduct a useful review.
______
Mr. Walden. Mr. Lorensen, thank you. That's precisely what
we intend to do and have been doing in our hearings, is say
what does the science tell us, what can we learn from it, and
how do we come to reach better policy decisions because of it.
So thank you for your comments today, and thanks to all the
panelists.
We'll now go into a phase in the Committee for our
audience. We'll each have five minutes to ask questions of the
panelists. My hunch is we'll probably do two rounds for this
panel, maybe more, but we also have to maintain a bit of a
schedule here. And I know Mr. Inslee has a flight to catch at
some point. He rearranged his schedule to be able to join us
here.
So why don't I go ahead and start off. And I have a
question I hope you can answer kind of briefly, but I recognize
that's hard to do. But five minutes is five minutes, and I've
got a bunch of them.
And so for Mr. Hobbs and I think for Mr. Kolb and Dr. West
and maybe Mr. Lorensen, how important is timing in post-fire
treatments? We were out on a stand today. We've heard about
Judge Hogan's decision, you know, something several years long.
We've read Mr. Donato's research about what happens if you wait
two years and start to do post-fire recovery, salvage logging,
whatever it is.
Can you just briefly comment from your experience perhaps
at this state and the research you've seen nationally how--what
is it about the timing that's critical that we should know.
Mr. Hobbs. Well, I can start to try and address that issue.
And I think that timing is crucial for a number of reasons,
but let's take southwestern Oregon as an example of why it's so
important.
Typically after a disturbance, whether it be timber harvest
or some other sort of disturbance--it could be wildfire--you're
going to get the associated vegetation on those sites that are
quite frequently well adapted to those types of disturbances or
those site conditions to recover very rapidly. And we've seen
this on the Biscuit Fire. I know that I was down here, looking
at it, in the late fall after that fire occurred and already
the field brush, the tanoak, the madrone were sprouting very
vigorously. And the problem you have is that these are very
well adapted competitors, and they are going to have a
significant effect on conifer establishment and subsequent
growth if you do not get conifers established quickly, whether
it be by natural regeneration or artificial regeneration, i.e.,
tree planting.
Mr. Walden. All right.
Mr. Hobbs. So that's just one.
Mr. Walden. Dr. West, a brief comment.
Ms. West. I would concur with Dr. Hobbs. And I would like
to add that--I think Dr. Kolb mentioned this--we lose those
learning opportunities. And if the management objective is to
reestablish vegetation on that site to meet wildlife
requirements or aesthetics or for wood production, it's
essential to go in for the reasons that were stated. And we
lose that opportunity.
Mr. Walden. All right. Dr. Kolb, briefly.
Mr. Kolb. Well, I concur. Timing is critical, and I would
add one thing. We seem to be in a period of climatic
uncertainty. And if you want a certain desired vegetation back
with this uncertainty, it's critical to get these plants on the
site as quickly as possible before competition exacerbates any
climatic uncertainty, such as drought or higher temperature, et
cetera.
Mr. Walden. All right. Briefly, Mr. Lorensen.
Mr. Lorensen. I think science has demonstrated the impact
on timber values. I think that's important to restate.
I also agree that climate/weather issues are huge and again
may well have been a factor in the results in this particular
study, but again you lose options to the extent that you wait.
I guess I would state, if I could, the policy of the State
of Oregon, established by Oregon's legislature, is they direct
the state agencies to begin salvage as quickly as possible, in
recognition of those multiple values and certainties. And the
Department of Forestry typically begins salvation operations
and put up the timber sales within weeks or months.
Mr. Walden. Within weeks or months.
Mr. Lorensen. Yes.
Mr. Walden. Thank you.
Mr. Donato, I have a couple of questions obviously for you.
I'm glad you're here, and I thought it was important to give
you an opportunity to address some issues that you may have
heard or read about, because they've been sort of out there,
so--
Based on your comments, I don't get the impression that you
blame the Bureau of Land Management for mistreatment or make
claims of a scandal or heavy-handed treatment.
Do you believe, given your original submittal that had
references to legislation, that there were legitimate concerns
with proper notification, the BLM had reasonable cause for
review?
Mr. Donato. Yeah, I think there were some issues that--
where there was some miscommunications and some perceptions of
certain verbiage that raised some questions. And I don't
necessarily question that.
Mr. Walden. OK. And let me ask about that sequence of
events, because this has been out there in the public and we're
trying to get answers and you're the guy. So lucky you.
In terms of the protocols--I'm not the scientist like my--
some of my colleagues. In terms of the protocols you were
required to follow, were you supposed to--did you have a
project investigator that you were supposed to report to prior
to submission to any publication of your work? Was it----
Mr. Donato. That was less than clear, I have to say, that
the communication between the agency and the university turned
out to be sort of an unclear two-way street. And we have
consulted with the agency throughout the course of the project,
including for the data presented in this paper. We presented
these data at the Joint Fire Science Program meeting in
November. And we also presented to the project inspector in
December, the day that we were planning on submitting, so--
Mr. Walden. So and was that the December meeting that Mr.
Sensenig asked you to attend.
Mr. Donato. Yes.
Mr. Walden. And in that meeting you told him you'd
submitted the science.
Mr. Donato. That we were submitting a paper, yes.
Mr. Walden. You did? Because he has an e-mail that we have
in our record that doesn't indicate that at all. It's a much
different version. Have you seen that e-mail?
Mr. Donato. No, I'm afraid I haven't.
Mr. Walden. All right. There's an e-mail from Tom Sensenig,
the principal investigator and project inspector to the
contracting officer, Mr. Shapiro, which we'll be glad to--do we
have a copy we can give to him?--that indicates that he called
the meeting with you in early December to prepare for a
conference. Scheduled meeting for December 15th in Corvallis.
And he says, and I quote here: ``Despite having already
prepared and submitted their paper to Science, Dan did not
offer any information regarding the other authors' involvement
or the fact that they had submitted a paper for publication.''
Mr. Donato. This really harkens to just a miscommunication
as to the level of consultation required. This is an issue that
has been resolved between the university and the agency as a
miscommunication. It really was.
Mr. Walden. Because he goes on to say: ``Had I not
scheduled this meeting, there would not have been any
communication between any of the authors.'' And----
Mr. Donato. Well, how that--how that went was we presented
at the Joint Fire Science Program meeting. And at first we were
under the impression that all the P.I.s were going to be there.
And when we found out that Dr. Sensenig would not be there, we
unofficially scheduled a meeting for some time down the
future--in the future. And that's when that occurred.
Mr. Walden. But this would indicate that he met with you on
December 15th. Do you remember that meeting.
Mr. Donato. I believe it was earlier than that, actually. I
don't know the exact date.
Mr. Walden. Well, he said: ``I scheduled a meeting for
Thursday, December 15th, in Corvallis, Oregon.'' And he goes on
to say: ``Although the studies"--let's see.
He says: ``I've scheduled the meeting, not them,'' and that
it--"and it had nothing to do with their publication. Both Dan
and Joe showed me some PowerPoint slides that they had
prepared. Joe discussed the wildlife aspects of the project,
mostly on deer mice. Although the study is comprehensive and
involves many types of data, Dan only prepared slides on
seedling counts and fine and coarse wood transects. He did not
discuss any other aspects of the study.
Curious about this, I asked about the other parts of the
study. He indicated he did not have time to look at these data
yet and that regeneration and fuel hazard are two factors in
which pending House Bill 4200 is based. As I wasn't familiar
with bill at that time, I asked him to explain what he was
talking about because these projects were not complete, it was
preliminary, and because they kept their publication from me. I
had no reason to suspect any wrongdoing at this time. In
closing, I asked them to send me any information. I did not
receive any information until January 4th when Dan e-mailed the
paper to my office. Had I not scheduled this meeting, there
would not have been any communication between any of the
authors with me prior to publication.'' I'll just give you this
to read because----
Mr. Donato. Sure.
Mr. Walden.--it really raises questions about this issue
that is so much in the press that I think every one of us here
has weighed in to defend academic freedom, but we also have an
obligation to make sure that the contractual obligations that
you and your colleagues are involved in are met. I mean, that
is, we have to be stewards of the tax dollar.
Mr. Donato. We agree, that is an important issue, and we
did work to resolve that between the agency and the university.
We did.
Mr. Walden. OK. My time has expired. Mr. DeFazio?
Mr. DeFazio. Mr. Chairman, I'm only driving north on I-5.
He's got to catch a plane, so I'm going to let him go ahead of
me, if he wants.
Mr. Walden. Mr. Inslee.
Mr. Inslee. Thank you, Mr. Donato. I appreciate you being
here and your research and your testimony for a couple of
reasons. One, I think you've expressed appropriate humility for
a scientific investigator; that your research really opens
doors and really adds to more questions and is not resolved. It
is not the end all, be all scientific research. I found your
study to be critical in leading us to conclude rightfully we
need more research on this issue and that there is some
evidence you have suggested, at least has some suggestion, that
logging may have some consequences we did not fully understand
on regeneration. So I appreciate your humility in that regard.
I also appreciate, I think it's fair to say, just a modest
amount of courage in this regard in your research. And the
reason I say that is that regardless of what happened in this
specific situation--I don't want to get down in the weeds on
that--but we really are in a country today that is living into
a cloud of suppression of science from this administration
trying to suppress information coming out of our principal
global warming administrator on global warming and out of NASA,
suppression of science out of NOAA on the same subject, right
out of the White House, suppression of studies of Dr. Susan
Wood about birth control. I was up at Western yesterday. There
were researchers I talked to that are very concerned about
this.
And what happened in your situation is in large part
because of that cloud that we're under, and I just want to sort
of relate that to you, that is not a cause or effect of you,
but it's simply a fact of life under this administration. And
it's caused us all a great deal of concern.
I wanted to ask a specific about your conclusion that the
regeneration we observed was reduced by 71 percent as a result
of the salvage logging operations. Could you just briefly
describe how you reached that conclusion for us laypeople.
Mr. Donato. OK. Well, it's a design with a series of plots
set out across the areas designated for salvage, and about half
of those plots get logged and about half don't. And before the
logging, we measure all of the plots and we do seedling counts
systematically. And the logging occurs, and we remeasure all of
the plots again after the logging, and we follow the before and
after data in the log stands. We compare the median value of
seedlings beforehand and the median value afterward. And that's
where the 71 percent reduction comes from.
And then we followed the unlogged stands through time to
make sure that it's not just a time effect that we're seeing,
that the 71 percent of the seedlings just don't die anyway.
Mr. Inslee. Got you.
Mr. Donato. And so we documented that there is no
significant difference within the absence of logging, so it
isolates the effective logging as producing the regeneration.
Mr. Inslee. Thank you.
I have a question I want to make sure of all the witnesses.
Do any of the witnesses believe that we need to eliminate the
need for requirements, the National Environmental Protection
Act requirements in our decisionmaking regarding salvage
logging? Do any of you advocate for the elimination of the NEPA
requirements in regard to salvage logging management decisions?
Do any of the five or six witnesses advocate that today?
Mr. Kolb, you do. None of the--so we have one that would
advocate for getting rid of NEPA in that regard.
Mr. Kolb. Not getting rid, but modifying.
Mr. Inslee. Modifying. OK.
Second question. Do any of the witnesses advocate for
removing from protection of our forests the roadless area
policy as it applies to post-disturbance salvage logging? Do
any of you advocate for getting rid of the roadless area policy
in that regard? Nobody.
So we've got one out of the ten questions I've asked, doing
quick multiplication, or twelve, depending on how you count.
That's important. I'll tell you the reason I asked that
question. This is what the whole issue is on this hearing. The
legislation that has been proposed would gut the National
Environmental Protection Act policy of asking our Federal
employees to consider science when they make these management
decisions. But nine out of ten or eleven out of twelve,
depending on how you count scientists today, have not advocated
for doing that.
And this is exactly my concern about this proposed
legislation, because I think it creates the potential that we
will make the same type of mistakes in the woods that we have
made on a bipartisan basis, I may add, in not looking at the
science before we make these decisions.
Now, Mr. Kolb, I want to ask you just one other issue
about--there are other values certainly of standing dead
limber--lumber--other than aesthetic or commercial.
I want to read to you a statement from Dr. Richard Hutto,
Professor and Director at the University of Montana. He says,
quote:
If you salvage these special biologically unique burned
forests, birds disappear as perhaps do many of the other
organisms unique to severely burned forests. In fact, every
study ever conducted on the issue has shown that all bird
species are less abundant in completely salvage logged than in
uncut burned forests. Even partially salvaged forests reveal
that all but possibly a few species are negatively affected.
And, once again, none of the species most specialized on most--
on most restricted to post-fire conditions have been shown to
benefit.
Basically, I understand by lay terms Dr. Hutto's saying
that standing timber can have a commercial value, but it causes
a significant cost to the American citizens to the extent that
they have values of our feathered friends in the forest. And we
got to see two of them today, a red--or one of them--a red-
tailed hawk, and we heard about a red-headed woodpecker that
was out in these forests that were supposed to have been cut
but were blocked by litigation. And everybody gets mad about
this litigation, but the habitat that supported the woodpecker
that we almost saw today, but heard about, would have been
destroyed had that salvage logging taken place.
And just the question I have, do you agree with Dr. Hutto
in his assessment of the impact on avian species of salvage
logging?
Mr. Kolb. No, I do not. And I've had many discussions with
Dr. Hutto about this. And here's the basic rationale.
And, by the way, studies have shown that flickers and red-
tailed hawks actually benefit from areas that are harvested
versus dense forests. They're egg species. The only species
that's been--the bird species, woodpecker, that's been
documented to benefit from dense standing dead timber is the
black-backed woodpecker.
There are actually many species that have been shown to
respond very favorably to logging. And really if you look at
the compendium of research on avian response to fire, it shows
that it's really a mixed bag. There are species that respond
well to salvage logged areas and some that do not. But as a
whole there are just as many studies that show positive
responses as negative responses, but depends on the species.
Now, with regard to Dr. Hutto's statements about the value
of these dead standing trees, there is a value to dead standing
trees. It's a question of magnitude. And the argument and the
comment I make to Dr. Hutto is: If 500,000 acres of dead
standing trees resulting from a fire is necessary to support
these bird species, where did they come from? We had 70 to 80
years of fire suppression where we didn't see fires of that
magnitude. Now all the sudden these species are dependent on
these huge black patches.
So fire is important to provide habitat to some degree.
It's a question of magnitude. I'm all for leaving patches of
dead, fire-killed trees out there, but do we need 500,000 acres
of it.
Mr. Inslee. You raise a very interesting point, where did
they come from. And if the presence of forest depends on human
intervention in the forest after fires, the question must be
raised: Where did these forests come from before the appearance
of industrialized man? They came from an ecosystem devised
through thousands of generations before our appearance in the
Northwest. And I think we ought to think about that.
By the way, I just want to mention that the gentleman I
just quoted, Dr. Hutto, is Director and Professor of the Avian
Science Center at the University of Montana. You know, we'll
have to draw our own conclusion in that regard.
By the way, if I may submit to the record the letter and
information that Dr. Hutto--what came from that. If I may just
have one more----
Mr. Walden. Yes. Without objection.
I'd also like to submit for the record the e-mail I
referenced earlier that we're providing for Mr. Donato. So
without objection, both will be in the official record.
Mr. Baird. Would the gentleman--would my colleague, Mr.
Inslee, yield for just one moment.
Mr. Inslee. Sure, if I can catch my plane.
Mr. Baird. It'll be brief.
To your knowledge, what percentage of the Biscuit Fire
would have been harvested?
Mr. Kolb. I'm not familiar with the Biscuit Fire other than
what I've read on it, so I don't feel----
Mr. Baird. I believe we were told it's seven-tenths of one
percent.
Ms. West. Six percent. Six percent.
Mr. Baird. Six percent. Six percent would have been
harvested. So we would still have 94 percent of the area
available for that bird habitat.
Thank you. I appreciate the clarification.
Mr. Walden. Mr. Inslee, I know you have to go to catch a
plane. I'm anticipating a second round. Do you have anything
else you want to ask before you have to leave.
Mr. Inslee. No. I may try to sneak in a couple minutes
after your next round. I'll just see.
Mr. Walden. Oh, I thought you had to leave at 2:30.
Mr. Inslee. Thanks for your courtesy.
Mr. Walden. All right. Congressman DeFazio, five minutes.
Mr. DeFazio. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
I'm just--Brian, just I'm pretty familiar with the Biscuit.
And just to be clear, there's a perimeter within which we lump
all and say this is the Biscuit Fire. But it's very much, as
are all fires, a mosaic and not everything within that 500,000
acres was burned or substantially burned. Some areas are total
toast, and other areas are, you know, still, particularly in
weather drainages and some places where it skipped, are still
quite intact.
The issue--I was particularly interested in Mr. Lorensen's
testimony because it really--it's something that came up in the
hearings in Washington and I want to pursue it because I think,
you know, there's also some potential grounds for agreement
here, even when we seem pulls apart.
And in your testimony, page three, you say: To reduce value
of the smaller trees means that most or all of the economic
value in the stand is contained in the larger trees that are
also most valuable as future stand structure and wildlife
habitat.
Then you go on to the next paragraph to say: One way to
address this is to reduce the time associated with planning and
implementing salvage sales. Reducing the time it takes to plan
and implement would allow more of the value of the small and
mid-diameter trees to be captured and allow greater flexibility
to leave larger trees while still maintaining the economic
viability of the timber sale.
This is similar to some conclusions that Dr. Franklin
offered in testimony in Washington.
And I guess I'd just like to ask. Does--I would assume Dr.
Kolb and others would agree there is value in having a
retention standard? That's correct. And then you can agree or
disagree over the magnitude or, you know, of the retention
standard. But doesn't it make sense, what Mr. Lorensen's
talking about here, is if an area is available for timber
management, that if you want to go in there you would want to
go in quickly and remove and target and get the value of the
smaller, mid-diameter trees and then you would have some more
or less retention of the biological reservoir of the larger
trees.
Does anybody disagree with that sort of premise or idea?
Because I'm thinking that's where there might be a little more
grounds for grooming here on the part of the Committee as we
move through this debate.
If I could go--I mean I'm a little puzzled because I read--
you know, I'm not a scientist, unlike Dr. Baird. But, you know,
I read the one-page article in Science, and I don't quite get
as excited about it. If you let a stand, the stand burns. OK.
It was a mature stand, as I understand it, so these are--was it
previously logged?
Mr. Donato. No.
Mr. DeFazio. No. OK. So we're talking old growth, very
large trees that are fire resistant. So there was some
survival. It was a mosaic kind of thing. They weren't all dead.
Mr. Donato. There was a mosaic, but we sampled just the
stands that burned with high severity.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. But they were--there was still some
scattering of seed sources and that.
Mr. Donato. Around them, yes.
Mr. DeFazio. So you got--so you got a lot of, you know,
natural reseeding and small things growing up. And then you
drive heavy equipment over the little trees three years later
and they get crushed, right? OK. That to me doesn't require too
much, you know, study. No offense. But, you know, I get that.
Now, the key--the key becomes--when we were up at BLM, we
saw a stand that was private where they had maximized salvage
and maximized reforestation. The BLM stand hadn't been
salvaged, but they went in with reforestation. They had very
little natural regeneration because it was a previously managed
stand and there wasn't much of a reservoir of seeds in the
bigger trees to survive.
So the--it seems to me that, you know, the conclusion that
can be drawn here, I think the thing to me that was perhaps
most compelling or interesting was the concern about the slash
and how that infected--affected either future possibility of
fire and/or whatever natural seedlings remain. And on the
private lands here again they controlled and very much they
removed most of the slash, which is not that usual in these
operations, but they did and they brought it down the hill down
by the road and got it out of there.
So I think one of the conclusions you came to was that--and
I saw it here in your testimony--rather with information from
this study and additional ones that isolate the effect of
different harvest techniques and timing, any undesirable
impacts of salvage logging could be minimized.
So, you know, that again does not seem to be a
controversial conclusion to me. And I'm a bit--and, you know,
we'll hear from Mr. Baird later in terms of his concerns. But
let me go this way. If we had a young plantation--I was
involved with Mark Hatfield legislating, actually. Salvage has
been always controversial. And in order to do salvage on the
timber, the Silver Fire, we legislated it and we stopped the
building of a very controversial road. We established and we
did helicopter logging, and we got fairly substantial salvage.
Created a young plantation. A lot of that burned up in this
fire.
Now, if you have a young plantation that gets fried, your
study wouldn't be applicable because there's really no seed
source. Is that correct?
Mr. Donato. If it had been a plantation prior to the first
burn? I'm not quite sure what the question is.
Mr. DeFazio. The first burn with the Silver Fire, I think
it was pretty much--I think it was pretty much virgin forest.
Someone here might know better than me. I mean it was--I don't
think it had been entered. It was pretty roadless area. So I
don't think it had been entered previously. But it was
substantially burned and areas were salvaged and then
plantations or--well, let's--maybe that's not a good example.
The point is: If a plantation or managed area burns, you're not
going to get much natural regeneration, right?
Mr. Donato. Well, it depends on existing seed sources that
surround that plantation.
Mr. DeFazio. Right. But if it's a--if it's a big
plantation, you know. I mean--what I'm trying to get at is
that--and this is for us to decide, which is where it's
appropriate to do harvest, where it isn't, and post-
catastrophic how you manage those lands. I mean if you have a
large plantation that burns in this environment, you're not
going to get probably natural conifer regeneration. You're
going to get some other kind of regeneration, but it's not
going to be conifer, at least for a very long time.
Mr. Donato. Well, that's not certainly certain. It really
depends on the site you're talking about.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. All right. That's fair. I mean I don't
think any of these things have totally definitive answers. But
Mr. Inslee did sort of put out there, but he didn't ask the
question, and I asked the question this morning, so I do want
to ask it again now, which exactly was the question he asked.
I said so if in this area that, you know, the natural
competing vegetation is so good, you know, how did we
previously, you know, maintain or regenerate or get these
forests? And I think there's a very complex answer to that
question. And I'd like anybody who wants to try and address
it--I mean because we don't--we don't know exactly and we've
got to interpolate backwards, but I mean, you know, hundreds of
years. I assume climate change comes into effect, you know,
natural fires, lower intensity, more frequently versus, you
know, now. But I mean what--how is that? I mean how did it
happen without intervention and management?
OK. Dr. Peterson is the guest. OK.
Mr. Peterson. I'll take a shot at that, I guess.
Mr. DeFazio. Sure.
Mr. Peterson. I think you've already stated most of the
reasons for the current day complexity, is that particularly in
these landscapes in Southern Oregon where we have what's called
a mixed severity fire regime. When fires have occurred in the
past, we normally got this mixed pattern of severity. Whereas
in the Biscuit Fire, as in the Silver Fire, there were areas
that were burned severely, there were areas that were hardly
burned at all, and a lot of stuff in the middle. Very complex
spatial patterns. And that's just absolutely natural and normal
for these types of forest ecosystems. And then you have the
wild card of climate that early in the regeneration process for
conifers can determine the fate of that particular stand for
the next hundred or 200 years.
So we have this--it's a very complex spatial pattern along
with these rather random things like weather and climate that
come into play.
Mr. DeFazio. You know, you said random. We won't even get
into that.
Mr. Peterson. I could have said stochastic.
Mr. DeFazio. But you said random.
And I guess what I want to get at, this is one of my big
contentions with the Northwest Forest Plan, which is not an
issue here, but when lines were drawn and these were called
late successional reserves, some of them big old trees, some of
them were tree plantations that were actually quite dense. And
I asked one prominent scientist once, I said what happens if
you draw a line around a tree plantation, what do you get in 50
or 100 years. And he said dog hair. You know, and so I says you
would have to re-enter and thin and, you know, really you would
have--if you want just to manage ultimately back toward what
you say is a natural state or large old trees, you would have
to manage back to it. It's going to happen very easily unless
the whole tree plantation burns down. I mean--would you like to
address that, Dr. West or Dr. Peterson, either one. I saw her
nodding. Because I mean that's the thing here. Part of what
you're saying is but some of these lands were previously
managed and therefore this was not a natural occurrence, which
goes to the whole issue of fuel loading and management.
Ms. West. And I think we've developed a fairly good
understanding of the opportunities to go in and remove some
trees from these very fixed width, between trees, you know,
patterns to create more of a natural mosaic of trees, creating
some gaps in those forests so that it can hasten its
development into older characteristics, characteristics of
older forests. So that's well documented, that we've got those
opportunities if that's a management objective.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. My time's expired, but I will have more
questions.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Walden. Dr. Baird.
Mr. Baird. Thank you.
Mr. Donato, I've survived a thesis defense and a
dissertation defense. They're not pleasant, but I didn't have
to do it in front of all these folks. So if I ask you tough
questions, I'm not picking on you. This is how science works.
It's worked for thousands of years this way.
Mr. Donato. Fair enough.
Mr. Baird. Mr. Inslee said that he thought you displayed an
appropriate degree of humility. One of my concerns is, frankly,
I don't think you did in a number of ways in the study or in
your testimony today. And part of scientific integrity is
making sure you don't make generalizations beyond the limits of
your data. And nowhere in your study or did I hear in your
commentary today two critical things germane to our
legislation.
First, I never saw reference in your study--maybe I just
missed it. I read it a bunch of times, but maybe I missed it. I
never saw you say that had the logging commenced prior to the
two-year time allowed under the Biscuit Fire, the mortality of
seedlings would have been substantially different. So that's
one thing.
I think you needed to say it because the entire purpose of
our legislation is to allow folks to go in while the existing
wood has more value and before you got seedlings coming up and
you can do some of the work that Dr. Kolb has testified
elsewhere on of cross-fallen trees to stop erosion. Did I miss
something or did you address that?
Mr. Donato. Can I address that?
Mr. Baird. Please, yeah.
Mr. Donato. Our goal in the paper was to present the
numbers and present the dates and not make management
recommendations. We just wanted to present the data.
Mr. Baird. I find it disingenuous.
Mr. Donato. We wanted to present the data.
Mr. Baird. Throughout your study are value-laden
statements.
[Audience disruption.]
Mr. Walden. Ladies and gentlemen, please. We don't tolerate
that in Washington and not here either.
Mr. Donato. Our goal was to present the data and let people
draw their own conclusions. We--we in the paper indicate that
as a 2002 fire that was--we measured before and after logging,
which is 2004.
Mr. Baird. I understand. I've read it. I don't want--I'm
going to interrupt you.
Mr. Donato. And I think it's clear that everyone--many
people are making that conclusion, and I think that that's a
fair thing. And we didn't want to make any specific management
recommendations.
Mr. Baird. With respect, I think it's disingenuous. With
respect, the fact of the matter is that you're going to kill
trees if you wait two years. And your title says Post-Wildfire
Logging Hinders Regeneration and Increases Fire Risk. But
there's no caveat in that title. It's a generic--the grammar of
it, my friend, is a generic continuous generalization. And I've
read probably 20,000 studies. I've taught this stuff. If I were
your advisor or if I were a reviewer, to be perfectly frank,
I'd have said I believe your title is deliberately biased, or
maybe not deliberately, but will be interpreted that way. And
here's why this matters.
People are taking this to imply far more than the study
suggests. And it particularly matters, and I'll get to this in
more detail in a second, because it is apparent from some of
the text of your earlier document that this document
particularly was published when and how it was to influence
policy, which it seems to me ethically to make it far more
incumbent upon you to express the caveats.
The second caveat I didn't see was any discussion about the
possibility of reforestation efforts and how that might be
affected.
Now, our legislation again addresses not only prompt
harvest, but also prompt reforestation through diverse species,
which could certainly supplement any--any mortality of natural
regenerated trees. So I just put that out there.
Let me ask you a couple of questions. When I requested the
material that you had, the full data set, I also asked through
my staff, what did Science magazine request. And the reason I
did it is because I wanted to see if Science had done due
diligence. And, frankly, I don't think they had.
You essentially said there's the one-page article itself
and about a page and a half of supplementary material available
on the Web. And I think your language was: What you see is what
you get.
Did at any point the reviewers from Science magazine ask
you for raw data?
Mr. Donato. No.
Mr. Baird. OK. So what you saw was what you got?
Mr. Donato. That's right. That is all--everything we
submitted.
