A3
THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, JULY 27, 2019
Oregon State cut down 420-year-old Douglas fi r
Doubts emerge
over reason
By ROB DAVIS
The Oregonian
When the fi rst English
colony was established at
Jamestown in 1607, the
Douglas fi r seedling was
about eight years old, grow-
ing on a hillside 20 minutes
northwest of what is now
Corvallis.
It climbed slowly for
decades, competing for sun-
light. While some forestland
in the area was burned by
the native Kalapuya people
and converted to prairie, the
fi r and others around it were
in a wetter part of forest and
free to grow. If fi re came
through, it didn’t kill them.
By the time of an 1826
Pacifi c Northwest explo-
ration by the famed bota-
nist David Douglas, the fi r
species’ namesake, the tree
already was a giant more
than 200 years old.
There it stood for genera-
tions — until May, when the
chainsaws came.
The
seedling
that
sprouted in 1599 in Oregon
State University’s McDon-
ald-Dunn research forest
was cut down by the pub-
lic college, along with other
trees more than 250 years
old. The decision netted
$425,000 for the univer-
sity’s College of Forestry.
School offi cials say the rev-
enue will fund teaching,
research and outreach, but it
happened at a time when the
university’s forestry school
has accelerated other tim-
ber cuts and dipped into its
reserves to fund $19 million
in cost overruns on a major
construction project.
The forestry school’s
interim dean, Anthony
Davis, has since acknowl-
edged his mistake in approv-
ing the 16-acre cut known as
the No Vacancy harvest. He
has temporarily halted all
logging of trees older than
160 years on the universi-
ty’s 15,000 acres of research
forests.
“Harvesting this stand
Rob Davis/The Oregonian
One of the stumps in the old growth grove clearcut by foresters with Oregon State University.
did not align with the col-
lege’s values,” Davis wrote
in a July 12 letter to the
school community, fi rst
reported by the Corvallis
Gazette-Times.
“Moving
forward, we have learned
from this matter.”
The felling of the old
growth trees raises ques-
tions about Oregon State’s
land stewardship at pre-
cisely the wrong time. Top
state leaders are weighing
whether to hand over man-
agement of the 82,500-acre
Elliott State Forest to the
university’s C ollege of F or-
estry, a transfer that would
quintuple Oregon State’s
forest holdings.
Doubt
Records reviewed by The
Oregonian cast doubt on the
university’s justifi cation for
cutting what it knew were
trees as old as 260 years.
Records also show the uni-
versity recently allowed
a separate clearcut seven
times bigger than permitted
under its own management
plans.
Taken together, the cuts
threaten the credibility of a
school that has deep ties to
the timber industry but says
it can be trusted to do more
than maximize timber pro-
duction in the Elliott.
“I don’t know why they’re
so blind to the magnifi cence
of these trees,” says Norm
Johnson, a retired Oregon
State forest ecology profes-
sor who helped develop the
Northwest Forest Plan, the
Clinton-era blueprint that
ended the 1980s timber wars
in federal forests. “It’s just
very discouraging. And it
raises all sorts of concerns
about management of the
college forests.
“They made it a much
heavier lift for the college to
get the Elliott.”
The old-growth clearcut
might have gone unnoticed.
Doug Pollock, 55, a for-
mer Hewlett-Packard sus-
tainability engineer who
lives in Corvallis, remem-
bers getting a notice on May
6 that the university planned
to log the nearby McDon-
ald-Dunn stand, a spot he
explored frequently with his
family. The notice arrived
one day before the univer-
sity closed the forest to the
public.
Surely, Pollock remem-
bers thinking, they won’t cut
the giants.
“It was just this alley of
big, majestic trees,” Pollock
said. “You just assume that
old growth trees like this
would be protected in the
management plans at OSU.”
Port settles with derelict boat owner
Those plans protect 350
acres of Oregon State’s old
growth — 2% of its hold-
ings. Those holdings include
tracts in places including
Columbia County, Gaston,
Corvallis and Union County.
Johnson, the retired Ore-
gon State professor, fought
unsuccessfully to have the
protected areas include the
16-acre grove that became
the No Vacancy timber sale.
But even though the trees
weren’t protected, Johnson
said, the university’s for-
est managers waited to har-
vest them. Through decades
when old growth was fl ying
off federal land, the school
left the old growth grove
alone.
“They knew it was spe-
cial, they knew it was differ-
ent,” Johnson said. “You got
these really old trees here,
which are of themselves
magnifi cent, but there’s
a stand of them. It’s just
remarkable.”
Pollock discovered the
trees had been cut while out
on a run. He was devastated.
Pollock started asking
questions of Brent Klumph,
the college’s forest manager.
In a May 30 email, Klumph
told Pollock that the plan-
ning process for the harvest
started two years ago “when
we fi rst started to notice
mortality within the stand.”
The interim dean, in his
public letter, said the deci-
sion to clearcut the trees was
“based on recent evidence
of a decline in stand health”
and was intended to turn the
old growth grove into land
that generated timber.
But the university’s own
records raise questions
about that justifi cation.
In 2018, a survey known
as a timber cruise estimated
that 4% of the harvested
lumber would come from
dead or dying trees.
“Almost none of it is dead
and dying,” said Johnson,
who reviewed the cruise at
The Oregonian’s request.
“This stand was not
unhealthy in an ecological
sense,” Johnson said. “In
fact, it was the opposite.”
When the trees were
fi nally cut this year, the
school’s intent, Davis wrote
in his letter, was to turn the
stand into “a timber-generat-
ing future condition.”
In other words, the giants
were taking up space that
could be used to plant trees
for harvest.
