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BLM pulls funding for OSU logging study
GREENWIRE, 02/07/06
The Bureau of Land Management said yesterday it has suspended funding for an Oregon State University graduate student's study that refuted the benefits of post-fire logging in Science.
BLM officials said the study, headed by graduate student Daniel Donato, violated a provision of its $300,000 research grant stipulating that it cannot be used to lobby Congress and must consult a BLM scientist before publishing.
The study found that logging after the 2002 Biscuit wildfire destroyed seedlings and produced highly flammable timber that could be "counterproductive to goals of forest regeneration and fuel reduction."
Last month, Donato's findings were attacked by the Forest Service and nine OSU professors, two of whom authored a report with contradictory conclusions that led the Forest Service to expand its logging operations. They asked Science to delay publication because the study's conclusions did not back up the research done since the fire.
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 OSU professor John Sessions' controversial report that estimated the burned area contained 2 billion board feet of economically accessible conifer (E&ENews PM, Jan. 20).
Science editor Donald Kennedy said the violation of rules against lobbying Congress was the journal's fault, not Donato's. He said the researchers had asked editors to take out an online reference to logging legislation sponsored by Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), but they failed to delete it.
"BLM has no case against the authors for that reference," he said (Jeff Barnard, AP/Salt Lake Tribune, Feb. 7).
Scientists said the funding cutoff was a first for government censorship.
"It's totally without precedent as far as I can recollect," said University of Washington professor Jerry Franklin, an expert on Northwest forests.
Kennedy said stifling research as BLM is doing "would cripple anyone from ever working on a science problem with a policy impact."
"Either way, the administration, regardless of the outcome of this incident, has made its message clear," said Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. "You knuckle under and give us the results we want, or we won't fund you" (Michael Milstein, Portland Oregonian, Feb. 7).
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