Smoking Emails Show OSU Forestry School Dean In Bed With Big Timber

[hatrack]

EDIT

Hundreds of pages of emails reviewed by WW clearly show how concerned Salwasser was by the study written by forestry student Daniel Donato and others. Science, one of the country's most prestigious peer-reviewed journals, published the study in January. Salwasser thought the study's findings were premature and overbroad. But at issue is how his concern translated into action, especially as industry insiders worried the study would undercut pending federal legislation to increase salvage logging.

EDIT

Writing Jan. 18 to Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council lobby, Salwasser notes that Oregonian reporter Michael Milstein "appears to be taking the side of the study and looking for a link between our budget situation and my context piece . This could turn into attacks on me and the college. Not sure what to do next."

On Jan. 12, Salwasser writes Jennifer Phillippi of Rough & Ready Lumber Co.: "These activist groups set up all the hurdles that make these projects money losers then they complain that the agency loses money so that projects should not be done...i can't call these goons out from my position but someone must bring this to light eventually. This is not 'environmental protection' it is extortion."

EDIT

Max Merlich, vice president of Columbia Helicopters, a major Republican backer that uses choppers to haul timber from remote areas, also wrote to Salwasser after the controversy surfaced: "I am going to do some damage control on this thing ... However, the likelihood of this paper being used successfully against us in court on salvage logging litigation is very high. Post catastrophic harvest is the most important part of our business, making this a very difficult issue between our organizations ... How OSU handles this from this point on could play an important part on our issues."

EDIT

http://www.wweek.com/editorial/3224/7458

[mike_c]

1. I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you!

Not.

[depakid]

2. Those of us familiar with Oregon's universities

have known this for a long time- but it's always nice have a smoking gun.

Back in the late 70's, during the Alsea studies (which were investigating the high rate of miscarraiges among women in a logging town in the Coast range) one of the professors at OSU actually quaffed a beaker full of a solution containing 2-4-5-T, an herbicide they were spraying on replanted clearcuts, just to "prove" how non-toxic it was.

Some of you may know 2-4-5 T by another name... Agent Orange.

A sizable number of the faculty there have always been staunchly pro-logging and their research has always been- at least in my mind, skewed toward what the timber industry wanted to hear- rather than towards the health and productivity of the various ecological services the forests provide.

That's legitimized a host of poor forest management practices that not only hurt our fisheries, for example- but also the communities that relied on timber. Back in the 80's, the forest service encouraged timber sales in sensitive areas and cut well beyond sustained yield, the inevitable result being mill closures, a surfiet of down and out loggers, and dramatic reductions in local public revenues. Whole towns became impoverished. And then of course- there's the spotted owl- which ended up taking the blame for it.