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Spring 2005 Meeting

This Forest Futures Roundtable explored the voices of those most intimately connected to our Pacific Northwest forests. The first part was a project completed by Willamette students who collected stories about the forest from their own families. Garret Stevenson explored his family's alternative logging business and the community that surrounds it. Ann Skordahl examined the family and network dynamics of logging. Lael Grant collected poetry, non-fiction, and family stories connected to logging and his Finnish family roots. Garret and Lael introduced their project and presented a 15-minute film of their interviews. Following the film, we opened the roundtable up to discussion. For the second part of the roundtable, small woodlot owners Dave Eisler and Sarah Deumling talked about their experiences with sustainable forest management. Discussion followed.

David Eisler is the past chair of the Siuslaw Watershed Council. For several decades Dave has been involved in sustainable forestry and value-added forest resources with an emphasis on small diameter wood products. The main effort through the Watershed Council has been networking markets and small nonindustrial forest owners but their goal is to encourage landowners to look at the natural resources on their land in a new light and to develop long term sustainable management plans.

Sarah Deumling is an ex-school teacher, mother of four, grandmother of one, gardener, housekeeper, and 4th generation Oregonian who, upon her husband's death in 1996, inherited the management of 2000 acres of FSC certified forest just 20 minutes west of Salem in the Eola Hills. There she practices her family's version of sustainable forestry—No Clearcutting, No Chemicals, No Compaction—managing for all site specific native species and encouraging the development of a local hardwood market while protecting and enhancing biodiversity, water resources and the myriad of other hard to quantify values of the forest.

Fall 2004 Meeting

In response to concerns about long term productivity and biodiversity protection, in the mid-1990s the Oregon Department of Forestry began a process to develop a management plan for the Tillamook and Clatsop state forests. Building upon a theory of active management to create diverse and dynamic forest structures across the landscape known as "structure based management (SBM)", the resulting plan was adopted by the Oregon Board of Forestry in 2001. From the earliest planning stages, scientists, policy makers, and citizens have weighed in on the plan's scientific, economic, and political viability, with many endorsing its assumptions while others questioned those very same premises. In 2004, the plan was challenged by both industry and environmentalists. It survived both challenges intact. Nevertheless, as we approached the 2005 legislative session, it was clear that Northwest Oregon State Forests Management Plan would once again be a topic of discussion. In order to encourage an open, informed, and useful discussion of the Management Plan, the Forest Futures Roundtable invited noted scientists and policymakers involved in the debate over the plan's creation to share their insights on the plan's capacity to fulfill its promise. Speakers included Mike Schnee (Policy/Planning Manager, ODF), Nancy Hirsch (Interim State Forest Program Director, ODF), John Sessions (Professor of Forest Engineering at OSU), and Eric Forsman (Research Wildlife Biologist, USFS).

Fall 2003 Meeting

At the Fall 2003 Forest Futures Roundtable we convened two informal panels. The first dealt with certifying forest products and included a discussion of the various types of certification and examples of certification from both a small and large landholder. Marco Lowenstein (SmartWood Program, Rainforest Alliance) presented an overview of forest certification, focusing on the Forest Stewardship Council's certification program. Richard Pine (President, O'Neill Pine Company) discussed his family-owned company's experience with certification, highlighting the benefits of and barriers to certifying small private landholdings. Finally, Ralph Saperstein (Boise Cascade Corporation) discussed Boise Cascade's efforts in providing sustainable timber through the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.

The second panel looked at the recently passed Healthy Forest Restoration Act. Joe Bowersox (Associate Professor of Politics, Willamette University) led the discussion, giving a brief overview of the political process and politics involved in conceiving and passing the HFRA. Roundtable attendees reacted to the HFRA from a broad range of perspectives, debating possibilities for funding the hazarous fuels reductions programs, the scale and quality of data upon which the act is based, its implications for old-growth, the opportunity for data collection and research under th HFRA, and the political and ecological necessity of the HFRA.

Participants also added new topics to the list of future roundtable topics.

Spring 2003 Meeting

Fire—Linking Research and Managementwas held on April 28, 2003. The Roundtable included informal discussion of the role of research in federal fire management and wildfire risk reduction. The role of fire in forest ecosystems and its ecological and social consequences seems a fitting topic for discussion, given predictions of yet another year of above-normal wildfire activity. Presenting were John Cissel, science liaison for the Bureau of Land Management, Robyn Darbyshire, Long Term Ecosystem Productivity Project Manager for the U.S. Forest Service, and presently Research Coordinator for the Biscuit Fire, Jamie Barbour, forest economist with the Pacific Northwest Research Station of the US Forest Service, and Joe Bowersox, Associate Professor of Politics at Willamette University.

Robyn Darbyshire discussed the ecological, economic, and social effects of last summer's 490,000 acre Biscuit Fire in the Oregon Siskiyous. For more information on the Biscuit Fire, please visit http://www.biscuitfire.com.

Jamie Barbour talked about his research on the economics of thinning for hazardous fuels management.

Joe Bowersox spoke of current Congressional initiatives for augmenting the role of research in fire management and mitigation.

Fall 2002 Meeting

The first meeting of the Forest Futures Roundtable took place on Friday, November 8, 2002 at Willamette University. The roundtable included discussion by Rod Stewart of the United States Forest Service, Detroit Ranger District and Jeremy Hall of the Oregon Natural Resources Council who discussed the resolution of their 5 year stand off on the Windy Canyon Timber sale. Their negotiations resulted in the offering of a timber sale of 6.5 million board feet, designed to address the needs of local communities for commodity production as well as environmentalist's concerns.