Bob Zybach Feb. 21, 2006 Siskiyou SAF Presentation: Recommendations

Lessons from B&B, Biscuit, & Babyfoot Lake:
Why Wilderness Doesn’t Work in the West

Students in Dan Bregar's Spring, 2005 Crescent Valley High School Field Biology class take random plot inventories of a relict upland prairie fragment near Corvallis, Oregon. The meadow still retains healthy populations of native grasses and wildflowers, and these students will be reporting their results on the Internet for purposes of peer review, public outreach, and technical skills training. These inventories will also be used to help develop experimental strategies for using controlled fire to help manage weed, and native plant and animal populations on this landowner's savannah oak restoration project.

The introduction and body of this report made strong arguments for the continued predictability of future catastrophic wildfire events if western US forests and grasslands continue to be managed passively, by regulation, as they have been for the past several decades. A recommended alternative approach is to actively manage the forests, with clearly stated objectives and science-based management strategies. If one of the management objectives, for example, were "to reduce the frequency and severity of catastrophic wildfires in Wilderness areas and federal old-growth," it would be relatively easy to do, and would make hundreds of millions of dollars for taxpayers and local schools in the process. It would cost nothing, would bolster local economies as originally agreed with local governments in the early 1900s, and could achieve a wide range of non-economical benefits -- including wildfire protection, stable local jobs, increased recreational opportunities, enhanced aesthetics, improved human comfort and safety, native plant diversity, stablized wildlife habitat patterns, and restored cultural landscapes -- if properly planned and implemented.

It is my belief that any effort to achieve such results must be conducted and maintained on a landscape-scale (10,000+ acres) basis in order to be successful over the long-term; either via single ownership decision, or by way of collective agreements and arrangements. Concerted efforts should be made for immediately logging invasive (during historical time) trees and uncharacteristically large numbers of snags, and for reintroducing regular patch and broadcast burning, firewood gathering, and native plant cultivation as proactive methods of restoring Wilderness values of solitude, serenity, and beauty, creating local jobs, preserving threatened species and cultural landscapes, and protecting local communities and private timberlands from future wildfire events.

These results cannot be achieved by Executive Order or some kind of sudden enlightment among Congress or the electorate. What has become seriously lost or misdirected over time, no matter how well intentioned (!), can only be repaired with time. A scientist would say: "More long-term research is needed." A teacher, politician, or employer would say: "We need better educated (students/ voters/ employees) if we are even going to attempt such a change." Both are right, and both take time. I am involved with two current proposals that address these dual problems of long-term research and urban education. These projects have similar objectives of public education regarding the use and management of Oregon's natural and cultural resources, and both are being actively promoted for funding and implementation by ORWW at this time (Feb. 21, 2006):

1) Conduct a public, peer-reviewed, long-term (30-year), landscape-scale (40,000 acre) experiment -- within the existing framework of a Biscuit Burn forest management study already in place on USFS land (Bormann et al. 2004) -- to test the competing predictions of the a) Beschta, Donato, Franklin "reduce logging" scientists, with the b) Buckman, Newton, Sessions "increase logging" scientists, and the c) Anderson, Boyd, Zybach "Indian-type burning" scientists.

2) Develop accredited online Forest Sciences curricula for Oregon middle school, high school, and community college students that use actual events and locations in Oregon forests as class-rooms and text books; as typified by a number of ORWW statewide projects that have been available online for several years.

Both proposals are discussed in greater detail with slides, examples, and background links below.

Program Slides	Titles, Summaries, & Related Links	Presentation Files
	Recommendations: Short-Term Research & Long-Term Education. Described briefly above.	JPG
	"WE Had An OBJECTIVE In Mind!" This play on words -- and pointed message to current FS employees -- did not have the intended effect, as there were no Old Smokeys or current USFS personnel present in the SAF audience. Quite a change in 13 years! (So much for choosing the talk's focus to be Wilderness, LSRs, and logging snags . . .)
	"Learning Opportunities: Biscuit Fire Landscape Management Experiment."(Bormann, Bernard et al. 2004). This peer-reviewed proposal was adopted as Appendix A. of the Biscuit Fire Recovery Plan EIS (USFS-speak). It is proposed as the framework for a public, 30-year, peer-reviewed experiment designed to test differences in three types of "recovery" treatments: 1) passive observance; 2) log and plant for trees; 3) Indian-type burning and pruning ("underburning focus").	JPG PDF
	Map of Study Unit Locations & Characteristics. An initial total of 16 research areas is systematically reduced to 12 areas, leaving four random selections of three separate treatments. This is shown to be a defensible method for achieving reliable statistical results, and the basic framework for the current proposal.
	Map of Final 12 Assigned Teatments. These are the final locations and treatments of the proposed study, which are already (at the time of this presentation) well underway. If proposed sediment traps and other testing methods, including permanaent plot photo points, were immediately installed in this study area, a wide number of current questions regarding potential salvage logging damage to soils, water, and wildlife, and differences between naturally seeded and planted forests, can be resolved publicly and scientifically.
	Siletz River Salmon Cycle. A second-grade classroom in Siletz Grade School, Lincoln County, Oregon, created a hand-colored book about the local salmon cycle, featuring new cursive handwriting skills. Students then took their individual drawings and scanned them for this website report, made with help from an Eddyville HS student, as part of Classroom on the Siletz River Day.
	Brandis Oaks Savannah Restoration Project. Students are working on a privately owned oak restoration project near Corvallis, in Benton County, Oregon, and building this website for current use and future reference.
	Harney County Cattle Grazing Study. Crane and Burns HS Agriculture students in Harney County, Oregon worked for two years on this website, culminating in research-based field trips to downtown Portland, and to Oregon State University campus.
	Willamette River Steelhead Project, Jefferson HS students joined other north Portland, Multnomah County, Oregon schools in raising Chinook salmon fry for release in the Willamette River. The fish were raised from eggs in classroom aquariums provided by Northwest Steelheaders Assn.
	Ashland Camas Bake. Two Oregon State University forestry students and two Philomath HS seniors teamed up to do a series of reports on the native plants of Bald Hill, in Benton County, Oregon. A trip was made to Ashland, Jackson County, Oregon, with USFS ethnobotanist Frank Kanawha Lake, to document harvesting, preparing, and then baking camas in a traditional pit oven.
	Bill Hagenstein: Public Outreach to the Urban Populations. Bill gets the last word (9 mb., 1:22 min.).	MPG Transcript
	Q&A How soon can recommended long-term research proposal begin? What are the best grade levels to teach Forest Sciences? When will next catastrophic wildfire occur?	NEXT