Forestry Profs Seek to Snuff Out Enviro Research

Every once in a while something crosses my desk that just gets my blood boiling. It wasn't just that a couple of big time professors with ties to the wood products industry tried to stop Science magazine from publishing a study critical of industry forestry practices. It was the fact that the author was a 29-year-old graduate student whose research concluded that logging forests blackened by wildfires slowed their recovery.

Can you imagine what went through Daniel Donato's mind as his "colleagues" sought to quash his research? Publishing in Science is the highlight of many professors' lives. For Donato, getting published in the nation's most prestigious science journal as a young graduate student could make his career.

To their credit, the editors at Science resisted entreaties from Oregon State University professor John Session and professor emeritus Michael Newton to hold off publishing Donato's paper. Their research has suggested logging and replanting restores forests faster than the gradual process of natural restoration after fires. Are you surprised to learn that Newton's research has been supported by Weyerhauser and Sessions is a frequent speaker at industry conferences?

According to the Portland Oregonian, which had a complete rundown on the issue over the weekend, the two senior professors' work had "faced its own criticism for not undergoing as thorough of a review process as studies published in Science, for instance."

Reporter Michael Milstein followed up on Sunday with quotes from other OSU scientists expressing fear that the professors' actions would damage the
university's reputation. It turns out the College of Forestry at OSU is funded in part by logging taxes.