Mr. Baird. Well, we have an hour and a half here. I could
talk about and I will talk about in a second why I think that's
problematic.
One of the key variables from this is the interpretation
that the median regeneration is reduced by, what, 71 percent,
something like that. You're taking continuous data. You're
taking an absolute number of trees. I want to walk people
through this. A brief statistic lesson.
This is what you call a measure of central tendency. We're
familiar with the average, right, where you add everything up
and then you divide by the total number of data points. That's
called the average.
The median doesn't encompass nearly that data. The median
says the point at which there are equal number of data points
lower than this value and an equal number of data points above
this value.
You've got, as I understand it, five cells, five study
cells broken into four quadrants per cell.
Mr. Donato. That's not quite right. It's nine plots
distributed amongst five sites.
Mr. Baird. OK. I'm not sure that's clear in the data, but
I'll stay with that.
The concept--your ``N'' was nine, but I looked at the study
a lot and I didn't get an understanding. You had five sites,
each of which had four transects, right?
Mr. Donato. No. We had nine plots, each of which had four
transects.
Mr. Baird. Well, I--well, you'll have to sit with me
afterwards and show me where that's reported in.
Mr. Donato. I could--I could do that.
Mr. Baird. Yeah. Good.
Here's the problem with the median data. If you look on
there, this is just hypothetical data I created. If you had the
first prelogged values on the top, 5,100, 767, 1,000 and 2,000.
And the second set--in the top set there, the post-logged were
one different except for that middle median. You could look
like there's quite a substantial difference in the median
value, but in all the other plots there's not such a
difference, is there? In fact, there's a difference of one on
all the other plots, but those other plots aren't spoken to by
this data.
Now, in contrast, the chart below has the exact same median
difference, but quite a lot of difference among the other
plots.
Now, my question to you was: Why not present that data? Why
not give it to me? And why didn't the reviewers in Science look
at it? Because I want to understand this question.
Mr. Donato. Well, submission of raw data to a journal for
peer review is almost unheard of.
Mr. Baird. Well, wait a second.
When a paper is accepted for publication in Science, it is
understood that any reasonable request for materials, methods,
or data necessary to verify the conclusion of the experiment--
My point is: You have chosen a methodology for analysis and
data report that is subject to significant misinterpretation.
And this is not, my friend, a subtle academic issue; this is a
matter of important policy decisions. Because if it is the top
graph, then in many cases the plots were not that different
pre/post than if it were the bottom graph, and merely reporting
the mean is specious. And I can't tell without that data which
is the case.
Mr. Donato. Can I address that?
Mr. Baird. Please.
Mr. Donato. Using the mean, given the distribution of the
data set, would be statistically indefensible.
Mr. Baird. Well, describe that.
Mr. Donato. And it would misrepresent the data.
To use the mean, the average value, you need to have
normally distributed data. It's a bell curve. And these data
are what's called skewed.
Mr. Baird. I understand.
Mr. Donato. They're right skewed. And the best measure of
central tendency for that is the median.
Mr. Baird. Correct. But the median is ordinal level data.
And by looking at 71 percent you've performed a ratio level
operation, and going back to Stevens in the '50s you can't do
it.
Mr. Donato. Can I also point out the statistical test that
I used, which is the Wilcoxon signed rank test, which is used
on before/after data for each plot, which completely takes care
of this problem, 100 percent.
Mr. Baird. No, it doesn't.
Mr. Donato. Yes, it does.
Mr. Baird. It does not. It does not deal with the
magnitude. I'm sorry. With respect, it doesn't. It does not
deal with the absolute magnitude of the difference. It rank
orders the variables or the plots on which ones are different.
It rank orders the magnitude, but it doesn't tell the absolute
magnitude. It just doesn't.
Mr. Donato. The median is a measure of central tendency of
all nine plots beforehand and all nine plots after.
Mr. Baird. No, it's not.
Mr. Donato. Yes, it is.
Mr. Baird. It is not.
Mr. Donato. Yes, it is. I disagree. I have to assure--I
would like to----
[Applause.]
Mr. Baird. I understand the applause.
Mr. Walden. Congressman.
Mr. Baird. Let me ask you this question. Anything wrong
with the logic of that chart I put up there? Is it possible
that the median could obscure that data? I mean I'm asking you
folks here, is it possible. I'll ask the other scientists here.
Could a median report obscure differences in the cells such as
I described, and if you really wanted to insure that such
differences--I won't ask Mr. Donato this; I'm going to ask some
other folks--is it really possible that reporting only the
median data could have obscured substantial misinterpretation.
Mr. Peterson. I think with data like this where the sample
size is small, which is a constraint of many of our studies in
forest ecosystems, it's incumbent on the investigator to look
at a variety of statistical approaches in order to get a fair
representation of the distribution of the data and the variance
in the data.
Mr. Baird. Would it be incumbent upon the reviewers to do
so as well?
Mr. Peterson. Certainly incumbent on the reviewers. Of
course that's the luck of the draw when you submit it to a
journal.
Mr. Baird. How much effort would it take--would you assume
that before someone submitted a--I mean Science and Nature are
probably the two preeminent scientific journals in the world,
broad-based journals. Before you submitted an article to
Science, would you not at least have wanted to look at this to
just insure that the median, which is a pretty basic measure of
central tendency, was not obscuring some kind of pattern that--
--
Mr. Peterson. If I were the reviewer, I guess that would be
one of my comments, is to ask the author to display more about
the data and the statistical approach.
Mr. Baird. Yet the reviewer didn't ask you that.
Mr. Donato. Well, at one point we had--we had mean values
presented for the woody debris data. And the reviewer actually
made a decision that the median was a better representation.
Mr. Baird. Now, when I--I understand that. When I asked--
when I asked you, I don't think you provided that information.
I just frankly disagree with the viewer in this--the reviewer
in this case.
Mr. Donato. Fair enough.
Mr. Baird. And will you provide this data to me, Mr.
Donato.
Mr. Donato. Appreciate that I represent a team of
researchers. It's not really just up to me. And I represent an
institution who is concerned about the ability to publish on
these data in the future. And we are working on going through
the appropriate paths to provide the data should that be the
appropriate path.
Mr. Baird. Well, when you submitted the article to Science,
did you intend to adhere to the requirements of submission in
Science.
Mr. Donato. Yeah, I'm aware of those requirements. And the
university has advised that there are conflicting directives on
that, and they're the ones working on that, because I am not an
expert on those matters.
Mr. Baird. Mm-hmm. Let me go to one other issue. If a
logging sale were let to a contractor who went up into the
woods and violated the terms of the sale, my guess is our goods
friends on the--anybody responsible would say, hey, you ought
to put a stop to that. If they're violating the law, you ought
to put a stop to that. You know, you immediately stop. Yet I'm
of the opinion that the terms of the agreement with the BLM
were violated in this case. And when, based on that, people
asserted that we ought to at least take a pause, it was
described as an academic witch hunt, it's censorship, et
cetera. And I'm not so sure it is. I mean let me read you the
terms of the agreement.
It's pretty explicit. It's page ten of the Assistance
Agreement. It says: Recipients shall not use any part of the
government's funds for any activity or the publication or
distribution of literature that--and I want to underscore
this--that in any way tends to promote public support or
opposition to any legislative proposal on which congressional
action in not complete.
Now, explicitly in the publication of the original draft--
one of the drafts of your document, plus in one of the drafts
of the Science publication, you specifically referenced this
bill.
Mr. Donato. We specifically reference it, but certainly
offer no endorsement or opposition to it.
I would like to read you a passage from the National
Science Foundation Web site.
Mr. Baird. Mm-hmm.
Mr. Donato. Basically, they--first I'll paraphrase, that
it's becoming increasingly important for scientists to not
relegate themselves to the ivory tower and make their findings
relevant to the boarder societal context, and they consider
grant applications to be competitive only when they address
those broader issues. And the following examples are included
on their Web site as potential ways to achieve this.
Quote, ``Provide information for policy formulation by
Federal, state, or local agencies.
Present research and education results in formats useful to
policymakers, Members of Congress, industry, and broad
audiences.
Demonstrate the linkage between discovery and societal
benefit by providing specific examples and explanations
regarding the potential application of research,'' end quote.
It was in this spirit that we referenced an important
policy issue. And while no endorsement or opposition was ever
offered, those references don't appear in the final published
version.
Mr. Walden. Mr. Baird.
Mr. Baird. I'll yield back. I'll have some more questions.
Mr. Walden. Thank you for yielding back nothing. You're in
a long line here of going over the clock, including me, so--
Mr. Baird. I figured I was OK.
Mr. Walden. We're here to get answers.
Mr. Baird. When you follow Peter, you're always in that
line.
Mr. Walden. That's all right.
I want to--part of what is troubling, I think, is this
conflict over the publication of your data. And this is
government money we're talking about, not independent research,
$300,000 to look at. And later we have somebody testifying--I
don't know if you've read Mr. Drehobl's testimony, but it's
pretty sharp as well. And he comes after this, so I want to
give you an opportunity to respond. Because he specifically
cites that the agreement that you and your colleagues had in
this research required, and I quote, the recipients must obtain
prior government approval for any public information releases
concerning this award, which refers to the Department of
Interior or any employee. The specific text, layout,
photographs, et cetera, of the proposed release must be
submitted with the request for approval.
And that the agreement further states, government
requirement: Provide timely review and comments on the document
produced by this study and work and partnership on this
project. And he goes on to express some other concerns.
And I just have to go back to this e-mail because Mr.--and
maybe you can help me. Mr. Sensenig was the project
investigator and principal----
Mr. Donato. Project inspector.
Mr. Walden. And principal investigator, correct.
Mr. Donato. I'm unclear on whether he was the P.I. or not.
Mr. Walden. He indicates he is in this memo.
Mr. Donato. I know.
Mr. Walden. And you knew that. It says----
Mr. Donato. No, I have not known that for sure.
Mr. Walden. Who then did you believe to be your project
investigator or principal contact at the BLM?
Mr. Donato. Well, the principal contact at the BLM was Tom
Sensenig.
Mr. Walden. And so in terms of compliance with the
agreement of the $300,000 grant for you and your colleagues to
do the research, if you were to comply fully with what has
been--what is in that agreement, would Mr. Sensenig have been
the person that you would have needed to get approval of to do
any kind of publication.
Mr. Donato. Actually, I have to say that was unclear too. I
really want to stress that the communication breakdown between
the agency and the university is a two-way street and that when
Tom Sensenig moved from the BLM to the Forest Service, we
weren't notified who the contact was.
Mr. Walden. Did you know when you got--did you know the
requirements for prepublication approval when you got the
agreement--or you got the funding.
Mr. Donato. No.
Mr. Walden. You never knew that you needed to consult with
anybody before you submitted for publication.
Mr. Donato. Not to the level specified in that agreement, I
didn't.
Mr. Walden. So you--none of your researches knew that
either.
Mr. Donato. I can't speak for the rest of the researchers.
Mr. Walden. Did--who signed the agreement for the funding,
do you know? I mean I would think--I mean I'm just trying to
figure this piece out.
Mr. Baird. I think it's a university person who signs it
for whoever administers the grant.
Mr. Walden. All right.
Mr. Donato. Yeah. And this all occurred before I was even
here at OSU.
Mr. Walden. All right. So you never knew you were supposed
to get approval.
Mr. Donato. That's correct.
Mr. Walden. You just submitted to Science.
But when you met with Mr. Sensenig, so it never crossed
your mind that you should----
Mr. Donato. Yeah, I really want to stress that this is just
a lack of clarity on the level of consultation required.
Mr. Walden. I would think--and I was never a graduate
student. I did get a journalism degree. But I would think if I
were meeting with somebody from the agency who I knew to be my
contact on a $300,000 research project that I had submitted to
Science magazine, one of the preeminent science magazines in
the country, I'd be pretty proud and I think I'd be blowing my
horn a little bit.
Did you share what you submitted to Science magazine with
anybody else before it was published?
Mr. Donato. No.
Mr. Walden. So no other organization out there had--had a
copy of your report and your findings prior to when Science
magazine either printed it online----
Mr. Donato. I may have e-mailed it to a couple people the
week before or a couple days before, but----
Mr. Walden. Who, do you recall.
Mr. Donato. I don't recall.
Mr. Walden. I think it would be interesting to know who
that might have been.
Here's--here's the other piece. And I want to get back to
the title because I think that's part of what others have used
to say your report claims certain things. And it does talk
about, you know, that this hinders--Post-Fire Logging Hinders
Regeneration and Increases Fire Risk. And Mr. Sensenig--
obviously you've seen the e-mail to you from--to him where he
writes and says he disagrees with that and he pretty forcefully
describes that.
And I want to kind of rebuild those and then how your
research applies to it, because if--you know, our bill does not
mandate any particular action in the woods. We do not mandate
in here they go salvage logs. In fact, they have to meet a
criteria to even be able to use the expedited processes to do
whatever the forest plan requires, correct? You've read our
bill, I assume.
Mr. Donato. I'm not terribly familiar with it.
Mr. Walden. And I'm not asking you--I'm not trapping you or
I'm not asking you to comment whether you like it or dislike
it, because I know you're still a researcher.
But having said that, if--based on what you know from your
research--I'll try and couch this so I'm not causing you any
other problems; that's not my intent--you would have fewer
seedlings destroyed if the activity, if it was determined to be
salvage logging, occurred sooner rather than later as in the
first month or two months like the State of Oregon--Mr.
Lorensen has testified the state tries to do on a very rapid
basis, as opposed to two years later, correct?
Mr. Donato. Yes, that is correct. In this case that would
have been the case.
Mr. Walden. So faster actually, because I think we've heard
this from Dr. Franklin and others, that if the societal choice
or the--is to go in and take out some trees, that you're better
to do it earlier rather than later; you'll do less damage.
Mr. Donato. In this case that's--that's true.
Mr. Walden. So you see why some people have said post-fire
logging hinders, you know, reforestation and creates problems,
have taken that title to imply that in every case that is the
outcome. And indeed I don't think that is what you meant.
Mr. Donato. No, I think we should be--we should be aware
ourselves of overinterpretation of that to all fires and all
situations.
Mr. Walden. And it really gets--it seems to me, and again
you all are scientists and foresters and done this a long time
and I'm still learning all this stuff, but it seems to me that
you have to do it on a site-by-site basis. And as I travel all
over Oregon and eastern Oregon, literally what happens on one
slope is different than what happens on another in terms of
moisture, vegetation, tree type. You go in the Hood River
Valley, my home, one side of that valley gets probably ten or
twelve inches more rain than the other. You cross over to
Mosier and you've got scrub oaks and limits of pine and then it
sort of disappears into grassland very rapidly.
And so--but there are times when you have the need to get
in and take actions in a rapid fashion to prevent erosion or to
do other restoration work that doesn't even involve cutting
trees, correct?
Mr. Donato. What is the answer--what is the question?
Mr. Walden. There are times when acting quickly--forget
cutting trees for a second.
Mr. Donato. Sure.
Mr. Walden.
Just to stabilize soils, maybe put logs in streams to help,
you know, stop a washout, those sorts, need to happen quicker
rather than slower.
Mr. Donato. I think that's correct. Some of those actions
if they're going to be taken are better off done sooner.
Mr. Walden. All right. And I've expired my time. Thank you
very much. I appreciate your being here today.
Peter.
Mr. DeFazio. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
I guess since--I mean I understood this ruling to be a
hearing sort of on a post-fire recovery relationship, salvage
logging, but since again you've characterized your bill several
times, and I have some concern, let me say what my--I agree
with all the objectives that you talk about in the bill and the
way you characterize. I don't think the language quite gets us
there, and I've expressed this to you and your staff.
I think it gives unbelievably broad discretion to political
appointees. And as I said to the Douglas timber operators, you
might like that with Mark Rey and Gale Norton, but God forbid
what if Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton comes back and you get
another Katie McGinty and Bruce Babbitt. And they go, oh, my
god, no, we can't have that.
So, you know, I really think we need to be more
prescriptive and we need to continue that discussion and debate
in this bill to go--to really get to class, forest type
treatment, retention. And those are the kind of things I think
the next panel can address who have read the bill and have
some--you know, have varying opinions about it.
But to get back to this. And, you know, you're never
supposed to ask questions you don't have an idea what the
answer is going to be, but I'm going to do it because--and I
hope I don't put you in a really tough spot here. But, again, I
read the article. I--like you drive a D9 over a little tree; it
gets crunched. You know, I got it. OK. You know, you leave a
bunch of slash on there. You know, no big deal.
The BLM told us, for instance, that when we were viewing
their site that it wouldn't be impossible and they do have
experience in salvage logging, selectively salvage logging in
sites that they have previously reforested very early on, and
they require it to be done in a way that minimizes the
mortality of the seedlings in terms of the equipment that's
used and how the activities are conducted.
So your--your--in this case I assume there was no intent, I
mean the loggers weren't told, hey, try and preserve the
natural regeneration. They didn't because the idea was they
were going to come in--not them, but another contractor was
going to come in and do reforestation. Is that correct?
Mr. Donato. That is correct.
Mr. DeFazio. But you do say in your testimony, which you
don't say in there, that in fact you could minimize some of
those impacts with different techniques in terms of slash
removal and/or harvest techniques.
Mr. Donato. That's specifically why we didn't go into all
the different possible management recommendations about logging
early or logging differently in an 800-page--or 800-word paper.
Mr. DeFazio. Right.
Mr. Donato. Yeah, that would be another option, is to if
you identify existing natural regeneration, you could do a
logging technique that protected that.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. That's good.
Now--but here's the question. I probably--again, I don't
want to--and, you know, you can take the Fifth or whatever. But
the thing that I think people find most inflammatory about the
article is the title, which does seem, as Mr. Baird said, to
draw a overly broad conclusion. And I guess the question is--I
mean I write out bids all the time and they stick titles on
them, and I go, oh, I can't believe they put that title on my
bid, that's not what I was trying to communicate at all.
Did you choose the title?
Mr. Donato. Let me explain the title.
I make no--no excuses for it, but do appreciate that
there's an 800--eight-word limit on a title for the Science
Brevia section. And by the time you say effects of post-
wildfire logging on, you've got like two words left, if that.
And so--and do also appreciate----
Mr. DeFazio. Debatable would have been a better term.
Mr. Donato. Yeah. Yeah. And people have asked that we put
the word ``delayed'' in the title too. It's like no, used all
eight words, sorry.
And--in any case wording of titles in high tier journals
that is strong, that states the, you know, the results that you
found, instead of just saying the effects of X on Y, you say
here's the results we found. And most of the time it's a study
that says plant pathogens accumulate in snail tissue, and no
one cares about it. And it just happens to be that in this case
people, you know, read that it was too broad because of the
particular topic, but that's where it is.
Mr. DeFazio. An educational moment.
Just back to Mr. Lorensen. I just want--I mean, you know,
we visited the site. The BLM had proposed some selective
salvage. They weren't--they were restrained by the courts. But
the point is they were going to do some selective salvage. But
next door was private land which had been, you know, much more
robustly salvaged and reforested, and it looked like it was
doing pretty good in terms of the regrowth. And it sounds like
the state would conduct operations similarly on state forest
lands.
Mr. Lorensen. We have a range of management prescriptions--
--
Mr. Walden. Peter, can you try to turn on that mike? And
get a little closer perhaps. Thank you.
Mr. Lorensen. On state-owned land we have a range of
management objectives, and we would tailor our prescription to
those objectives. But, again, the objectives are fairly clear,
and then the methods we use, the expertise and science are out
there to implement them.
Mr. DeFazio. Right. So if the objective is to create fiber
or grow trees for harvest, you would conduct similarly to
private.
Mr. Lorensen. As we would--also we'd grow structure and
other forest conditions that are similar to the Federal
objectives that we would also implement in a similar active way
but through different techniques. We use the full range of
tools, and again----
Mr. DeFazio. Different treatments for different objectives.
Mr. Lorensen. But with a full range of tool box. And that's
probably the biggest difference.
Mr. DeFazio. And is that set by law or the management plans
are written to--I mean are these catastrophic events
anticipated in your management plan, so with this management
objective this is the prescription you'd apply, or do you have
to develop it after the fact.
Mr. Lorensen. We do not have that in our current plan.
We've talked about incorporating that, but we do it on an ad
hoc basis based upon the circumstances. It's preferable to get
them done very quickly.
Mr. DeFazio. But would that be--I mean if we had the
resources and the time, would that be a prudent thing to do,
because that way if you knew it was an area that was reserved
for fiber production, didn't have sensitive species, watershed,
tribal soils, whatever issues, that you're going to get in
there quick, salvage and reforest. I mean would it be desirable
to sort of anticipate those different things with a cross of
different classes in different areas.
Mr. Lorensen. That's correct. And we basically have a
desired future conditions.
Mr. DeFazio. I know you say this, or your bill does, but
I'm not sure we quite get there in legislative language, Brian.
And we can--again, we can have that debate later. But I just
want to establish that that's a desirable thing to do.
Mr. Lorensen. On all arranged desirable future conditions
we have active management centers we implement to accomplish
those in a timely way.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. That's good.
Anybody else of anything I've asked here want to, because
this is going to be my last round, anybody want to comment on
any question I've raised, anything the other people have said?
Yeah, go ahead, Dr. Kolb.
Mr. Kolb. Well, I just want to get back to a question that
Mr. Inslee asked me.
Mr. Baird. Well, he's gone.
Mr. Kolb. Why are forests here. And I don't want to be
misunderstood on this.
Nature does not need us. Nature is just a series of
processes that's been doing its thing for a long time. Whether
forests are here or not, nature doesn't care. And as climates
have fluctuated, so have our forests. We, however, need nature.
It provides for us what we need. And this is where this gets--
this is where my comments are on. If we have a landscape
designated to grow forests for us, if we let nature do its
thing and nature decides no more forests, that's going to be
really hard on us. And that is the whole point of trying to
manage nature, to help us while maintaining the integrity of
the processes that are out there.
Mr. DeFazio. OK.
Mr. Lorensen. And if I may. Again, I apologize for
Representative Inslee also not being here. He did ask the
question of do we advocate something or not, and I guess I want
to be clear. I didn't say yes or no. It's not my role to
advocate, and I'm a state employee. My job is provide
policymakers decision information and help support their
decisionmaking processes. So that's my answer, and I guess it's
not a yes-or-no question, but he asked it that way.
Mr. DeFazio. Well, I think the answer, and going back to
what Dr. Kolb said, it depends. It depends on the objective
and/or the classification of that particular tract of land.
Mr. Lorensen. But I also think other beliefs that came out
with Representative Inslee was the notion of man and forest,
and it's fair to say that man was here prior to European input
and there was management of forests well before we got here
through fire and other means. It's also fair to say due to fire
suppress we now have forests and woodlands where they weren't
before. And so it works both ways. And we need to be cautious
about both those roles. We can either create forests or we can
manage and modify forests.
Mr. DeFazio. No, I mean and that's a point. I mean we're
not into--I mean that's why, you know, we adopted legislation
to move forward on fuel reduction, because we realized we
created the problem. I mean you can see photos of settlement in
1870 and there's a house and there's some big ponderosas around
and you look now and you can't see the house. And that's
because of the repression of fire, and it isn't what the
preexisting regime was with natural prairie fire and other
things.
Or just one other quick thing, because a lot of people like
to focus on diameter, which is a really poor measure of what
you should take or not take in a lot of cases, and it's a great
example. And I just want to put it out here because I like to
educate as we go along and I learn as we go along.
I was visiting a guy who's done a really great job with his
property over in eastern Oregon. And he's, you know, thinned it
out pretty nicely, moving back toward what, you know, I would
see in the 1870 picture with the ponderosa. Right next door is
Federal Forest Service. It's been repressing fire. And here's
this big old Doug fir that's now 90 years old, growing right up
into the crown of the ponderosa on the Federal forest land, but
it's over 20 inches in diameter.
The screens say, well, you shouldn't take--the fir
shouldn't be there, but also if you have an indiscriminate
screen, you'd say, well, you can't take it out, it's over 20
inches in diameter. Well, the question is: Do you want to save
the big old ponderosa if there is a fire or do you want to lose
both of them?
And, you know, so I mean there are no easy answers to this.
And that's ultimately why we ask scientists, you put all your
stuff out there. I'm just not as heads-up about this whole
publishing of the article. I mean it's like I read stuff I
disagree with all the time. I mean it's like--you know, I mean
if I read stuff I only agreed with, I'd be, you know, on Fox or
something.
So, you know, it's just--you know, I'm not offended by it,
so I invite you all to continue to challenge this because we
definitely don't know everything we need to know.
Thank you.
Mr. Walden. I look forward to the day you're on Fox, Peter.
You know, before I go to Dr./Congressman Baird, I just want
to say--and I look forward to working with you. We've worked on
a lot of these issues together and we sometimes start from
sightly different viewpoints and try to find common ground, and
I think we did that with the Healthy Forests Restoration Act.
And I think--and I'm hopeful we can do that here, because again
I'm hearing some of the same things Brian and I have talked
about, come to terms with and hopefully with language we, all
of us, can, because I want to rely--yeah, if we can get Doug to
write the right words.
Because I still believe, just as you say, these decisions
have to be made on the--sort of plot by plot or forest by
forest or plant regime or whatever your terminology is by plant
regime. And we've--we've learned, as I said in my opening
statement to some snickers, actually learned from these
hearings. We have drafted amendments to the original law that
say we want to be prescriptive about leaving habitat trees
behind. We want a dedicated funding source for the research. We
have adopted some of Dr. Franklin's recommendations on how we
phrase independent third-party peer review. I think that's
probably not the exact right wording, but we've tried to refine
the peer review piece and tried--in fact, one of the issues,
and Jay's gone now, but in his and Tom's bill talks about, you
know, trying to predetermine what to do if a fire were to go
through a region.
We in the, as you know, in the Healthy Forests Restoration
Act created the community wildfire planning process as bringing
together very disparate individuals and groups to try and say
what do we want in our forest-surrounded communities.
The Resource Advisory Councils have done that, brought
together people that sometimes in some communities have been at
war forever to say, you know, we all love these forests, how do
we--how do we come together and say what's best for management.
We're also modifying our bill to take advantage of that
wildfire community planning process to say let's do look out
and say if a fire were to go up the Applegate or over into a
watershed, here is a community, what we think should happen in
a post-fire recovery process. Start that planning process now
so that we can have some guidance so that if we need to act, so
we don't run over, you know, seedlings two years after, let's
do what's right for the forests, for watersheds.
Anyway, I'll stop.
Brian.
Mr. Baird. We're going to save for another time, you and I
have a chat about Wilcoxon rank sum test itself and----
Mr. Donato. I would love to.
Mr. Baird.--the importance of the median.
I will--I will assert that the median speaks to one of the
many possible cells and therefore can be misleading. I think
that's pretty clear.
But let me ask you. Something that I think is interesting
is emerging out of this. Rightly or wrongly, intentionally or
unintentionally, largely based solely on the title of your
article and then what the press made of it subsequently, this
study is becoming as if it were the total body of literature
about post-fire logging. And people show up at townhalls with
how could you dare put forward this bill when science has
proven this. And we have buttons about scientific integrity.
Scientific integrity is a lot more complex than that.
The question from me would be, Mr. Donato, and then I want
to ask a separate one of everybody. Do you think it would be an
accurate or an inaccurate use of your study, given its
limitations and its strengths, to suggest that your study alone
should guide this particular piece of legislation or should be
used as evidence that we should or should not, in and of
itself, that we should or should not engage in post-fire
logging and reforestation?
Mr. Donato. No, I don't think that this study is a
wholesale threat to this bill. And I think that it provides
some important information, but it does not provide a lot of
other important information.
I guess I'm going to leave it at that.
Mr. Baird. Would you say that it concludes that all post-
fire logging would hinder regeneration of an increased fire
risk.
Mr. Donato. You said--you asked me if it was all post-fire
logging?
Mr. Baird. Mm-hmm.
Mr. Donato. Definitely no.
Mr. Baird. Thank you.
Let me ask everybody. We'll go through one by one.
Mr. Inslee, one of the problems I had with my good friend--
Jay and I differ. One of the problems I had with his
characterization was he said that our legislation would take
science out of the process. What we're really trying to do is
put science into the process. Right now the process is a
litigious process, not a scientific process. And because of
that litigation, we are wasting millions of dollars of the
taxpayers' monies not with hardly any environmental benefit and
at significant economic cost.
