Forest Inventory

field crew

member using the

relascope — a

multipurpose

instrument—in

1982. (Larson

collection)

Fairbanks Forestry Science Laboratory in 1980. (Wright

collection)

paralleled the revolution in political priorities and funding at the national scale, with the result

that scientists at the various research laboratories in Alaska developed stronger, long-distance,

professional networks. This expansion of the boundaries of the scientific community in Alaska

carried great potential for developing research programs with broader relevance beyond Alaska.

It also rendered more localized working relations relatively less significant, however, because it

encouraged networking with other scientists in the same discipline, leaving less need (or time) for

interdisciplinary stimulation and interaction with scientists working in the next office. Many

scientists in Alaska still found themselves at the center of controversy and on the periphery of

control over the administrative and funding decisions that defined the scope and even the direction of their work, but the new technology increased their ability to disseminate their research

findings and commiserate with colleagues from other stations and other agencies. As criticism of

the agency mounted in the early 1 980s, and as scientists became more dependent on grants and

other outside funding, these external networks became more important, but colleagues in the

same lab also increasingly competed against each other for scarce resources and administrative

support. In this institutional climate of competitive positioning, the frontiersmanship that earlier

generations of scientists in Alaska had cultivated as their corporate culture was submerged in the

more prosaic, bureaucratic tradition of scrambling for recognition and funding from public and

private sources that was more common at other Research labs outside Alaska. This bureaucratic

tradition had always been a factor in shaping the research agenda in Alaska, but it usually had

operated beneath the veneer of frontiersmanship that often disguised potentially divisive personal and political differences. These trends were mitigated at the Juneau Lab, where the Tongass

Timber Fund provided a countervailing force against the budgetary pinch felt at all levels of Forest

Service Research during the first Reagan Administration of the early 1980s.

)ust as computer-aided analysis transformed forest inventory methods to include an integrated

resources sampling design from the late 1970s through the 1980s, computers also transformed

work habits, patterns of interaction, and reporting among scientists in the Forest Service during

the 1980s. The development of instantaneous communication by way of electronic mail in the

151

This file was created by scanning the printed publication. 

Text errors identified by the software have been corrected; 

however, some errors may remain. 
Chris Mack testing soil samples for the Forest Inventory

unit in 1985. (Larson collection,

first half of the decade rapidly eroded support

for more laborious compilations of reports and

memos previously prepared for deposit in the

central files and libraries maintained at Juneau,

Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Portland. The practice of maintaining a central file at each facility

gave way to a system of individual scientists

maintaining personal libraries and communicating with each other through a massive electronic

network contracted for the entire Forest Service

from a corporate interest, Data General, by mid

decade. This "DG" system was primarily designed for managerial and administrative purposes, and many scientists in Research who were

already using personal computers and other

computing facilities by the mid 1980s complained the monolithic DC! system was obsolete before it came on-line and poorly suited to their

needs. Despite these criticisms, the DG rapidly changed the community culture of the Forest

Service, including Research. Administrative matters became the subject of running conversations communicated in brief notes, and both scientists and administrators faced a flurry of inquiries and memos in which relevant information often was overwhelmed with messages unrelated

to their work or even their work unit, and all of this was transmitted as discrete, disconnected

messages spread out over days, weeks, months, and even years over an electronic medium that

disappeared into the netherworld of cyberspace after a brief period of storage on local backup

systems.

The new technology also effectively bypassed administrative assistants who had provided a

community focus at each lab in earlier years and filtered out meaningful paperwork from the

deluge of marginally important material typical of most bureaucracies. Scientists less frequently

routed their professional communications through the administrative staff, and the institutional

memory that these start members previously supplied was gradually eroded. Adaptation to electronic systems, moreover, often was a disorienting process that disrupted traditional patterns of

interaction among scientists at each lab, and it coincided with an era of disruptive challenges to

accepted practices and scientific assumptions within the Forest Service. By the mid 1980s, agency

scientists in Alaska were searching for a new focus and mission for their work, but they increasingly did so in relative isolation from their colleagues at each site. This trend ironically developed

just as the integrative research focus of the previous two decades bore fruit with the development

of a new vegetation classification system for Alaska and the multiresource forest survey system

developed at the Anchorage Lab.

152
Classification Systems and Forest Research

The movement to redistribute federal lands in Alaska during the late 1970s provided the

impetus tor interagency cooperation to develop the preliminary vegetation classification system

that served as the basis for the multi-use inventory developed at the Anchorage office over the

next decade. The Fairbanks Lab led in developing this system, which was a significant exception

to the general drift away from integrated research among the different Forest Service Research

labs in Alaska. The effort originated as a state initiative for an Alaska vegetation classification

system in response to a federal program aimed at developing such a system for the lower 48

states, excluding Alaska, and it was a reaction to the issues raised in the wake of the Alaska Native

Claims Settlement Act. Plant ecologist Les Viereck and soil scientist Ted Dyrness, both of the

Fairbanks Laboratory, took the lead in generating a preliminary classification system with a committee consisting of William Gabriel of the Bureau of Land Management, Samuel Rieger of the

Soil Conservation Service in Anchorage, and David Murray of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

Dyrness, who had recently worked with Jerry Franklin to develop a classification of vegetation on

the Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon, recalls of the Alaska classification project, "...we

didn't know what we were getting into at that point, but we just had a tiger by the tail." The first

published result of their efforts appeared in 1980, and then went through a series of extensive

revisions that spanned the next 12 years.4

Viereck, Dyrness, and other members of the committee proceeded from the premise long

established among Forest Service researchers in Alaska that they were dealing with a relatively

unknown frontier in which scientists had just begun to compile the basic elements of knowledge

that were a prerequisite for more advanced research. In keeping with this tradition of "just finding out what's out there," Viereck's group focused on developing a system that "built up from

below toward a higher level" as an interim step in developing management guides that would

have to be developed at a later date and on a more regional basis. With this goal in mind, the

system was designed to classify existing vegetation, not potential vegetation, and it was developed as an aggregate system, building upward from the basic unit of discrete, known, plant

communities (Level V) toward broader classes of plant associations (Levels IV, III, II, and I). Classification workshops at Fairbanks and Anchorage between 1976 and 1986 encouraged input

from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Alaska Department

of Natural Resources, the Forest Service, the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, the University of

4Viereck recalls lhat the classification system was a long-term project that landed at his feet and

essentially diverted him from his other research. Dyrness notes, however, that nobody knows more

about Alaska vegetation than Viereck, and "...we NEEDED him, ...but he wasn't exactly hauled in

kicking and screaming." Interview with Les Viereck, 30 |uly 1993; interview with Ted Dyrness, 1 7 July

1 995. Leslie A. Viereck and C.T. Dyrness, "A preliminary classification system for vegetation of Alaska,"

(Portland: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, General

Technical Report, PNW-106, 1980); interview with Les Viereck, 30 July 1993; L.A. Viereck, C.T.

Dyrness, A.K. Batten, and K.|. Wenzlick, The Alaska Vegetation Classification (Portland: U.S. Department

of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, General Technical Report, PNW-GTR286), 1-4.

153
Alaska at Palmer, and the National Park Service.1

 They also worked closely with the Anchorage

inventory unit, particularly near the end of the project. Dyrness observes, for example, that for

many units of the classification system, the inventory unit was their only source of information

because "...they had discovered these kinds of stands that nobody else has described."6

Viereck was astonished to discover, during the early 1 980s, that scientists at Juneau had established virtually no classification systems for vegetation in southeast Alaska. Ecologists Paul Alaback

and Jon Martin produced provisional reports during the 1980s that drew on their personal experience working in southeast Alaska, but the results of their work was mostly unpublished, and

their efforts essentially paralleled Viereck's. In the interior, Viereck was able to draw on his nearly

two decades of research at the Fairbanks Lab, where the strong ecological focus of the multifunctional work unit yielded a nucleus of material describing vegetative communities and successional stages in relation to wildfire and permafrost.7

 This circumstance contributed to a classification system that closely followed the priorities of a research program centered on an area

historically less valued as a source of marketable timber and increasingly valued as a potential

site for national parks, wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas. In the political climate of the late

1970s, when this project began, those priorities placed a premium on descriptive systems that

would assist in identifying lands appropriate for restricted uses, and timber production was a

relatively low priority among the various state and federal agencies that funded the project and

contributed staff and ideas.8

Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act

Viereck's vegetation classification system developed in the same political climate that produced the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and subsequent interpretations of

that act provided Forest Service Research in Juneau with an annual infusion of funds specifically

for research on the Tongass National Forest, the Tongass Timber Supply Fund (TTSF). The ANILCA

was an outgrowth of the final report of the Joint Federal-State Land Use Planning Commission for

Alaska in 1 979 that was incorporated into legislation approved in the U.S Congress in 1 980. As

finally drafted, ANILCA radically revised public land holdings in many parts of Alaska, placed

104 million acres in new conservation units distributed across Alaska, and included a statement

6

L.A. Viereck, C.T. Dyrness, A.R. Batten, and K.J. Wenzlick, The Alaska Vegetation Classification

(Portland: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, General Technical Report, PNW-C.TR-286), 1-4; interview with Les Viereck, 30 July 1993.

7

Interview with Ted Dyrness 17 July 1995.

8Viereck et al.. The Alaska Vegetation Classification, 4-10.

9

This situation has ruffled the feathers of some timber-oriented foresters more accustomed to the

traditional Forest Service interpretation of multiple-use management as a production-oriented strategy of

sustained yield, but it has gained the admiration of the forest research community, in and out of the

Forest Service, that has responded to public demands for a broader interpretation of multiple use in

more recent years. Interview with Ed Packee at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, 16 December 1992;

interview with Keith Van Cleve, 1 8 December 1 992; interview with Ken Wright, 1 3 July 1993;

interview with Fred Larson, 5 August 1993; interview with Jim LaBau, 4 August 1993.

