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26-461 PDF 2006

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

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

or

Committee address: http://resourcescommittee.house.gov

(II)

COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES

RICHARD W. POMBO, California, Chairman

NICK J. RAHALL II, West Virginia, Ranking Democrat Member

Don Young, Alaska

Jim Saxton, New Jersey

Elton Gallegly, California

John J. Duncan, Jr., Tennessee

Wayne T. Gilchrest, Maryland

Ken Calvert, California

Barbara Cubin, Wyoming

Vice Chair

George P. Radanovich, California

Walter B. Jones, Jr., North Carolina

Chris Cannon, Utah

John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania

Jim Gibbons, Nevada

Greg Walden, Oregon

Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado

J.D. Hayworth, Arizona

Jeff Flake, Arizona

Rick Renzi, Arizona

Stevan Pearce, New Mexico

Henry Brown, Jr., South Carolina

Thelma Drake, Virginia

Luis G. Fortun ̃ o, Puerto Rico

Cathy McMorris, Washington

Bobby Jindal, Louisiana

Louie Gohmert, Texas

Marilyn N. Musgrave, Colorado

Vacancy

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan

Eni F.H. Faleomavaega, American Samoa

Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii

Solomon P. Ortiz, Texas

Frank Pallone, Jr., New Jersey

Donna M. Christensen, Virgin Islands

Ron Kind, Wisconsin

Grace F. Napolitano, California

Tom Udall, New Mexico

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona

Madeleine Z. Bordallo, Guam

Jim Costa, California

Charlie Melancon, Louisiana

Dan Boren, Oklahoma

George Miller, California

Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts

Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon

Jay Inslee, Washington

Mark Udall, Colorado

Dennis Cardoza, California

Stephanie Herseth, South Dakota

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

Wayne T. Gilchrest, Maryland

Chris Cannon, Utah

John E. Peterson, Pennsylvania

Vice Chair

Thomas G. Tancredo, Colorado

J.D. Hayworth, Arizona

Jeff Flake, Arizona

Rick Renzi, Arizona

Henry Brown, Jr., South Carolina

Cathy McMorris, Washington

Richard W. Pombo, California, ex officio

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan

Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii

Dan Boren, Oklahoma

Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon

Jay Inslee, Washington

Mark Udall, Colorado

Dennis Cardoza, California

Stephanie Herseth, South Dakota

Nick J. Rahall II, West Virginia, ex officio

(III)

CONTENTS

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

(1)

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.

2

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.

3

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

4

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

5

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 peerreviewed 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?

6

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

7

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.

8

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

9

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.

10

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.

11

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.

12

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.

13

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,

14

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 policymakers 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

15

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.

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

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

16

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.

17

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:]

18

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

19

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.

20

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

21

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 postfire 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

22

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 paper1 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 paper1

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 area7 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

23

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 postfire 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

24

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.

25

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.

26

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 postfire 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

27

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 DouglasFir 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 postfire 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).

28

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 sumVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:02 Apr 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 J:\DOCS\26461.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: HRESOUR1
29

mary 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.

30

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.

36

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.

37

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,

38

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

39

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 ap- proach 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

40

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:

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• 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 Evidencebased 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.

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• 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.

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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.

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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.

45

• 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 longterm 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

46

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.

47

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

48

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

49

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.

50

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.

51

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

52

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, firekilled 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?

53

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

54

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?

55

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.

56

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.

57

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 crossfallen 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.

58

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.

59

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

60

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, broadbased 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

61

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.

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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——

63

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 email 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

64

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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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 postfire 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

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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 longterm 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.

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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-theground 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

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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.

75

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

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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: SuperVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:02 Apr 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00080 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 J:\DOCS\26461.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: HRESOUR1
77

fecundity, 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. Highseverity 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)

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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,

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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.

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

80

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 coauthors, 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.

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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 postfires.

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,

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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 manage- ment 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-dis- turbance 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

83

(tree, shrub, and herb), fungal, insect, small mammal, songbird, and aquatic ecosystem responses. In addition, focused research is needed on survival of eventdamaged 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 postevent 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 shortand 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, postevent research and monitoring should be directly integrated into post-event management strategies. 6. Management agencies need to be encouraged and funded to collect and main- tain 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 beVerDate 11-MAY-2000 12:02 Apr 20, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00087 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 J:\DOCS\26461.TXT HRESOUR1 PsN: HRESOUR1
84

lieve 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.

85

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.

86

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 peerreviewed 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

87

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

88

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 dis- turbed 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 reestablishment 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

89

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 signifi- cance 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 earlysuccessional 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.

90

1Dept. 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

4Dept. of Geography, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309

5Dept of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616

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-GTR229.

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

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.

91

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

92

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 northfacing 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.

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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

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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 wildlandurban 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.

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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, in- cluding 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

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forest following stand-replacement fire characteristically occurs at widely varying rates, providing temporary, but ecologically important and now rare earlysuccessional 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

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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 postburn 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 decisionmaking 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 oldgrowth 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.

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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

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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.

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My name is Dave Perry. I’m a Professor (emeritus) of Ecosystem Studies and Eco- system 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

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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

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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 under- standing 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 longlasting 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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

108

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 Bu- reau 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 in- sistence 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

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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.

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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

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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’’ <Dan.Donato@oregonstate.edu>

01/04/2006 07:17 PM TomHere’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 postfire 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

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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.

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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

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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 fireprone—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

115

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

116

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

117

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.

118

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.

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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

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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

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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,

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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:]

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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.

Æ 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.

Æ 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.

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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.

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• 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

(sconard@fs.fed.us)

• Deborah Hayes, National Program Leader, Watershed Research

(deborahhayes@fs.fed.us)

• Jimmy Reaves, Director, Vegetation Management and Protection Research

(jreaves@fs.fed.us)

• Sam Foster, Acting Director, Watershed, Wildlife, Fish, and Air Research

(gfoster@fs.fed.us)

Æ