Learning opportunity
Surveying the sun-baked
clearcut this week, Davis
said the school was using
the No Vacancy cut as a
learning opportunity for its
participation in the Elliott
State Forest discussion.
“I actually think account-
ability and trust partly
come from transparency
and being able to say we
wouldn’t do this again,” he
said, “because we’ve now
had a chance to realize that
runs counter to some of the
values which weren’t being
amplifi ed, that weren’t
articulated.”
Davis said he should have
sought more information
about the ages of the trees
before approving the cut. He
was clear that responsibility
stopped with him.
“We should have acted
differently on this stand,” he
said.
Oregon State’s College of
Forestry, university offi cials
often proclaim, is the No. 2
forestry school in the world.
(As ranked by the Center for
World University Rankings
in the United Arab Emir-
ates.) It is home to preem-
inent scientists conducting
groundbreaking research.
It also has strong fi nancial
links to the timber industry.
Numerous faculty positions
are endowed by timber com-
panies and their executives,
including the deanship,
funded by a $5 million gift
from Allyn Ford, the for-
mer CEO of Roseburg For-
est Products.
The forestry school’s
management decisions have
drawn nationwide scrutiny.
In 2006, Hal Salwas-
ser, then the school’s dean,
led a contingent of profes-
sors who tried to suppress
the publication of a graduate
student’s work in Science,
the nation’s preeminent sci-
entifi c journal. The student,
Dan Donato, had found sal-
vage logging after wildfi res
doesn’t help forests recover
and could increase fi re risks.
The fi nding ran counter to
the industry’s position.
A year later, two land-
slides from clearcuts logged
on university-owned land
on U.S. Highway 30 west
of Clatskanie sent a wall of
mud and debris into Wood-
son, a small community.
No one was killed, but the
slides damaged homes and
vehicles.
More recently, $6 million
in accelerated timber sales
from the school’s forest near
Clatskanie are being used to
help defray cost overruns for
a College of Forestry con-
struction project, the Ore-
gon Forest Science Com-
plex. Costs ballooned on the
$60 million building, meant
to showcase the potential for
a pricey building material
made in Oregon known as
cross-laminated timber.
The Clatsop County Fair
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Astorian
The Port of Astoria has
settled a dispute with the
owner of a derelict boat
Coastwise formerly parked
at the East Mooring Basin.
The Port voluntarily dis-
missed all claims without
costs against Nick Mathias,
the vessel’s owner. The
details of the settlement were
not disclosed.
The Port sued Mathias last
year for more than $112,000
in back-due moorage and
abandonment fees. The
agency claims the California
resident sent a letter in Sep-
tember announcing he would
abandon the Coastwise.
Mathias claimed the Port
unfairly raised the rent on
him while the East Moor-
ing Basin deteriorated. Last
year, The Port closed a rot-
ting causeway at the marina,
requiring boat owners to
board skiffs to reach their
vessels.
Edward Stratton/The Astorian
The Port of Astoria settled a dispute over back-due rent with
Nick Matthias, owner of the fi shing vessel Coastwise, which
has been removed from the East Mooring Basin.
“They knew I couldn’t
move the boat. T hey knew
I had no choice but to keep
paying,” Mathias wrote in
his response to the Port’s
lawsuit. “There was no way
I could continue to pay this
amount so I had no choice
but to abandon the boat along
with all of the money I had
spent fi xing it up.”
The boat has since been
taken away.
The settlement ends the
last of three lawsuits the Port
has fi led in the p ast two years
trying to cut down on dere-
lict vessels languishing in its
marinas. The agency secured
a $41,000 judgement against
Marvin Olson, a Colorado
resident and owner of the
1976 wooden sailboat John
Muir, and more than $17,000
from Henry Tomingas, an
Alaska resident and owner of
the charter vessel Wilderness
Explorer.
July 29 - Aug 3
10am - 10pm
Adults $5 | 12 & Under $3 | Parking $2
TUES: FREE Hog Roast • 4pm
FRI: Midland Concert, gates open 6pm
SAT: Demolition Derby •11am
Local building company fi ned over wetlands
The Astorian
Local building company
North River Homes will
restore wetlands and pay a
$50,534 fi ne over violations
at its Willow subdivision in
Warrenton.
The state Department
of Environmental Quality
fi ned North River Homes,
owned by the Nygaard fam-
ily, for placing construction
soils and sediment in wet-
lands, and for other viola-
tions of its stormwater per-
mit. The state ordered the
company to inventory wet-
lands and create a plan for
restoration.
John M. Nygaard, a rep-
resentative of the company,
said a contractor at the sub-
division didn’t keep records
up to the state’s standards
and went outside the project
area . The company plans to
pay the fi ne, enhance nearby
wetlands as mitigation and
start soon on the fi rst phase
of 30 homes , he said.
WANTED
Alder and Maple Saw Logs & Standing Timber
Northwest Hardwoods • Longview, WA
Contact: John Anderson • 360-269-2500
ONLY VALID AT BEAVERTON/ALOHA LOCATION
CALL TODAY TO PERSONALIZE YOUR ORDER 503.642.0849
$150
OFF
LEER
BEDLINERS
C
A
N
O
P
I
E
S
S
P
R
A
Y
I
N AFTER
21575 SW TUALATIN VALLEY HWY • ALOHA 97006
$100
OFF
BEFORE
*MUST PRESENT THIS COUPON TO REDEEM
*SOME EXCLUSIONS MAY APPLY
WWW.CLATSOPCOFAIREXPO.COM
92937 Walluski Loop
Astoria, Oregon • 503-325-4600