Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 21:08:45 -0400
To: Sara Ashkannejhad
From: Tom Horton <trhorton@esf.edu>
Subject: Fwd: Re: FW: Editorial by Les Aucoin
Cc: 
Bcc: 
X-Attachments: :The Other One:2350919:unnamed 65: :The Other One:2350919:unnamed 66: :The Other One:2350919:9dd4608.jpg:

Claridge's 'only in America' response is appropriate from Australia. Read the Oregonian editorial to get a fix on what was up.

Subject: Re: FW: Editorial by Les Aucoin
From: Andrew.Claridge@environment.nsw.gov.au
Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2006 09:53:04 +1100


Only in America ....




From Jim Trappe to a deleted long list of recipients.....

THE OSU FORESTRY CONTROVERSY


Tuesday, February 28, 2006
The Oregonian

Another harsh lesson in political science

A t last week's oversight hearing on forest science in Medford, Daniel
Donato, a graduate student at Oregon State University's School of
Forestry, was taught a harsh lesson in political science: In today's
climate, if a scientist follows his findings to wherever they lead, he
risks sticking his neck into a congressional noose.

Donato's nationally recognized research suggested that commercial
logging sets back recovery of forests in the first years after wildfires
by crushing seedlings that grow naturally in the wake of fires and by
creating tinder that invites future conflagrations.

Those findings are at odds with the official line of the Northwest
timber industry and its supporters, including Reps. Greg Walden, R-Ore.,
and Brian Baird, D-Wash., who used the hearing to launch what bordered
on a star chamber attack on the 29-year-old student's integrity as much
as his research. That Walden and Baird are pushing a bill to expedite
post-fire logging by easing environmental laws may be, of course, sheer
coincidence.

Irony abounds.

Although Donato's findings are far from the last word on logging charred
forests, they were peer-reviewed and published by the editors of Science
magazine, one of the nation's premier scientific journals.

On the other hand, the spiritual sire of the Walden-Baird bill is a 2002
report by John Sessions, a professor at the OSU School of Forestry.
Sessions' report contended that up to 2.5 billion board feet of timber
could be commercially harvested in the area of the 2002 Biscuit fire in
Southwestern Oregon -- in contrast to a 278 million board-foot cut that
same year in Oregon and Washington combined -- with salutary effects on
the Siskiyou National Forest. The Bush administration seized on those
findings to propose one of the largest timber cuts in history.

The record shows that Sessions' academic specialty is road engineering,
that he was hired by the board of county commissions of timber-dependent
Douglas County, that his team did not include one forest conservation
biologist, that his work was not subjected to peer review and that he
tried to quash the Donato article before Science magazine printed it.

"It is unfortunate when people prematurely draw policy implications from
single studies before the scientific process has finished its job,"
wrote Hal Salwasser, the dean of OSU's School of Forestry.

"Part of scientific integrity is making sure you don't make
generalizations beyond the limitations of your data," intoned Baird.

Well, yes.

But remarkably, the comments of Salwasser and Baird were not directed at
the Sessions report, which wasn't peer-reviewed, but at the Donato
report, which was.

Last week a lot of folks came to Medford not to praise Donato, but to
hang him. And John Sessions? No noose for him. In fact, the congressmen
didn't call on him to defend his research or his censorship efforts. But
that may have been sheer coincidence, too.

Les AuCoin, a Democrat, is a former U.S. congressman from Oregon who
served for 12 years on the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee,
which oversees the U.S. Forest Service. He is a co-author of "Wildfire:
A Century of Failed Forest Policy," to be published this spring by
Island Press.

(c)2006 The Oregonian


----- End forwarded message -----


Jim Trappe
Department of Forest Science
Oregon State University
Corvallis, Oregon 97331-5752
USA

Tel 541 737 8593
Fax 541 737 1393
email <trappej@onid.orst.edu>



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