154
that Congress considered this legislation as the "last word" on land withdrawals. The ANILCA

established boundaries for Native, private, federal, and state lands, and it provided a framework

for resolving future disputes over land use. Among other provisions designed to garner support

from timber interests and other industries, the act also mandated an intensive forest-management

program aimed at maintaining a production of 4.5 billion board feet per decade from the Tongass

National Forest. Congress funded this program wit h an annual allocation of

$40 million, and the Forest Service annually assigned about 5 percent of those funds to support

Research in southeast Alaska.9

Robert Ethington was the first PNW Station Director in the post-ANILCA era, which began

with the election year of 1 980, when the Republican Party gained control of both the Presidency

(Ronald Reagan) and the Senate on a platform promising cutbacks in government programs and

expenditures. Ethington, consequently, faced a political situation significantly different from the

era when Buckman and Tarrant expanded programs in Alaska, and his executive skills and training were rooted in experiences relatively remote from the ecological concerns shaping Alaska

Research during the 1 970s. He also found himself representing an administration that placed

a relatively lower priority on Research than in earlier years. Ethington notes that the "long

payoff-curve" for Research made it a "natural target for Reagan budget cutters," and the first

budget proposed by the Reagan administration for the PNW Station called for a 20-percent

cut in funding.10

The new Station Director's leadership style was a product of a long career in public service,

first in the military and later in the Forest Service. He placed a high priority on administrative

leadership and the need for Research laboratories in Alaska to be responsive to Congressional

mandates and to the needs of their client base, which included Native Corporations, the State of

Alaska, and other federal agencies in addition to the Forest Service. Ethington had served in the

U.S. Army in the Korean war, and he was a graduate of Iowa State University, with an undergraduate degree in wood technology, a master's degree in theoretical and applied mechanics, and a

Ph.D. in wood technology and theoretical and applied mechanics. His background with the

Forest Service included 10 years with the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin,

before he moved into an administrative position as Assistant Director at Madison for another 2

years. His administrative talents at the Forest Products Lab caught the eye of higher level managers, including Buckman, and they brought him into the Washington Office and placed him in

charge of all harvesting and utilization research in the Forest Service, most of which was done at

Madison. He remained in that position until September 1979, when his assignment as Director

of the PNW Station suddenly placed him in charge of the innovative Research programs at Juneau

and Fairbanks.11

9

'Naske, Alaska, 234-236; "Planned Forest and Related Research," 1; interview with Ken Wright, 1 3

July 1993.

10Interview with Robert Ethington, 12 July 1995.

11Interview with Robert Ethington, 12 |uly 1995; interview with Robert Buckman, 13 July 1995.

155
Aside from his military background, Ethington's extensive background as a scientist and administrator was somewhat out of step with the history of programs in Alaska, where forest products research, other than feasibility studies for pulpwood production, were relatively uncommon

before 1979 by comparison with other studies relating to the effects of logging or fire. Several

forest products studies began about the time of Ethington's appointment, including a study begun

in 1979 that was designed to estimate the volume and value of light framing lumber and chips

from small-diameter hemlock logs from Alaska. Another study begun that year involved an evaluation of the quality of pulp produced from mill residues generated from blowdown logs of spruce

and hemlock. Three years later, a 1982 study included estimates of the volume and recovery

value of the lumber produced from beach logs of western hemlock and Sitka spruce. One other

study, begun in 1985 during the latter years of Ethington's administration, was designed to provide data on lumber, chip, and sawdust volume recovery and lumber value for trees and logs

from a sample of live trees and from samples of fire-killed stands of white spruce.12

ANILCA Funding for Research

Forest products research in Alaska became somewhat more common during Ethington's

administration, but the Congressional allocation process loomed larger than professional

experience as a dominant force shaping the scope and direction of scientific programs in

Juneau during his tenure as Station Director. Research gained access to ANILCA funding in

an example of close cooperation with Region 10 reminiscent of the era of Taylor and

Heintzleman. In a show of support for Research, Regional Forester John Sandor contacted

Assistant Director Ken Wright in Portland with the suggestion that Research should be included in the enabling legislation by which Congress would approve disposition of funds

from the annual allocation authorized under ANILCA. Wright recalls that Sandor called him

while the Station Director was out of town, and he advised Wright to contact the Washington Office immediately with a request to include funding for Research. Sandor was concerned that the mandate to sustain a high rate of timber production while protecting other

forest resources and wilderness areas would create management problems, and Region 10

would require considerable support from Research. Sandor told Wright to "think big," and

Wright came up with the figure of $2 million, which he drew from an economic study previously conducted by the PNW Station to determine Research needs for southeast Alaska.

Wright called Sandor's contact in Washington and asked for an annual appropriation of $2

million for Research. The resulting legislation earmarked an annual allocation of about that

amount to support Research on the Tongass National Forest in accordance with the goals

and priorities of ANILCA.13

12Communication trom Marlin Plank, Forest Products Technologist (ret.), to Ken Wright, 25 August 1995.

13Interview with Ken Wright, 13 July 1993.

156
The ANILCA raised the stakes in the

contest between preservationists and Forest

Service production-oriented conservationists

because it provided funding that, ironically,

challenged the implicit assumption of the act

that high-yield timber production could be

compatible with recreational uses and wilderness protection. Wildlife biology was one area

in which this conflict became immediately

apparent. O. Charles Wallmo, a specialist in

wildlife habitat, had transferred to Juneau from

the Rocky Mountain Station at Fort Collins,

Colorado, in 1978 to begin studies of habitat

for deer, goats, bear, moose, and nongame

animals on the Tongass National Forest.

Wallmo, who was the first wildlife biologist

on staff at the Juneau Lab, operated on a

budget of about $30,000 per year by 1980,

by which time he had brought in a technician,

Gordon [Gordy] Fisch. Wallmo and Fisch

worked closely with the Department of Fish

and Game in a cooperative agreement

designed to contain costs. Their findings, by

early 1980, challenged the long-held belief

that clearcut logging improved habitat for deer and other browse animals. That belief, Wallmo

argued, was rooted in an understanding of forest ecology and regeneration for the lower 48

states, but his studies demonstrated that those characteristics were different in the complex

ecosystems of southeast Alaska. Wallmo's conclusions directly challenged fundamental

assumptions supporting management policies in Region 10, and they sparked a storm of

controversy.14

Relations between Region 10 and the Juneau Lab, already tense in the aftermath of the

earlier dispute with Yates over Harris' regeneration studies on Afognak Island, were further

14Wallmo t arried impeccable scientific credentials into the dispute, and he was selected in 1980 for a

2-year term as associate editor for the journal of Wildlife Management, the publication of the Wildlife

Society. The Wildlife Society also awarded Wallmo its highest honor for his research in this area. PNW

News, 23 Jan 1978 and 4 August 1980. Interview with Bill Farr, 9 August 1993; interview with Thomas

Hanlev by Max Geier in luneau, Alaska, 18 December 1995; interview with Bill Meehan, Doug

Swanskin, Al Harris, Tom Laurent, Don Schmiege, Bill Farr, Karl Hegg, and Mary Lewis, 22 December

1992. Olot C Wallmo and |ohn W. Schoen, "Response of deer to secondary forest succession in

southeast Alaska," Forest Science 26 (1980) 3, 448-462.

Olaf C. "Charley" Wallmo, a specialist in wildlife

habitat, became the local point of tense relations

between Research and Region 10 between 1978 and

1982, when his studies on the Tongass National Forest

challenged forest management assumptions that

clearcut logging improved habitat for deer and other

browse animals. Wallmo's reseath was subjected to

intense scrutiny and criticism from within the Forest

Service, but the Wildlife Society awarded him its

highest award in 1982 in recognition of his contribution

to advancing scientific knowledge about old-growth

forests. Wallmo died shortly after receiving the award.

(Photo provided by Matt Kirchoff of the Alaska

Department of Fish and Game'

157
15 Thomas Hanley, who at the time was a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington, notes that he

was one of the reviewers of the article for Fpxest Science. Interview with Tom Hanley, 1 8 December

1995.

158

strained during the early 1980s when forest

managers at Region 10 challenged the applicability of Wallmo's work beyond the specific study

sites he had examined. Budgetary constraints had

limited the scope of Wallmo's work to relatively

narrow, site-specific studies before 1980, but his

studies clearly indicated that deer on those study

sites did not benefit from clearcutting. Wallmo

also upped the ante when he presented his

findings in an article for Forest Science aimed at

practicing foresters, rather than limiting himself

to communicating with other wildlife biologists.

This willingness to directly confront the management

implications of his research and communicate his

insights to forest managers continued the utilitarian traditions of the Research community in

Alaska, but it sparked a firestorm of controversy that drove a wedge between Research and

Region 10.15

Wallmo's results, when extrapolated across a broad spectrum of sites in Alaska, challenged

central assumptions guiding Forest Service management of National Forest lands in southeast

Alaska, and his research became the focus of intense scrutiny and numerous reviews, both within

and outside of the Forest Service. John Schoen, a wildlife biologist with the Alaska Department of

Fish and Game, who worked as a cooperator with Wallmo on the study, recalls that the state

agency staunchly supported their research findings. Persistent reports that the Regional Forester's

office had tried to block publication of Wallmo's study, however, further soured relations between Sandor and Schmiege, and aggravated existing tensions between Research and Region 10

in Alaska. Any such efforts to block publication of Wallmo's study apparently failed, but Wallmo

eventually resigned, his health deteriorated, and he died not long after the controversy peaked.

Station Director Ethington, who emphasizes that Sandor was "entirely professional in the way he

conducted himself" during this episode, argues that Wallmo's personal style contributed to the

acrimony nearly as much as did reactions to his science and its implications for forest management in southeast Alaska. Matt Kirchoff, however, who began his professional career working

with Wallmo and currently holds appointment with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game as

Deer Research Biologist, observes that Wallmo "had tremendous respect from his peers, not only

as a first rate ecologist, but as a person of great integrity." Sandor dismisses as "absurd" the idea

that Region 10 attempted to block research publications, but Schmiege and other scientists remain deeply suspicious about the motives and methods of the people in the Regional Forester's

The controversy over the management implications

of Wallmo's study of deer habitat in Alaska forests

ironically paved the way for Thomas Hanky's

long-term studies of deer habitat requirements in

the 1980s. Here, Thomas Hanley relaxes with a

deer and a portable computer. (Hanley collection)
Boh Erhardt (left)

and an assistant

assess stream

profile on the

Kadashan River,

Chichagof Island.