As you may know, our legislation proposes the establishment
of preapproved management plans, and the gist of that is based
actually on some concepts from our reading of the scientific
literature that says, look, given that we know that woody
material decays rapidly after a fire and therefore if you're
going to do anything, you ought to do it quickly, given that we
know that other plant material can grow quickly and thereby
suppress forest regeneration and therefore further you ought to
do something quickly, can we not, analogous to what my good
friend Peter was saying, use our existing knowledge in advance
to identify plant association groups, soil types, types of
fire, and in context with that general information and the
intentional use of the land, or the allocation of the land,
come up with reasonable plans where we use the best science to
make decisions about both economic and environmental interests
so that we can make these more expeditiously for both the
benefit of the environment and the economy.
And I'm going to ask you. Do you think we have both the
knowledge to do that, Dr. Hobbs?
Mr. Hobbs. Yes. As a matter of fact, I think we do in
many--in many cases. But I'd also like to add another dimension
to that, and that is not only should we be prepared for these
contingencies, but I think we also simultaneously need to have
research plans in place so that when we have a catastrophic
wildfire or some other type of natural disturbance, we are able
to move quickly to implement the types of experimentation that
is necessary to address these crucial questions.
Mr. Baird. I appreciate that.
Mr. Hobbs. So I think you need--I think you need both of
these.
Mr. Baird. It's actually in the legislation, and I think
more than any other Federal statute pertaining to forest
management that I know of, it provides for it as part of the
process of post-fire response and also it contains a research
element for funding.
Mr. DeFazio. Would you yield for a second.
Mr. Baird. I would be happy to.
Mr. DeFazio. Again, this--you know, we write laws, and this
is again one of the areas where I have a concern. When you look
at catastrophic event research projects, it says the secretary
concerned may. May does not mean that Gale Norton will develop
these things. She may if she so wishes. And given the aversion
of this administration to science, she probably wouldn't.
So I'm suggesting there are ways in which we need to
negotiate parts of this bill and say ``shall.''
Mr. Baird. But I think----
Mr. Walden. Can I interrupt just a second, since I actually
have this little gavel here.
This is about whether or not they do projects.
Mr. DeFazio. Right. And he is suggesting we should have and
he's saying that's exactly what we're doing. We should have
projects ready to move forward out of the can.
Mr. Walden. Right. Right. But what we didn't want to do is
mandate that every single time they had to do a project.
Mr. Baird. That's why we put ``may'' in there.
Mr. Walden. Yeah, because if you've got fire--oh, sorry. Go
ahead.
Mr. DeFazio. Well, but--well, then you need to say that--if
I could then, gentleman, yield it.
I just think given what he's saying and what other
scientists have said, I think ``may,'' given the prejudices of
this administration, is going to lead to one thing, and
``may,'' given the prejudices of the last administration, would
have led to endless study and no action.
So, you know, it's like we--I believe we need to be more
specific, and I'd be happy to work with the two of you on that.
Mr. Baird. I appreciate that. That's a good point. Thank
you.
Return to the question at hand. Dr. Peterson.
Mr. Peterson. Thank you. I have a couple of comments I'd
like to say about that.
First of all, the Federal agencies often do write fire
management plans in anticipation of things that may occur at
different portions of the landscape. So many of the national
forests have those. Many of the National Park Service
properties have those. They are always being looked at again
and revised and so forth. So I think to the extent that some of
the things you've mentioned could be further incorporated, that
would be a terrific idea.
Regarding the body of knowledge that can be used for making
scientific decision, there's always some uncertainty. And
that----
Mr. Baird. There always will be.
Mr. Peterson. And it always will be, and that's a judgment
call of policymakers and management as to how they want to deal
with that uncertainty and how risky they are and so forth.
There's a huge body of literature on the effects of logging
individually on forest ecosystems going back to the 1960s.
There's hundreds and hundreds of papers on them.
There's a huge body of scientific literature on the effects
of fire individually on different forest ecosystem components
going back to the 1930s. There's a much smaller body of
literature specifically on post-fire tree harvest. There was a
literature review done in 2001 by Dr. Jim McGeever, who
currently works with Oregon State University, and they found 21
studies that had been done on that topic. As far as I know,
since then there's been two more, so that's 23. Mr. Donato's is
study number 24.
There will be another study published later this year by
Dr. McGeever that will provide results--at least the study was
set up rather similar to what Mr. Donato's study is. The
difference--and this is something that hasn't been mentioned
yet today, I don't think--is that he is taking a long-term view
of the effects on post-fire logging slash----
Mr. Baird. He being the study you're referring to, not the
Donato study.
Mr. Peterson. Correct. This is Dr. McGeever's study. They
used a simulation technique to project forward into time. And
that hasn't been mentioned here today. That, you know, I think
it's really important to get that initial result after the
management action.
And because of the constraints of funding, and a lot of the
institutions we're with, we typically have short-term, small-
scale studies. That's all we can forward. That's all we have
personnel for, whatever.
But the thing that's going to make the biggest difference
in terms of reducing uncertainty in the science in this issue
is long-term research and monitoring. Track this through for at
least a couple of decades.
Mr. Baird. Mr. Donato, any comments.
Mr. Donato. Can we just repeat everything that Dr. Peterson
said for my--for my bit.
Mr. Baird. Dr. Kolb.
Mr. DeFazio. Is he your thesis advisor or what.
Mr. Kolb. I agree with a lot of what Dr. Hobbs commented,
and just as an aside, the research that I presented will be
submitted for publication. We've been very careful because of
the volatile nature of this type of research. We want to have
all our T's crossed and I's dotted. And, basically, I begged
and borrowed and conducted this research with $15,000. So when
I read that Mr. Donato had $300,000, I turned quite green with
envy.
And this--the research that we need, I agree with Dr.
Peterson on additional components.
Another thing that has always been thrown out here is
logging does this, logging does that. We need to recognize that
logging is also very varied and there are many, many different
types of logging. So it's unfair to categorize logging per se.
And this--all of this whole process of what we need to know
and can we do things preemptively and prescriptively relates
back to my lone dissension, I guess, about the question about
NEPA. And you must understand half of my job is as a scientist;
the other half is providing that information to practitioners.
And basically I give them options and consequences; they make
the decisions.
And what I see with my Federal colleagues is that the
questions that NEPA poses are very relevant and needed. The
process that it takes doesn't work because it takes so long.
And I would say imagine you come down with an illness and you
go to your doctor and your doctor says, well, let's do this
analysis, and a month later you say, well, we ran out of
funding, we'll have to wait till next year, and finally three
years later your family gets the news of what to do. In the
meantime you're dead.
This is kind of the feeling of NEPA, is that it doesn't
have the ability to react very quickly. And that was the basis
of my response to Dr. Inslee on that.
Mr. Baird. I would just add, I don't see any evidence
necessarily that delay is always beneficial to the environment.
Dr. Lorensen.
Mr. Lorensen. Well, I appreciate being elevated that way.
Mr. Walden. Yes, I was going to say it's actually
Congressman Inslee, Dr. Baird. We'll call you Mr. Lorensen.
Mr. Lorensen. Thank you.
Mr. Baird. I'm not sure it's an elevation.
Mr. Lorensen. We often, for those of----
Mr. Baird. Either Congress or doctor.
Mr. Lorensen. I would have to agree with maybe both. But
certainly for those of us in the lower ranks, Ph.D. has some
other meaning than Ph.D.
Mr. Baird. Hey there. Give back the balance of my time.
Mr. Lorensen. I do agree with my boss on my far left there,
that I think a research plan does need to be available and
created ahead of time. There's clearly legitimate debate about
how studies should be conducted, and you don't want to have
that debate after the event. But we do also argue that it needs
to be done in the context, given limited resources, of active
adaptive management, which is going to do something different
than strict research may do.
And, again, back to the systematic evidence review concept,
one advantage of doing that, it does allow us to gather the
available science and really make a decision about how do we
move forward from where the current status quo and the current
research is and also allows us to say we made an incremental
change in terms of the knowledge, and it may be time to do
another SCR. And so it's a different process, but I think it's
worth looking at. And I encourage your exploration of that.
Mr. Baird. Thank you.
Mr. Walden. Dr./Congressman Baird, thank you. And I want to
thank our panel of witnesses. You all have been most helpful
and insightful. And, Mr. Donato, I don't want you to go away
from here thinking this is like the worst experience of your
life, even though it might have been. I really appreciate your
willingness to come here voluntarily, your willingness to
answer very--yeah, we didn't have to subpoena you--and your
willingness to answer some very difficult questions and follow-
up with Mr.--with Congressman Baird.
And part of the reason I thought it made sense, and I think
I could speak probably for Congressman Udall, although I'll
not, to have this hearing was so that you could address some of
these issues. I mean we get these things that say calls needed
now, oppose Walden logging bill, new science study shows bill
is flawed. And then we have the one on, you know, how where it
says scandal over academic freedom and suppression and, you
know, we're eliminating funding. And here we've all said no,
that's not what this is about.
And so it really helps us to have you talk about what your
study shows, how you conduct your research, what
misunderstandings, if there were some, are there and clear up
the record.
And so good luck in your future studies. You have
accomplished something that I dare say the other 237,000
studiers haven't done: You've achieved great prominence and
press coverage for a study that is a page long, I think, or
two, so--
Thank you all. We will--thank you for being here.
We will call up our next panel of witnesses. I'll read you
a little about each one as they make their way up here.
Rich Drehobl, retired BLM Field Manager from Medford,
Oregon. He has 33 years of experience as a land manager with
the Bureau of Land Management, including the past 18 years as a
field manager for the Ashland Resource Area. During his 33
years as a practitioner of applied science with the BLM, he has
gained on-the-ground experience with all the facets of wildland
fires, including suppression, hazardous fuels reduction, post-
fire stabilization and rehabilitation, and salvage logging. He
graduated from the University of Arizona in 1972 with majors in
Forestry, Range Ecology and Natural Resource Planning.
Dr. Hal Salwasser, Dean of the College of Forestry, Oregon
State University. Prior to joining OSU's faculty in July of
2000, Dr. Salwasser was Director of the U.S. Forest Service
Pacific Southwest Research Station in California, regional
forester for the northern region of the Forest Service in
Montana, Boone and Crockett Professor of Wildlife Conservation
at the University of Montana, Director of the New Perspectives/
Ecosystem Management for the U.S. Forest Service in Washington,
D.C. He holds a Ph.D. in wildland resource science from the
University of California, Berkeley. In addition to serving as
Dean of the College of Forestry at Oregon State University, Dr.
Salwasser of Oregon's Forest Research Laboratory at the
University and Fellow of Society of American Foresters.
Dr. Jerry Franklin, who has been--both these gentlemen have
been before our committee before and we welcome you back. Dr.
Franklin is a Professor of the College of Forest Resources at
the University of Washington. Dr. Franklin, who must have
started at age seven, has 52 years of experience in forestry,
including fire fighting, practicing silviculture and managing
forest properties. The majority of his career has been in
conducting research in silviculture, forest ecology, forest
ecosystem science and disturbance ecology. He's published on
these topics and also teaches them primarily at the University
of Washington and Oregon State University. His experience is
primarily in the Pacific Northwest, but Dr. Franklin has also
spent time in other forest regions in the United States,
including the Sierras, Alaska and the eastern United States.
Dr. Dave Perry, Professor Emeritus of OSU. Much of Dr.
Perry's research since the mid-1970s has focused on factors
influencing the recovery of beneficial soil organisms following
clear cutting, with particular reference to biological legacies
such as big dead wood and sprouting shrubs/trees. In Montana
and southwest Oregon his studies included degraded clearcuts
such as those in which reforestation attempts had failed. In
all cases research included comparisons with stands that have
been established by fire at some point in the past. Dr. Perry
also spent time on the ground with the U.S. Forest Service
personnel observing burn patterns following the 1987 fires in
southwest Oregon.
And, finally, Dr. Thomas Atzet, Atzet Ecological Consulting
of Merlin, Oregon. Dr. Atzet worked as Area Ecologist for the
Rogue River, Siskiyou and Umpqua National Forests from 1974 to
2004. A major objective of his work was to define successional
pathways and their modifications by disturbances, such as fire,
by plant association. He helped define natural fire regimes for
southwest Oregon and has participated in developing post-fire
Environmental Impact Statements for the Silver fire of 1987 and
the Biscuit Fire of 2002. He has a B.S. in Forest--I'll
rephrase that. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Forest
Science from--I have a B.S. in journalism, which is kind of a
double--from Humboldt State University and a M.S. in
Physiological Ecology and a Ph.D. in Forest Ecology from Oregon
State University.
Gentlemen, we really appreciate your all being here and
your help with our hearing today.
If you would please stand, I'll administer the oath and
then we can begin. If you'll raise your right hand.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Walden. Let the record show they all agreed to the
affirmative. Please be seated.
Dr. Atzet, for your statement please we certainly welcome.
Thank you for being here, sir. And you're up first.
Do we need to change out a little bit. You don't want to
give Mr. Drehobl's. We're doing Dr. Atzet. That's what I'm
told.
Mr. Atzet. I could do yours.
Mr. Drehobl. I appreciate that.
Mr. Walden. And as this is setting up, I hope our friends
who are here today to observe this, first of all, I want to
thank you for the way you all have conducted yourselves in a
topic that has at times produced some smoke and fire and heat,
shouting. Thank you for the way you've conducted yourselves.
And, second, I hope you can appreciate the caliber of
witnesses that we have this wonderful opportunity to hear from.
Tremendous background. It really helps in the process, and
we're thankful for them being here.
Mr. Atzet. Good afternoon.
Mr. Walden. Is that microphone on.
Again, for those of you, if your mike--if your light in
front of your microphone is out, that means it is on. And so if
it's lit, it is off.
Mr. Atzet. Is this working?
Mr. Walden. That is. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS ATZET,
ATZET ECOLOGICAL CONSULTING
Mr. Atzet. Good afternoon. My name is Tom Atzet, and I'm
delighted to say that I no longer have any affiliation
whatsoever other than my family. And I appreciate everyone
being here because I believe everyone wants to seek excellence
in science.
Back at the turn of the century when Representative Bob
Smith asked for a historic accounting of old growth, I likened
the Klamath Mountains to a library where the species were the
books and the processes created the shelves or the niches. We
have many books representing millions of years of nature's
wisdom in this area, and my objective today is to provide the
background about the creation of this unique library.
And that's just showing you that I've put in a few plots in
my lifetime, 8,000 and a hundred--1,500 permanent plots.
Now, I've spent my career pretty much as a public servant,
bringing sound and unbiased science to our decisionmakers.
Mr. Walden. You know, you really are going to have to be
close to the mike. Maybe we could hand him that hand-held mike.
That would be----
Mr. Atzet. That would help.
Yeah, I really need to see what's going on up there.
I spent my career as a public servant, bringing sound
science and unbiased science to the decisionmaker. Fraud
science leads to poor policy and poor decision. It's just a
matter of garbage in, garbage out.
I strongly feel my role has been and is to provide only the
science and steer clear of policy and decisionmaking. Science
is and was, still is the life blood of what I do.
First a bit about a current diversity. Geological diversity
brought about by plate movement, volcanism and erosion is the
foundation for our ecosystems here in the Siskiyous.
Go ahead.
Vegetationally, I've described 15 plant zones. Go ahead.
Thirty plant associations and a hundred--whoops, go back.
Thirty plant associations--30 plant groups and 130 plant
associations. Plant associations are the basic unit for
predicting successional pathways and reaction to disturbances
such as fire.
Go ahead.
To fully appreciate how our library was created, here's a
bit of background on the Klamaths. The Klamath Mountains first
appeared near Mexico City as an island arch and gradually
rotated their way into the present position. So it's not like
what stays in Las Vegas remains there.
And so at this current position you could see that the
Pacific Coast high pressure cell is what gives us our fire
weather and it dominates a lot of the summer climate. And we
were far enough south to not be ravaged by the Ice Ages and
have our library eliminated. So we came through the Ice Ages
with our library intact. But this ecosystem developed over
300,000 years ago--300 million. I'm sorry.
When I helped create the late successional reserves for the
Northwest Forest Plan, I considered the Cascades as a barrier
between the eastern and western Oregon ecosystems. But the
Columbia Gorge--go back. One more. OK. Go on.
OK. The Columbia Gorge and the Klamath River breach that
barrier, and that's the only place in the Cascades that the
barrier is breached.
The processes that I was considering here were migratorial
and dispersal processes. And the Klamath River allowed the
breach of that barrier in order to have east/west mixing of the
species that we have in southwestern Oregon. So each area is
now considered just a bastion of diversity.
So--go on. Now, imagine the Northwest as a gigantic H and
the Klamath as a cross bar and the Cascades and the coast
ranges as legs. So for over 60 million years the species have
been going in four directions, up and down these legs, and the
Klamath is like Grand Central Station. It processes what comes
there and acts as a source and a sink for our genetic library.
So it's a very special place in the--in the Pacific Northwest.
Go on. Go on. That was my subliminal slide.
OK. Local gradients also add to the diversity. We have
marine climates from the coast grading into the continental,
and we have high elevation grading into low elevation that
complicate the matter. Just another way of adding diversity.
And let me leave you with two thoughts. One is that
evolution keeps what works and discards failure. OK. And the
processes--go on--that are necessary for evolution are
basically three: Superfecundity, stress-related mortality, and
the ability to transfer that knowledge from one generation to
the next through DNA. All of these organisms and processes
contribute to the library and our diversity and therefore the
resilience.
Second and last is the concept of saving the tails. Suppose
you used the strategy for hiring people where you continually
pick from the center of a normal distribution. What would that
do? It would guarantee you basically a uniformity and a
mediocrity of your work force. So you really need to save the
tails of the fire regime. High-severity and low-severity fire
are essential to maintain the diversity in our fire regimes.
We've tried to cutoff those tails over the years and dismiss
them as catastrophic. I got to tell you, I hate the word
catastrophic. Accepting the tails as part of the natural
process will insure us the diversity we need to maintain the
resilience and health of an ecosystem, in other words, a fully
stocked library.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Atzet follows:]
Statement of Thomas Atzet, Ecological Consultant,
Medford, Oregon
Good afternoon. I am Tom Atzet and I am delighted to admit that I
no longer have any particular affiliation other than family. I was
however, the area ecologist for the Rogue River, Siskiyou and Umpqua
National Forests for almost thirty years. Both my advance degrees were
completed here in the Klamath Mountains. You all have access to my
specific background, so I will go on.
It is an honor to be here among colleagues that have dedicated
their careers to studying and understanding ecosystem and the processes
that maintain them. I have great respect for all of you. I also
appreciate the time and effort my government has taken to help assure
and maintain excellence in science.
I spent 36 years as a public servant, bringing sound, and
unblemished science to the decision makers. They expected nothing less
to care for our public ecosystems. Science was, and is, the ``life-
blood'' of what I do.
Today my objective is to review some of the major processes for
promoting our renowned ecological richness (biodiversity) of the
Klamath Province. I believe this background helps provide context for
planning and applying research in southwestern Oregon. It is similar to
taking a psychological profile before attempting to treat a patient.
Diversity of process creates structural and compositional
diversity, the essential element of resilience and sustainability.
Although average climatic conditions are often used to describe
ecosystems, such as average annual temperature or average annual
precipitation, it is the extremes that more often determine survival,
growth and reproductive success. I will highlight process and emphasize
why it is necessary to ``save the tails'', to maintain diversity.
We tend to vilify extremes (for example, extensive fires) as
``catastrophic'' and on the other hand, accept those of less acreage as
part of the ``norm'' in the normal distribution. That strategy cuts off
the tails, the extremes. If we used that strategy in hiring, we would
be assuring ourselves of uniformity and mediocrity. The stresses of
acute change continually hone organismic process of reproduction,
survival and growth. This overarching process, called evolution,
discards failure, keeps what works, and passes the learning on to the
succeeding generations.
To provide a detailed profile of the history of the Klamath would
take a major treatise. Instead, I have provided an outline of the major
factors involved and some detail for selected factors.
Outline of major factors affecting diversity in the Klamath Geologic
Province
1. Geology and associated compositional and structural diversity
a. Triassic (300,000,000 years old) through recent alluvium.
i. Volcanic island arch intrusion and erosion produced
shallow sea sediments and resistant volcanic peaks.
b. Plates hosting ancient ecosystems slowly rotated northwest
from 20 degrees south latitudes ( Mexico City)
c. Volcanics and sediments metamorphosed (folded, faulted and re-
crystallized) pressured by the Gorda Plate part of the Pacific Plate
d. Nevadian Orogeny inserted granitic and dioritic peaks
e. Sea floor (Josephine Ophiolite) scraped off onto the
continental terrain
f. Continued metamorphosis and erosion through the Ice Ages
2. ``Library'' of genetic material for evolving and migrating flora &
fauna
a. Old conifer species and continued recombination (Triassic)
i. A sink for tropical and arctic sources during plant
migrations
1. Climate change the driver
a. Recombination of the Tertiary floras
b. Invasion of chaparral flora during the Xerothermic
Period
c. Influence of the ``Little Ice Age'' on species
regeneration and migration processes.
ii. Klamaths were a genetic source for emerging surrounding
terrain
1. Building Cascade ranges received species from the
Klamaths
2. Emerging California & Oregon Coast ranges were
populated by the Klamath species migrations
a. Angiosperms evolved 60 million years ago (Cretaceous)
i. Added new reproductive processes
3. Present Global position affects diversity of climate and rates of
change
a. Continental ice spared southwestern Oregon plant communities.
b. Scattered alpine cirques and glaciers provided northeast
facing coves
c. Within the transition zone between Temperate and Mediterranean
d. Pacific Coast High Pressure area promotes dry summer fire
weather
3. Pacific marine influx grades into inland continental climates
4. Transverse orientation (rather than north-south) of the Klamaths
a. Blocks cyclonic storms stabilizing adjacent systems to the
north and south
b. Links Coast Ranges and Sierras forming an ``H'' pattern
i. Allows for continued migration and genetic mixing
ii. Maintains the sink-source character of the Klamath
Province
5. Elevation grades from sea level to above timberline
a. Provides temperature and precipitation gradients and niche
breadth
6. A variety of disturbance agents and regimes increase diversity
a. Fire, the primary agent, provides an acute rate of change
b. Insects and diseases, usually secondary provide chronic stress
and change
The ``H'' configuration
From a satellite view only the major rivers, valleys and mountain
ranges stand out. The Cascade-Sierra chain and the California-Oregon
Coast ranges appear as north-south parallel tracks, with the Cascades
appearing as occasional white-capped volcanic peaks. The Klamath
Geologic Province stands out as a crosstie joining the tracks, like the
crosstie of a gigantic capital ``H.' The Klamath and Columbia Rivers
completely breach the Cascade barrier. They appear as deep, winding
gorges allowing water, air, spores, seeds, fish and other animals
lowland passage through the Cascade mountain barrier. The Klamath River
effectively joins east with west, sagebrush, juniper and aspen with
Sitka spruce, madrone, Douglas-fir and shore pine.
In the Klamath Province, the backbone or ``crosstie'' of the
Siskiyou Range provides a high elevation east-west corridor and a sink
for genetic material uninterrupted by the glacial advances. The
Siskiyous have been an ``intersection'' for migration and dispersal of
fauna and flora for at least the last 60 million years. Genetic
material from the Oregon and California Coast Ranges, the Sierras and
Cascades, the Klamath River corridor and southern lowland chaparral
species, migrate in, recombine and disperse. Wittaker and Axelrod both
alluded to the Klamath's ``central significance'' on the west coast.
Transitional Latitude
Southwest Oregon, transitional from Temperate to Mediterranean
ecosystems, is habitat for 29 conifers including endemics such as
Brewer spruce, Baker's cypress and Port-Orford-cedar. It is the
latitudinal extreme for coast redwood, silver fir and Alaska yellow
cedar. It has approximately ten fold more sensitive species than
typical Temperate forests to the north.
Geologic Diversity
Geology ranges from the ultramafic ophiolites of the Josephine
Peridotite Mass to the scattered granite plutons of the Nevadan Orogeny
that poked through existing metamorphosed volcanics and metamorphosed
sediments of Triassic and Jurassic age, including the limestone at
Oregon Caves. Continual deformation of the terrain, by forces
associated with the Pacific Plate, has resulted in steep, complex
geomorphology and chaotic drainage patterns.
Elevation ranges from sea level to just over 7,000 feet at Mt.
Ashland, the highest peak in the Siskiyou Range. Pacific fog often
reaches inland valleys even during the early summer, supporting Port-
Orford-cedar, particularly in protected drainages, such as Grayback
creek.
Recent Climate Change
Recently the Xerothermic (8000 to 4000 years before present) and
the Little Ice Age (1400 to 1850) have modified local vegetation. On
south slopes, new migrants from southern California (ceanothus and
manzanita species for example) were frequently burned. To this day
south slopes have shallow soils and xeric vegetation. Looking north
from any Siskiyou lookout provides a view of sparse vegetation and
occasionally grassy balds. The north aspects on the other hand support
older and denser forests.
Since the average forest on Federal land in southwest Oregon is
less than 300 years old, most stands were generated during the Little
Ice Age, when selective and competitive stresses were likely different.
Survival may have favored species that tolerated higher frequency,
intensity and duration of frost. Today as processes, particularly fire,
create mortality and opportunities for regeneration, a new generation
of genetic material will be selected under different selection
criteria. Fire adapted, fire resistant, or species that avoid fire may
be increasingly favored. Suppressing selection, by dampening mortality,
regeneration and disturbance extremes may result in lowering resilience
and diversity in the long run.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6461.001
Lightning has always been a dependable ignition source. Humans have
become increasingly active. Native Americans, for example effectively
used fire to manage ecosystems for game, crops and water. Natives were
much more than an incidental ignition source. Forests were repeatedly
and consistently burned and thinned creating vegetation mosaics and
plant communities. Natives also stimulated root and berry crops,
planted crops, burned to maintain habitat for game, and cultured
materials for tools, ceremonies and lodging. Shrub cover was low, and
herb and grass vegetation was constantly recycled. Ranchers and miners
burned to replace forest cover, control forest pests, and for fun on a
Saturday night.
Today records indicate, in southwest Oregon, about 60 percent of
the 200 to 300 yearly fires are human caused. On the Siskiyou national
forest (included in the Oregon Department of Forestry Database) the
proportions are about the same (60 percent human caused), but the
average number per year is about fifty. The Oregon Department of
Forestry suppresses 70 percent of their fires before they reach a tenth
of an acre. Eighty-eight percent are less than one acre. Since 1920,
approximately 15,000 fires have been suppressed.
The Future
Decades ago Leopold, Weaver, Biswell, Kilgore Arno, Agee, Mutch,
Martin, Atzet, Skinner, Pyne, all predicted the consequences of fire
suppression:
an increase in total forest biomass
an increase in the percentage of high severity fire
an increase in the number of total acres burned/time
an increase in insect activity
an increase in the occurrences of diseases
an increase in extent and abundance of exotic species
a decrease in vigor of older stands
lowering of crown ratios, increasing inter-tree
competition
increasing risk to late seral landscapes and early seral
pines
increase in hardwood carbohydrate reserves (hardwoods on
steroids)
decreasing conifer abundance and extent
change in competitive relationships
Our attempt to suppress process (fire in this case) and force
stability on ecosystems has resulted in unwanted consequences. Change
creates stress, but stress creates diversity. Dampening the extremes,
cutting off the ``tails'', in the short run, may eliminate what we
consider ``catastrophic'' events, but in the long run may magnify
unwanted consequences.
______
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Doctor. We appreciate your comments.
I just have one really brief question. When you were talking
about the Klamath River and the Columbia, was that the Missoula
flood? Is that what you were saying, when it breached.
Mr. Atzet. Well, the Missoula flood did breach the area,
but the--both those rivers allow migratory processes back and
forth between the east side and the west side.
Mr. Walden. The corridors.
Mr. Atzet. And that's why we have Aspen in the western part
of the Klamath geological provence.
Mr. Walden. OK. Thank you. We'll now turn to the Dean of
the College of Forestry from Oregon State University, Dr. Hal
Salwasser.
