The Committee of Scientists: A Forgotten Link in National Forest Planning History

Passage of the National Forest Management Act (NFMA) of 1976 was intended to get forestry out of the courts and back into the woods. Clearly that did not happen; controversy, legal gridlock, and legislative remedies continue. As an example of this impasse, consider that Congress had to legislate the timber harvest level for some USDA Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands in the Pacific Northwest in 1989. This stalemate has also prompted a renewed reliance on scientific experts to advise both Congress and the administration on matters of natural resource management. The most notable examples are the committees established to consider various issues relating to the controversiallisting of the Northern spotted owl as an endangered species: the Interagency Scientific Committee, the Scientific Panel on Late Successional Forest Ecosystems (also known as the "Gang of Four"), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's official Spotted Owl Recovery Team. These committees' prominence, along with the persistence of forest policy controversies, combine to make a discussion of scientific advisory boards a timely issue. The Committee of Scientists established by the NFMA is a useful vehicle for such a discussion. The NFMA was commonly seen as a legislative response to clearcutting controversies on the Monongahela and other national forests, but in fact it addressed widespread dissatisfaction with Forest Service response to public input, calling for sweeping changes in Forest Service planning procedures,' The most substantive and well known of these may be the forest planning requirements of section 6(c): "The Secretary shall begin to incorporate the standards and guidelines required by this section in plans for units of the National Forest System as soon as practicable after enactment of this subsection and shall attempt to complete such incorporation for all such units no later than September 30, 1985. "2 This prompted a flurry of planning and publication of articles in academic and professional journals. Donald Ellis and Jo Ellen Force, in an annotated bibliography on the NFMA, list 271 publications for 1976-86, revealing the act to be perhaps the most discussed of American forestland management policies. " Despite this, little attention has been given to the Committee of Scientists established to advise and counsel the secretary of agriculture in developing regulations for implementing the act. Ellis and Force's exhaustive bibliography lists only three publications about the committee: an article describing its activities," a call by its chairman for input from interested professionals,' and a retrospective conference presentation by the chairman. " If the bibliography is any indication, the committee's role in implementing the NFMA might easily slip into obscurity, which would be unfortunate. It was a novel exercise in American public land management policy, rare among the numerous oversight committees in that it was never apparent that members were selected for political reasons rather than for scientific qualifications. 7 Also, the committee was no mere advisory body, but one that actively drafted regulations. Whether or not it did this without bias or was only perceived to do so, the committee worked effectively with groups that were historically adversaries. This article reviews the history of the Committee of Scientists with special attention to its evolution from an advising into a participating body and to its effectiveness in enunciating and incorporating diverse viewpoints. Our research approach was both archival and oral. First, we reviewed the private papers of one member of the committee to document committee history and to develop hypotheses about its relative