(Swanston

collection)

juneau FSL technicians measure the energy cost ot

locomotion in snow for deer in southeast Alaska. The

mask over the deer's muzzle collects exhaled CO2 in

the weather balloon at right. (Haniey collection)

office at the time of the dispute. Those scientists also view the incident as a challenge to the

traditional autonomy of their branch of the Forest Service, although Research in Alaska had long

been subject to influence from the Region, dating back to the era of Taylor and Heintzleman.16

Expanded support within the Forest Service for more-extensive studies of the habitat requirements of deer were an ironic by-product of the Wallmo controversy after 1 980, largely because of

the convergence of TTSF funding for research and the insights of research forester Wilbur Farr.

Farr's suggestion that deer habitat preferences might be correlated with timber-type maps led to

the discovery of a correlation between high-volume stands and habitat preferences of deer, and

ANILCA mandates called for maintaining a high volume of annual timber production on the

Tongass. Wallmo's work had already pioneered the idea that at least some problems existed with

clearcutting in relation to deer habitat in southeast Alaska, and Farr's work seemed to suggest the

most valuable timber stands were also the stands most preferred by deer. Wallmo's replacement,

Thomas Han ley, a wildlife biologist with a Ph.D. from the University of Washington, arrived at

this moment:TTSF funding boosted the 1981 allotment for wildlife biology research from $30,000

to $1 30,000 as of February 1981, and forest managers were desperately seeking an answer to the

question of what features of high-volume forests suit the needs of deer in southeast Alaska. Where

Wallmo had struggled to break through preconceived notions that clearcutting was beneficial to

16Schoen observes that the Fores Science' article that he co-authored with Wallmo was subjected to

more intense scrutiny and review than any other research project with which he has been associated.

Hanley notes, tor example, that Region 10 brought in two deer biologists from the University of

California Bill Longhurst and Les Robinette) for an independent investigation, and Wright brought in

Hanley from the University of Washington for an independent review of their findings in a summer

"close-out" session presenting the results of the "Longhurst-Robinette Report". Wallmo left the Station

that September (1980), and Hanley arrived as his replacement in October 1980. Interview with Tom

Hanley, 18 December 1 995: interview with Robert Ethington, 12 July 1995; communication from

Robert Fthington to Max Ceier, 13 |uly 1995: communication from Don Schmiege, 12 August 1995;

interview with Bill Farr, 9 August 1993; interview with Bill Meehan, Doug Swanston, Al Harris, Tom

Laurent, Don Schmiege, Bill Farr, Karl Hegg, and Mary Lewis, 22 December 1992; interview with ]ohn

Schoen. 4 March 1996; interview with Matt Kirch off, 4 March 1996; communication from Matt

Kirchoff, 22 lanuarv I 996.

159
Roy "Doc Feely" Sidle plotting soil horizons in a bore

hole in 1979. (Swanston collection)

deer, Hanley enjoyed the luxury of a research

climate in which leading forest managers recognized some problems existed and wanted an

answer to the question: "now what do we do

about it?" Hanley notes that this context enabled him to secure approval for a 10-year research program to study the general biology of

deer (including, among other issues, overstoryunderstory relations and energy costs of locomotion through snow). This long-term study,

which Hanley considers unusual in the broader

context of Forest Service support for wildlife research in Alaska, included many individual elements with few obvious political implications in

their discrete parts, and by the time the cumulative results were published in 1 989, Hanley notes

that an emerging consensus of support for his findings effectively precluded any confrontation

with forest managers such as that experienced by Wallmo 9 years earlier.17

The strong support for Hanley's research was a silver lining to the problem of ongoing tension

between Research and the Regional Forester's office over the Wallmo controversy, which contributed to a sudden change in leadership at the Forestry Sciences Laboratory at a crucial point in the

evolution of administrative guidelines for allocating funds from the Tongass Timber Supply Fund

for Research in southeast Alaska. The Juneau Lab suddenly faced the new mandate with new

leadership and new personnel when Schmiege, who had led the multifunctional program, Ecology of Coastal Alaska Forests, since its inception in 1972, announced his early retirement in

1982. Schmiege cites the "frustration of dealing with R-10 over the deer habitat issue" as a

central motivation behind his decision. In an interview published in the Station newsletter in

1982, Wright credited Schmiege with sustaining the program at Juneau over the previous decade

with his reputation and credibility with the Alaska legislature. Schmiege had developed strong

ties with the Governor's office in Alaska that nearly led to funding for a new laboratory facility at

juneau, but Schmiege left the program in the aftermath of the Wallmo incident and just as the

Tongass Timber Supply Fund shifted the emphasis of Research in Alaska.18

18 Another wildlife biologist who successfully pursued an ongoing program of long-term research during

this period was Vic Van Ballenberghe, whose studies of moose on the Kenai Peninsula are addressed in

another se( tion of this chapter. Hanley notes that Region 10 had hired more biologists by 1 989, which

he suggests may have contributed to the relatively supportive response to his summary report by forest

managers with the Region. Thomas A. Hanley, Charles T. Robbins, and Donald E. Spalinger, Forest

Habitats and the Nutritional Ecology of Sitka Black-Tailed Deer: A Research Synthesis With Implications

fjor_Forest__N1anagerrient (Portland: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest

Research Station, General Technical Report, PNW-GTR-230, March 1989); interview with Tom Hanley,

18 December 1995.

19 Communication from Don Schmiege, 12 August 1995; PNW News, 23 January 1978; PNW News,

27 July 1981: PNW News, 27 September 1982.

160
Station Director Ethington viewed Schmiege's retirement as

an opportunity to change the administrative structure at the

Forest Science Laboratory to "ease the burden" on scientists like

Schmiege and Meehan while maintaining strong leadership in

juneau. In keeping with that goal, Assistant Director Wright

and others on the management team in Portland devised a

multiproject program that placed Schmiege's former program

and Meehan's fisheries program under the leadership of a

person who would assume the administrative burden and leave

the scientists free to pursue their work. Ethington recalls that he

was concerned that the TTSF funding had created a difficult

administrative situation in Juneau that might be "too tough" on

people like Schmiege and Meehan, who were expected to be

productive scientists even as they also ran their Research units.

Among other concerns, administration of research supported

with TTSF funds required different reporting and accounting

procedures than did other PNW Station projects. Ethington

recalls that after consulting with Deputy Chief Buckman,

Assistant Director Wright, and others, he initiated a recruitment

process to locate someone with strong leadership qualities who

The Mendenhall Chapter of

Federally Employed Women in 1981

inducted Schmiege into the

organization as "our first male

member, since you have been one

of our most loyal supporters. " Here,

one of Schmiege's recruits,

Technician Elaine Loopstra, ponders

Armillaria sex in the luneau Forest

Science Laboratory. (Loopstra

collection)

was "professionally big enough to look past all this internal

scrapping... and, in fact, could lead the troops out of that.... Plus, they had to be someone with

enough scientific credentials that they were scientists, that the troops wouldn't question whether

they knew anything about science."19 The man finally selected to head the multiproject program

was new to Alaska, and his academic training and professional experience was a clear departure

from Schmiege's or Meehan's.

Calvin Bey and Staff Changes at Juneau

Calvin Bey, the person selected to fill the new administrative post at Juneau, was formerly

Project Leader for the Genetics of Southern Pine research unit at the Southern Station, in Gulfport,

Mississippi, and he arrived at the PNW Station in a period of substantial turmoil and frustration.

Some scientists remained hopeful that the proposal for a new research lab at Juneau might yet be

approved, but the Station was still adjusting to a new Director (Ethington), the aftermath of the

Wallmo incident, the TTSF mandate, and the looming possibility of budgetary cutbacks in

Congress. Bey held a graduate degree in forestry from Michigan State University, and a Ph.D. in

silviculture and crop breeding from Iowa State University. His appointment marked a significant

shift in local leadership at Juneau, from a specialist in entomology, pathology, fisheries, and

1 9 Interview wit h Robert Ethington, 12 July 1995 ; communicatio n from Robert Ethington, 13 July 1995 ;

interview wil h Robert Buckman , 1.3 July 1995.

161
Forest pathologist Terry Shaw at work on the

mistletoe plot at the Harris River, (Farr collection)

Some scientists hunted big

game or brought back

fishing trophies, but

Bernard Bormann seemed

pleased with this trophyquality specimen of skunk

cabbage that he bagged on

an alder thinning area. (Farr

collection)

Elaine Loopstra uses the

shigometer at the juneau

cemetary in tall 1981.

Despite all the concerns

about logistical support in

the vastness of Alaska

forests, study sites were

also available almost within

reach ot the scientists' back

doors. (Farr collection)

wildlife (Schmiege), to a specialist in trees and silviculture (Bey). Many of the scientists with

whom Bey worked at Juneau after 1982 had joined the lab in the years just before Schmiege's

retirement, and they were influenced both by the professional legacy of Schmiege's leadership

and by the administrative priorities that Bey brought to the program.20

New scientists at Juneau in the early 1980s were a small group of researchers who, like

Hanley, continued the third wave of talent from western and midwestern graduate programs in

fields other than forestry. Roy Sidle, who held undergraduate and graduate degrees in hydrology

and soil science from the University of Arizona and a Ph.D. in soils and civil engineering from

Pennsylvania State University, joined Swanston at Juneau in 1981. That same year, forest pathologist Charles G. "Terry" Shaw joined the staff at Juneau as a technician who worked closely

with Tom Laurent and also with forest pathologist Paul Hennon and the State and Private Forestry

unit in Juneau. Shaw, whose father (Charles G. Shaw, Sr.) was a forest pathology professor at

Washington State University, later completed his Ph.D. at Oregon State University and eventually

joined the State and Private Forestry unit. Another new recruit who worked with Shaw, biological

technician Elaine Loopstra, signed on with Schmiege's group in the same month of 1 981 that the

Mendenhall Chapter of Federally Employed Women (FEW) reportedly inducted Schmiege into

their organization with the wry observation: "We feel it is fitting that you be our first male member, since you have been one of our most loyal supporters."21

20Communication from Don Schmiege, 12 August 1995; PNW News, 23 January 1978; PNW News,

27 July 1981; PNWNews;, 27 September 1982.

21 Dorothy Bergstrom; Addendum, 27 July 1981 ; PNW_News, 1 3 July 1981; 27 July 1981; 23 January

1978; 27 July 1981; 27 September 1982; 27 September 1 982; interview with Elaine Loopstra by Max

Geier in the Juneau FSL, Alaska, 19 December 1995.