Doctor, thank you for being with us once again. We look
forward to your comments, sir.
STATEMENT OF HAL SALWASSER, DEAN, COLLEGE OF FORESTRY, OREGON
STATE UNIVERSITY
Mr. Salwasser. Thank you, Chairman Walden, Members of the
Committee.
I'm Hal Salwasser, the Dean of the College of Forestry at
Oregon State University. I have submitted written testimony
with two co-authors, and I want to tell you why I've done that.
I had a conversation, oh, a month or so ago with a member
of Representative DeFazio's staff, and the conversation got
around to the need for some more specific detail on the kind of
research that would be done after fires in the bill. And I told
Dave Drayer, the staff fellow, that I'd get ahold of Jerry
Franklin and toss some ideas around. And we started an e-mail
conversation about what maybe we'd like to see considered, not
necessarily tell you what you all have to put in the bill, but
some things you might like to see considered.
And my colleague, Professor Norm Johnson, entered into the
conversation, and we were cranking along on this thing until
about the 6th of January and we got distracted. We got
distracted by some other things, and it kind of rested for a
while. And then I got a call from Doug Crandall here saying
we're thinking about holding an oversight hearing. And Norm
said, you know, we really need to dust off that e-mail traffic
and see if we can find some common ground on the kinds of
things that research needs to focus on post-fires.
And so we did that. And we found it to be a very productive
conversation. And our written testimony reflects the
conversation that we had over the past several months.
We also did something else. We've had some less than
pleasant experiences at the university lately with people
reading things that we wrote and drawing inferences from it
that we didn't think we were trying to say. And so we thought
we'd send our draft testimony out for extensive review, and we
sent it to a very wide network of people, everybody in the
college actually and a fair sampling of people outside the
college. And we processed something like 25, maybe 30 comments
back and folded those into our final version of our testimony.
So we presented peer review testimony for you here today,
Chairman.
There's just a few things that I'd like to highlight from
the testimony. And given Dan Donato's very correct statement
about the paucity of peer-reviewed scientific studies on post-
fire logging, we feel it's very important that any legislation
that's going to provide policy direction regarding post-
disturbance management activities, that it would call for and
fund both short and long-term research as well as long-term
monitoring of the ecosystem responses and effects of any
management activities.
We also think that post-fire experimental studies should
take a look at the consequences of different kinds of
management activities on ecological protected social and
economic objectives if those are appropriate. These studies
should be conducted at scales that are sufficient to assess and
contrast how the plants respond, soil fungi, inspects, small
mammals, song birds, aquatic ecosystem responses, and
especially important that's popped up lately is we need a
better handle on how to identified in a feasible manner trees
that are allowed to die so that we can know which trees are
likely to survive and which trees are likely not to.
We also think that reasonable combinations of post-event
strategies should be included in the research, taking care to
insure that assessments of the effects of logging and the
effects of reforestation are handled independently and not
confounded.
It's very appropriate that a stable and permanent source of
funding be created to support post-event research, outreach and
monitoring. One of the concerns that the scientific community
has had about proposed post-fire studies is that the funding
runs out and they stop doing the studies. The Silver Fire is a
classic example where they ran out of money to do monitoring in
the mid-1990s, and it would have been wonderful to have had
that data for a longer time.
And then finally I can't be up here without encouraging you
to call for agency and university collaborations, teams of
scientists, managers working together to integrate the research
and the outreach with the post-fire management strategies.
And I'll just give you one last suggestion, that a really
good topic for these teams of managers and scientists to start
working on right now is what would a preapproved management
strategy look like, how would it be done, how much detail, and
what kind of public input process, how would public input be
handled in developing a preapproved management strategy.
I'll conclude my testimony with those comments.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Salwasser follows:]
Statement of Hal Salwasser, Dean, College of Forestry, and Director,
Oregon Forest Research Laboratory, Oregon State University; Jerry F.
Franklin, Professor, College of Forest Resources, University of
Washington; and K. Norman Johnson, Professor, College of Forestry,
Oregon State University
Recent scientific reports on the potential and actual effects of
various management actions following large fires have generated
enormous interest in the scientific community, the media, and the
public on such topics as post-fire logging, fuel treatments, and
reforestation. While the reports to date are informative and useful,
they also reveal how little peer-reviewed science has been focused on
forest recovery after fires with various management interventions.
Extensive recent scientific studies have been made on the natural
responses of forests to major disturbance events, results of which have
not yet been fully assimilated by resource managers and agencies.
Systematic scientific studies of the impacts of various management
interventions following disturbances are not as rich, although forest
managers have decades of practical knowledge on effects of post-fire
management actions on production forests. We need to use that knowledge
and build on the body of relevant ecological and management science to
improve our capabilities for more reliable forecasting of treatment
approaches and effects.
We believe that any legislation that provides policy direction
regarding post-disturbance management activities should contain
provisions to mandate and fund short- and long-term research, as well
as long-term monitoring of ecological, fire, and other management
responses to forest recovery projects--essential elements of any
credible adaptive management strategy.
Before proceeding, we want to reiterate from previous testimony on
H.R. 4200 by Salwasser and Franklin that management objectives for the
area in question are the primary consideration in any decision
regarding post-fire logging, reforestation, or any other activities.
Much of the ongoing controversy over post-fire logging and active
reforestation results from inadequate attention to management
objectives. The relevant scientific and technical knowledge to inform
post-disturbance management decisions depends upon clarity regarding
management goals for the forest property in question. Hence,
``recovery'' and related activities must be defined in terms of the
management goals for a post-event landscape. Those goals, together with
information on the forest type (or plant association group), post-event
conditions in disturbed areas, and future climate trends will largely
determine what actions, if any, are appropriate. If management plan
direction is not clear for appropriate actions following large
disturbance events, plan revisions should provide such clarity. Major
disturbances should not be the basis for de facto changes in land
allocations or management objectives.
With a clear view of the management objectives, science can play a
vital role in helping managers sort out the type and appropriate levels
of activities to achieve those objectives. Retrospective and
experimental research on post-event landscapes can also help managers,
policy makers, and the public better understand when and how actions
can help move that landscape toward these goals. Toward that end, we
make the following suggestions:
1. Management plans should make clear the primary goals for
different areas and provide general guidance for appropriate post-event
interventions in those areas, giving due consideration to plant
association groups and disturbance event effects on soils, plants,
animals, and aquatic ecosystems.
2. Scientifically credible experiments should be undertaken to
provide quantitative information on the consequences of different post-
fire management activities on ecological, protective, social, and
economic objectives. Experimental studies should be replicated and
include random assignment of treatments and controls. Treatments should
be conducted at scales sufficient to assess and contrast plant (tree,
shrub, and herb), fungal, insect, small mammal, songbird, and aquatic
ecosystem responses. In addition, focused research is needed on
survival of event-damaged trees to provide credible and practical
indicators for predicting whether damaged trees will live or die.
3. Reasonable combinations of post-event strategies should be
included, with care to insure that assessments of the effects of
logging and of reforestation are independent and not confounded.
Strategies could include: management to assist post-event forest
recovery without post-event logging; forest recovery actions with
varying levels of post-event logging and biomass treatments to reduce
impacts of subsequent disturbances; and randomly assigned control areas
that are untreated, i.e., no logging or actions to reduce biomass or
influence forest recovery. This research should have strategic
representation of major plant association groups and fires associated
with different historic fire regimes, i.e., low, mixed, and high
severity and extent.
4. An additional scientific need is synthesis of existing knowledge
and additional research on the ecological roles and functions of large
disturbed areas in regional landscapes, including their role in
maintenance of regional biodiversity, and short- and long-term natural
forest ecosystem responses following major disturbance events.
5. Because forests are highly dynamic ecosystems, post-event
management must be adaptive, i.e., responding to feedbacks from
monitoring and research. Thus, post-event research and monitoring
should be directly integrated into post-event management strategies.
6. Management agencies need to be encouraged and funded to collect
and maintain better management records.--On large fires, such as the
Biscuit, record keeping tends to be quite uneven--much of it is not
useful because of its variable quality and the lack of a central
depository available to researchers.----Good, spatially explicit
records of pre- and post-fire management would strengthen retrospective
research and supplement experimental studies, which because of budget
and management realities will be limited.
7. A permanent and stable funding source should be created to
support post-event research, outreach and monitoring. Long-term
research and monitoring may require data collection for several decades
after the event to fully understand forest responses to management
actions, thus the need for dedicated, stable funding. With dedicated
funding plans for long-term research and monitoring become credible.
8. Linked with establishment of a funding source, authority should
be provided to develop and conduct the research and outreach program
outlined here, including rapid implementation of post-event
experiments, in conformity with management plan direction.
9. University and agency collaborations should be strongly
encouraged in post-fire research, outreach education and monitoring as
such collaborative programs have been highly successful. Consideration
should be given to establishment of interdisciplinary centers of
excellence, based on teams of university and federal agency scientists
working closely with forest resource managers.
10. As a final point, development and administration of the
research and outreach education program outlined here needs to be
transparent to stakeholders and incorporate regular review from a
broadly representative scientific community, perhaps facilitated by the
National Academy of Sciences or some other organization with impeccable
scientific credentials.
We believe that the approach to post-event research and outreach
described above will produce the science needed to better inform policy
makers and the public about the rationale for, and effects of, post-
disturbance-event actions and their relation to previously adopted
management objectives.
______
[An additional statement submitted for the record by Hal
Salwasser follows:]
2 March 2006
To assist with responses to questions raised during the Medford
hearing, we have provided additional information on our consultation
process throughout the research project.
We have communicated primarily with the Joint Fire Sciences Program
concerning our progress through this research. We believed this was
consistent with the lines of communication for other Joint Fire
Sciences Program projects. However, we have also communicated with Tom
Sensenig, Project Inspector. We have attached a chronology of our
contacts and consultation with him. We were never led to believe that
these contacts were insufficient or that we should be communicating
with anyone else within BLM.
Aside from interactions with Tom Sensenig, we only received
requests for information from BLM once. That was a phone call from
Terry Johnson in late November, 2004, asking Douglas Robinson if the
project was on schedule with its budget expenditures for that year. She
said we could confirm with a phone call or email that we were on
schedule. Robinson sent an email confirming that we were right on
schedule. Thus, we had no reason to believe we needed to communicate
with anyone else at BLM. We felt our communication with the Joint Fire
Sciences Program and with the Project Inspector, Tom Sensenig met our
responsibilities for consultation. Although Tom Sensenig, the Project
Inspector, left BLM for the Forest Service in fall, 2004, we were not
notified of a new Inspector. Therefore, we continued to communicate
with Tom Sensenig as Project Inspector. Had we known, we would have
been happy to share our communications and updates of our progress more
broadly within BLM. No clearly defined procedures for consultation were
provided to us.
All the investigators were invited to the national meeting of the
Joint Fire Sciences Program held in San Diego, California, in early
November 2005. Tom Sensenig chose not to attend that meeting. Dan
Donato, Joe Fontaine, and Boone Kauffman attended the meeting. Donato
presented during an oral presentation the same results that were later
accepted for publication by Science. Since Tom Sensenig did not attend
the national meeting, Dan Donato and Joe Fontaine offered to show
Sensenig the talk and the results. Sensenig told them he would be in
Corvallis in Dec so they met with him and showed him the same
powerpoint presentation that was presented in San Diego. They told
Sensenig they were publishing those results and Sensenig expressed no
concerns to them about it. The content of all those presentations
contained the same results that were later published in Science.
Finally, we sought input from Sensenig throughout the project. We
provide dates below of the times we consulted with him.
Chronology of Interactions with Dr. Thomas Sensenig
The following chronology summarizes the interactions with Dr.
Thomas Sensenig, the original project inspector for our Joint Fire
Science Program grant.
2002
Fall 2002 Project Inception Dr. Boone Kauffman visits SW Oregon,
meets with Dr. Tom Sensenig, discusses finding sites to construct a
fire chronosequence. Sensenig and Kauffman tour Quartz fire.
2003
August
27 August. Dr. Douglas Robinson and Joe Fontaine drive to Central
Point to meet Sensenig at BLM District Office. Discuss management needs
and regulatory climate in morning, tour Quartz fire in afternoon.
Sensenig provides Robinson and Fontaine with resource area maps and
telephone directory of Medford BLM employees. Sensenig also provides
general directions to several fires mentioned in JFSP project proposal.
[Dan Donato begins graduate program in September]
2004
[Fontaine begins graduate program in January]
February
Fontaine and Sensenig exchange emails about BLM personnel with GIS
expertise.
March
March 8-12. Fontaine and Donato attend fire conference in Medford.
Donato meets Sensenig for first time.
Donato, Fontaine, Sensenig speak briefly on two occasions about
project logistics.
Late March. Donato and Fontaine meet with Sensenig in Central Point
to discuss locating field sites. Sensenig provides newspaper articles,
aerial photos, and additional contact information for BLM personnel
familiar with past salvage logging sales.
April
Donato and Fontaine both hold graduate committee meetings where
they present project proposals to their graduate committees in
Corvallis. Sensenig is later emailed these proposals. Sensenig does not
provide comments or feedback.
May-August
Sensenig contacts Robinson in early August inquiring about the
status of the project. Robinson directs Sensenig to talk to Donato and
Fontaine who were most familiar with project field sites and status of
data collection. Donato arranges a time with Sensenig for a field tour.
September (first week)
Sensenig, Donato, Fontaine, and Adam Pfleeger (field technician)
spend day together touring BLM portion of project study area (Galice
fire, BLM portion of Biscuit).
Sensenig asks questions, discusses regulatory issues he faces in
his job, and gives positive feedback on project status, but no specific
scientific feedback (design, ecological considerations, etc) is
offered.
October/November
Sensenig moves from BLM to USFS.
2005
April
Fontaine presents revised research proposal to graduate committee.
Sensenig is emailed a copy of the document. Sensenig does not provide
comment or feedback.
Early June
Donato emails (June 6th) and speaks with Sensenig about access to
salvage logging units.
Sensenig emails (June 10th) Lee Fox, head Law Enforcement Officer
of Siskiyou National Forest, alerting him to our presence in and around
salvage logging units.
July
Donato and Sensenig speak again about permits and gaining access to
units with active salvage logging (July 5-14). Sensenig sends several
emails to other SNF personnel in an attempt to aid us. Donato and
Fontaine's project proposals are attached to one of these emails.
Fontaine leaves 4-5 voice mails that go unreturned regarding access to
salvage units.
August
Sensenig helps with logistics in permitting process. Sensenig again
sends around project proposals to demonstrate validity of scientific
work.
Sensenig is emailed a progress report intended for the Siskiyou NF
on August 15.
September
Sensenig is emailed the annual project report (and included in the
circulation of drafts) written for our funding agency, the Joint Fire
Sciences Program. Sensenig does not provide comments or feedback.
Sensenig speaks with Donato and emails Donato and Fontaine about
his need for maps of our study plots.
A map of the study area is sent to Sensenig on 9/23. He responded
on 9/26 thanking us for our quick response. Fontaine emailed Sensenig
and asked him to stay in touch, especially if he was coming to
Corvallis. Sensenig is notified several times about Donato's upcoming
presentation at the Joint Fire Science Program meeting:
From Fontaine to Sensenig on 9/23 ``Dan and I are both eager to
represent our project and provide meaningful research results to the
USFS and BLM in SW Oregon. Currently, we are gathering the last of the
data for this year and beginning to analyze data for our presentation
at the JFS meeting in early November. ``
From Sensenig to Fontaine & Donato 9/26 ``I'll be in corvallis next
month so maybe we could get together to look over your data. I'll be in
touch.''
From Fontaine to Sensenig 9/28 ``Hi Tom,
When are you planning on being in Corvallis? Dan and I would really
like to get together and want to make sure that we're both around.
Also, other than working on our permit renewal, what else can we
provide to help you represent our project for the review of Biscuit
research?
We are preparing a talk for JFS in early November. We will email
the power point presentation to you.
looking forward to seeing you, Joe
``No response was received to Fontaine's 9/28 email.
November
Donato presents results of postfire logging at annual Joint Fire
Sciences Program meeting. Results are also presented at weekly
departmental seminar in Forest Science.
December
Sensenig was again emailed an annual update and summary of study
goals for 2006 on 12/2/2005 by Fontaine (CC'd to Donato and several
others).
Sensenig visits Corvallis in December and meets with Donato and
Fontaine. Donato and Fontaine show Sensenig presentation that was given
at JFSP meeting. This presentation contains the data and analyses
presented in Donato et al. 2006. Sensenig accepts results, comments on
how unfortunate Fiddler timber sale was in terms of its intensity.
Fontaine verbally summarizes progress on wildlife portion of the
project, focusing mainly on small mammal results. Donato and Fontaine
tell Sensenig that they are submitting a manuscript that contains the
presented results. Sensenig has since indicated he did not understand
the paper's status at that point. It was not our intent to
miscommunicate and Sensenig did, after expressing mild interest, ask
for a copy once the paper was in print. Last, Fontaine inquires about
collaboration on future JFSP grants investigating woody debris
dynamics. Sensenig responds positively. We are confident that our
current collaborative effort with BLM to clarify future expectations
for consultation will help avoid further misunderstandings.
______
Mr. Walden. All right. Thank you, Dr. Salwasser. We
appreciate the work that your college does and help us
understand these issues better, and we appreciate the
recommendations of your peer-reviewed testimony.
We'll turn now to Dr. Franklin, I believe. Jerry, you were
up next. Thank you. We appreciate each time you've testified
before us and the conversations we've all had with you, and we
welcome your comments today.
STATEMENT OF JERRY FRANKLIN, PROFESSOR, COLLEGE OF FOREST
RESOURCES, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
Mr. Franklin. Thank you for the opportunity. I really
appreciate it. And I do very much appreciate the kinds of
responses that you've made to earlier testimony, mine and
others, with regards to the bill. Mostly what I'm just going to
do is supplement Hal Salwasser's statement.
I'm delighted to see the emphasis on management objectives.
I think that's absolutely critical, because I think management
objectives for the areas, whatever areas they are, in question
should probably be the primary consideration in any decisions
about what you do post-disturbance with regards to logging,
reforestation, or any other activity.
The relevant science and technical knowledge to inform
post-disturbance management decisions really depends on clarity
in those management goals for that forest property, even to the
point that, you know, our notion of what recovery is is going
to be different just depending upon what that particular
management allocation is directed toward.
Again, you know, I think--I just want to emphasize that the
appropriate activities and relative knowledge set's going to
vary, and there's a really good way of seeing the contrasts,
for example, between areas where timber management is the
primary objective as opposed to where perhaps retention of
ecological values. And the distinction, as was suggested I
think by Representative DeFazio, of distinguishing--no, I guess
it was Inslee--but distinguishing between various types of
activities like salvage and reforestation is really critical.
For example, if you are in an area where timber production
is a primary objective, aggressive salvage and reforestation
with establishment of plantations of commercially important
tree species is going to be appropriate. Where in fact you have
goals related to ecological objectives, timber production is
not a significant element of it and very likely salvage is not
going to be appropriate. Reforestation, however, may make some
contributions to the desired process.
I also want to point out, it's in our testimony, that there
is a great deal of peer-reviewed ecological knowledge about
large disturbances, which pretty much has not been effectively
assimilated by agencies, by most resource management personnel.
You know, a lot of the--there have been a lot of studies done
in the last several decades of large disturbances by
ecologists, the Yellowstone fires, the hurricanes, Mount St.
Helen's, even some experimental research. And it shows, you
know, a number of very significant things about how natural
disturbances undergo recovery.
There is an additional issue that's emerged from those
studies, and that has to do with the role that such areas can
play in the ecology of a region such as ours. And these may in
fact play very important roles as biological hot spots, as hot
spots of biological diversity within a region. So we really
need to look at that knowledge, synthesize it, analyze it and
see what it has to tell us about our management activities.
With regards to the research that you're going to help us
get funded, hopefully long-term research and monitoring, for
heaven's sake pay attention to the issue of data management,
credible data management activities. And I'm not going to name
names, but I can tell you there are some resource management
agencies that suffer from the same failings as the F.B.I. They
do not have credible data management systems, meaning systems
where the data are documented, are properly stored, are made
generally available. So that has to be a part of the job.
And I got to tell you, scientists don't like to spend money
on that. But it's absolutely critical or you are not going to
get the value that you're looking for from these.
My final comment that I want to make is, you know, there's
been all of this attention paid to salvage. And certainly we
need to pay attention to what we do to recover these large
disturbed areas. But I'm concerned that all of this focus on
disturbed areas, such as big burns, is diverting us from what I
really think is perhaps a more important task, at least equal
in importance to it, and that is to get on with the treatment
of green forests that are at risk of uncharacteristic stand
replacement fires. And, you know, I love big old trees. I love
them. And there are in eastern Oregon hundreds of thousands of
acres of forests and millions of irreplaceable big old pine
trees out there that are at risk of loss. We need to focus on
moving forward much more rapidly with the treatment of those so
that we aren't doing as we have been doing, picking up the
burned pieces after the barn's burned down.
So I'd really, really encourage you to do everything you
can to move aggressively so that in fact we retain the green
forests and we aren't arguing about what we should do after
they're burned down.
To point out to you on the Deschutes National Forest, they
have lost 18 out of 24 areas for Northern Spotted Owls, nesting
areas where the--spotted owl habitat area. And we really don't
want to see that happen all along the eastern side of the
Cascades, so--
And research and monitoring on that process is as important
as it is on the salvage.
Thanks.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Franklin follows:]
Statement of Jerry F. Franklin, Professor, College of Forest Resources,
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
I thank the Subcommittee for this opportunity to testify regarding
scientific knowledge relevant to appropriate management activities
following a major forest disturbance. This testimony supplements a
general statement that Drs. Hal Salwasser and K. Norman Johnson of
Oregon State University and I prepared on the importance of increasing
long-term research and monitoring programs focused post-disturbance
management activities. I do reiterate from that statement the critical
need for credible data management (e.g., documentation, archiving, and
public access) as part of these activities.
At the outset I view it as fundamental that the management
objectives for a disturbed area under consideration are an essential
consideration in identifying and applying science relevant to post-
disturbance activities. Management objectives are probably the most
important factor in determining appropriate post-disturbance
activities, assuming that we do not want disturbances to automatically
result in de facto changes in management objectives. If management
objectives for the area are focused on timber production, than one
knowledge set based on experience and scientific study will be
relevant. On the other hand, if management objectives for the area are
directed primarily to sustaining biological diversity and important
ecological processes, such as watershed protection, than a different
knowledge set will be relevant. Of course, there will be overlap in
these knowledge sets but the emphasis is certainly going to be very
different.
I personally believe that much of the controversy that has arisen
over post-fire logging and other activities relates to stakeholders
viewing the appropriateness of an activity through the prism of their
own experience and values without adequately considering the defined
management objectives for the area under consideration.
There is a very large body of ecological science relevant to
management of areas following large disturbances, much of which has not
yet been fully assimilated by resource management agencies, policy
makers, and the public. The sources include recent studies of such
diverse major disturbances as the Mount St. Helens eruptions (Dale et
al. 2005), the 1988 Yellowstone Fires (Christensen et al. 1989), and
Hurricanes Hugo and Andrew (Walker et al. 1991; Pimm et al. 1994) as
well as designed disturbances, such as the artificial hurricane
experiments created at Harvard Forest in Massachusetts (Foster et al.
1997).
Rapid natural recovery is commonly observed in these studies,
particularly in terms of ecological functions. Such recovery does not
always equate with rapid re-establishment of a dense forest of
commercially important tree species, however! Results of current
studies also reiterate findings from much earlier research on the many
ways in which human activities--many of them well intended--can
interfere with natural recovery processes. The results provided by
Donato et al. (2006), for example, should not have surprised anyone.
The negative impacts of post-fire logging on natural regeneration have
been reported in many past studies, including one conducted on the
Tillamook Burn by the guru of Douglas-fir management, Leo A. Isaac
(Isaac and Meagher 1938).
Biological legacies are a key factor contributing to rapid
ecological recovery (Franklin et al. 2000). The concept of biological
legacies emerged from research at Mount St. Helens but it is applicable
to essentially all disturbance types. Biological legacies consist of
living organisms, organic matter, and organically-created patterns that
persist from the pre-disturbance ecosystem and strongly influence the
development of the post-disturbance ecosystem. Living legacies are
extremely diverse in form and often abundant, typically ranging from
spores and seeds to large trees and sexually mature animals. Legacies
of organic matter are also abundant since trees and other plants are
killed but very little organic matter is actually consumed or removed
in natural disturbances, including intense wildfires. Legacies of
organic matter are most apparent in the concentrated forms of standing
dead trees (snags) and downed boles (logs), material often referred to
as coarse wood.
Snags, logs, and other coarse wood are biological legacies of
extraordinary significance to ecological recovery, second only to
surviving trees. The literature on the ecological role of coarse wood
is immense; Harmon et al. (2004) and Maser et al. (1988) provide
excellent entry points into this literature. The functions of such
material are many. Logs and snags provide critical habitat for probably
1/2 to 2/3 of forest animal life (mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles
and invertebrates). Coarse wood is a long-term source of energy and
nutrients but, unlike other organic matter, coarse wood is also a site
for nitrogen fixation. Coarse wood has significant direct physical
influences on geomorphic and hydrologic processes, such as erosion,
sediment deposition, and the physical structure of stream and river
ecosystems. Residual wood structures significantly modify the
microclimatic regime of the disturbed site, which is important in
lifeboating diversity and in facilitating the establishment of natural
tree reproduction.
Logs, snags and other wood persist and progressively play these and
other roles for many decades and even centuries, particularly in the
case of larger and more decay-resistant wood and in the case of aquatic
ecosystems. Furthermore, where a stand-replacement disturbance has
occurred, the resulting pulse of large wood in the form of snags and
logs is all of the coarse wood that the recovering ecosystem is going
to get for the next 60 to 80 years or more--i.e., until the new forest
is large enough to begin generating large snags and logs on its own
(Spies 1988). In part, this is the basis for my comment in earlier
testimony that, from an ecological perspective, it is better to harvest
living trees from an intact forest than to remove dead trees from an
intensely burned site.
Ecological science also provides substantial insight into
landscape-level issues that need to be considered in any type of post-
disturbance management activity, such as ecological impacts of logging
(e.g., Lindenmayer and Franklin 2002). All parts of a landscape are not
created equal. The special importance of riparian habitats in a forest
landscape exemplifies this principle. As another example, post-fire
logging programs that are selectively focused on portions of the
landscape with high residual wood volumes can have a disproportionately
high impact on overall ecological conditions within the disturbed
landscape, even though the activity directly impacts only a small
percentage of the total area. The potential is there to effectively
``high grade'' a large disturbed landscape by logging the majority of
the areas with abundant large legacies.
Research on natural forest disturbances has also shown that post-
disturbance landscapes are important sites for many biota and important
ecological processes, such as nitrogen fixation. Because such areas
have a rich array of structural legacies and are free of dominance by
tree canopies, very high levels of biological diversity are often
present in the form of animal, plant and fungal species as well as
diverse plant life forms. Forest guru Leo A. Isaac noted such qualities
based on his observations in the Tillamook Burn (Isaac 1963). Such
naturally-disturbed early-successional habitats are very different from
clearcuts in structure, composition, and duration.
The naturally recovering portions of the Mount St. Helens blast
zone provide graphic evidence that such areas can be regional hotspots
of biological diversity, as exemplified by the extraordinary species
diversity and population levels of amphibians, birds, small mammals,
and meso-predators found in this landscape (Dale et al. 2005). Such
richness of organisms and processes is not to be found within the
reforested portions of the Mount St. Helens region although these dense
young forests are producing a lot of wood. This contrast makes explicit
the importance of management objectives for a disturbed area.
Resource managers do have much knowledge and experience with post-
disturbance landscapes but there has been relatively little systematic
research on impacts of post-fire logging. Moreover, some of the science
described as relevant has limitations. We cannot assume that research
focused on solving regeneration problems following timber harvesting in
southwestern Oregon are directly applicable to conditions or to
management objectives on naturally disturbed areas in the Biscuit Burn.
As I hope we have all learned--clearcuts are not just like wildfires!
To which I would add, what is good for timber production may not be
good for many other forest values. Hence, the importance of management
goals for affected properties.
