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Oregon State dean criticizes conclusions from Biscuit Fire report
DAN BERMAN, GREENWIRE, 01/13/06
The dean of Oregon State University's College of Forestry this week criticized the conclusions drawn about the dangers of salvage logging after the publication of a study on the 2002 Biscuit Fire by an OSU graduate student.
"It is unfortunate when people prematurely draw policy implications from single studies before the scientific process has finished its job," wrote Hal Salwasser, dean of the College of Forestry and director of the Oregon Forest Research Laboratory, in an e-mail to college faculty and staff Wednesday. "It is also not unusual for people to read a single report or newspaper article or opinion and accept its findings or conclusions without asking critical questions about the study and its interpretations or about other evidence pertinent to the issue."
Salwasser is referring to the report published last Thursday in the journal Sciencexpress by OSU graduate student Daniel Donato and five co-authors that said salvage logging following the Biscuit Fire in Oregon destroyed nearly three-fourths of seedlings that had regenerated naturally and increased the risk of future wildfires.
The report, which received widespread media coverage after its release, implies that forests are better off without intervention from forest managers, either for salvage logging or replanting (E&E Daily, Jan. 10).
"Surprisingly, it appears that after even the most severe fires, the forest is naturally very resilient, more than it's often given credit for," Donato said last week in an OSU press statement. "And if another of our goals is to reduce the risk of early re-burn, the best strategy may be to leave dead trees standing." Environmentalists and others who oppose legislation in Congress that would accelerate post-wildfire timber harvests and forest restoration on national forests proposed by House Forests Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.), Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) and Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) immediately seized upon the report as evidence salvage logging causes more harm than potential good.
But Salwasser warned about any jump to conclusions. "In essence, the controversy is not about what the study found regarding seedling survival and surface fuels; it revolves around the general conclusions reached or the extrapolation of field data from a 2-year study on a limited range of sites and a limited set of post-fire activities to a much broader policy issue," Salwasser wrote.
"Occasionally preliminary results or research results from a single study relevant to a controversial, highly visible issue become general public knowledge before the complete scientific process is through," the dean added. "This can intensify public discussion and positioning before adequate scientific debate and further research can confirm, modify, disprove or place the results in the appropriate context."
In his e-mail Salwasser also calls for research into the consequences of federal policies and processes that delayed salvage logging and silvicultural operations after the 2002 fire.
"For the results reported in the Science paper, study sites in the 2002 Biscuit Fire were salvage logged in 2004 and 2005, 2-3 years after the fire," Salwasser wrote. "What would have been the results had they been logged in fall 2002 before natural regeneration had occurred and when fire-killed trees had maximum economic value to pay for subsequent reforestation, or in 2003, and followed with silvicultural operations appropriate to encourage the kind of forest conditions called for in management plans?"
The Biscuit Fire burned nearly 500,000 acres in 2002, primarily in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest, with federal agencies spending $153 million over five months to extinguish it. President Bush used the area as the backdrop that summer to unveil his Healthy Forests Initiative designed to streamline procedures for thinning and hazardous fuels reduction.
The Forest Service eventually decided to attempt to sell salvage contracts for 372 million board feet on about 20,000 acres, approving sales in old-growth reserves and roadless areas. But approval of the final project was delayed several months while the agency went back and considered a controversial report by OSU professor John Sessions that estimated the burned area contained 2 billion board feet of economically accessible conifer. That report was endorsed by Salwasser.
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