162
These new additions to the staff realized the vision of Wright and Schmiege, who had struggled

to broaden the scope and focus of Research at Juneau throughout the 1 970s, but their arrival in

Juneau also came when Congressional legislation and other political concerns increasingly shaped

new priorities for Alaska Research in the 1980s. The ANILCA mandate for timber production in

southeast Alaska, and the linkage of Research funding with the TTSF, built more on the traditions

of Taylor and Heintzleman than on the integrated research and multifunctional programs fueled

by third-wave scientists recruited to Alaska in the 1960s and 1970s. The Congressional mandate

for high timber production was clear, and that reality framed the context for questions from

Research clients, including Forest Service managers. This trend also extended into the interior.

Assistant Director Wright, in early 1981, circulated to scientists in Alaska copies of a paper by

forest economist Richard Smith entitled ''Potential Economic Development of Forest Resources in

Interior Alaska." Wright observed that the value of interior Alaska forests for wood products had long

been the subject of speculation, and noted that ANILCA made the report on the potential for expanded timber production "particularly timely".22

In keeping with the emphasis on timber production and the provision for Research as mandated in the TTSF legislation, a second group of scientists joined the staff at Juneau between

September 1982 and January 1983 to assume the increased workload associated with ANILCA.

These new hires included plant physiologist Bernard Bormann, fisheries technician Pam Porter

(who was quickly promoted to fisheries biologist), hydrological technician Barry Long, plant

ecologist Ed Dealy, mensurationist Don DeMars, and biological technician Richard Orchard.

These additions increased the number of scientists on the staff at Juneau by nearly 50 percent, to

a total of 16 researchers, and Bey observed that areas of emphasis for Research in 1983 would

include the effects of logging on timber, wildlife, slope stability, pathology, and site productivity.

He also noted, "My job is to be sure that we aren't going in different directions; that we are

focused. I'm here as an administrator to make the scientist's job easier."23

Most of this new class of scientists arrived with strong connections in the undergraduate and

graduate programs of forestry schools in the Pacific Northwest, and with prior work experience at the

PNW Station in Portland. Orchard, for example, transferred to Juneau from the Corvallis Forestry

Sciences Laboratory. The sudden infusion of new blood in the research community at Juneau

between 1980 and 1 983 (9 of the 1 6 scientists at the Forest Science Laboratory in 1983 were hired

over the preceding two years) fostered a mood of creative energy that approximated conditions at

Fairbanks 20 years earlier. The multifunctional unit at Fairbanks, however, had coalesced around

studies of the ecological effects of natural events, such as fires, and watershed studies related to

flooding. At Juneau, the new research team zeroed in on disturbances related to timber and logging

activities mandated under the Lands Act. Dealy, for example, was a 1975 Ph.D. from Oregon State

University who focused on wildlife habitat and land management policies on second-growth forests

22PNW News, 1 6 Feb 1981.

23Sou£dogh Nptes, January 1983.

163
in the vicinity of Ketchikan and Prince of Wales Island. DeMars was a 1968 Ph.D. from the University

of Washington who studied forest stands to improve estimates of marketable timber per acre. Bormann,

with a B.S. (plant ecology-soils) at Evergreen State College in 1976 and an M.S. in botany (ecology/

soils) from the University of Washington in 1978, earned his Ph.D. in 1981 in forest science (forest

tree physiology) from Oregon State University. At OSU, he worked with former Station Director

Tarrant and John Gordon, Department Head of Forest Science, who left OSU for a position at Yale

shortly thereafter.24

Bormann is a good example of the new wave of scientists who came to Juneau during the

1980s, but he also illustrates how earlier trends and traditions of the Research community in

Alaska continued into more recent times. He was raised near the center of forestry research at

Yale, where his father was a forest ecologist known as "somewhat of a heretic" for his studies of

nutrient loss from clearcutting.25 The younger Bormann, however, yearned to get away from the

East Coast, and after high school, he pursued his academic interests in the Pacific Northwest,

where his scientific curiosity eventually drew him north to Alaska. His early work at the University of Washington was an ecological study concerned with soil development in relation to stand

physiology and nitrogen-fixing bacteria in alder stands that had come in after disturbances of

various kinds. His doctoral research involved a more controlled study requiring standardized

plots and more experimental skills, but he worked to blend his interest in broader ecological

studies with more technical studies that devoted more attention to specific cause-and-effect mechanisms that influence broader ecosystems. He credits this evolving focus in his work to his father,

to Gordon, and to Tarrant, who took an interest in his studies at the UW and funded his Master's

thesis through the PNW Station. Tarrant also convinced Bormann to accept a position as Research Plant Physiologist at the Olympia Lab in 1981, where he worked for 8 months before

moving to Juneau in May 1982.26

Tarrant's recruitment of Bormann and his advice to the young scientist on the eve of his assignment to Alaska are a good illustration of how Research priorities had changed in the 8 years since

1974, when Buckman approached Dyrness about the job in Fairbanks. Buckman's first concern with

Dyrness had been whether he and his family were willing to make Alaska their home, but Tarrant's

first concern was that Bormann remember that his purpose in Alaska was science. He recalls telling

Bormann, "You'll be like the first white man, just run your canoe up on any gravel bar and take a big

sack and pick up a nugget, there's information lying there for the taking and you know how to do it.

Promise me you won't go Alaskan on me."27 Tarrant's insistence that Bormann should "go in, do the

22PNW_News, 26 October 1981; Sourdough Notes, January 1983; interview with Bernard Bormann by

Max Geier at the Forestry Sciences Laboratory in Corvallis, Oregon, 31 August 1995; interview with

Robert Tarrant, 11 July 1995.

23Interview with Robert Tarrant, 11 July 1995; interview with Bernard Bormann, 31 August 1995.

24Interview with Bernard Bormann, 31 August 1995; position description for Bernard Bormann,

provided by Bormann to Max Geier, 31 August 1995; interview with Robert Tarrant, 11 July 1995.

25Tarrant recalls, however, that despite this advice, Bormann had barely settled in at Juneau before he

started talking about buying a boat, cabin, and other accouterments of the Alaska lifestyle. Interview

with Robert Tarrant 11 July 1995.

164
University of Washington

Professor F.C. Ugolini, shown

here rolling up his sleeves for

work at Whitewater Bay, is an

example of the invaluable

support that cooperators

provided tor research in Alaska.

Ugolini worked closely with

Bernard Bormann in the early

1980s. (Farr collection)

work, and get out" was a reflection of twin

concerns at PNW Station: many excellent researchers were interested in Alaska,

but they were often reluctant to move

there on a permanent basis, and those

who did want to move there often were

so enamored of the place that they would

follow their scientific curiosity into remote

study sites where the vastness of scale

overburdened them with logistical and

budgetary problems that hampered

completion of their work. Tarrant urged

Bormann to seek study sites close to Juneau and to concentrate on completing the work and publishing the findings. Bormann, for his part, located plots accessible from the highway system in juneau

and at sites accessible with short flights by floatplane from Juneau. He located much of his work at

Hawk Inlet, where the Juneau Lab maintained two float houses obtained "on surplus" from the Vegetation Classification crew. Bormann recalls he and his crews anchored the boats at Hawk Inlet,

where they provided a comfortable work environment for about 1 2 to 1 5 people at a location that

was just a 1 S-minute flight from Juneau. After about 5 years, this and other work provided the basis

for publications that rapidly established Bormann's reputation as a promising scientist, and he subsequently moved back to the Corvallis Forest Science Laboratory, where he became involved in efforts

to develop scientific methods for ecosystem management.28

Even with his emphasis on locating study sites close-in to Juneau, Bormann grappled with the

same kind of logistical problems, difficult field conditions, and uncertain travel arrangements that

had frustrated scientists in Alaska since 1741. He notes that most people at the Juneau Lab who

needed air transport preferred to work with Ward Air, a private contractor in Juneau with pilots

certified by the Forest Service, rather than relying on planes dispatched through Region 1 0. Lingering tension between Region 10 and Research apparently spilled over into concerns about the

service that dispatchers with the Region provided for crews from the Forestry Sciences Laboratory.

Ward Air also had a reputation as the outfit with the best pilots in Juneau, but Bormann recalls

that at least one hair-raising experience involving his crew "freaked out" even the "best pilot in

juneau." Bormann and his crew were working near Hawk Inlet near the end of the field season

when a snowstorm began to move in, and they hurriedly called Ward Air by radio to arrange for

an early pick-up. The pilot flew in over the pass into Hawk Inlet just ahead of the storm, pulled up

on the beach, and yelled "Get in! FAST!" Bormann recalls, "So we just throw our stuff in, and he

28 Interview with Robert Tarrant, 11 July 1995; interview with Robert Ethington, 12 July 1995; interview

with Robert Buckman, 13 July 1995; interview with Bernard Bormann, 31 August 1995; Bernard!.

Bormann, Martha H. Brookes, E. David Ford, A. Ross Kiester, Chadwick D. Oliver, and lames F.

Weigancl, Eastside Forest Ecosystem Health Assessment, Volume V: A Framework for SustainableEcosystem Management (Portland: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest

Research Station, General Technical Report PNW-GTR-331, February 1994).