In conclusion, we certainly do need more credible scientific
research as well as systematic monitoring to increase the breadth and
depth of the knowledge available to guide management. I would emphasize
that the research and monitoring need to be sustained--long-term--
efforts and, further, that these efforts will be largely wasted without
appropriate investments in data management.
Finally, I want to express a concern that all of this attention on
salvage and reforestation has diverted us from what I view as a more
important task, which is to get on with treatment of green forests at
risk of uncharacteristic stand-replacement fires. In eastern Oregon
there are hundreds of thousands of acres of forest and millions of
irreplaceable old-growth trees at risk of loss. We need to focus on
these green forests so that they don't end up as part of policy debate
over salvage!
Citations
Christensen, N. L. et al. 1989. Interpreting the Yellowstone Fires of
1988. BioScience 39:678-685.
Dale, Virginia H., Frederick J. Swanson, and Charles M. Crisafulli.
2005. Ecological responses to the 1980 eruptions of Mount St.
Helens. 342 pp. Springer-Verlag: New York.
Donato, D. C., et al. 2006. Post-wildfire logging hinders regeneration
and increases fire risk. Science.
Foster, D. R., et al. 1997. Forest response to disturbance and
anthropogenic stress. BioScience 47: 437-445.
Franklin, J. F., et al. 2000. Threads of continuity: ecosystem
disturbance, recovery, and the theory of biological legacies.
Conservation Biology in Practice 1:9-16.
Harmon, Mark H., et al. 2004. Ecology of coarse woody debris in
temperate ecosystems. Advances in Ecological Research 34:59-
234.
Isaac, Leo A. 1963. Fire--a tool not a blanket rule in Douglas-fir
ecology. In: Proceedings of Second Annual Tall Timbers Fire
Ecology Conference.
Isaac, Leo A., and George S. Meagher. 1938. Natural reproduction on the
Tillamook Burn four years after the fire. Pacific Northwest
Research Station: Portland, OR.
Lindenmayer, David B., and Jerry F. Franklin. 2002. Conserving forest
biodiversity. A comprehensive multiscaled approach. 351 p.
Island Press: Washington, DC.
Maser, Chris, Robert F. Tarrant, James M. Trappe, and Jerry F.
Franklin. 1988. From the forest to the sea: a story of fallen
trees. USDA Forest Service General Technical Report PNW-GTR-
229, 153 pp.
Pimm, S. L., et al. 1994. Hurricane Andrew. BioScience 44:224-229.
Spies, Thomas A., and Steven P. Cline. 1988. Coarse woody debris in
forests and plantations of coastal Oregon. Pages 5-24 in:
Maser, Chris, et al. (editors), From the forest to the sea: a
story of fallen trees. USDA Forest Service PNW-GTR-229.
Walker, L. R., et al. (editors) 1991. Ecosystem, plant, and animal
response to hurricanes in the Caribbean . BioTropica 23(4):313-
521.
______
Ecological Science Relevant to Management Policies for Fire-Prone
Forests of the Western United States
society for conservation biology scientific panel
on fire in western u.s. forests
Authors: Reed F. Noss \1\ (editor), Jerry F. Franklin \2\, William
Baker \3\, Tania Schoennagel \4\, and Peter B. Moyle \5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Dept. of Biology, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL
32816
\2\ College of Forest Resources, University of Washington, Seattle,
WA 98195
\3\ Ecology Program and Dept. of Geography, University of Wyoming,
Laramie, WY 82071
\4\ Dept. of Geography, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309
\5\ Dept of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology, University of
California, Davis, CA 95616
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Society for Conservation Biology, Washington, D.C.
February 24, 2006
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Fire is a primary natural disturbance in most forests of western
North America and has shaped their plant and animal communities for
millions of years. Native species and fundamental ecological processes
are dependent on conditions created by fire. However, many western
forests have experienced shifts in wildfire regimes and forest
structure following a century or more of resource use and management,
with some past and present management activities lacking a scientific
basis. Changes in wildfire and fuel management policies are needed to
address social and environmental problems that have arisen as a result
of these activities.
Incorporation of current scientific knowledge into revised policies
and practices is essential to insure that the productivity, biological
diversity, and ecological values of western forests are sustained. As
an example, implementation of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act
(HFRA) of 2003 will benefit from adaptive application of the
dramatically expanding base of scientific knowledge. Our review
addresses the ecological science relevant to developing and
implementing forest restoration and fuel management policies, including
activities conducted before, during, and after forest wildfires. An
essential principle of ecological variability within and among forests
underlies all of our findings.
In this summary and in the background report we use the term
``characteristic'' in referring to the dominant natural disturbance
regime of a forest type or site. For example, some types of dry forests
are described as being historically or naturally ``characterized by a
frequent, low-severity fire regime'' while some coastal and subalpine
forests are ``characterized by an infrequent, high-severity fire
regime.'' These are generalized characterizations of the regimes that
these types experience and are not necessarily exclusive. For example,
forests characterized by high-severity fire regimes may also experience
low-severity events and vice versa. The term ``uncharacteristic''
refers to disturbances, forest structure, or fuel loads of a scale or
type outside the historic range of variability based on site-specific
vegetation reconstructions using tree rings, fire scars, pollen,
charcoal, or early historical records.
Fire in Western Forests
Wildfire is inevitable and ecologically important in forests
throughout much of the western United States, given the fuels, ignition
sources, and variable climatic conditions. Nevertheless, characteristic
fire regimes--especially the extent, frequency, and severity of the
wildfires--are immensely variable. For example, fires historically
recurred in western forests at intervals ranging from as frequently as
a decade or less in some dry ponderosa pine forests to 250 to 800 years
or more in forests at high elevations and along the Pacific Coast.
Fires provide important services such as recycling nutrients,
regulating the density and composition of young trees, and creating and
shaping wildlife habitat at the stand level. At larger spatial scales
wildfire influences landscape patterns and affects water and sediment
delivery in watersheds. Many native plant and animal species are
adapted to postfire habitats and suffer population declines with fire
exclusion.
Characteristic fire regimes differ markedly among forest types and
regions--as well as within major forest types--and these differences
need to be considered in fire and fuel management policies to assure
that these policies are effective and sustain ecological values.
Managers, stakeholders, and policy makers are challenged by the
complexity created by this variability, which defies a simple, one-
size-fits-all prescription. Fortunately, plant association groups
(PAGs) provide a surrogate classification of this diversity in forest
wildfire regimes that is effective and scientifically credible, since
plant associations have predictable relationships to characteristic
fuels and fire regimes.
Forest Management Before Wildfire
How could forests be managed prior to the inevitable wildfires they
will experience, so as to insure that fires will play their
characteristic roles in maintaining the composition, structure, and
function of the forest ecosystem when they do occur? Appropriate
management will vary greatly with the type of forest and its dominant
fire regime. Determining the appropriate management and restoration
goals requires that the effects of past land uses first be identified
so that those effects can be specifically remedied. Then appropriate
ecologically based restoration and management policies can be
developed. Protected areas require particular management approaches
that may differ from practices appropriate in managed forests. Each of
these topics is addressed in turn below.
Variable Effects of Fire Exclusion, Logging, Livestock Grazing, and
Plantations
The effects of fire exclusion, as well as other activities that
affect fire regimes (e.g., logging, livestock grazing, plantations) on
forest structure are not necessarily easy to identify or demonstrate
scientifically; they also vary significantly among forest types and
regions. In some forest types change has been dramatic since European
settlement due, for example, to fire exclusion, logging, grazing, or
tree planting (singly or in combination), and restoration is clearly
needed. In other forest types major changes are not apparent and
restoration is not needed. In many cases it has been inappropriately
assumed that forests in general or all forests dominated by a
particular tree species have been altered in the same way. In fact,
these effects are known to vary, depending upon the forest type and
whether fire was characteristically high, mixed, or low severity, each
of which is discussed below.
Key Findings:
Fire exclusion and other human activities have led to
significant deviations from historical variability in some forests but
not in others. Restoration treatments are warranted, sometimes
urgently, in those cases where such activities have led to significant
alterations in ecosystem structure, function, or composition, but
cannot be justified ecologically in cases where such changes have not
occurred. The following sections discuss this for forests with
different fire regimes.
Land uses and fire exclusion do not universally increase
fuel loads or fire risk. Such activities may alter fuels in divergent
or complex ways that lead to a need for decreases in particular fuels
and increases in other fuels, if restoration to the historical range of
variability is the goal. For example, fire exclusion can increase tree
regeneration and ladder fuels in some cases and decrease tree
regeneration and ladder fuels in other cases.
Forests Characterized by High-Severity Fires
Forests characterized by high-severity fires are found in several
disparate locations: subalpine forests at higher elevations throughout
the West (e.g., lodgepole pine and Engelmann spruce-subalpine fir); the
moist and highly productive forests in marine-influenced regions of the
Pacific Northwest; and certain semi-arid woodlands, including some
dominated by pinyon-juniper and by oak-pine-chaparral. High-severity
fires, which are usually infrequent, kill most or all of the trees in
large portions of the burn, although such fires typically create a
landscape mosaic that also includes some areas of unburned forest and
of low- to moderate-severity burn. Forests subject to high-severity
fires typically support high densities of trees and other woody plants
and, consequently, large fuel loadings. When these dense fuels dry out
and an ignition source is present, the resulting fires can spread
rapidly and quickly become difficult or impossible to suppress. Many
large, high-severity fires are probably associated with either
infrequent, severe droughts or short-term synoptic weather patterns or
both.
Key Findings:
Fire exclusion has had little to no effect on fuels or
forest structure in forests characterized by high-severity fire
regimes--a fact that is especially relevant to fire policy. High-
severity fires are relatively infrequent--coming at intervals of one to
many centuries--while the period of active fire exclusion in these
remote forests has been less than a century. Land uses, including
logging, plantations, and grazing, may have extensively modified the
structure of these forests in some areas, but evidence suggests that
fire regimes have not been fundamentally modified.
Because fuel structures or tree densities are usually
well within the historic range of variability, ``restorative''
treatments are ecologically inappropriate in forests characterized by
stand-replacement fire. Modifying stand densities and fuels to levels
that would reduce the potential for stand-replacement fire would render
these forests incapable of fulfilling their characteristic ecological
roles, including provision of high densities of standing dead trees
(snags) and other critical elements of fish and wildlife habitat that
are created by fire. Restoration could address other needs, such as
restoring native understory plant diversity, where land use is known to
have caused changes.
Forests Characterized by Mixed-Severity Fires
Fire is quite variable in severity and frequency in many mid-
elevation and some low-elevation forests of moderate to high
productivity across variable topography in the interior west and some
coastal regions, such as the Klamath-Siskiyou region. In these forests
both low- and high-severity fires may occur, with the former often more
frequent than the latter. Topographically complex western mountain
landscapes may be especially prone to mixed-severity fire, because
drier south-facing slopes with lower fuel loads can burn at low
severity when adjacent, moister north-facing slopes that support higher
tree densities experience high-severity fire. The inherent variability
of mixed-severity fire regimes precludes easy detection and analysis of
the effects of fire exclusion. Exclusion of fire may have allowed tree
densities to increase in some areas but post-fire tree density is
naturally high in patches killed by high-severity fire.
Key Finding:
Scientific understanding of mixed-severity forest
landscapes is limited, making it difficult to provide ecologically
appropriate guidelines for restorative treatments. These are very often
very complex landscape mosaics; hence, it is necessary to plan and
conduct activities at larger spatial scales. In mixed-severity forest
landscapes where sufficient ecological and fire-history information is
available, a combination of thinning and prescribed fire may be useful
in restoration. However, only portions of these landscapes will warrant
treatment from an ecological perspective that recognizes the spatially
complex patterns. More scientific research is needed to understand the
dynamics of mixed-severity forest landscapes.
Forests Characterized by Low-Severity Fires
The consequences of many human activities--including fire
exclusion, logging, tree planting, and livestock grazing--are most
serious in forest types that historically were characterized primarily
by low-severity fires. Low-severity fire regimes were typical of many
(but not all) pine and dry mixed-conifer forests, which occurred on
warm, dry sites prior to European settlement. These fires historically
burned fine fuels (e.g., grasses and litter on the forest floor) at
regular intervals. These surface fires killed few large fire-resistant
trees but killed many smaller trees of all species, helping to maintain
open-canopied stands of large, old trees. Human activities since
European settlement have dramatically modified the fuel structure in
these forests. Logging of large fire-resistant trees has eliminated key
ecological elements of these forests, including the large trees, snags,
and logs essential to many ecological functions, such as provision of
fish and wildlife habitat. Logging also has promoted higher stand
densities in many dry forests by stimulating dense natural
regeneration, even when it was not followed by aggressive replanting.
Key Findings:
Restoration of dry ponderosa pine and dry mixed-conifer
forests--where low-severity fires were historically most common--is
appropriate and desirable ecologically on many sites. Mechanical
thinning of small stems and prescribed fire are effective techniques
for restoring stand densities to levels that existed prior to fire
exclusion, livestock grazing, logging, and plantation establishment.
Retention of large and/or old live trees, large snags,
and large down logs in restoration treatments, such as thinning, is
critical to restoring and maintaining ecological function. Also, other
key components of these ecosystems, such as native understory plants,
must be restored or protected for full restoration of natural
conditions, including the potential for characteristic fire behavior.
Priorities and Principles of Ecologically-Based Forest Restoration
Forest restoration varies along a continuum from restoring
structure (e.g., reducing densities of small trees and increasing the
density of large trees) to restoring the processes (e.g., low-severity
fire, competition between grasses and tree seedlings) that create and
maintain that structure. The continuum also represents a gradient from
symptoms (e.g., uncharacteristically high tree densities) to causes
(e.g., exclusion of fire). A well-established principle in land health,
as in human health, is that treating symptoms may be necessary in the
short term, but that ultimately causes must be identified and treated
to restore health.
Appropriate models for restoration will vary with current forest
conditions, management objectives, and plant association groups, among
other factors. An essential early step in a management program is to
identify the Desired Future Condition (DFC) to which treatments are
directed. DFCs are often based on conditions that are considered to be
within the historical range of variability (HRV). Precisely achieving
some past condition is not a reasonable goal, but conditions broadly
representative of the historic range of variability can often be
approximated through restorative activities. Restoration of processes
(e.g., low-severity fire) may allow the re-structured forest to
eventually equilibrate with contemporary environmental conditions. The
level of threat to particular natural values--such as critical wildlife
habitat, watershed and aquatic values, and existing populations of
veteran old trees--should be considered in setting priorities for
restoration treatments.
Areas in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) may require fuel
reduction and fire management policies that are inconsistent with HRV
or with maintaining the biodiversity of those sites, even though
carefully tailored treatments can maintain some aspects of
biodiversity. Growth-management policies could minimize adverse
ecological impacts from the WUI.
We provide two case studies--the Klamath Reservation Forest and
Rocky Mountain ponderosa pine--Douglas-fir forests--in the background
report to illustrate the wide variety of ecological conditions and
ecologically appropriate management and restoration practices in
western forests.
Key Findings:
From an ecological perspective priorities for restoration
need to be determined on the basis of ecological considerations and
urgency outside of the wildland-urban interface (WUI). High-priority
cases are likely to include areas where significant ecological values
are at risk of undesirable stand-replacement fire. Many of these are
outside of the WUI.
On lands where ecological objectives dominate, the
desired goal will often be a forest ecosystem with its fire regime,
fuels, tree population structure, and other living organisms restored
to within the historic range of variability. Ideally, the conditions
created must be consistent with the characteristic fire regime of the
site--i.e., sustainable in the context of the probable fire regime.
Deviation from historic conditions sometimes may be necessary, however,
to accommodate an altered biota or environment, or to accommodate
appropriate social objectives. In such cases the highest conservation
values are likely to be obtained by minimizing deviations from the
historic range of variability.
Broader conception and implementation of restoration
objectives, beyond fuel and fire mitigation, are necessary to achieve
comprehensive, scientifically based approaches to ecological
restoration of western forests. An example is the restoration of
understory plant communities.
Restoration plans must recognize and systematically
incorporate fire management needed to maintain the restored forest.
Forests are dynamic; therefore, any restoration program has to provide
for sustained fire management in order to maintain the desired
condition. A common-sense goal consistent with ecological science is to
achieve restored forests that are low maintenance, such as can be
achieved through managed natural fire, and, where this is not possible,
to use prescribed fire that seeks to mimic as closely as possible the
characteristic fire regime.
Large trees of fire-resistant species and large snags and
logs have high ecological importance and should be retained in
restoration projects with ecological goals. Where present, large and
old live trees are the most fire-resistant component of western forests
and are essentially irreplaceable. Snags and logs on the forest floor
are key wildlife features that are deficient in many western forests
due to logging.
There are risks associated with restorative treatment of
stands and landscapes including: (1) Uncertainties associated with
basing treatments on inadequate knowledge; and (2) Risks associated
with not taking restorative actions, including the potential loss of
significant ecological values. An example of the latter is potential
loss of spotted owl habitat to stand-replacement fire, which is
uncharacteristic in some landscapes, such as on the lands that
previously constituted the Klamath Indian Reservation in the Eastside
Cascades. Again, we emphasize the need to recognize variability, as
portions of landscapes that are generally characterized as falling
within a low-severity fire regime did experience high-severity fire, at
least on occasion.
Adaptive management, including properly designed
monitoring activities, needs to be a part of all major restoration
programs. Many proposed research and monitoring activities associated
with restoration programs have lacked both sufficient and sustained
funding. Creation of a dedicated funding mechanism to support these
activities is imperative for proposals to provide critical feedback to
managers and, secondarily, to have credibility with stakeholders.
Credible, third-party scientific reviews are critical
when major controversies arise as to the scientific merits of proposed
activities. Regular processes or mechanisms for the initiation and
nature of these scientific reviews need to be established along with
appropriate funding mechanisms.
Protected Areas Are Essential for Managing Fire for Ecological
Diversity
Not all conservation needs can be met in managed forests. Reserves
of various kinds are a fundamental conservation tool whether they are
congressionally recognized (e.g., national parks and wilderness), land
allocations (e.g., Late Successional Reserves), or de facto reserves
(e.g., roadless areas). They provide essential enclaves for species and
serve as control or reference sites for lands managed for commodities.
The question of how reserves in fire-prone landscapes should be managed
cannot be addressed by application of a simplistic ``one-size-fits-
all'' philosophy, but must be guided by consideration of the vegetation
structure and composition of the area in question and its
characteristic fire regime.
Key Findings:
Reserves may be required for species closely associated
with late- or early-successional forests in fire-prone landscapes for a
variety of reasons. For example, unreserved forests are often
fragmented by periodic logging or consist only of stands of trees too
small or too open to meet the needs of late-successional species, such
as spotted owls. Species typical of natural post-fire habitats (e.g.,
many woodpeckers), which contain abundant standing dead trees, require
substantial areas reserved from post-fire logging.
The reserve concept does provide for appropriate kinds of
management and ecologically compatible human use. Restoring a natural
fire regime is most compatible with the reserve concept, but in cases
where fully restoring a natural fire regime is not feasible,
ecologically appropriate management will likely be needed to restore
and maintain biodiversity and the conditions for which reserves were
set aside. Some types of management, such as prescribed burning, and
some uses, such as ecological research and monitoring, are often
essential to the persistence of populations, habitat features, and key
ecological processes within reserves. The general goal would be to
restore the reserve landscape to a condition within the historical
range of variability (where restoration is necessary) and then to
maintain it in that state with minimal human intervention, or allow it
to equilibrate with contemporary natural conditions.
Management Activities During Wildfire
Fire management policies provide direction regarding responses to
wildfire, including such basic issues as whether or not to suppress
wildfires. A generalized policy regarding fire suppression is
inappropriate as evidenced by the negative ecological (and other)
impacts of a universal fire-suppression policy during the 20th century.
Decisions regarding appropriate response to fire need to consider many
ecological and social factors, beginning with the nature of the forest
type and societal goals.
Key Findings:
From an ecological perspective, allowing fires to serve
their natural role may be most beneficial ecologically. Certainly, fire
must be managed when close to human settlements and infrastructure and
in some cases where economic resource values are high. Away from these
areas--such as in many wilderness areas, national parks, and large
areas of contiguous public lands--there is opportunity to increase the
use of wildland fire, thus benefiting the range of species that require
a diversity of natural fire regimes.
Fire suppression may be beneficial to ecological values
in some forest landscapes, particularly where special values are at
risk. For example, fire suppression may be appropriate where rare or
unique ecological values (including imperiled species habitat) could be
lost, where uncharacteristic fuel accumulations have created the
potential for a fire that is outside the historic range of variability,
or where infrequent high-severity fires are characteristic but where
such fires are not currently viewed as ecologically desirable (e.g.,
old-growth forests in Pacific Northwest).
Forest Management After Wildfire
Forest landscapes that have been affected by a major natural
disturbance--such as a severe wildfire or windstorm event--are commonly
viewed as devastated and biologically impoverished. Such perspectives
are usually far from ecological reality. Overall species diversity
measured as number of species--at least of higher plants and
vertebrates--is often highest following a natural stand-replacement
disturbance and before re-development of closed-canopy forest.
Important reasons for this include an abundance of biological legacies,
such as living organisms and dead tree structures, the migration and
establishment of additional organisms adapted to the disturbed, early-
successional environment, and temporary release of other plants on the
site from dominance by trees.
Currently, natural, early-successional forest habitat--naturally
disturbed areas with a full array of legacies (i.e., not subject to
post-fire logging) and experiencing natural recovery processes (i.e.,
not seeded or planted)--are among the scarcest habitat condition in
some regions, such as the Pacific Northwest.
Key Findings:
Research by both ecologists and foresters provides
evidence that areas affected by large-scale natural disturbances often
recover naturally. Post-burn landscapes have substantial capacity for
natural recovery. Reestablishment of closed forest following stand-
replacement fire characteristically occurs at widely varying rates,
providing temporary, but ecologically important and now rare early-
successional habitat for a variety of native species and key ecological
processes.
Post-fire logging does not contribute to ecological
recovery; rather it negatively impacts recovery processes, with the
intensity of such impacts depending upon the nature of the logging
activity. Post-fire logging in naturally-disturbed forest landscapes
generally has no direct ecological benefits and many potential negative
impacts from an ecological standpoint. Trees that survive the fire for
even a short period of time are critical as seed sources and as habitat
that will sustain many elements of biodiversity both above and below
ground. The dead wood, including large snags and logs, is second only
to live trees in overall ecological importance. Removal of these
structural legacies--living and dead--is inconsistent with our
scientific understanding of natural disturbance regimes and short- and
long-term recovery processes.
Post-fire logging destroys much of whatever natural tree
regeneration is occurring on a burned site. This is a fundamental
concern since these tree seedlings are derived from local seed sources,
which are most likely the best adapted to the site. Furthermore,
environmental variables, such as moisture and temperature conditions,
are major selective factors in determining which natural tree seedlings
survive, which favors genotypes more tolerant of environmental stresses
than are nursery- or greenhouse-grown seedlings.
Evidence from empirical studies is that post-fire logging
typically generates significant short- to mid-term increases in fine
and medium fuels. In some cases this may result in increased reburn
potential rather than a decreased reburn potential, as is often
claimed. In any case, from an ecological perspective large wood is of
demonstrated importance in ecological recovery; removing this wood in
an attempt to influence the behavior of a potential reburn event has
little scientific support.
In forests subjected to severe fire and post-fire
logging, streams and other aquatic ecosystems will take longer to
return to historic conditions or may switch to a different (and often
less desirable) state altogether. Following a severe fire the biggest
impacts on aquatic ecosystems are often increased sedimentation caused
by runoff from roads. High sediment loads from roads may continue for
years, greatly increasing the time for recovery.
Post-fire seeding of non-native plants generally damages
natural ecological values, such as reducing the recovery of native
plant cover and biodiversity, including tree regeneration. Non-native
plants typically compete with native species, reducing both native
plant diversity and cover. Reductions in natural tree regeneration as a
result of seeding of non-native plants have also been reported in
numerous studies.
Post-fire seeding of non-native plants is often
ineffective at reducing soil erosion. Aerial seeding of grasses
(primarily non-native) is common on federal lands following moderate-
to high-severity fire to reduce postfire erosion. The effectiveness of
seeding in reducing erosion is mixed. Grass seeding generally does not
mitigate erosion during the first winter following fire, when seeded
grasses are not yet well established. Seeding may slow erosion during
the second year following fire but is rarely effective during intense
storms.
There is no scientific or operational linkage between
reforestation and post-fire logging; potential ecological impacts of
reforestation are varied and may be either positive or negative
depending upon the specifics of activity, site conditions, and
management objectives. On the other hand, ecological impacts of post-
fire logging appear to be consistently negative. Salvage and
reforestation are often presented as though they are interdependent
activities, which they are not from either a scientific or operational
perspective. From a scientific perspective, policy and practice should
consider each activity separately. As noted above, post-fire logging is
a consistently negative practice from the standpoint of ecological
recovery. Natural tree regeneration is ecologically most appropriate,
but intentional reforestation could also be designed to provide
significant ecological benefits in some cases.
Accelerated reestablishment of extensive closed forest
conditions after fire is usually not an appropriate objective on sites
managed with a major ecological focus. Wildfires have been viewed
historically as events that destroy valuable standing forest and create
undesirable expanses of deforested (i.e., unproductive) landscape. Re-
establishment of fully stocked stands of commercially important tree
species on burned sites has been a fundamental forest management
objective on most private and public forestlands; hence the historic
commitment to intensive reforestation. However, timber production is no
longer the primary objective on many federal lands, where the focus on
provision of biodiversity and ecosystem services equals or exceeds wood
production objectives. The ecological importance of biological legacies
and of uncommon, structurally complex early-successional stands argues
against actions to achieve rapid and complete reforestation except
where the primary goal is wood production. In addition, it is also
inappropriate to re-establish fully stocked stands on sites
characterized by low-severity fire--the same sites where managers are
trying to restore fuel loadings to their historical range of
variability.
Where timber production, other societal management goals,
or special ecological needs are the focus, planting or seeding some
native trees and other plants using local seed sources may be
appropriate. Ecological assessments of the post-burn area and
considerations of management objectives should be used to determine
appropriate activity. Special ecological circumstances might include a
need to restore an uncommon plant species or habitat for a threatened
or endangered species. Innovative practices, such as low or variable
density planting, will likely be more appropriate ecologically than
traditional practices that involve dense tree plantations of one or a
few commercial species. Dense uniform conifer plantations are always
inappropriate on sites characterized by low-severity fire unless the
intent is intensive management of such sites for wood production.
More Ecological Science is Needed in Fire Management
Despite the complexity of fire ecology in western forests and
uncertainty over the effects of particular management actions, the
scientific basis for rational decision-making about fire has improved
dramatically in recent years. Some of this improvement is evident in
law and policy. For example, there is explicit attention to old-growth
and characteristic forest structure in the Healthy Forests Restoration
Act (HFRA) of 2003:
``In carrying out a covered project, the Secretary shall fully
maintain, or contribute toward the restoration of, the
structure and composition of old growth stands according to the
pre-fire suppression old growth conditions characteristic of
the forest type, taking into account the contribution of the
stand to landscape fire adaptation and watershed health, and
retaining the large trees contributing to old growth
structure.''
Nevertheless, current approaches to implementation of HFRA may be
flawed; while attempts are being made to incorporate the variability of
fire regimes and vegetation dynamics among forest types, there is heavy
reliance on expert opinion and unvalidated, over-specified models.
Critical review of the scientific basis for HFRA, FRCC (Fire Regime
Condition Classes), and LANDFIRE from a credible independent source,
such as the National Academy of Sciences, is needed.
More generally, principles of ecological science and the detailed
existing knowledge of individual forest ecosystems need to be
incorporated more systematically into the development of forest fire
and fuel policies. A current example is the need to incorporate
ecological principles into proposed legislation dealing with post-fire
(salvage) logging and reforestation.
One barrier to better use of ecological science is that scientists
involved in developing fire policies and practices have tended to be
specialists in fire and fuel management, not ecologists, conservation
biologists, or other broadly trained scientists. It is not surprising,
then, that current forest law and policy, such as HFRA, does not
adequately incorporate ecological science in its implementation and
tends to promote a narrow definition of restoration that focuses almost
exclusively on fuels.
