Professor challenges pilot project in Applegate Valley 'Their ideas don't match up with forests that were there'

August 02, 2011

By Paul Fattig
Medford Mail Tribune

A University of Wyoming professor is challenging the assumptions of two leading Pacific Northwest forestry professors spearheading a pilot project on public forestlands in the Applegate Valley.

Professor Bill Baker, a fire ecologist who has conducted research in the Applegate Valley, says historical data he has uncovered shows the pilot project proposed by professors Norm Johnson of Oregon State University and Jerry Franklin at the University of Washington would create a forest that never existed.

"They are envisioning the forests were more open with fewer trees," said Baker, who communicated with the Mail Tribune via email and telephone.

"But if we look back, the new evidence shows the forests were quite dense," he added, noting that his conclusion is based on historical survey data. "They were not particularly fire-resistant forests, either. Their ideas don't match up with the forests that were there."

But Johnson and Franklin are standing by their ongoing work on the project that includes 80,000 acres of largely U.S. Bureau of Land Management forestland in the mid-Applegate Valley. It is one of three such projects in Oregon that could change the way timber is managed on federal forestland.

Other pilot projects are under way on BLM land in the Myrtle Creek drainage in Douglas County, as well as on tribal land in Coos County. Franklin and Johnson also are heading up those projects.

Baker's 19-page report was one of 17 comments, many of them lengthy, received by the BLM's Medford District during the 30-day comment period on the project's environmental assessment, which ended last week, according to district spokesman Jim Whittington.

"We have not yet studied Dr. Baker's report in detail, but his work appears to describe a complex and heterogeneous historical landscape — a landscape with a mixture of oaks, pines, madrone and Douglas fir — some open areas, some areas with dense, young trees and significant shrub communities," stated Franklin in an email to the Mail Tribune. "This is very different from the forest ecosystem that exists there today."

The forests where Johnson and Franklin want to demonstrate their restoration strategy is overwhelmingly dominated by maturing Douglas fir trees, he said.

"Diversifying these stands by thinning — allowing pines, incense cedar, oaks and madrones to reproduce and thrive — is an important part of our restoration strategy, as is increasing the growth and resilience of the residual Douglas firs," he said.

The restoration strategy leaves more than 40 percent of the landscape untreated, providing dense forest patches needed by northern spotted owls, he added.

"Overall we think that the goal should be to reverse the simplification of this landscape that has occurred over the last 150 years by restoring some of its historic biological diversity, heterogeneity and resilience," said Franklin.

"The vision should be forward, looking toward the desired future of this landscape and potential threats to it, including effects of climate change, even while recognizing the important knowledge derived from historical studies," he concluded.

All the comments on the pilot project will be analyzed in the coming weeks, said Whittington, adding that many of the comments urged a larger chunk of land be included in the local pilot project.

Noting that the debate among the professors is more about academic approaches, he noted he would let them address that issue.

"Scientists love to argue about data, and sometimes it can get a little bloody," observed Johnson.

A member of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's northern spotted owl working group for dry forest landscapes, Baker said he was offering his observations to further science.

"The goal of science is to gather new information and bring it to bear," said Baker, noting the pilot project need not be rushed.

"I think that Norm and Jerry's general principles are a good start but needed extensive and deep, scientific, peer review and more public discussion and refinement before we get to the stage of the pilots," he said. "We want to be much more sure that these principles truly can achieve the admirable goal of bringing together forest restoration and wood production before they have to face a test on the ground."

Dominick DellaSala, a forest ecologist and chief scientist at the Geos Institute, an environmental think tank in Ashland, agreed.

"You do pilots because you want to scale them up to something bigger," he observed. "We need to hone this pilot so it is based on the very best science possible."

Following the uncertainty of forest management on BLM lands after withdrawal of the Western Oregon Plan Revisions by the Obama administration, Franklin and Johnson last year proposed the large-scale restoration projects to U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

After studying the proposal and being lobbied by such groups as the Applegate Partnership and the Southern Oregon Small Diameter Collaborative, two broad-based groups that include both conservation and timber-industry representatives, Salazar gave his go-ahead.

The goal is to preserve the largest trees while improving forest health, including northern spotted owl habitat, while producing wood for mills and reducing wildfire danger.

The goal of the pilot is to have demonstration units to offer for sale by September, said BLM officials.

All of the comments on the project's environmental assessment are available at
www.blm.gov/or/districts/medford/forestrypilot/pilot-projects.php.

 (From Ann Forest Burns
American Forest Resource Council)