165
guns it, and he heads up over the pass, and it turns into complete, total white-out conditions, and

its, you only can do that with visual contact, and so he did this really outrageous maneuver and

came back and just landed back in Hawk Inlet, and like, put his head between his hands and

wouldn't talk to us for a few minutes, and when the BEST pilot in Juneau is freaked out over

something, you know that something pretty nasty could've happened." They sat there for about

an hour, Bormann notes, and the weather just kept getting worse, until the pilot finally took off

and flew about 6 feet above the churning whitewater that was Chatham Strait, all the way around

the north end of the island. The flying time back to Juneau from Hawk Inlet, normally 1 5 minutes

away, took more than 45 minutes, and Bormann recalls he spent the whole time "just kind of

looking out the window, and it's froth down there, that was probably the worst one I had."29

Difficult field conditions, the need for base-line data specific to Alaska, and limited access to

analytical facilities had often preoccupied and frustrated earlier scientists in Alaska, and these

issues nearly discouraged Bormann from accepting the position in Juneau. Bormann recalls that

his research at Olympia was heading more in the direction of controlled experimental work, and

he was not optimistic about the opportunities for continuing such work in Alaska. As with the

other scientists who preceded him at Juneau, however, he recognized the enormous potential for

good research in southeast Alaska, and he soon adjusted his research methods to meet the conditions of work in that region. Bormann observes that "the Tongass and the Chugach National

Forests, in general, ought to be thought of as a national treasure for understanding natural ecosystems, in that information gained from there has tremendous applications in many other places...."

Once at Juneau, he reverted back to his earlier interest (at the University of Washington) in studies

with a broad, ecological perspective, and he began to look more at "natural processes and mechanisms...."30

Despite his own initial trepidation about the move to Alaska, Bormann notes that he never

had any trouble recruiting other scientists for his program: "That's one of the best things about

working up there...most people are interested in the place...it's uncharted waters, for the most

part, research-science-wise, all sorts of wonderful questions to look at, so it's a good combination." Bormann, who notes that his work would not have been possible without the solid foundation laid down by previous scientists in Alaska, initially worked closely with Bill Farr at Juneau,

but he also maintained close connections with his colleagues at the University of Washington

and Oregon State University. As one of his first moves, Bormann recruited F.C. Ugolini, a soil scientist

from the University of Washington, to help him develop his research program at Juneau31.

Ugolini, who had done considerable work in Alaska at Glacier Bay, had already established

his reputation as an expert on the soil-development process of podzolization. Podzolization is a

process that occurs mostly under conifers. It eventually produces a thick organic layer over a

thinner "Bh" horizon in which iron, aluminum, and other elements combine with fine particulate

29Interview with Bernard Bormann, 31 August 1995.

30Interview with Bernard Bormann, .31 August 1995.

31Interview with Bernard Bormann, 31 August 1995.

166
Each generation of forest researchers in Alaska worked with

their successors to pass along their experiences and insights,

thus perpetuating the community culture of scientists in the

field. Here (from left), Tom Hanlev, Dave Bruce, Bernard

Bormann. Al Harris, and Don Domain cooler at Hollis. (Farr

collection

organic matter to form a layer that roots can

seldom penetrate. Bormann suspected that

this podzolization process, which predominates in southeast Alaska, was a driving

mechanism affecting the "basic productivity of the forests" in that region. Working

with Ugolini and other scientists over the

next 10 years, Bormann also found that

windthrow was a significant mechanism

working to prevent the whole landscape from

becoming podzolized because, if a tree

blows down while its roots are still in the

zone where the Bh is forming, the disturbance

stirs the soil and promotes more productive

assemblages of species in terms of net primary

production and wood production.32

Bormann notes that his research has far-reaching implications for management practices in

southeast Alaska, although he initially faced criticism that his work was too esoteric. He observes

that podzolization occurs throughout the North Temperate Zone, and windthrow is common all

over the world and particularly in areas of Alaska that have not been logged. Logging removes

trees that might otherwise be subject to windthrow, and thus eliminates a major mechanism for

the nutrient cycling necessary for maintaining the long-term productivity of sites in southeast

Alaska. Bormann argues that the pattern of clearcut logging, as historically practiced in Alaska,

contributes to declining productivity in that region, and he has been active in devising new

management strategies to promote harvesting methods that more closely mimic windthrow patterns and processes. He also suggests that management guidelines must take into account the

reality that forest ecosystems in Alaska are dynamic, chaotic, rapidly changing, and often unpredictable. Bormann's work on podzolization eventually led him into studies of long-term ecosystem productivity, and he moved back to the Corvallis Lab in 1988 to lead the Long-Term Ecosystem Productivity (LTEP) program.33

Bormann's path-breaking work with Ugolini was the product of a long period of relatively

esoteric research that yielded short-term dividends of marginal interest to other scientists and

32 F.C. Ugolini, B.T. Bormann, and F.H. Bowers, Soil development and the evolution of forest ecosystems

in southeast Alaska [Abstr.] (Gustavus, AK: Glacier Bay Science Symposium, U.S. Department of the

Interior, National Park Service, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, 1984); B.T. Bormann, "Podzolization and windthrow: natural fluctuations in productivity and management implications [Abstr.]," in

Perry et al. (eds.). Maintaining the long-term productivity of Pacific Northwest forest ecosystems

(Portland, OR; Timber Press, 1989); B.T. Bormann, H. Spaltenstein, M.H. McClellan, F.C. Ugolini, K.

Cromak, Ir, ,ind S.M. Nay, "Rapid Soil Development After Windthrow Disturbance in Pristine Forests,"

Journal of Ecology 88 (1995): 747-757; interview with Bernard Bormann, 31 August 1995.

33 Position description for Bernard Bormann, 31 August 1995; interview with Bernard Bormann, 31

August 1995.

167
Production-oriented research gained broader political

and fiscal support during the 1980s and in the

aftermath of the Alaska National Interest Lands

Conservation Act, the focus of attention shifted away

from the interior and hack to the Tnngass National

Forest. Here, the Wrangell Mill illustrates the

continuing concern lor timber pioduction in an era of

broadening research methods and interests. (Wright

collection)

forest managers in Juneau at the time. Bormann

recalls he spent his first three years in Juneau

doing "a lot of grunt work" to develop biomass

regression equations "...that just didn't exist..."

for Sitka spruce and western hemlock. These

basic equations were necessary to his plans for

developing stand-scale nutrient budgets and

other interim tools needed to explore research

questions relating to nutrient cycling, soil development, and changes in productivity, but they

required a long-term commitment of human and

fiscal resources that were already in high demand

for research on immediate management problems for Region 10.34

Bormann also gained an appreciation for the

relative status of Research in relation to other

Forest Service priorities in Alaska during his years

at the Juneau Lab. He recalls that one of his plots near Hawk Inlet was on a major deposit of sand

slated for development as a gravel pit to support efforts to sand the icy roads servicing mining

activities in the area. Bormann's unit had completed most of their work on the site by the time

Region 1 0 announced the plan to develop the gravel pit, but some long-term measurements were

still underway, and Bormann hoped to keep his options open for going back and doing some

different work on the same sites. He recalls the Regional Forester's office eventually addressed

his concerns, but "we had to do a lot of yelling and screaming. We were just on the list... fit]

came down to, well, 'the National Forests are here to supply resources, and research winds up

way down at the bottom of the list ... those things fall out, we'll accommodate you' was the

message. It was the first time I fully realized where we were on the totem pole, which was really

down at the bottom."35

Bormann notes, however, that he benefited from established traditions of scholarship in Alaska

and from a shift in the kind of research that the broader scientific community was willing to

support. Like other researchers in his class of recruits, Bormann arrived at a time of heightened

expectations that timber resources in the region soon would be targeted for industrial development. At juneau, the new recruits joined an established staff of scientists already deeply engaged

in studies evaluating the effects of logging on forests of southeast Alaska, although the entomological and pathological programs lost John Hard, who transferred to a position with the Pacific

34Quotations are from I he interview with Bernard Bormann, 31 August 1995; interview with Robert

rarrant. 11 July 1995; interview with Robert Buekman, 12 July 1995.

35Interview with Bernard Bormann, i\ August 1995.

168
John Alden, Ken Wright, and Elaim- Loopstra

sit before the Adak Forest in 1986, (lanked by

Walter Brlggs and an unidentified assistant

(standing). (Loopstra collection)

Southwest Station in Davis, California, about this time.

Much of the ongoing work at Juneau and Fairbanks,

however, involved descriptive studies that were still desperately needed in Alaska but were often less interesting to editors of scientific journals than the more analytical studies current in other regions of the United

States. Other scientists and research programs in Alaska

also struggled with stagnant budgets and staffing problems that often limited their productive output. Bormann,

however, found funding opportunities and publishing

outlets that enabled him to staff projects and deliver research results to an appreciative audience. He was able

to acquire funding, for example, through the U.S. Department of Agriculture competetive grants program to support his research through the difficult

era of limited budgets and political readjustments that scientists with the Branch of Research

increasingly faced during the mid 1980s.16

ANILCA and Implications for Fairbanks and Anchorage

The ANILCA revitalized the program in Juneau and provided a central focus for work on the

Tongass National Forest, but it also marked the beginning of a long period of stagnant budgets

and eroding support for continuing the multifunctional unit in Fairbanks. ANILCA, moreover,

virtually settled many of the issues relating to the disposition of federal lands, which had fueled

support for the forest inventory work in Anchorage. The provision for an annual allocation of

funds for Research from the Tongass Timber Supply Fund, along with controversial decisions to

allow mining, hunting, and other activities on ostensibly protected reserves and wilderness areas

on theTongass National Forest, diverted public attention from the interior. ANILCA largely settled

many of the issues related to who would control which lands in Alaska, and the need for comprehensive surveys of broad regions became less of a priority than research targeted at management

issues specific to a particular resource or local site. This political reality in Alaska coincided with

the political backlash against the environmental initiatives of the 1970s, and production-oriented

research gained broader political and fiscal support during the 1980s.17

16Communication from Bill Meehan, June 1995; interview with Bernard Bormann, 31 August 1995;

communication from Ken Wright, December I995.

Memo 19 June 1981. from Bill Meehan to Ken Wright (in TTSF File, Juneau Office, PNW Station);

"Planned Forest ,md Related Research," 1-2; Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station,

"Research Work Unit Description. Management Alternatives for Timber and Related Resources"

(unpublished report in storage room, Juneau Forestry Sciences Laboratory, USDA Forest Service, 1984).