True ecological restoration requires the maintenance of ecological
processes, native species composition, and forest structure at both
stand and landscape scales. Because ecological variability is great,
few universal principles exist for integrating insights from ecology
and conservation biology into fire management and conservation
policies. Nevertheless, one principle that does seem to hold is that as
forests are managed or restored, they should not only support the
desired fire regime but also viable populations of native species in
functional networks of habitat.
______
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Dr. Franklin.
Dr. Perry, thank you. Welcome for being here. We look
forward to your testimony. Have at it, sir.
STATEMENT OF DAVE PERRY, PROFESSOR EMERITUS, OREGON STATE
UNIVERSITY
Mr. Perry. Thank you, Chairman Walden.
Mr. Walden. Make sure your mike's on. And if you could bend
it over your way, then everybody can hear a little better.
Thank you, sir.
Mr. Perry. Light means on now.
Mr. Walden. Light means off. Don't ask me. I don't get it.
Mr. Perry. Where am I?
Mr. Walden. Medford. And this appears to be an old growth
table we're around.
Mr. Perry. Chairman Walden, Members of the Committee,
Members of the Staff, thank you for the opportunity to testify.
I want to talk today about being conservative and being
careful about tiptoeing along the edges of cliffs, which if we
go over we're going to compromise our objectives. I don't care
whether timber management or biodiversity or what.
If you go up elevation from Cave Junction, Oregon and you--
around the vicinity of Oregon Caves National Monument and you
look south into California, you'll see what in Hawaii they call
a puka, a hole, a lot of holes in the forest. And those holes
in the forest are clearcuts that were put in in the '60s and
were planted three, four times each, and it's difficult to find
a living stick on. This is a problem at high elevations and
other areas of the West as well.
I spent a lot of my research career myself and my students
trying to understand what goes on there. Why is it that you can
cut what was a productive, healthy forest, established by fire,
and all of the sudden you can't get trees to grow back.
Now, I want to stress these are different situations than
Steve Hobbs talked about with the forest study. But they may
have some similarities as well.
Well, to make a long story short, we concluded that a big
part of the problem was the removal of the shelter, of big old
trees. It's an old, old silvicultural technique called shelter
wood, which is very important on these kinds of harsh sites and
which wasn't done up there. And the second thing was
herbiciding the sprouting hardwoods and shrubs.
We spent a great deal of time and research and intensive
study figuring out what went on in the soils in these areas.
These shrubs will protect soils. They protect streams. They
maintain organisms that are important for conifers. They
cleanse the soil of organisms that are detrimental to conifers.
They also compete for resources. These services don't come
free. And the balance between their benefits and their costs
are multidimensional and not generalizable, depending on a
number of factors.
Adjacent to each one of these clearcuts was a forest that
was established by wildfire. And the retrospective studies that
have been done for the last ten years around western Oregon and
southwestern Oregon, and Tom Sensenig, whose name came up
earlier, did a number of these in southwestern Oregon, all show
the same, pretty much the same thing. These forests recover by
themselves very well.
Now, we're at a different point in history now. Maybe the
situation is different, and we can't assume that that will
happen again. But neither can we assume that we have to get in
there and help them. And, if fact, the evidence is that if we
do the wrong thing on the wrong place--in the wrong place, we
can tip these systems into something that we wish we hadn't,
and it's going to compromise all our objectives.
The second cliff to stay away from, and this one was going
to be impossible to, but maybe we can help it, is the threat of
wildfire. And we hear a lot of talk about the threat of snags
and wildfires. And actually it turns out the studies that are
being done on the Biscuit show that the fire laid down when it
came to the unsalvaged areas of the Little Silver.
I have some hypotheses about that. I think--I think the
standing dead timber disrupts the air flow into the fire, just
like closing down the damper on your stove. That's a hypothesis
to be tested.
But let me go back to the old Silver complex. I was out on
the ground with Forest Service people shortly after that. And
Yogi Berra's name came up a little earlier, and I'll invoke him
again. You can learn a lot from looking. And I'll tell you in
my career I've learned a lot from looking.
We came upon an example of something that just absolutely
blew me away. It was a plantation which had been the site of a
brush control study. And like virtually all plantations in the
fire area--the plantations, by the way, are the most fire
susceptible thing we put out there. Like virtually all
plantations in the study area, the trees outside of--or the
trees where the brush had been controlled were totally
consumed. The trees where the brush was not controlled were
green and healthy, and they didn't look like they had been
touched by the fire. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
And then I got to looking around and I got to talking to
people, and I discovered that this was--some of the plant
species we have out there are fire resistant. This is something
foresters 100 years ago knew and somewhere along the line got
forgotten. But those things are out there doing stuff for us.
And I think our job here is to find balance. We need to
find the balance. And that's where research can really
contribute to helping us find the balance between extracting
and between preserving and long-term health of these systems.
I think science has traditional things to contribute in
terms of research. I think we also have to be taking a hard
look at risk analysis, how much do we risk when we start
modifying the biodiversity of these systems. And I can tell you
we do risk something. And this needs to be looked at.
And, finally, I'll close by saying that another role for
science that I would like to see is the formation of rapid
response collaborations between scientists and managers on
individual fires, so we bring the expertise of both groups
together. And this is a lot easier said than done, but I think
that would be an important way to begin to make intelligent
decisions on what we do out here.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Perry follows:]
Statement of David A. Perry, Professor (emeritus) of Ecosystem Studies
and Ecosystem Management, Department of Forest Science, Oregon State
University
Chairman Walden, members of the Committee, staff members, thank you
for the opportunity to testify.
My name is Dave Perry. I'm a Professor (emeritus) of Ecosystem
Studies and Ecosystem Management in the Department of Forest Science,
Oregon State University. I currently live in the Illinois River Valley
near Selma, Oregon.
I'll begin with a comment on the study by Donato and colleagues. In
my opinion, it is a fine piece of work. That it has stirred up such a
controversy calls to mind a plaque that forest service scientist, Jim
Lotan, had on his office wall. The plaque had a single stirrup on it,
and beneath the stirrup the inscription--He who tells the truth better
have one foot in the stirrup''.
Since the critics of Donato's work chose not to follow accepted
scientific procedure and air their objections in the open literature, I
can only guess what they are. I imagine a major criticism is that the
study focused on short-term responses and did not account for long-term
dynamics (something Donato et al acknowledged). This is a valid
criticism, and it can be applied to virtually every study we have on
forest ecology and forest management. Studies that span as much as two
decades are rare, whereas the dynamics of these forests play out over
many decades and centuries. The few long-term studies we have teach us
that what you see today is not necessarily what you get tomorrow, which
means that most of what we know must be considered provisional. If I
could summarize 35 years of ecological research in a single phrase, it
would be that nature loves to throw curveballs.
The Sessions Report stressed the environmental benefits of active
post-fire management, particularly with regard to reducing fire risk
from standing snags and ameliorating the impact of brush on conifer
seedlings. I want to discuss some of the environmental benefits of
leaving fire-killed trees and the so-called brush species, both of
which represent critically important biological legacies. I will
briefly discuss three aspects: habitat, conifer regeneration, and
susceptibility to future fires. I will conclude with comments on
science's role in helping society find a proper balance between levels
of utilization and maintenance of ecosystem health.
Habitat. It's beyond the scope of my testimony (not to mention my
expertise) to go into all the habitat implications of post-fire
management, suffice it to say that big dead wood and noncommercial
plant species are critically important habitat for a number of animal
species. For example, a comparison of bird communities in salvaged and
unsalvaged areas in Alberta found that ``resident species, canopy and
cavity nesters, and insectivores were the least likely to be detected
in salvaged areas'' (Morrisette et al 2002). In their review of the
scientific literature, McIver and Starr (2001) found that
``Most cavity-nesters showed consistent patterns of decrease
after (post-fire) logging, including the mountain bluebird and
the black-backed, hairy, and three-toed woodpeckers; abundance
of the Lewis' woodpecker increased after logging...In general,
postfire logging enhances habitat for some wildlife species and
diminishes it for others''.
At least one bird, the black-backed woodpecker (more common in the
northern Rockies and the eastern Cascades than in the Klamath region),
is critically dependent on fire killed trees. Montana has listed the
black-backed as a species of high concern.
Mast produced by oaks and tanoaks is an important food resource for
many animals, as are madrone berries.
Prominent hydrologists and fisheries biologists have raised
concerns about the impacts of post-fire management on streams (Karr et
al. 2004).
Aids to conifer regeneration. In some cases standing trees (living
or dead) and early successional hardwood trees and shrubs help rather
than hinder conifer regeneration. I'll illustrate that with a story
from my own research in SW Oregon. My students and I were trying to
understand the factors underlying the inability to reforest high
elevation clearcuts, which is a widespread problem in the portions of
the west. One of our prime study sites was a degraded clearcut at high
elevation not far from Oregon Caves National Monument. Like a number of
other clearcuts in similar environments, this one had been cut in the
early ``60's and despite several planting attempts had virtually no
living conifer seedlings. Adjacent to this clearcut was a fully stocked
80 year old conifer stand that was obviously established by fire. The
fire would have occurred long before roads were put into that area, so
the site presumably received no post-fire management of any kind. Yet
it was a thriving forest, in sharp contrast to the neighboring
unreforested clearcut. It seems nature knew something we didn't.
Perhaps the climate had changed, but I doubt that's the explanation. To
make a long story short, we concluded that it was the biological
legacies represented by fire-killed snags and early successional
sprouting shrubs that enabled trees to successfully reestablish on the
burn (Perry et al. 1989). Standing boles, living or dead, provide what
is essentially a greenhouse effect that reflects radiant heat loss back
to the surface and thereby ameliorates temperature extremes (which is
the basis for the old silvicultural technique called shelterwood). At
high elevations in the west, where the window of establishment for a
tree seedling may be very short, the extension of the growing season
that results from a sheltering overstory--living or dead--can be a
critical factor enabling seedlings to establish and survive.
A number of studies have demonstrated the beneficial role of
sprouting shrubs and hardwood trees. They protect soils and therefore
streams, stabilize soil organisms that are important to conifer
survival, induce conifer seedlings to form roots faster, and cleanse
the soil of organisms harmful to conifers. Research following a recent
wildfire on the San Dimas Experimental Forest, funded by the National
Commission on the Science of Sustainable Forestry (NCSSF), used modern
molecular techniques to study recovery of the soil biota (Egerton-
Warburton et al. 2005). Speaking of ectomycorrhizal fungi (EM), which
form a critically important symbiosis with trees, the researchers
concluded that
The root zone of re-sprouting plants and possibly senescing roots,
along with soil spore banks are--important sources of EM inoculum.
Halting activities that impede the recovery of the EM, such as salvage
logging, stump removal, site clearing or ripping, should be considered
because these activities remove sources of inoculum. In addition, any
mechanical disruption of the soils will limit plant access to resources
transferred by common mycorrhizal networks.
Planting conifers promptly (within one year) also stabilizes soils
(if the seedlings survive). However, even if planted at high densities,
seedlings will influence less than 10% of a site during their first few
years. The more widespread cover provided by the naturally recovering
vegetation is necessary for protecting soils and streams (seeded
grasses can stabilize soil physical properties, but not the
ectomycorrhizal fungi required by conifers). The San Dimas researchers
went on to conclude that
``Adequate mycorrhizal inoculum exists within the soils of
natural communities for post-fire plant regeneration.
Plantation forests, however, contain lower fungal abundance and
species diversity, with the result that plant regeneration may
be slower due to limited mycorrhizal benefits (e.g.,
aggregation, resource uptake)''.
Fire Susceptibility. It's well known that fine fuels rather than
standing dead boles carry fire, however snags can send up flaming
brands and contribute to spotting. But the story is turning out to be
more complex. Analysis by Thompson and Spies (2006) shows that areas
salvaged and planted following the Silver Fire tended to burn with
higher severity than comparable areas that burned in Silver but were
not salvaged and planted. Initial results indicate a sudden change in
weather was not a factor in the difference.
Though not studied, standing dead timber seems likely to disrupt
patterns of air movement that influence the behavior of subsequent
fires. In later years, unsalvaged timber would become a source of soil
organic matter and large down wood, both of which hold large amounts of
water that would also influence the flammability of stands. To date, I
am not aware of any models that take these factors into account. Our
understanding of the full range of effects of unsalvaged timber on
subsequent fires is poor.
Studies and observations both show that certain hardwood species
retard the spread of fire and protect intermixed conifers (something
foresters of 100 years ago knew and used). In one natural experiment,
the Longwood fire (part of the Silver complex) burned through a
plantation that was the site of a brush control study. All conifers in
the area where the brush had been removed were killed. All conifers
intermixed with the brush were alive, and appeared to be completely
unaffected by the fire. This example calls to mind Aldo Leopold's first
rule of intelligent tinkering, to keep all the pieces. It also cautions
about premature judgments and the need to incorporate risk into our
decisions. Measurements of the effects of brush on conifer growth would
have reached quite different conclusions depending on whether they were
made before or after the fire.
Finding balance. The weight of scientific knowledge cautions
against significant modification of ecosystems recovering from severe
disturbance. Vital systems could easily be disrupted and ecosystem
health jeopardized. This is not to say, however, that all post-fire
management is inappropriate. The ``brush'', for example, performs
important ecological functions but it also competes for resources.
There is no reason that competition can't be managed on a spot basis
while preserving the overall functioning of the noncommercial plants.
Similarly, I believe some economic value can be captured in salvage
without compromising the ecological values of fire-killed trees,
however that is a hypothesis to be tested. There is precedent.
Following the Silver fire, the USFS worked salvaged 50% and left 50%.
Salvage was done with helicopters to minimize site impacts.
As recognized in the Walden Bill, science has a crucial role to
play in helping policy makers find balance. We cannot maintain healthy
and productive ecosystems unless we know how they work, and there is
still much to be learned. Other testimony goes into research needs in
some detail and I will be brief. Two general types of research will be
needed: (a) rapid response to study natural patterns of recovery, and
(b) manipulative experiments.
In a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Science, Robert Holt wrote,
``Ecologists increasingly recognize that the structure of
natural communities reflects the interplay of processes acting
over a wide range of temporal and spatial scales that are well
beyond the scope of manipulative experiments''.
The ability to respond quickly with post-disturbance research aimed
at understanding the processes of natural recovery (in other words
letting nature teach us) is critically important. The National Fire
Program and the NCSSF have funded such research on several recent
wildfires (NCSSF is sponsoring a symposium in Denver in April to review
some of the findings). It is important that continued funding be made
available for such studies.
Manipulative experiments still have an important role to play.
Finding balance involves exploring options that can only be achieved by
manipulation, such as different levels of salvage or brush control.
Finally, it would be highly desirable for scientists and managers
to form rapid-response collaborations, which would develop options for
management response to each large disturbance on public lands,. Each
group has a critical role to play: managers know their objectives and
their ground better than scientists do; scientists bring knowledge of
relevant, cutting edge science (e.g., landscape ecology, modern
disturbance ecology, ecosystem management, risk analysis). Following
the model established by the Northwest Plan, the objective should be to
produce a set of options for policy makers to choose from, not a single
approach. Unlike the Northwest Plan, these options would have to be
developed within a short time-frame. A general strategy will be
necessary to guide the tactical approaches to individual situations.
Lindenmayer et al (2004) made that point clearly:
Large-scale salvage harvesting is often commenced when resource
managers are in ``crisis'' mode following wildfires. Major decisions
are made rapidly, often with long-lasting ecological consequences. A
better approach would be to formulate salvage harvesting policies
before major disturbances occur again. Such policies should make
provision for the exemption of large areas from salvaging such as
national parks, nature reserves, and watersheds closed to human access
to maximize water quality. Furthermore, wherever salvage harvesting
continues, carefully formulated prescriptions are needed to guide the
timing and intensity of such operations. This is essential to both
maintain the regenerative potential of recovering stands (15) and
ensure the retention of biological legacies such as dead trees, live
trees, logs, and islands of undisturbed or partially disturbed
vegetation.
Similarly, Karr et al (2004) offered 10 recommendations for
minimizing impacts on streams by post-fire management.
The formation of rapid response collaboration teams is more easily
said than done, and the general framework will require planning. I
suggest that a first step would be to bring together a blue-ribbon
panel of scientists and managers to work out a strategy for forming
such teams and to develop general guidelines for protecting the
resource base along the lines of those published by Lindenmayer et al
(2004) and Karr et al (2004).
In conclusion, I would like to thank the committee members and
staffers for the opportunity to testify.
Literature cited.
Holt, R. 2006. Making a virtue out of a necessity: Hurricanes and the
resilience of community organization PNAS 103 2005-2006.
Karr, James R., Jonathan J. Rhodes, G. Wayne Minshall, F. Richard
Hauer, Robert L. Beschta, Christopher A. Frissell, and David A.
Perry. 2004. The Effects of Postfire Salvage Logging on Aquatic
Ecosystems in the American West. BioScience 54, 1029-1033.
Lindenmayer, DB, D.R. Foster, J.F. Franklin, M.L. Hunter, R.F. Noss,
F.A. Schmiegelow and D. Perry 2004. Salvage Harvesting Policies
after Natural Disturbance. Science 303, 1303
Morissette, J.L., T.P. Cobb, R.M. Brigham, and P.C. James . 2002. The
response of boreal forest songbird communities to fire and
post-fire harvesting Can. J. For. Res. 32(12): 2169-2183
McIver, James D. and Lynn Starr. 2001. A Literature Review on the
Environmental Effects of Postfire Logging. WJAF 16, 159-168
Perry, DA, MP Amaranthus, JG Borchers, S. Borchers, and R. Brainerd.
1989. Bootstrapping in Ecosystems. BioScience 39, 230-237
Thompson, J. and T. Spies. 2006. Presentation at fire workshop in Gold
Beach, Oregon, February 8th, 2006.
______
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Dr. Perry. We appreciate this. It's
most helpful.
Mr. Drehobl, you're our wrap-up witness. Thank you for
being here today. We look forward to hearing your testimony as
well.
Please go ahead, sir.
STATEMENT OF RICH DREHOBL,
RETIRED BLM FIELD MANAGER
Mr. Drehobl. Thank you for inviting me, I think.
I'm sorry that Yogi left because I was looking forward to a
lively debate over how forests evolved and how you could regrow
forests. And I think it's unfair that Mr. Inslee started this
news media blitz and he walked out in the middle of the
testimony. I wish he were here.
I retired from the BLM just the first of this year. I've
been a manager--well, I was a resource specialist, planner for
the Bureau for seven years and a manager for 26, the last 18
here in south--Southern Oregon, the Ashland Resource Area.
I received a number of awards while I was here in Oregon,
and I'm going to tell you about these not to brag, but rather
to let you know that I--I don't have the credentials of Dave
Perry and Jerry Franklin and Hal Salwasser, but I've been a
practitioner of applied science for those 26 years. I received
award from the Public Lands Foundation, which is a group of
retired BLM employees, headquartered in Washington, D.C., from
directors on down to resource specialists. So the award was
very special to me. It was for outstanding public land
professionalism of the year--public--outstanding public land
manager of the year, for developing the agency's, BLM's first
new forestry project while working under extreme, heavy and
diverse public opinion, and for bringing industry and
environmental groups together on contentious issues. And I see
a lot of folks on both sides of this issue in the audience here
today.
I also received an award from Oregon/Washington State
office of BLM, also recognized me for being on the leading edge
of implementation of all facets of the Northwest Forest Plan
through innovated approaches to ecosystem based management on a
landscape scale and in a collaborative manner.
Dr. Dave Perry was very instrumental in helping me do this
paradigm shift, a very important paradigm shift on how we
manage the public lands/forests, as was Dr. Franklin, although
I didn't have direct interaction with Dr. Franklin. I attended
many of his presentations and read his work. So these folks had
an influence on me. I appreciated good science. I implemented
good science, even under adverse conditions. A couple of my
former bosses are sitting in the audience, and they can attest
to the fact that it was no picnic at that time.
Dave Perry said in his 1994 book, titled Forest Ecosystems,
in the preface he was talking about the need to explain the
complexities and the intricacies of ecosystem functioning in
his book to--college students are going to have one course in
ecosystem. And he further said that it has to be a reservoir of
science, not only for students, but for practicing land
managers, for scientists, and increasingly for public land
policy folks, as yourselves, and for the private citizen who
has a very vested interest in how our public lands are managed.
So that one's gonna--yeah, you can just click them all up
there at one time. Thank you.
As a manager and a practitioner of applied science, I was
responsible for implementing science-based projects on an
ongoing basis. And we reviewed these--this science on every
project that we did, nearly every project. We reviewed--we made
a determination of its applicability. And I can tell you, after
26 years of doing this--actually 33 years--there is a lot of
science out there purported to be science, which upon a closer
look is nothing more than an advocacy statement. And we call
that junk science.
I had criteria for separating out sound science from the
junk science, and it's pretty simple and you apply the
following test. And if I could read it, I'd read it to you, if
I could see. So maybe--I don't know if everybody in here can
see that far. Does the report provide any new information? Is
there any information that is previously unknown that may
influence my decision as a manager? Are the conclusions
supported by the data? Is there sufficient data to cover the
area of inference? Are the conclusions independent and agenda
free? Is it intended to influence a point of view? Are there
relevant and important factors that were not disclosed that
would change the conclusion?
After the 2001 Quartz Fire I had asked Dr. Sensenig, who
was a forest ecologist on my staff at the time, because we were
trying to do a salvage and we had a lot of--a lot of discussion
going on, even some within my interdisciplinary team, my own
scientists, on not knowing what to do. Dr. Sensenig came back
and said there's not a lot of information available on post-
fire in southwestern Oregon, and a lot of the work that was
done was on industrial land, so it wasn't really applicable to
how we were managing on the public lands. So I asked for and I
wholeheartedly supported the research project that's the
subject here today.
And I've been following the news media blitz with all this
controversy that's going on and BLM being accused by one media
person that I really respect, which is Russell Sadler, and I
worked with Russell when he was living in Ashland. I'm really
disappointed that he has made this dance without finding out
the facts. But I couldn't--in light of all this frenzy, I could
no longer sit in retirement. I came out of retirement, and for
hopefully maybe one last time, but maybe never say never. But
the notion in the media that the BLM is stifling academic
freedom is absolutely false.
Academic freedom does not apply to intentionally misleading
or publishing disingenuous or politically motivated science
that's funded by taxpayers. That is not sound science. And I
can understand the temptation of scientists to maybe want to
sway the data a little bit to influence a decision for or
against. But that's not ethical. If you're a scientist, you got
to be a scientist. Otherwise, you're an advocate.
So let's look at the test. Does the report provide any new
information? Is there any information that is previously
unknown that may influence the decision?
And I'm going to have to get--does that microphone work up
here, do you think? If I may, I'm going to stand up here
because I can't see that far. OK. That's good. It must be my
aged eyes.
In the report seedlings and debris were measured two years
after the fire of '04 and once after the felling of the trees
in the salvage logging of '05. This is insignificant in terms
of effects of salvage.
Seedling mortality is expected to occur in any operation.
This could have been a green timber sale. It could have been a
salvage sale. It doesn't matter. If you have seedlings present
and you're doing any kind of salvage and you take that into
account, or any kind of logging, you take that into account
prior to dropping the trees. There's no new science there. We
know you're going to disturb seedlings.
There's lots of information on expected seedling mortality
and seedling damage during harvesting. Nursery seedling orders
reflect the fact that we're going to need more seedlings. If
they're present, we're going to damage them.
Go ahead on that please. OK. Next line.
So, again, there's no new information.
Another test. Are the conclusions supported by the data? Is
there sufficient data to cover the area of inference?
Post-fire natural regeneration varies greatly in Southern
Oregon, and that's why I had asked Doug if I could go after
these renowned ecologists because that was--there was no
mention in his report, anything about the site. What was the
elevation? What was the aspect? What was the plant association?
What was the precipitation and what was the available soil
moisture? The natural soil moisture is probably a critical
factor in this dry climate on seedling survival. He could have
1,500 seedlings per acre as he said in the report, and maybe 71
percent of them were damaged in the harvesting. So what?
Twenty-nine percent is more than adequate probably for that
particular--the carrying capacity of that particular site. And
also what kind of seedlings were they? I don't know that.
There's no mention either in the report of a land use
allocation for this area. There's four possibilities in the
Biscuit Fire. It could have been Kalmiopsis Wilderness, which
it was not. It could have been the Brewer's First Natural area,
which it was not. It could have been a late seral reserve,
which it was not. Or it could have been the matrix lands, which
by the Northwest Forest Plan are for timber production. That's
where it was at.
So it's only--by law, the agencies should have aggressively
pursued stabilization and rehabilitation, whether they were
going to log or not. The agencies, in their defense, are kind
of--have two hands tied behind them, they're shackled and they
got a blindfold over one eye, because they're short on staff
and, quite frankly, the paper monkey-wrenching and the judicial
obstructionism that is occurring is very, very effective, and
it was not possible to get that out.
Had the--had the salvage occurred when it should have, been
aggressively pursued, there wouldn't have been any seedlings
destroyed. There would have been the seed bed prepared and you
would have had probably more seedlings than you got in this
case.
So to typify salvage from data that is infinitesimal
relative to the area of inference is improper and a gross
misuse of the data.
One back, please. That's OK. I can tell you.
The Biscuit Fire was 500,000 acres. It was 700 square
miles. That's a large area to make--to draw these inferences
from one--from one study.
Are the conclusions independent and agenda free? Is it
intended to influence a point of view?
In the paper submitted to Science, the journal Science, the
authors stated that their intentions were to inform the
dialogue on pending House Bill 4200. This statement was
incriminating, and they requested that Science--to Science that
it be removed.
The Hatch Act.
Recipients shall not use any part of the Government's funds
for any activity or the publication or distribution of the
literature that in any way tends to promote public support or
opposition to any legislative proposal on which Congressional
action is not complete. However, the use of Federal funds to
mislead the dialogue on pending legislation is precisely what
the Hatch Act was enacted to prevent.
These are the wordings. And I put these on slides because I
want you to read them for yourself. Legislation currently--this
was submitted January 5th, the original publication.
Legislation currently pending in U.S. Congress, H.R. 4200,
would expedite post-fire logging projects, citing reforestation
and fuel reduction among its goals. To help inform the
dialogue--or more correctly to help sway the dialogue perhaps--
to help inform the dialogue, we present data from a study of
early conifer regeneration and fuel loads following the 2002
Biscuit Fire, Oregon, U.S.A., and with and without post-fire
logging. Natural conifer regeneration was abundant with high
severity fire.
Post-fire logging reduced median regeneration density by 71
percent and significantly increased downed woody fuel loads and
thus short-term fire risk. Post-fire logging can be
counterproductive to stated goals of ecosystem restoration.
The underlying words now on January 20th were changed, and
you can see that that was dropped out and the addition to,
reduction of fuels as necessary for effective mitigation. They
failed to mention that mitigation of fuels was programmed. It
was already planned. But there's no mention of that.
Mr. Walden. Mr. Drehobl, if I could get you to kind of
wrap. We've got about ten minutes and----
Mr. Drehobl. I'm going to pick on everybody, so I should
have more time. I'm not just going to pick on Mr. Donato.
Mr. Walden. Well, we've got to wrap the whole hearing up in
about 15 minutes and so----
Mr. Drehobl. Go ahead then. Go ahead.
There's specifically requirements. This has been discussed
already, about the specific requirements. Mr. Donato said he
didn't know they were there.
Let's keep going. I do want to pick on some other people.
OK. No, let's keep going.
Conclusions were out of context. I talked about that
already. If salvage had been done when it should have been, you
wouldn't have destroyed any seedlings. Probably have more.
Of course wood debris was another thing. That was already
prescribed. They failed to mention that. They just criticized
the fact that they're going to be removing it.
So in wrapping up, management perspective. From a--from a
person that applied science, tried to apply it, did not provide
any new or useful information, compromised the trust between
the agencies and the university and the public, compromised a
potentially worthwhile study, got it detailed and somehow
politicized it, cost the taxpayers $308,000, made no
contribution whatsoever to science, damaged the image of
university researchers, and intentionally misled the dialogue
of post-fire management in pending legislation.