169
Personnel and Research Trends at Fairbanks and Anchorage

The expectation that ANILCA mandates would open the forests of interior Alaska for economic exploitation generated an initial burst of interest in expanding the Research program at

Fairbanks during the early 1980s, although that initiative rapidly dissipated as the focus of controversy and investment swung heavily southward by mid decade. Several new scientists brought a

broader array of skills to bear on the study of interior forests, especially in genetics, silviculture,

and wildlife biology, and the family atmosphere of the lab seemed conducive to the continued

advancement of the concept of integrated research.

The experience of John Alden on the research staff at Fairbanks illustrates Wright's support for

expanded studies in the interior before ANILCA and also the gradual erosion of that program over

the next decade. Alden, who came to Alaska in 1 979, was much like many of the other scientists

who joined the staff between 1980 and 1983, in that he had close ties with the Pacific Northwest

before his arrival in Alaska. He came to Fairbanks from a position at the Portland office of the

Bureau of Land Management, and Wright hired him to study forest genetics issues related to

liquidation sales of timber on Native lands acquired after the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act

(ANCSA). Alden, who was frustrated with the administrative responsibilities that dominated his

time with the BLM, hoped to develop his interests in studying genetic variation in the forests of

Alaska, but he soon found that his colleagues in Alaska and directors in Portland expected population studies, and his initial research focused on seed supply and handling of seeds for the

regeneration of white spruce and Sitka spruce.38

Alden soon found himself working closely with John

Zasada under relatively primitive conditions at Fairbanks.

Zasada contributed to the mood of renewal and brought a

circumpolar perspective to the program in 1980, when he

returned to the INF at Fairbanks after completing a year of

post doctoral training with J.L. Harper, head of the School

of Plant Biology at the University College of North Wales

and a leading authority on the demography and population

biology of plants. Harper approached population biology

with a Darwinian emphasis on the life cycles of individual

organisms in relation to the physical environment, available resources, and selective processes that lead to ecological and evolutionary change. One of the goals Zasada cited

as a priority in his year of study with Harper was to deterEarly research efforts in Fairbanks

proceeded without local nursery facilities,

but more recently, scientists at the

Institute of Northern Forestry in Fairbanks

developed nursery beds such as this

planting of spruce and alder near

Fairbanks. (Wurtz collection)

mine methods other than herbicides useful in promoting

the establishment and growth of desired species and to iden18Inlerview with John Alden in Fairbanks, Alaska, 1 7 December 1992; interview with Ruth Murphy, 1

December 1992.

170
Ken Wright, John Alden, Elaine Loopstra, and

Walter Briggs (Navy Forester) planting trees on

Adak Island in June 1986. Alden secured

cooperative grant funding from the U.S. Navy in

1985, which supported his research efforts in

coastal regions through 1990, but these efforts also

illustrate the gradual erosion of support for

research in the interior after ANIICA. (Loopstra

collection)

Indoor greenhouse at Petersburg. Forest geneticist

John Alden faced a constant challenge of securing

ongoing funding for research facilities and support

staff, and he had to resort to "bootstrap" methods

of improvising outdoor nursery beds because local

nurseries could not accommodate his research.

(Schmiege collection)

tify methods for re-establishing native trees and shrubs needed to restore severely disturbed sites

in interior Alaska. Zasada also visited Sweden and Finland during his year abroad and observed

forest regeneration practices and harvesting in the subarctic forests of Scandinavia. He later

noted that this year of study abroad "...gave me a different perspective on forest community

description and response to disturbance, which I hope will be useful in Alaska.../'39

The year Zasada returned from his sabbatical was also the year in which ANILCA went into

effect, and a triumvirate of officials from the Portland office toured the facilities in Juneau, Fairbanks,

and Anchorage that summer to identify areas of concern and review problems of forest economics and utilization of resources. They were accompanied by leading players in the game of

defining federal policy and managing public resources in Alaska. PNW Station Director Tarrant

had retired in 1979, and his successor, Station Director Robert Ethington, Deputy Director Glenn

Cooper, and Assistant Director Ken Wright toured Alaska in June 1980 with a group of officials

representing other federal interests in the research agenda.40

Problems with funding and supplies were glaringly obvious at the time this group toured

through Fairbanks. Alden, who resembles Helmers in temperament and administrative style,

recalls he was struggling to establish seed zones and develop baseline information on native

species, but he was working with inadequate operating budgets, greenhouse facilities, or nurseries.

40 PNW News, 7 July 1 980; Request for a 1 -year sabbatical submitted to Bob Tarrant, Director of PNW,

November 1978, in Professional Biography Files, Central History Files, Portland Office.

44The touring group included, among others, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Rupert Cutler, Regional

Forester John Sandor, and Forest Products Laboratory Energy Program Manager John Zerbe. PNW News,

16 June 1980; Professional Biography Files, Central History Files, Portland Office; Forestry Research

News, 10 December 1979.

171
This bootstrap solution was in keeping with the tradition of frontiersmanship for research in

Alaska, but it also illustrated the shifting priorities of the program. If Alden and other scientists at

Fairbanks expected stronger support in the wake of Ethington's tour in the summer of 1980, they

soon discovered that southeast Alaska enjoyed an advantage in funding and priority. Alden notes,

for example, that funding to support his seed zone project for the period 1979 to 1984 initially

was allocated but then revoked amidst the budgetary reductions affecting the entire PNW Station

during the first years of the Reagan administration. In the wake of those cuts, Alden resorted

to using student interns from the Seward Skills

Center in Fairbanks to manually compile records

covering the preceding 20 years from 62 weather

stations across Alaska. As fiscal support from

Portland withered during the mid 1980s, Alden

and other scientists at Fairbanks scrambled for

alternative sources of funding. A cooperative

grant from the Navy in 1985, for example, enabled Alden to develop seed collections, provenance studies, transplant beds, and wind-shelter experiments over the next 4 years. This reliance on funding from the Navy, however, forced

Alden to shift the focus of his studies away from

When Forest Supervisor Clay Beale began inviting

scientists at the Fairbanks lab for annual visits to the

Chugach National Forest in the mid 1980s, Dyrness

suggests, the experience seemed to encourage those

scientists to refocus their energies "...to do more work

down that way." Here, a field technician observes the

behavior of a moose radiocollared for one of Vic Van

Ballenberghe's wildlife studies. (Loopstra collection)

41 Interview with John Alden, 17 December 1992.

172

Alden claims it was the technical challenge of

conducting research in the "frontier conditions"

of Alaska that appealed to him when he applied

for the position in 1979, but he was not prepared

for the lack of funding or technical support that

plagued his efforts with the Forest Service. Alden

recalls that, in 1 980, the nearest nursery was more

than 300 miles away, in Palmer, Alaska, and he

struggled to improvise with materials on hand.

Alden and Zasada brought in sand from the river

floodplain near Fairbanks and worked up an outdoor nursery bed with peatmoss, using a tractor

and disc. Lacking sufficient funds for irrigation

hoses or a pump, they used an Army surplus tank and trailer to haul water to the site, and they

successfully irrigated lodgepole pine, white spruce, and black spruce seedlings with a gravity-fed

system consisting of garden hoses attached to the trailer tank.41

Field work at

Fairbanks required

an ability to adapt

to winter

conditions that

could freeze

equipment and

people, but the

snow cover also

enabled scientists

like Tricia Wurtz

(partially visible

here) to reach field

sites by snow

machine.

(Loopstra

collection)
Three years' before the administrative burden at

Fairbanks shifted onto his shoulders, Skeeter Werner

(center) enjoys a break with technician Danny Lyon

and seasonal employee Charles Kingery at a spruce

beetle study site on the Chugach National Forest in

1981. (Juneau, unnumbered)

the interior and into coastal regions near Seward,

Valdez, Kodiak, and Adak. It also eroded the

integrity of the multifunctional research unit and

the premise of integrated research.42

Research Wildlife Biologist Victor Van

Ballenberghe, who joined the staff in 1980, similarly drifted away from the integrated research

unit at Fairbanks by mid decade, but unlike

Alden, who remained at Fairbanks, Van

Ballenberghe physically relocated his base of

operations from Fairbanks to the Anchorage office. Van Ballenberghe was an established authority on moose populations with publications

in his first year at Fairbanks, but as funding stagnated, he worked with Tom Hanley at Juneau to

acquire funding and support for studies of deer

in old-growth forests of southeastern Alaska, and

he shifted his focus southward in the search for

cooperative funding from other agencies and

units.43 Van Ballenberghe's studies of moose in

relation to wolf predation in south-central Alaska

soon yielded a series of publications in professional journals and a high profile article in

National Geographic magazine. By mid decade,

Van Ballenberghe's research in southeastern and

south-central Alaska rendered his location in

Fairbanks increasingly inconvenient, and he transferred to the Anchorage office in 1984, the

same year that Assistant Director Wright established the Multiproject Program (MPP) in Juneau,

headed by Calvin Bey.44

Spruce beetle outbreaks on the Kenai moose range

(Seen here in an aerial view) and other concerns led to

John Hard's move to Anchorage in 1985; Vic

VanBallenberghe also moved to Anchorage in this

period. (Wright collection)

42 Interview with John Alden, 1 7 December 1992; interview with Robert Ethingion, 12 July 1995.

43Interview with Ruth Murphy, 17 December 1992; "Research Attainment Description, PNW-1652,

Ecology and Management of Forests and Asociated Ecosystems in Coastal Alaska (Juneau, Alaska,

Problem 2: Habitat requirements of wildlife, PNW Station, 1984," In storage room, Juneau Forestry

Sciences Laboratory, USDA Forest Service; V. Van Ballenberghe, "Utility of multiple equilibrium

concepts applied to moose populations," North American Moose Conference and Workshop 16 (1980):

126-1 38; V. Van Ballenberghe and Thomas A. Hanley, "Predation on deer in relation to old-growth forest

management in southeastern Alaska," in William R. Meehan, Theodore R. Merrell, Jr., and Thomas A.

Hanley (eds.), Fish and wildlife relationships in old-growth forest proceeding of a symposium, 1982

April 12-15), (Juneau, AK: American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists, 1984), 291-2%.

44Research Work Unit Description, Management Alternatives lor Timber and Related Resources, Tongass

National Forest in Southeast Alaska, Juneau, Alaska, Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment

Station, 6 July 1984, in storage room, Juneau Forestry Sciences Laboratory, USDA Forest Service; V. Van

Ballenberghe, "Extraterritorial movements and dispersal of wolves in southcentral Alaska," Journal of

Mammalogy 64 (1983): 168-171 ; Victor Van Ballenbcrghe, "Giants of the wilderness: AIaskan moose,"

National Geographic (August 1987): 260-280.

173
Bill Farr, seen here in August 1989, was hasped in

Juneau for most of his career in Alaska, but he was also

active in studies of the interior and is fondly

remembered by those he worked with at Fairbanks,

Anchorage, juneau, and Portland. (Loopstra collection)

An outreach program from the Chugach National Forest Supervisor's office in the mid 1 980s

further encouraged scientists at Fairbanks to shift

their focus southward. Forest Supervisor Clay

Beale began inviting Dyrness and his colleagues

for visits every year to present their current research in 2- to 3-day programs geared toward

managers and staff for the Chugach National

Forest. In the process, the Fairbanks scientists

gained an opportunity to learn about problems

in the Chugach. Dyrness recalls people in his

unit from Fairbanks enjoyed the opportunity to

''...get together with our Forest Service

colleagues...and I think they did engender more

of a desire on the part of guys like Vic Van

Ballenberghe and Skeeter Werner to do more work down that way." At a time of continuing

tension between Region 10 and Research at Juneau, scientists at the Fairbanks Lab (who worked

closely with the BLM and State Forests people) hungered for more contact with "Forest Service

people," and those with the Chugach National Forest were most accommodating.45

These intra-agency exchanges with the Chugach National Forest were points of light in an

unrelenting succession of bleak budgetary outlooks and constant worry over the status of the

program throughout the 1980s. Dyrness recalls that the budgetary problems were "...kind of sad

and ...[by the] last part of '84, I was getting burned out. I was really getting burned out. ...and

this was the slim-down years, and you'd lose sleep—how are we gonna make, meet our budget,

we can't do it, you know, how can we do our research on this lousy budget, and where's the

money gonna come from..." Dyrness talked the situation over with Wright, and he noted that

Werner was willing to assume the responsibilities as project leader, so Dyrness stepped down.

He recalls "...after I'd stepped out and Skeeter [Wernerl took over, I'd go home and start worrying

about these things, and I had to tell myself, 'It's not your problem anymore, Ted!' [laughs] I was

just a research scientist like all the rest of them and then Skeeter had all these personnel headaches and stuff."46

By mid decade, budgetary concerns were taking their toll on scientists and staff at the Fairbanks

Lab, and a pseudo-colonialist mood of resentful suspicion of administrative motives and priorities gradually seemed to displace the earlier climate of optimistic experimentation and fraternal

cooperation.. Amidst rumors that the Forest Service was planning to close the Fairbanks Lab,

45Werner, lor example, studied spruce beetle flareups on the Kenai Peninsula. Interview with Ted

Dyrness, 17 July 1995.

46Interview with Ted Dyrness, 17 )uly 1995.

174
some scientists grew wary of administrative reassurances, scrambled to locate outside funding,

and cultivated their contacts with outside agencies to shore up their programs. The result was an

ironic sense of increasing alienation from decision-makers in the Forest Service even as their fate

rode on the efforts of administrators within that agency, such as Ethington and Buckman, who

worked with Congressional representatives who countered budgetary cutbacks proposed by the

Reagan administration.47 Alden, during this period, forged ties with the Nordic Forest Research

Council (a consortium of scientists from Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland), which

recruited him to assist in collecting specimens of Alaskan and Canadian species for introduction

into Scandinavia and Alaska at a time when the Forest Service failed to fund his research proposals.48

 This project, and the transmission of Alaska species to scientists in Europe, was reminiscent

of the early phase of forest research in Alaska during the late 1700s and early 1800s, when

Archibald Menzies, Frederic Litke, and others collected seeds, seedlings, and cuttings from southeast Alaska and brought them to the attention of the international scientific community.49

 More

than 200 years after European contact, and despite concerted efforts by administrators in Portland

to channel money their way, Research scientists in Alaska still found themselves in a position of

dependence on fiscal support from other sources, and they struggled to frame their research

agendas in ways that would attract outside funding. In taking this approach, scientists did not

sacrifice their commitment to quality science or independence of thought, but the realities of

their quest for competitive funding effectively narrowed the field of viable research to those projects

for which outside funding could be obtained to supplement allocations from PNW Station.50

Scientists in Fairbanks, particularly, depended on cooperative arrangements with the various

national, state, and local agencies and interests that gained control of forest lands after ANILCA.

Without a National Forest in interior Alaska, and with Forest Service priorities shifting heavily

toward timber production in southeast Alaska, as mandated by Congress with the Tongass Timber

Act, the future of the Fairbanks office increasingly depended on their ability to serve as interagency consultants. These realities further encouraged the outward spiral of the research community already apparent in the efforts of Alden and Van Ballenberghe, and other scientists at

Fairbanks continued to cultivate such ties. Werner, for example, worked closely with Region 10

entomologists and John Hard in Forest Pest Management in the areas of greatest spruce beetle

outbreaks in south-central Alaska from 1982 to 1990. Hard, who had already moved from

Juneau to Davis, California, and then to Region 1 in Missoula, Montana, finally moved back to

47Interview with Robert Ethington, 12 July 1995; interview with Robert Buckman, 13 July 1995;

interview with Ted Dyrness, 17 July 1995; communication from Ken Wright, 29 August 1995; interview

with John Alden, 17 December 1992.

48'Interview with John Alden, 17 December 1992.

49See chapter one of this publication for a discussion of these earlier expeditions.

50This situation fostered a problem of miscommunication between administrators in Portland and PNW

Station scientists in Alaska. From the perspective of administrators in Portland, Alaska received a

disproportionate share of funding, leaving research projects Oregon and Washington relatively

underfunded. From the perspective of many scientists in Alaska, however, the scale of funding from the

PNW Station was grossly inadequate for the enormous scale of the research problems confronting them

in the far North. This dual reality fostered the emergence of a pseudo-colonialist mood among scientists

in Alaska, as noted at the outset of this paragraph.

175
Alaska to join the Region 1 0 office in Anchorage in 1 985 to study the spruce beetle outbreaks on

the Kenai Peninsula. Proximity to the Kenai was a central consideration for Hard in making the

move to Anchorage rather than Fairbanks. The commute time from Fairbanks to study sites on the

Kenai, along Cook Inlet, and on the lower Copper River was about 7-9 hours, but the same sites

were only about 2-3 hours out from Anchorage.51

Werner's work on the Chugach National Forest during the 1980s included outreach programs

to farmers, horticulturists, veterinarians, pesticide coordinators, plant pathologists, forest managers, representatives of state agricultural agencies, and representatives of the Alaska Railroad.

Much of this work focused on damage from spruce beetle outbreaks on Lutz spruce with commercial potential, and Werner also directed his research toward evaluations of forest management alternatives in relation to the life cycle of the spruce beetle and other insects threatening

stands of Lutz spruce in south-central Alaska.52

Hard arrived in Anchorage about the time the Inventory unit began to focus on the spruce

beetle problem on the Kenai Peninsula in 1 985. This inventory work established baseline data at

a fortunate time, shortly before more severe problems developed with beetle-killed trees in the

latter part of the decade. Scientists at the Anchorage Lab also entered unfamiliar waters in the

late 1980s, however, when Region 10 assumed responsibility for inventory work on National

Forest lands. Wright and LaBau observe that the amount of training for inventory crews in the

National Forest system did not meet the more rigorous standards maintained by the Inventory

unit at the Anchorage Lab. Wright notes that this aggregation of national inventories also led to

problems because the nature of information from inventories performed by the National Forests

did not match those performed by Research. In other words, Wright concludes, "it becomes a

matter of 'combining apples with oranges!'"53

In the bleak context of stagnating budgets, eroding jurisdictions, weak logistical support, and

dissipating focus, however, the Rosie Creek Fire of 1983 was the catalyst for a temporary revival

of the multifunctional unit for integrated research. Scientists at Fairbanks had become less isolated from their colleagues elsewhere in the Forest Service in March 1982, when direct-dial

access to the lab finally became possible over the FTS telephone network,54 and research centered on the 1983 fire on and near the Bonanza Creek Experimental Forest provided the focus for

an Arctic Science Conference held at Fairbanks 2 years later. Contributors to the conference

51Interview with )oan Foote, 15 December 1992; interview with Richard Werner, 30 July 1993; PNW

News, 21 Oct 1985.

52R.A. Werner, E.H. Holsten, "Mortality of white spruce during a spruce beetle outbreak on the Kenai

Peninsula in Alaska," Canadian lournal of Forest Research 13 (1983): 96-101; PNW News, 1 Feb 1982;

Richard A. Werner. Felton L. Hastings, Edward H. Holsten, and Alice S. Jones, "Carbaryl and lindane

protect white spruce from attack by spruce beetles (Coleoptera: Scolytidae) for three growing seasons,"

lournal of Economic Entomology 79 (1986) 4: 1 1 21 -1 1 24.

53Interview with Jim LaBau, 5 August 1993; communication from Ken Wright, June 1995.

54Direct-dial access was previously available via commercial phone lines, but access via the FTS system

made communication outside Alaska considerably less complex and less of a budgetary burden than in

prior years.

176
55 PNW Research News, 14 Oct 1985; interview with loan Foote, 14 December 1992; PNW News, 8

February 1982 and 15 March 1982.

56P.NW.Eesed.rch_News, 14 Oct 1985.

57"Research Work Unit Description, Ecology and Management of Taiga and Associated Environmental

Systems in Interior Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska, Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Fxperiment Station, 14

January 1985," in storage room, luneau Forestry Sciences Laboratory, USDA Foiesl Service.