It's obvious a violation of the Hatch Act.
If I could have a few more minutes, I would like to pick on
you folks. All right.
Mr. Walden. You wouldn't be the first. Or the last.
Mr. Drehobl. Yeah.
I was doing pretty well until this morning's Mail Tribune
article came out, and my anxiety rose. And I'm glad we had the
hearing this afternoon. Otherwise, I'd have some medical
emergency because if I didn't get it off my chest.
In the Mail Tribune this morning Yogi was quoted as saying
he wants to publicly burn the fingers of an administration he
believes tries to prevent scientists from speaking out if it's
contrary to administrative policy. Further, he states it needs
to have the whistle blown on it.
Well, hey, hey, hey, bring it on. I'm ready. It should be
investigated. I welcome an investigation to get the truth out
of this.
Mr. DeFazio is quoted as saying, to pull the funding was
simply stupid. And he's referring to the Director of BLM,
Kathleen Clarke.
Further, Mr. DeFazio said that there's nothing wrong with
policymakers having a wide range of facts. I agree 100 percent,
Congressman. But please don't select in what facts you gather.
Get all the facts and look at them before you call it stupid.
I also agree with the Representative Inslee, Yogi. This
does need to have the whistle blown.
So as a taxpayer, an official originally responsible for
this study initiating, I'd like to go on record as requesting
an investigation, that to house something so unethical and
illegal could not only have occurred, but is authorized to
continue.
This paper contained absolutely no new information, and
what it did report was taken so far out of context it is
meaningless. There is no useful information for a manager
whatsoever.
Although what these authors managed to pull off is obvious,
and every level, including the media and Russell Sadler, Oregon
State University, the Bureau of Land Management, and the
journal Science, had access to the truth, none could find it
within their system to face the truth. Apparently, all had
their reasons. I don't know what those would be. But I would
like to know and I'd like the public to know the truth.
Mr. Walden. All right.
Mr. Drehobl. So I'm saying let the scientific researchers
practice honest, unbiased, nonpartisan forest science and let
the politicians practice honest political science. That may
have been an oxymoron. I don't know.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Drehobl follows:]
Statement of Richard John Drehobl, Retired Bureau of Land Management
Manager of 33 years, Representing Self, Medford, Oregon
My name is Richard Drehobl and I recently retired as a field
manager for the Bureau of Land Management. Over my 32-year career I
managed hundreds of thousands of acres involving nearly every social
and ecological issue conceivable. I graduated from the University of
Arizona in 1972 with majors in Forestry, Range Ecology, and Natural
Resource Planning. My career covered the. Public Domain lands of
California to the O&C lands of Oregon, both as a resource specialist
and manager in both states. Over the last 18 years I have been the Area
Manager of the Ashland Resource Area the most complex single
organizational unit in the Bureau of Land Management. I received the
Department of the Interior's second highest reward, the Superior
Service Award for ``outstanding contributions to the natural resource
programs in the Bureau of Land Management. I also received an award
from the Public Lands Foundation as ``Outstanding Public Land
Professional'' for ``developing the Agency's first `new forestry'
project while working under extremely heavy and diverse public
opinion''--and for bringing ``industry, environmental groups together
on contentious issues.'' The Oregon/Washington BLM State Office also
recognized me for being on the leading edge in implementing all facets
of the Northwest Forest Plan through innovative approaches to ecosystem
based management on a landscape scale and in a collaborative manner.
Although I had some rough times, I owe my success to my
perseverance and insistence and pursuit of quality and honest work.
Upon retirement I thought that I could finally put my career behind me
and move on to the things that I enjoy doing that weren't possible
while working. . However one of the issues before us tonight is quite
serious, serious enough to bring me out of retirement at least one more
time.
As a manager, I was responsible for implementing science based
projects on an on-going basis. Nearly every project involved a science
review, evaluation and a determination of its applicability. And I can
tell you that there are a lot of papers out there that purport to be
science that upon closer look are nothing more than advocacy
statements. Mangers have a name for these papers, we call it junk
science. I had a stack of junk science paper this deep. My criteria for
separating out sound science from junk science is simple and the
following list provides the tests;
1. Does the report provide any new information? Is there any
information that is previously unknown that may influence my decision.
2. Are the conclusions supported by the data? Is there sufficient
data to cover the area of inference?
3. Are the conclusions independent and agenda free? Is it intended
to influence a point of view?
4. Are there relevant and important factors that were not
disclosed that would change the conclusion?
First of all I would like to make it clear that I'm not here to
talk about the pro or cons of salvage logging, that's why the renowned
scientist are here, frankly I don't care. What I do care about is what
happened to what was otherwise a good study under my watch, one that I
wholeheartedly supported, but was commandeered to promote a political
agenda.
I'm referring to the Science paper ``Post-Wildfire Logging Hinders
Regeneration and Increases Fire Risk D. C. Donato, J. B. Fontaine, J.
L. Campbell, W. D. Robinson, J. B. Kauffman, B. E. Law ``
In 2002, after the Quartz fire in southern Oregon, I requested a
review of the options relative to post fire management of the Quartz
fire, because little information was available on southern Oregon post
fire management, and to address the controversy over post fire
management. I requested and supported the study proposals presented to
the joint Fire Science Program by Doctors Boone Kauffman, Tom Sensenig
and Douglas Robinson in 2003. Because I was the BLM manager at the
time, I had, and still have, a vested interest in this project. I've
been following the media fury which they have made a global issue
I could no longer sit back and watch the frenzy of misinformation
continue. The notion that censorship or suppression of academic freedom
is what is going on is absolutely false. Academic freedom does not
apply to intentionally misleading or publishing disingenuous or
politically motivated science funded by the taxpayers. I can understand
the temptation for scientist to over state there data to further
something that they do or don't support. However I believe this is
unethical, especially when federal money is involved.
Lets talk facts:
I believe that this research started out as a sound study having
the potential to make important contributions to our knowledge relative
to post-fire management. However, at some point it became derailed for
political purposes. The authors made an ``end run'' to Science avoiding
all of the required PSW, BLM and OSU protocols that would have revealed
their objective. The authors intentionally prepared, submitted and
published this Science without informing the agency or Dr. Sensenig the
co-Principle investigator and Project Inspector responsible for
overseeing the implantation of the agreement.
They portray this as miscommunication. I believe that
characterizing ``no communication'' as ``miscommunication'' is wrong.
The agreement clearly states:
``Recipients must obtain prior Government approval for any
public information releases concerning this award, which refers
to the Department of Interior or any employee''
``The specific text, layout, photographs, etc. of the
proposed release must be submitted with the request for
approval''
The agreement further states:
Government Requirement.
``Provide timely review and comments on the document produced
by this study and work in partnership on the project''.
The test:
Does the report provide any new information? Is there any information
that is previously unknown that may influence my decision?
There is no new or useful information in this study. Seedlings and
debris were measured before and after felling of trees at one point in
time. Seedling mortality is expected to occur in any operation. There
is lots of information on expected seedling mortality and seedling
damage during harvesting. Nursery seedling orders reflect unanticipated
lose of seedlings during logging. Seedling loses as a result of logging
occurs regardless of what type of operation is being conducted. It
could have been a green tree project or even a thinning had seedlings
been in the under story. The authors misleadingly portrayed this as
being unique to salvage.
Are the conclusions independent and agenda free? Is it intended to
influence a point of view?
In the paper submitted to science on November 21, 2002, the authors
stated that their intention was to ``inform the dialogue on pending
House Bill 4200, apparently realizing that this statement was
incriminating, they requested that it be removed. Because this report
contains no new information, and the results are reported out of
context it is essentially useless to science, thus there is no other
possible purpose than to influence legislation. The use of Federal
funds to ``mislead the dialogue'' on pending legislation is precisely
what the Hatch Act was enacted to prevent. By the authors simply
stating that this paper had no political purpose, does not make it
true. All circumstantial and physical evidence indicate otherwise.
Their actions clearly speak for themselves. The agreement clearly
states
Opposition to any Legislation
Recipients shall not use any part of the Government's funds for any
activity or the publication or distribution of the literature that in
any way tends to promote public support or opposition to any
legislative proposal on which Congressional action is not complete.
Are the conclusions supported by the data? Is there sufficient data to
cover the area of inference?
The data were collected on limited number of sites using 75m
transects 1/2 meters wide. The diversity of the southern Oregon
landscapes which varies greatly by slope, elevation, precipitation,
plant association, tree species, and stand structure. To typify salvage
from data that is infinitesimal, relative to the area of inference is
improper and a gross misuse of the data. The Biscuit fire alone covered
over 700,00 square miles and some 700,000 acres.
Are there relevant and important factors that were not disclosed that
would change the conclusion?
There were many important factors that were not disclosed in the
report: 1. had the salvage operation been conducted immediately and not
delayed because of the required administrative processes, seedling
recruitment would have occurred post disturbance and seedling numbers
would have remained unaffected. 2. seedling recruitment is likely to
continue over time and thus the disturbed areas will possibly have more
seedlings than the undisturbed areas in subsequent years. 3. The number
of residual seedlings surviving after logging is, in many cases above
adequate levels, and represent tree densities observed in old-growth
stands.
The report concluded that salvage logging increased fire hazard. Of
course logging creates debris. This is also to be expected and is not
new information. What we were not told is that where necessary, fuel
reduction treatments were planed. In addition course wood was
prescribed to be retained on site by the contractor during the
operation to enhance long-term site productivity. To report that a fire
hazard was created was to use the data out of context and intentionally
misleading.
Although what these authors managed to pull-off is obvious, and
every level including the media, OSU, BLM, and Science had access to
the truth, none could find it within their system to face the truth.
Apparently they had their reasons. However, the truth is what compels
me to be here today.
When I first read the paper I could not believe what I was reading.
This work is an insult to me. The paper contained absolutely no new
information and what it did report was taken so far out of context it
is meaningless. There is no useful information for a manager in this
paper, none. It's obvious this paper was about influencing pending
House bill 4200, pure and simple. This is unethical, in violation of
the BLM agreement and is precisely what the Hatch Act was intended too
prevent.
I've been asked why the so-called ``Session'' report is any less
unethical. Although I am not going to speak to that report, and really
don't care what it says, however there are at least three distinctive
differences. The ``Session'' report; did not involve Federal money, was
not research and did not have the expectations of independence, clearly
reveled the objectives of the paper up front and clearly defined the
purpose of the report.
In my 33-year career, I have not observed anything as unethical as
this.
A management perspective on the Donato et al. paper,
1. Cost over $300,000.00 dollars of taxpayer money.
2. Did not provide any new or useful information.
3. Intentionally mislead the dialogue on post fir management and
pending legislation
4. Made no contribution to science.
5. Compromised a potentially worthwhile study.
6. Damaged the image of university researchers.
7. Compromised the trust between the agencies, the University and
the public.
8. Blatant violation of the Hatch Act.
I would like to go on record as requesting an investigation as to
how something so unethical and illegal could, not only have occurred,
but is authorized to continue.
Exhibit 1. Dr, Sensenig's response to questions
As co-PI, these are my questions and concerns, concerning the
publication Donato et al.
The research projects being conducted by OSU graduate students Mr.
Dan Donato and Mr. Joe Fontaine are part of a cooperative effort
between the USFS, BLM and OSU and are being funded by the Interagency
Joint Fire Science program. However, the many anomalies in the process
leading up to and the publishing of preliminary information raise
questions as to the objectives of OSU and other authors. It should be
noted that the types of data collected on the plots was more
comprehensive that reported. It included information on shrub and forbs
height and cover, live and dead biomass, root mass etc., yet only the
information on regeneration and fuel hazard were selectivity presented.
The title derived from regeneration and fire hazard is misleading. Why
was pending House bill 4200, referenced in the report but later
withdrawn? Note: requirement -Stipulation N, page 10.
Also, why did all six authors withhold the fact that this
publication was being prepared for, and submitted to Science for
publication from the Bureau of Land Management (administrator of the
project), U.S. Forest Service (co-operators), and violate required PSW
research publication requirements.? Could it be that had any of the
processes been conducted it is clear that the publication would not
have gone forward in its present form. Why was publication so urgent,
given the simplicity of the data used?
In addition, the data did not support the conclusions displayed in
the title. For example, damage to seedlings from logging is expected
regardless if the trees are felled dead or alive. If protecting
seedlings was the objective then perhaps a different plan may have been
utilized. To imply that salvage is uniquely responsible was
disingenuous. The report overlooks the fact that had the salvage
operations been conducted immediately and not delayed, seedling
recruitment would have occurred post disturbance and seedling numbers
would have remained unaffected. Also, to report that residual debris
from harvesting elevated the fuel hazard when it was clearly understood
that subsequent fuel reductions treatments where planed was, at
minimum, deceiving. In addition, coarse wood was prescribed and
required to be retained by the logger. Therefore, I believe that this
paper unfairly served to feed one side of the ongoing political debate
over salvaging logging
Shortcomings like these are usually identified during the Journal
peer review process, however, as indicated by many OSU and other
distinguished scientists, in this case, the peer review process failed
to identify these shortcomings.
The way in which this publication was prepared, used the data,
reviewed, released, and the misleading conclusions, give the
appearance, and raise the possibility that it was intended to influence
public policy on this contentious issue
Exhibit 2. Dan Donato's first reveling of their publication
``Donato, Dan''
01/04/2006 07:17 PM Tom-
Here's that paper. Do read it with an open mind. It is a simple
presentation of numbers, with a few implication statements relative to
some of our common post-fire management goals. There is no good-or-bad,
for-or-against verbiage in there. But people will run with it anyway.
Best, D
Dan Donato, Department of Forest Science, Oregon State University
321 Richardson Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331
ph: 541.231.7273 fax: 541.737.1393
Exhibit 3.
The publication was kept secret and not revealed to the project
inspector until January, 4th 2006. The paper was submitted to Science
November 21st, 2005 Memo sent to the authors by Dr. Sensenig, a
Principle Investigator and the Project Inspector upon seeing the
publication for the first time on January 9, 2006.
Dan and others:
``I feel compelled to briefly respond to your recent report.
Dan, as you know, this project was conceived by Boone Kauffman
and I during the development of the Quartz fire salvage plan,
because of the uncertainty and lack of creditable science on
several issues. Doug Robinson added the wildlife part later.
After considerable work, our proposal was funded and I received
the funding when I was the ecologist for the BLM, which I
transferred to OSU. Also, as you know, I spent a great deal of
time defending the credibility of these OSU studies this past
summer during your troubles, when It was perceived by some to
possibly have an underlying agenda. I am a principle
investigator on these studies, yet I was not provided even a
draft report. The timing and handling of the events that led to
this situation gives the perception of a political stunt. That
fact that preliminary data was intentionally used for political
proposes seriously undermines my and your scientific
credibility regardless of the quality of the science. Being
tasked with explaining and responding to this puts me in a very
precarious situation, which I don't particularly appreciate.
I don't think that I'm the one that needs to be reminded to keep an
open mind. As I have explained on several occasions, I am not for or
against salvage logging or anything else for that matter. Every action
has consequences (effects) and good and bad are human imposed values.
Effects are only good or bad when evaluated against the objectives.
Good science, explains the observation in context, including size,
scope, limitations and variability. That being said, the title of this
report is misleading and feeds one side of the debate without
sufficient information to understand the limitation of the
observations. Your title makes assertions from the numbers, it does not
constitute facts. Title ``Post-Wildfire Logging Hinders Regeneration''
does it? Maybe. For example, the remaining trees may well be sufficient
to constitute a fully occupied stand? What about timing, had the
salvage operation been conducted immediately and not delayed because of
the required administrative processes, seedling recruitment would have
occurred post disturbance and seedling numbers would have remained
unaffected, yet it was salvaged logged. Will seedlings continue to
recruit into the stand over time creating ecological complexity or even
result in more seedlings? on and on.
Title ``Post-Wildfire Logging Increases Fire Risk,''--does it?
Maybe. The data showed an increase in fuel one/two years following the
operation and before fuel treatment. This does not equate to fire risk.
Fire risk is much more complex. It involves landscape scale analysis of
current conditions, fuel continuity, vegetation structure and
probability if ignition. Etc. Also, what about longer-term conditions
when fine fuels decompose? etc. This assertion is quite the leap from
the data.
Despite my harsh criticism of how this has been handled, I still
feel your work is good and will prove valuable in future management. We
just need to be more careful and not read more from the numbers than
just good science.''
Thomas Sensenig
Southwest Oregon Zone Ecologist
Rogue River-Siskiyou, Umpqua National Forests
333 West 8th Street
Medford, Oregon 97501
(541) 858-2319
Fax (541) 858-2330
Exhibit 4 Dr. Sensenig response to the contracting officer over OSU
reference to miscommunication.
To: Contracting Officer, Steve Shapiro
From: Tom Sensenig, Principle Investigator, and Project Inspector
Subject: Communication Regarding Donato et al. Publication
Date: 02-10-2006
Identification of Authors:
Dan Donato and Joe Fontaine: Our study plan included an objective
for supporting several student degrees including PhD and Masters
program. Dan Donato and Joe Fontaine are the graduate students selected
per study plan. Dan is a Masters student in the Department of Forest
Science and Joe is a PhD. student in Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Douglas Robinson and Boone Kauffman were original OSU co-principle
investigators along with myself. Boone now works for the Forest
Service, Institute for Pacific Island Forestry in Hawaii. Douglas
Robinson works in OSU's Department of Fisheries and Wildlife.
Bev Law: Although not part of the original study, it's my
understanding that Boone recruited Dr. Law to join the project upon his
leaving OSU to work for the Forest Service.
John Campbell: I have no knowledge of John Camble's participation
or role in this project. He was not identified in the study plan, any
of the agreements nor had the other PIs or students mentioned that
others were involved. I did not authorize his involvement and I don't
know if he received any of the BLM's funds. His contribution, if any,
is unknown.
Science publication background and/or lack of background
The publication Post-Wildfire Logging Hinders Regeneration and
Increases Fire Risk by D. C. Donato, J. B. Fontaine, J. L. Campbell, W.
D. Robinson, J. B. Kauffman, and B. E. Law was submitted by these
authors to the Journal of Science on November 21, 2005. Because
information on the preparation and draft reviews among the authors has
not been divulged it is not known when the process of development for
this publication actually began. Typically several months or more is
common. Therefore, preparation of this publication presumably began in
October or before.
The Rogue River-Siskiyou and Umpqua National Forests conduct their
annual business and science conference in Gold Beach, Oregon during the
second week of February. I was informed in late November that the
science portion of the 2006 conference was going to focus on the
research currently being conducted on the Biscuit fire, and that the
Joint Fire Science project, on which I'm a principle investigator and
project inspector, is in the program. Science coordinator Robyn
Darbyshire, had requested that both Dan Donato and Joe Fontaine
prepared presentations for this conference. I called Dan Donato in
early December to schedule a meeting where we could prepare for this
conference. I said that I would like to discuss their progress and go
over any presentational material in preparation for the February
conference. I scheduled a meeting for Thursday, December 15, 2005, in
Corvallis Oregon. Despite having already prepared and submitted their
paper to Science Dan did not offer any information regarding the other
authors' involvement or the fact that they had submitted a paper for
publication.
As scheduled, I met with Joe Fontaine and Dan Donato on December
15, 2005 in Corvallis Oregon to prepare for this conference. Contrary
to what the OSU letter indicated, I scheduled this meeting, not them,
and it had nothing to do with their publication. Both Dan and Joe
showed me some PowerPoint slides that they had prepared. Joe discussed
the wildlife aspects of the projects, mostly on deer mice. Although the
study is comprehensive and involves many types of data, Dan only
prepared slides on seedling counts and fine and coarse wood transects.
He did not discuss any other aspects of the study. Curious about this,
I asked about the other parts of the study. He indicated that he did
not have time to look at these data yet, and that regeneration and fuel
hazard are the two factors on which pending House Bill 4200 is based.
Because, I was not familiar with House Bill 4200 at that time, I asked
him to explain what he was talking about. Because these projects were
not complete, was preliminary and because they had kept their
publication from me; I had no reason to suspect any wrongdoing at his
time. In closing, I asked them to send me any information. I did not
receive any information until January 4th when Dan e-mailed their paper
to my office.
Had I not scheduled this meeting, there would not have been any
communication between any of the authors with me prior to publication.
None of the authors had, at any time, contacted me, nor was I provided
any of the draft or final documents. It was only a matter of
happenstance for Joe and Dan to have had this meeting prior to the
release of their paper. To imply that at this meeting I, in any way,
condoned, approved, or authorized their publication, which I had no
knowledge of, is wrong. In fact, to the contrary, for it was this very
meeting that made me instantly realize, when I first read their
headlines on January 9th, 2006, what these authors had done.
On the afternoon of January 4, 2006, although I was on leave that
week, I was in my office taking care of business. I received a call
from the Rogue River-Siskiyou Forest officer Robert Shull and Illinois
Valley District ranger Bam Bode. They asked me if I knew anything about
a news release on the Biscuit fire salvage creating a fire hazard. I
had no idea what they were talking about. I explained that our project
is still underway and that there is still another year of data
collection, so it's not our Joint Fire Science project. However, when
they said that the author was Donato et al., I immediately became
suspect and called Dan in Corvallis, and explained that I was asked
about a ``Salvage'' publication news release with his name on it, and
that I need to know what was going on. He explained that he and others
had published a paper on salvage in Science. I asked who else was
involved and then ask him to send a copy of the paper to me
immediately. My computer received the following message from Dan Donato
at 7:17 pm January 4, 1006. The timeline speaks for itself.
______
Mr. Walden. All right. Thank you, I think.
I also want the record to show I think you had the longest
time to testify of anybody. So we didn't cut anybody off today.
I appreciate you also had to wait the longest to give your
testimony.
So let me move right into questions. We're each going to
get about five minutes, no more than that, and literally I have
to be out of here no later than 4:35.
And I want to go to Dr. Franklin, because you talked about
the old growth ponderosa pines in eastern Oregon, which I'm
probably more familiar with in terms of where I've grown up, in
the Dalles and Hood River and out in that country over the
years. And I was out in the Ochoco National Forest, and there
had been a fire up in a wilderness area in part and outside of
a wilderness area in part. And the Forest Service had tried to
do some salvage logging, if you will, in the piece outside. And
then across the basin and up the other side there was an old
growth forest they were managing for old growth characteristics
with all the usual things you've identified in eastern Oregon
of the understory that's grown up.
And that opportunity to do precisely what you said needs to
be done, to thin out the small diameter that's growing up as
ladder fuels and competing for moisture and everything else,
was the plan they had in place, to remove that stuff so that we
can preserve the big old beautiful ponderosa pines.
That got challenged, appealed and litigated. In the
meantime, the bugs came out of the forest where the fire had
occurred--this is what the Forest Service tells me, their
scientists--came down across the valley, up the other side,
into this area that they had set aside to do thinning to
strengthen these old growth pine, and guess what was attacked.
The old growth ponderosa pine. And they're now dying.
Somewhere in here we're not able to accomplish, even if we
have the money, what you have told us we need to. What else do
we need to do?
Mr. Franklin. Well--wow. In one minute.
Mr. Walden. Actually, I have another question, so 30
seconds will work. No, I'm kidding.
You know, I want to say you have told us repeatedly and
thankfully you've come before our Committee and said you guys
got to do this stuff, we got to manage better. And I'm just--I
guess I'm not asking you that specific example to tell me what
your prescription is. But I hope you--I think we share our
frustration here.
Mr. Franklin. Yes. So I think, you know, we do see a
consensus coming together in these fire-prone--
uncharacteristically fire-prone--landscapes. And we need to fan
the fire, the development of that consensus, so that we can
move forward.
I learned a lot about those areas working with Norm Johnson
and his wife Deborah on that Klamath Restoration Plan. And I
hope you have a chance to--to visit with us about it.
Mr. Walden. I'd enjoy doing that.
Dr. Salwasser, you can't come here and not comment
something about what happened in your school of forestry. If
you had to do it over again, what would you do differently?
You've heard criticisms raised today about specific
questions. I've raised them based on information I've only
received in the last two days. Does any of that affect your
view now? What would you do differently? What should we do? Do
you feel that your school of forestry was somehow attacked by
having the BLM--tell us what--how you folks reacted when it
came to the BLM's decision to hold funding, which even Brian
Baird and I wrote a letter and said, wait a minute, let's not
get into academic freedom here.
But what about this issue of following protocols. Mr.
Donato said he was unclear that those protocols were even
there. Can you shed some light on that.
Mr. Salwasser. Yeah. First, we took the letter from BLM
quite seriously about their points about not being in
compliance with a couple of the stipulations with the contract.
And our legal office people immediately started talking with
the authors of the article and--to find out just exactly what
went on. And in their judgment this was not an issue of
science, so we weren't even involved, but the legal people
were. In their judgment, it was very much as Dan Donato said.
There was a misunderstanding of what the expectation was for
consultation.
They--it was also clear that Science had not followed
through on the request of the authors to remove the language
from the draft of the article that said something about H.R.
4200, and Science had not done that. And Science wrote a letter
back saying it was our fault, not the authors' fault.
And so we put that information together and sent it back up
to the BLM contracting people. This is contract officer to
contract officer and legal people, and they were sufficiently
satisfied that they put the funding back on line.
Mr. Walden. Did you feel or do your researchers feel like
academic research was being suppressed as a result of that
communication.
Mr. Salwasser. Not at all. It wasn't a matter of the
research. It was a matter of performance on the contract, on
the specifics on the contract and----
Mr. Walden. Because it's been characterized that way.
Mr. Salwasser. I know, but that's an unfair
characterization. The BLM's points had nothing to do with the
substance of the science. It had to do with following the
contract language. And once that was resolved, they were back
on line. And our objective was to--was to find out what
actually occurred and then--and I think everybody understands a
little bit better. In fact, the project--the investigator for
BLM, a new person has been down on campus, and we're working
out the details about making sure we all understand what's
expected.
Mr. Walden. All right. Thank you, Doctor.
And, again, to all our panelists, from my perspective,
thank you for your testimony.
Peter.
Mr. DeFazio. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And in response to that, Dr. Salwasser, and to Mr. Drehobl,
I guess perhaps rather than being my usual blunt self, I should
have said it was a precipitous decision made hastily which had
to later be reversed which was stupid. And that was--so, you
know, in any case, I mean, you know, but that's really not
relevant here. And I understand there's some varied opinions.
Let me--I want to get back to the bill because the two of
you were there, in a hearing there, and there's unresolved
issues, as you can understand, here. And a key element of the
bill, and you both referenced this, is--and you in
particularly, Dr. Salwasser--preapproved management practices.
I'm going to give you a list of things, and you tell me which
of these things would be disqualified in a generic sense from
being a preapproved management practice for post-catastrophic
event recovery. OK. Here's the list.
Clearcut, reforest monoculture; clearcut, reforest diverse;
remove small medium trees, leave large trees, reforest; remove
small trees, medium trees, leave large trees, natural
regeneration; selective logging at different levels of
retention, reforest; no logging, restock; no logging, no
restocking.
Now, what of those would be rejected out of hand? What of
those would never be acceptable as a prior approved management
practice?
Mr. Salwasser. Well, actually, I've been trying to think
about what these preapproved management practices might be
because I've not seen what one looks like yet. So my answer to
your question is: All of the above would be rejected, because
to me a preapproved management strategy would have to deal with
the kind of--the management direction for the place, the forest
plan association group, how intense the fire was, and what kind
of conditions were left on the site in the forest. And only
after I would know some of those kind of things would I have a
clue, you know.
So to me the preapproved practices might be something more
like a dichotomous key, you know, what forest type you in,
what's the land management direction, what actually happened on
the site. And then it would say--and then it would fall out.
Mr. DeFazio. And I agree with everything you're saying. So
it needs to be specific to the forest classification, forest
type, the event that occurred.
Mr. Salwasser. Right.
Mr. DeFazio. And so how could we have like gone through a
public review, set up a bunch of generic practices, and then
say, OK, now the secretary has total discretion to apply
anything on that list to this fire. How does that get to be
site specific.
I personally believe that, you know, we maybe want to do
something in the short term, but in the long term we're going
to have to go back and amend forest plans and anticipate these
things at the forest level where you have a much more, you
know, and better idea of all those things, and you can say what
might be appropriate on which parts of the forest.