177

included Werner, Viereck, Foote, Alden, and

Dyrness, as well as John Zasada, who had recently transferred to Corvallis but returned for

the session in Fairbanks.55

One of the presenters at the Arctic Science

Conference, Research Forester George Sampson,

had joined the scientific community at Fairbanks

in 1980, when he began studies of the potential

for developing a forest products industry for interior Alaska. Sampson's research and his presentation at the 1985 conference (a discussion

of product recovery potential for fire-killed white

spruce in interior Alaska)56 were examples of the

production emphasis of scientists hired in the wake of ANILCA, even at the multifunctional unit

at Fairbanks. Like Alden, however, Sampson's efforts at Fairbanks were hampered by the relatively low funding and support for Research in an area remote from Forest Service lands and far

removed from the cash cow of ANILCA mandates. The flurry of interest in integrated research

centering on the Rosie Creek fire dissipated rapidly after 1 985, and the lab headed into the latter

half of the decade with an uncertain future.

Project Leader Ted Dyrness' 1985 summary of work unit objectives for the next 5 years of

research at the Fairbanks Lab emphasized the need for studies that would support the goals of

resource managers in the interior, but Dyrness and his colleagues could not escape the hard

reality that those managers were not with the Forest Service. Three years earlier, however, the

State Forest Bill had created the 1.8-million-acre Tanana Valley State Forest near Fairbanks and

established a reforestation fund supported with receipts from state timber sales, and Dyrness

cited the State's expressed interest in research on these lands as rationale for continued funding

for his unit.57 Dyrness and his colleagues were in the tenuous position of seeking federal funding

to support research that would serve state programs and priorities, and in the political climate of

the Reagan era, they were vulnerable to proposals to pare down, or even eliminate the federal

facility in the interior.

Scientists at the Fairbanks Lab were not alone in their concerns about budgetary issues in

Alaska, but they faced the most extreme possibility of termination at mid decade. System-wide

budget cuts in the Forest Service during the early 1980s seriously undermined morale, and a

The ANILCA imposed a statutory mandate for

management practices with the "least adverse impact"

on rural residents, dependent on subsistence lifestyles,

thus broadening the scope of multiple use and related

research. (Schmiege collection)
Much early research focused on how timber harvests

affected the environment, such as this stand of spruce

at Shoe Inlet, first logged in 1918. By (he mid 1980s,

however, critics of the Forest Service argued that a

more appropriate question was whether timber should

be cut, where how, and at what late. (Schmiege

collection)

1 984 survey indicated that inadequate resources

was one of the most important concerns facing

Forest Service personnel in Alaska. By early

1985, the Forest Service was offering employees counseling to help them cope with job displacement and relocation. In February 1986,

Ethington and Wright traveled to Fairbanks to

break the news to the 1 6 staff members that the

proposed budget for 1987 would close the

Fairbanks Lab, transfer the research programs in

wildlife habitat, entomology, and soil and water

to the Anchorage office, eliminate all other programs at Fairbanks, reduce funding for wildlife

research, and trim $ 148,000 from inventory work

at Anchorage. Official announcement of the proposal to close the lab indicated that it was based

on the premise that research should shift to applied studies of forest management and the reality

that Forest Service management interests were in the south-central and southeastern regions of

Alaska and not in the interior.58

Station Director Ethington and Deputy Chief Buckman recall that the proposed closure of the

Fairbanks Lab was included in a system-wide effort to meet massive cutbacks for the Research

Branch required in the annual budgets the Reagan Administration presented before Congress, but

Buckman and Ethington both rec all they were convinced, at the time, that with Senator Stevens'

support, Congress eventually would restore the funds needed to keep the Fairbanks Lab open.

Ethington, who was technically a manager in the Reagan administration, found himself in the

uncomfortable position of officially defending the proposed closure and initiating the administrative process of preparing the personnel at Fairbanks for the end, if and when it came. He recalls

his visit to Fairbanks with Wright in February 1986 included a meeting with a citizen group, but

very few people turned out because of the bitterly cold weather, and he concludes, "that was

probably for the best." He also recalls that his meeting with PNW Station employees affected by

the proposed closure was the first time he completely sympathized with angry people who were

verbally attacking him in a public setting.59 Congress finally did restore funding, and both the

Fairbanks Lab and the other PNW facility slated for closure (the Bend, Oregon, Forestry Sciences

Laboratory) survived the budgetary crisis, largely as a result of intervention by Senators Stevens

and Murkowski and the Congressional delegation from Oregon.60

58 PNW Research News, 9 July 1984, 14 Jan 1985; Professional Biography Files, Central History Files,

Portland Office, PNW Station; PNW News, 17 Feb 1986.

59'Interview with Robert Ethington, 12 July 1995.

60 Interview with Robert Buckman, 13 July 1995; interview with Robert Ethington, 12 July 1995;

communication from Ken Wright, |une 1995.

178
Scientists and technical stall recall the mid 1980s at the Juneau

FSL as a period of congenial interaction, and the "coffee break"

crowds at the FSL (shown here in August 1989) were often the

setting tor exchanging stimulating ideas and developing working

relations with others at the lab. (Loopstra collection)

An established relation with state of

Alaska and local interests in the interior

and the University of Alaska at Fairbanks,

and an intensive lobbying campaign in

Washington, D.C., by well-connected

representatives of those interests, ultimately saved the Fairbanks Lab from closure in 1987, but it did not resolve

chronic problems with funding and administrative and logistical support. Scientists at Fairbanks struggled through a

period of uncertain readjustment, layoffs,

and staff reductions over the latter part

of the decade. The official explanation

of the rationale behind the initial proposal to close the lab, moreover, was a clear repudiation of the principles that led to the founding

of the multifunctional unit at the Fairbanks facility in the early 1 960s. Integrated studies of forest

ecology and cooperative efforts with the University of Alaska, best exemplified by the successful

development of a Long Term Ecological Reserve program headed by Viereck and Van Cleve,

continued to be a central focus and a major source of funding at the Fairbanks Lab after the initial

proposal to close that facility was withdrawn. Allocations of new funding for research on the

Tongass National Forest through the Tongass Timber Supply Fund were linked to the Congressional mandates of ANILCA, however, and applied studies of forest management in that region

rapidly emerged during the 1980s as a leading priority of the administrative hierarchy of the

Forest Service. Scientists in southeast Alaska significantly advanced their understanding of forest

ecology during this period, while similar efforts at Fairbanks lacked access to this new infusion of

funding, and some scientists there struggled to continue or initiate studies. Forest Service Research in Alaska had come full circle from the era of Heintzleman and Taylor, when Management

needs shaped the Research agenda, and scientists conducted their studies with an eye to immediate economic utility and usable knowledge about Alaska forests.

The Tongass Timber Supply Fund and Related Research

Utilitarian priorities guided the Research program at Juneau after 1981, much as they had at

the outset of the modern era of Forest Research in Alaska during the 1920s. Scientists in southeast

Alaska gained a windfall of funding from ANILCA and the Tongass Timber Supply Fund at a time

when the other labs in Alaska were facing severe budgetary limitations, but they also faced severe

pressure to apply those funds in research programs addressing the practical concerns of forest

managers who struggled to reconcile ANILCA mandates with prior forest management laws. The

179
Research gained

a share of the

Tongass Timber

Supply Fund, but

the ANILCA

mandate to

maintain timber

supplies to

industry from the

Tongass imposed

severe pressure

on researchers to

address

immediate

problems

confronting

forest managers

working to meet

harvest targets.

(Schmiege

collection)

ANILCA mandate to "...maintain the timber supply from the Tongass National Forest to dependent industry at a rate of 4 billion 5 hundred

million board foot measure per decade" seemed

to conflict with the mandate to manage forest

resources in accordance with multiple use, as

that concept had evolved during the 1960s and

1970s.61 Tongass Timber Supply Funds, consequently, came with strings attached, but more

important, they came with increased pressure

for Research to address issues of immediate,

practical concern, often with insufficient information or time to conduct rigorous investigations.62 Region 10 administrators were under a

Congressional mandate to increase timber sales within a specific timeframe, and funding derived

from those sales (the TTSF) was earmarked for studies exploring their effects on specific forest

resources identified as valuable under federal guidelines of multiple use.

The ANILCA also broadened the scope of the multiple-use concept and the need for research

with a statutory mandate for management practices that would cause the "...least adverse impact

possible on rural residents who depend upon subsistence...." Forest Service administrators identified this mandate, covered in Title VIII of ANILCA, as "...a standard by which all other Forest

Service activities in Alaska will be measured, i.e., is the activity being conducted in a manner

which will cause the least impact possible on subsistence?" and they noted the need for research

to develop an information base that would serve this mandate.63 This concern encouraged wildlife studies that focused more on habitat requirements of big game species, notably Sitka blacktailed deer, mountain goal, bear, and moose, as well as a shift toward fisheries studies that would

describe "good" habitat as opposed to "pristine" conditions.64

Public criticism of the management practices of the Forest Service on the Tongass National

Forest escalated in the early 1 980s as the ecological implications of ANILCA became more apparent, and the ensuing debate by mid decade increased the pressure on Research to provide fast

61 Research Work Unit Description, Management Alternatives lor Timber and Related Resources,

Juneau, Alaska, Pacific Northvvesl Forest and Range Experiment Station, 6 July 1984," in storage room,

Juneau Forestry Sciences Laboratory, USDA Forest Service.

62This problem had always existed in |uneau and often led to friction between Region 10 administrators

and the Research office. Scientists at Juneau observe that forest managers with the Region often tended

to frame research questions in terms of administrative issues that were not researchable, such as "how

much limber should be cut?" Interviews with Don Schmiege, Doug Swanston, Bill Farr, Bill Meehan,

and Al Harris, December 1992.

63ANILCA, Title VIII," memo from Walt Sheridan, ANILCA Coordinator, to Forest Supervisors and Staff

Directors. 12 April 1984, in storage room, Juneau Forestry Sciences Laboratorv. USDA Forest Service.

64Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station. "Planned Forest and Related Research to Mee

Requirements of the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act" (tvpescripl memo, 14 July

1981) p. 1-9; interviews with Bill Meehan, 9 August 1993 and 22 December 1992.

180 CONTINUED