Dr. Franklin, can you help me with this, because when I
read this we're going to publish this list, they're going to be
peer reviewed, which is going to be obviously generic because
we are not going to say on the Siskiyou, you know, on a south
facing slope in an area that hasn't been previously harvested,
here's a preapproved management practice. If that's going to be
what they're going to develop for all the forests in the United
States of America, this is going to be one hell of a big, long
list and it's going to take a long time.
So my question becomes what--you know, and then the
secretary has total discretion to apply, which again I am
disturbed by because as I said previously the Clinton
administration would probably say let's do nothing; this
administration would say, hey, let's use number one, which is
what I listed, which is, well, we're going to go in and clear
cut and reforest in a monoculture.
Dr. Franklin, can you help me with this.
Mr. Franklin. Well, I--you know, the response to the
question the way you put it to me, it's the same as Hal's. You
know, there isn't anything on that list that you could
preapprove for an undefined situation.
Now, I can----
Mr. DeFazio. So then how do you get from having a
preapproved list to secretarial discretion and applying
something.
Mr. Franklin. Let me suggest a way, all though I think that
Norm Johnson, who is my mentor in forest policies, persuaded me
the best way to do it, exactly what you're talking about, make
the disturbance-based response a part of the forest plan for
each of the land allocations.
OK. Now, if I want to do legislation and preapproved
practices, then you're going to have to at an absolute minimum
talk about the management allocation. For example, if we're
talking about a land allocation which is predominantly timber
production, you might as a matter of policy say salvage and
reforestation with a dense plantation of conifers is
appropriate to that.
OK. Similarly, late successional reserve, that land
allocation is not appropriate for salvage logging. It's not
preapproved. It doesn't mean you wouldn't do an analysis maybe
and decide, but no streamlining basically. You leave--you don't
salvage that. You probably don't even mandate reforestation on
that.
So, you know, the only way I could see you doing it is
going back to land allocations. I think otherwise you try to do
anything else, you're going to end up with a really incredible
bollixed up system.
Mr. DeFazio. So perhaps a little more prescription or
direction from Congress on how these plans would be developed
and how they would be applied to different forest
classifications and types of management regimes.
Mr. Franklin. That's right. You know, I've had some
correspondence with Representative Baird about using that kind
of approach, using the management direction as a basis for
policy direction.
Mr. DeFazio. OK. Great. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Mr. Walden. Thank you, Peter.
Brian.
Mr. Baird. A few quick things.
Peter, I admire and enjoy your bluntness, but in referring
to the actions of the BLM, it may have appeared stupid. It may
have appeared to Mr. Inslee as it was politically motivated.
But the fact is they were obeying the law. And if obeying the
law is stupid or politically motivated, we've got a problem.
Mr. DeFazio. They could reinstate the money if they were
obeying the law before the money was----
Mr. Baird. Because the law suggested there were legitimate
questions of process and there were legitimate questions of the
Hatch Act as were raised earlier. They inquired about--with the
university about an explanation. The university provided the
explanation and they proceeded forward. The law provides for
that.
And it is shameful that this has been portrayed as a
political witch hunt. There I believe this administration is
biased against certain scientific findings. I agree with that.
I've testified to that. I participated in hearings. I do not
think this was the case, point one.
Point two. Dr. Franklin, as we've done this, I've got to
tell you, you've been quoted only second to God on some of
these things. You other folks are demigods, sorry. So
apparently I want to hear what God has to say about this notion
that we're going to protect our old growth trees, big old
ponderosa pines that you so dearly love. There was a radical
anti-environmental piece of legislation a while back written by
someone I've never heard of, called Greg Walden, called Healthy
Forests Restoration Act. It was vehemently opposed by the
environmental community.
Do you think the Healthy Forests Restoration Act has the
potential to help us save old growth timber or not?
Mr. Franklin. Certainly it has some potential to help us
save old growth timber.
Mr. Baird. And would it be better to spend more money in
the wildlands to do that or in the urban interface.
Mr. Franklin. Well, my position on that is that we have as
much need for treating fuel-loaded forests outside of the urban
interface as we do within it. And I'm on record on that, but--
well, published on that, that, you know----
Mr. Baird. Well, it's just nice to hear God say it once
again.
Mr. Franklin. And, incidentally, I miss Jack Thomas because
when Jack Thomas was involved in this stuff, he was God and I
was only the Pope.
Mr. Walden. Jerry, are you saying we still have to kiss
your ring.
Mr. Baird. Let me conclude with this. I want to put these
preapproved concepts into context.
It is not as if we have not anywhere else in human
existence said let's take the broad base of information that we
know on a number of variables and use those variables in
advance to make decisions about what is best, given our desired
outcomes.
There is no absolute right or wrong about what end desired
outcome is. And one is not necessarily evil or good in being
able to say in this area this is our desired outcome and this
is how best to achieve it, and in this area this is our desired
outcome. Neither is one corrupt or venal. That is what society
does. That's part of our responsibility. It's part of this
entire community's responsibility.
What Greg and I are saying is rather than have every single
one of these fought out in the courts so we spend millions and
millions of dollars of the taxpayers' money and depending on
the judge you get determines the outcome, let's look in advance
and say what do we want to do with the land, and recognize that
some land might be for production and others might be preserved
for environmental qualities. And our legislation allows for
that. And then say what information do we have and can we agree
on the best practices, given the goal of the land.
Now, people may not like that, but there will be in our
legislation a public process for input under NEPA as we develop
these plans. We will turn to you folks, and there may be areas
where by golly you say we've got to leave something or we're
going to screw things up big time. There may be other areas
where you say if you don't do something you're going to have a
brush field for the next 40 years and that may not be good for
forests.
This is not such a dangerous, such a radical or such a
destructive notion. I think it's common sense, and we hope
common sense can be guided by science. And that's why I
appreciate your input today.
And I'll yield back, as we say. I had time to yield, by
golly.
Mr. Walden. I appreciate that because we're right on
schedule.
I want to thank our witnesses on this panel for their
insights and the Members for their questions. Members of our
full Subcommittee who couldn't be with us at this field hearing
may have questions they'd like to submit to you and the other
panel. We hope you'll respond quickly, like in ten days, to
those question.
Members of the public, you can submit testimony if you have
comments. We welcome them. There are some sheets here that are
stacked there that you can use as a guide, and you can submit
them. And the address--in theory we have an e-mail address too,
but I don't have it handy. It is the House Resources Committee,
the Longworth House Office Building, 1337 Washington, D.C.,
20515. My staff will, though, at some point here have an e-mail
address for you. I assume we have one they can use.
And for our audience, thank you for the way you've
conducted yourselves in a most contentious issue.
To our people who testified, thank you. I know we grilled
people hard in some cases. It is so we get better knowledge
about these issues so we can make better decisions.
If there is no further business before the Subcommittee, I
again thank the members of the Subcommittee and our witnesses.
And this Subcommittee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:35 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.
[Additional material submitted for the record follows:]
[A statement submitted for the record by Manuela M.P. Huso,
Consulting Statistician, Department of Forest Science, Oregon
State University, Corvallis, Oregon, follows:]
Statement submitted for the record by Manuela M. P. Huso, Consulting
Statistician, Department of Forest Science, Oregon State University,
Corvallis, Oregon: March 9, 2006
Honorable Members of Congress,
I am respectfully submitting my comments concerning the
Congressional Oversight Hearing entitled Scientific Research and the
Knowledge-base concerning Forest Management Following Wildfires and
Other Major Disturbances, held February 24, 2006 in Medford, Oregon. I
am a consulting statistician with the Department of Forest Science at
Oregon State University. Although two of the authors (Messrs. Donato
and Fontaine) on the publication in the journal Science that
precipitated this hearing consulted with me regarding study design
prior to data collection, I was not consulted regarding data analysis
or interpretation of the data after collection.
On March 3, Mr. Donato asked me to provide an independent analysis
of his data in order to assess the validity of his approach from a
statistical point of view. I did so using a slightly different approach
than he and his co-authors used. I had two primary objectives: to
analyze the data from a different, yet statistically sound and
ecologically relevant perspective in order to compare my results with
theirs for consistency; and to investigate the potential influence of
measurements made on any single plot to assess the robustness of the
results. I have described my methods in detail below. As with all
statistical analyses, statistical significance of results may or may
not represent biologically meaningful differences in the context of the
study. That interpretation is left up to the authors and is not an
issue I am qualified to address.
Even though my analysis addressed a slightly different question
than Donato et al (2006) asked, my results regarding seedling density
and fine fuels are consistent with the conclusions they draw and their
analysis appears to be quite robust. My results concerning coarse fuels
were consistent with Donato et al's but I found that some individual
plots had slight influence on the magnitude of the results.
In my analysis, I focused on the salient question of the research
for each of the three measures: seedling density, fine fuels and coarse
fuels. I asked ``Is there statistical evidence that, on average, stands
that were logged between 2004 and 2005 changed more than stands that
were not logged over the same interval?'' As annual variation can lead
to changes in these three measures between these two years, regardless
of the human intervention, I felt it was important to frame the
research question in a way that incorporates the potential inherent
change in these measures from year to year. Donato et al also addressed
this issue but in a slightly different way. They asked two sequential
questions ``Is there statistical evidence of significant differences
between logged and unlogged stands in 2004, before logging was
implemented?'' Once they established that the two groups (logged and
unlogged) had no initial differences, they then asked ``Is there
evidence of significant differences after logging, in 2005?'' Both
approaches are valid, but are estimating slightly different things. I
deliberately approached this analysis from a different perspective in
order to assess the consistency of their results. My independent
analysis of the data indicates the answer to my question above to be
clearly ``Yes'' for seedling density and fine fuels and a ``qualified
yes'' for coarse fuels.
Methods. I used a parametric approach with these data, using log -
transformed values. This transformation is very common in natural
resources and is often used when effects are multiplicative rather than
additive. If a factor acts additively, as opposed to multiplicatively,
it would cause a change of a fixed number of units, no matter how many
were there to start with. For example, a certain factor may induce an
average change of 10 units, so that a plot starting with 200 units or a
plot starting with 50 units are both expected to change by 10 units
after this factor has acted. A factor that acts multiplicatively would
cause a change of a fixed percent, no matter how many there were to
start with. For example, if a factor induces a 10% decrease, a plot
starting out with 200 units would be expected to decrease by 20 units,
whereas a plot starting out with 50 units would be expected to decrease
by only 5 units. When factors act multiplicatively, the distribution of
the data is often skewed with some few, very large numbers. In this
case, the median is often a better measure of central tendency than the
mean. The median represents the half way point in the distribution of
the data, i.e., half the values can be expected to be above the mean,
half below. It is much more stable than the mean and is not influenced
by few large values. The mean in a skewed distribution, on the other
hand, is highly influenced by a few large values and will be pulled
toward them. It will not be representative of the half-way point in the
distribution. In the Donato et al. study, seedling density, fine fuels
and coarse fuels appeared to be acting on a multiplicative scale, so
the log transformation was applied to all three measures and median
values (and 95% confidence limits) are reported.
In statistical analyses, we can never make such precise estimates
as those just stated (e.g., 10 unit decrease or 10% decrease). We place
95% confidence limits or bounds on these estimates of change or
difference that can be interpreted as having a 95% chance that the true
change or difference is somewhere within the bounds, so rather than a
10% decrease we would estimate somewhere between a 7% and 14% decrease,
for example.
In addition to answering the above research question, I explored
the possibility that results were based on an unusual sample of data,
and that perhaps only one plot with an extreme measured value was
actually responsible for the results. So, I reanalyzed the data,
leaving out one plot at a time (16 separate analyses) to see if the
results would change. If taking out a single point causes the
conclusions to change, then the results of this study would not be
considered to be robust. It would be extremely tenuous to interpret as
general effects, those that are unduly influenced by measurements at
only one point. However, if the conclusions were qualitatively
unchanged by removal of any plot, then the results would be interpreted
as robust and the effects measured would be considered representative
of a general pattern in the data. Visual representations of the results
of this analysis are presented in Figures 3, 6 and 9. In each of the
these, if the plotted interval includes 1, then there is no statistical
evidence of difference between logged and unlogged stands. If all
intervals exclude 1, then the conclusions are robust and there is
statistical evidence of a difference between logged and unlogged
stands.
I found that the results derived from Donato's sample were robust
for seedling density and fine fuels and even leaving any one plot out
did not change the essential interpretation of the results. Coarse fuel
measures were extremely variable and there was some evidence that the
coarse fuels estimates would change slightly if only one point were
removed.
Analysis Results Based on All Data
Seedling density
Seedling densities in 2004 ranged from about 300 to 2400 in 2004,
with (to be) logged plots having about the same range as (to be)
unlogged plots (Figure 1). Seedling density of most stands declined
between 2004 and 2005 (9 out of 9 logged, 5 out of 7 unlogged).
However, the magnitude of the decline was, on average, greater in
logged stands than in stands that were not logged (Figure 2). While
seedling density in unlogged plots was estimated to decline 20% from
2004 to 2005, seedling density in logged plots was estimated to decline
by 61% over this same time period. The 95% confidence limits for the
estimated percent change in seedling density in unlogged stands extend
from a decline of 48% to an increase of 23%, indicating that the
evidence is equivocal as to whether the average density decreased,
increased or remained unchanged in these stands. The 95% confidence
limits for the estimated percent change in logged stands, however,
extend from a decline of 43% to a decline of 74%, indicating that there
is strong evidence of a decline over that period, with uncertainty only
in the magnitude of the decline. Logged stands were estimated to have,
in 2005, between 27% and 86% of the proportion of seedling density
remaining in unlogged stands in 2005.
Fine Fuels
Fine fuels ranged from 0.5 to 2.9 Megagrams per hectare in 2004,
with (yet to be) logged plots having about the same range as (to be)
unlogged plots, and well interspersed (Figure 4). In 2005, after
logging, the fine fuel load of every logged plot was greater than that
of every unlogged plot (Figures 4 and 5). Fine fuels in unlogged plots
were estimated to increase by 8% from 2004 to 2005, whereas fine fuels
in logged plots were estimated to increase by 370% over this same time
period. The 95% confidence limits for the estimated percent change in
fine fuels in unlogged stands extend from a decline of 31% to an
increase of 68%, indicating that the evidence is equivocal as to
whether the average fine fuel load decreased, increased or remained
unchanged in these stands. The 95% confidence limits for the estimated
percent change in logged stands, however, extend from an increase of
222% to an increase of 607%, indicating that there is strong evidence
of an increase in fine fuels over that period, with uncertainty only in
the magnitude of the increase. The change in fine fuels in logged
stands from 2004 to 2005 was estimated to be between 2.4 to 8 times the
change in fine fuels in unlogged stands over this same period.
Coarse Fuels
Coarse fuels ranged from 1 to 81 Megagrams per hectare in 2004,
with (yet to be) logged plots having a bit larger range as the (to be)
unlogged plots (Figure 7). The two largest values and the two smallest
values were measured in plots that were later logged. In 2005, after
logging the coarse fuel load of every logged plot was greater than that
of every unlogged plot (Figures 7 and 8). The two plots with the
smallest coarse fuel load in 2004 each had dramatic increases in coarse
fuel load after logging. Coarse fuels in unlogged plots were estimated
to decrease by 34% from 2004 to 2005, whereas coarse fuels in logged
plots were estimated to increase by 240% over this same time period.
The 95% confidence limits for the estimated percent change in coarse
fuels in unlogged stands extend from a decline of 63% to an increase of
19%, indicating that the evidence is equivocal as to whether the
average coarse fuel load decreased, increased or remained unchanged in
unlogged stands. The 95% confidence limits for the estimated percent
change in logged stands, however, extend from an increase of 7% to an
increase of more than 1000%, indicating that the data are highly
variable but there is fairly strong evidence of an increase in coarse
fuels over that period, with a lot of uncertainty in the magnitude of
the increase. The change in coarse fuels in logged stands from 2004 to
2005 was estimated to be between 1.4 and 19.2 times the change in
coarse fuels in unlogged stands over this same period.
Analysis Results Based on Subset of the Data
I examined the potential influence of each point on these results
by removing one point at a time (16 possible) and rerunning each
analysis. I evaluated the effect on inference by plotting the 95%
confidence intervals around the estimate of the change in logged stands
relative to the change in unlogged stands from 2004 to 2005.
Seedling density
Figure 3 represents the 95% confidence intervals around the ratio
of percent seedlings remaining in logged stands relative to percent
seedlings remaining in unlogged stands in 2005. For example, if density
in logged stands in 2005 was 60% of what it was in 2004, but in
unlogged stands it was 80% of what it was in 2004, the ratio of the
percent remaining in logged to unlogged stands would be .6/.8=0.75=75%.
This ratio takes into account the possibility that densities in all
stands decreased between the two years. When the seedling density data
were reanalyzed after having removed one of the plots, none of the 95%
confidence limits of this ratio included 1, indicating that the results
were robust and the measured effect was representative of a general
pattern in the data (Figure 3).
Fine fuels
When the fine fuels data were reanalyzed after having removed one
of the plots, none of the 95% confidence limits of this ratio included
1, indicating that the results were robust and the measured effect was
representative of a general pattern in the data (Figure 6). In fact,
this ratio was never less than 2, indicating at least a doubling of
fine fuels in logged plots relative to unlogged.
Coarse fuels
When the coarse fuels data were reanalyzed after having removed one
of the plots, 4 out of 16 of the 95% confidence limits of this ratio
included 1, indicating that the results were not very robust and the
measured effect might not be representative of a general pattern in the
data (Figure 9). Although in all cases the estimate itself indicated an
increase in coarse fuels, removal of some of the plots caused the 95%
confidence interval around the estimate to include 1, providing
equivocal evidence of a general change. In addition, all the 95%
confidence intervals were extremely large, reflecting the high
variability in this measure.
Literature Cited
Donato, D.C., J.B. Fontaine, J.L. Campbell, W.D. Robinson, J.B.
Kauffman, B.E. Law, 2006. Post-wildfire logging hinders regeneration
and increases fire risk. Science 311: 352.
Figures
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______
[A report prepared by the USDA Forest Service Research &
Development submitted for the record by Chairman Walden
follows:]
Research & Development, USDA Forest Service--November 2004
POSTFIRE LOGGING: THE CONTROVERSY
AND THE CURRENT STATE OF KNOWLEDGE
Debate over the effects and appropriate use of postfire logging has
intensified in recent years. While many managers and scientists
consider it as part of a suite of possible restoration techniques after
wildfire, others argue that it causes damage to burned sites sufficient
to outweigh potential benefits. These discussions, whether in the
courts or in the literature, have often been carried on with a notable
absence of balanced evaluation of the available science. Managers and
policy makers need the soundest possible information in developing
recommendations for postfire management activities.
What do we know?
A recent review (Mclver and Starr 2000, 2001) summarized available
scientific information on this topic. This paper looked at some 21
studies that addressed effects of postfire logging on erosion,
wildlife, vegetation recovery and other factors. Since that review, a
few additional field studies have been completed, and several others
have been initiated to help address some of the gaps in scientific
knowledge identified in the review. None of these new studies changes
the major conclusions:
The environmental effects of postfire logging depend on
the severity of the burn, slope, soil type, vegetation composition and
condition, the presence or building of roads, type of logging system,
and postfire weather conditions. Logging over snow and aerial logging
or other low-impact systems help to reduce erosion and soil compaction.
Road building is likely to cause the greatest increase in sediment
transport off-site.
Wildfire, postfire logging, or other management
treatments alter vegetation structure, food sources, and other aspects
of animal habitat. These changes will favor some species and reduce the
occurrence of others; the end result is change in species composition
but not necessarily in species richness.
Both wildfire and postfire logging can cause significant
changes in the abundance and nest density of cavity-nesting birds,
particularly those attracted to high insect populations or structural
changes in recently burned forests.
Mammal species composition is changed by wildfire and
postfire treatments; everything from deer and elk to small forest-floor
mammals respond to the habitat changes that result from fire and
postfire logging.
The probability that insect pest populations will build
up and infest adjacent healthy tree stands may be reduced through
removal of vulnerable trees after fire.
Fine fuels are reduced by fire, and then increase as
trees or other vegetation die and new growth occurs. Fuel mass
increases on logged sites as a result of slash left over from harvest
and on burned but unlogged control sites as the result of dead branch
litter and falling dead trees. Control of logging slash can minimize
accumulation after harvest. There are few data on fuel changes with
time after fire, or on how these changes affect and are affected by
future fires.
Maintaining a maximum diversity of habitats and plant and
animal species across the landscape depends on a shifting mosaic of
landscape conditions. Fire and other disturbances can be important
contributors to maintaining a healthy and desired level of spatial and
temporal diversity over the landscape.
There is considerable variation in burned forests, in
logging methods, and in site-specific effects. A coordinated approach
to addressing key science questions, such as the ecological
consequences of alternative postfire logging practices in an
operational context, and could improve our understanding of general
principles for mitigating ecological damage in the postfire environment
as well as important site-specific information for adaptive management.
Several recent papers have discussed postfire logging from various
perspectives (Beschta et al. 2004, Lindenmayer et al. 2004, Sessions et
al. 2004). The assumptions that these papers make about desirable
societal or ecological goals influence their conclusions. Sessions et
al. (2004) focused on postfire options in areas being managed either
for old-growth characteristics or for fiber production following the
2002 Biscuit fire in Southwestern Oregon. They concluded that postfire
logging and artificial regeneration can help accelerate return to old
growth characteristics. They also concluded that rapid loss in economic
value of timber over the first two years after a fire, and the
potential for rapid growth of shrubs or other species that would
compete with conifers could make it much more difficult to use postfire
logging to help meet reforestation or old-growth restoration objectives
if action was not taken rapidly.
Beschta et al (2004) started with the assumption that 'nature knows
best', and that under most circumstances it is desirable to take a
custodial approach to management in the postfire environment. They did
little to address the social and economic context within which forest
lands are managed. They concluded that beneficial postfire management
activities can include soil protection, road restoration, large-tree
retention, and support of natural recovery, while most postfire
logging, seeding of non-native species, disturbance of riparian areas,
road construction, and in-stream erosion control structures are ``not
likely to be consistent with ecosystem restoration''. Unfortunately, a
selective review of the literature, and reliance on indirect evidence
for many of their arguments detract from the value of this paper as a
balanced analysis.
In a policy forum published recently in Science, Lindemayer et al.
(2004) discussed examples of negative ecological effects of postfire
logging from around the world. However, they recognized that, depending
on management objective, there may be situations where postfire logging
is appropriate. They made the excellent point that post fire or post
disturbance restoration and recovery activities are best considered
during the planning cycle, analyzed in a landscape context, and
incorporated into planning documents as anticipated responses to severe
fires or other disturbances.
Conclusions:
Effects of postfire logging and other restoration treatments are
site specific and strongly dependent on the way in which treatments are
conducted, the extent and severity of wildfires, and what parts (and
how much)of the burned area are treated. Both fire and postfire
treatments affect soils, hydrology, and the structure and composition
of plant and animal communities. While most research has been conducted
at the stand level, planning for such treatments should occur in a
landscape context, and with a clear set of ecological and social
objectives. Such planning is best done in advance of disturbance events
and with a full balancing of the potential impacts and benefits of
treatments, or of decisions not to treat, on recovery and restoration
of desired landscape condition. Adaptive management is a useful tool
that could help build understanding of logging effects in the postfire
environment.
Research is ongoing
Several studies have been started recently, with support from the
Joint Fire Science Program and National Fire Plan Research, to help
enhance our understanding of the effects of postfire logging.
A study established by the Pacific Northwest Research
Station following the 1996 Summit fire in eastern Oregon is evaluating
the effects of postfire logging on fuel structures, fire hazard, soils
and sediment movement. Treatments include: no postfire logging, harvest
of one-third of the viable timber, and harvest of all of the viable
timber. Logging was removed between 43 and 46 percent of timber basal
area. Logging disturbed between 15 and 30 percent of the soil area in
the study units. Sediment transport out of the area was minimal,
probably because the slopes were low, logging was over snow, no new
roads were constructed, and there were no severe rainfall events in the
year following logging. Logging added more small-diameter woody fuel in
the short term, but reduced the amount of standing fuel, in the form of
dead trees, which will contribute to future fuel loads as they fall
down. Model projections suggest that logged units might have less fuel
in the long run and may burn less intensely. This study suggests that
logging can be done with acceptable effects on soils and minimal
sediment transport off-site, provided the right equipment and approach
are used.
Rocky Mountain Research Station has installed several
sets of paired watersheds to measure the impact of salvage logging on
erosion and hydrologic processes. The sites are at the Hayman Fire
(Pike and San Isabel National Forest, Colorado), the Kraft Springs Fire
(Custer National Forest, Montana), and on simulated wildfires at Priest
River and Boise Basin Experimental Forests. Researchers are monitoring
runoff and sediment yields from these small watersheds (10 ac) on a
storm by storm basis over three years. Preliminary results indicate
only small rainfall intensity events for these sites, thus little
erosion for either the salvage logged or control watersheds. Additional
sites following wildfires and simulated wildfires will be installed
over the next several years. FS scientists also continue to improve and
develop hillslope and watershed-scale models and analysis tools for
that estimating postfire erosion with and without postfire treatments.
These tools are widely used by the NFS and other agencies throughout
the western U.S., and scientists are incorporating available
information on effects of postfire logging.
Pacific Northwest Research Station and several
collaborators are investigating effects of salvaging burned trees
following the 2002 Cone Fire in northern California. Scientists
established 2 hectare (5 acre) plots that to evaluate effects of 5
levels of postfire logging - 0%, 25%, 50% 75%, and 100% of basal area
removed, with each level replicated 3 times. The historic fire regime
of this ecosystem was of the frequent/low-moderate severity type of
interior ponderosa pine in the southern Cascade Range of northern
California. The study team is assessing effects of levels of postfire
logging on: 1) the succession of the fuel profile (e.g., How rapidly
does the fire hazard return; what happens when dead trees fall down;
how does regrowing vegetation affect fuel hazard?); 2) levels of insect
infestation and the use over time of the dead trees by woodpeckers; and
3) the influence of various levels of postfire logging on soil
compaction.
References:
Beschta, R.L., J.J. Rhodes, J.B. Kauffman, R.E. Gresswell, G.W.
Minshall, J.R. Karr, D.A. Perry, F.R. Hauer, C. A. Frissell.
2004. Postfire management on forested public lands of the
western United States. Conservation Biology 18(4): 957-967.
Duncan, S. 2002. Postfire Logging: Is it beneficial to a forest?
Science Findings 47, USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest
Research Station, Portland, OR. 5 pp.
Lindenmayer, D.B., D.R. Foster, J.F. Franklin, M.L. Hunter, R.F. Noss,
F.A. Schmiegelow, D. Perry. 2004. Salvage harvesting policies
after natural disturbance. Policy Forum. Science 303:1303.
Mclver, J.D. 2004. Sediment transport and soil disturbance after
postfire logging. Proceedings 2002/2003 Annual Meeting of the
American Institute of Hydrology.
Mclver, J.D.; Starr, L. 2000. Environmental effects of postfire
logging: literature review and annotated bibliography. USDA
Forest Service General Technical Report PNW-GRT-486. 72 pp.
Mclver, J.D.; Starr, L. 2001. A literature review on mental effects of
postfire logging. Western Journal of Applied Forestry. 16 (4):
159-168.
Saab, V.J. Dudley, J. 1998. Responses of cavity-nesting birds to stand-
replacement fire and salvage logging in ponderosa pine/Douglas-
fir forests of southwestern Idaho. Res. Pap. RMRS-RP-11. Ogden,
UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky
Mountain Research Station.
Sessions, J., Bettinger, P., Buckman, R., Newton, M., Hamann, M. 2004.
Hastening the return of complex forests following fire: The
consequences of delay. Journal of Forestry 102(3):38-43.
For further information contact:
Susan G. Conard, National Program Leader, Fire Ecology
Research ([email protected])
Deborah Hayes, National Program Leader, Watershed Research
([email protected])
Jimmy Reaves, Director, Vegetation Management and Protection
Research ([email protected])
Sam Foster, Acting Director, Watershed, Wildlife, Fish, and
Air Research ([email protected])