Oregon Forester to Head Glickman's Scientific Team
12/12/97
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Headline: Oregon Forester to Head Glickman's Scientific Team
Source: The Associated Press
Date: 12/12/97
Copyright © 1997: The Associated Press
Author: Scott Sonner, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (December 12, 1997 4:07 p.m. EST http://www.nando.net) --
An Oregon forester whose research helped prompt logging cutbacks in
the Northwest was chosen Friday to lead a scientific panel reviewing
U.S. forest management laws.
Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman's selections to the 13-member panel
chaired by Oregon State University professor Norm Johnson drew
criticism from timber industry leaders, who said most of their
nominations were overlooked.
"I'm disappointed," said Chris West, vice president of the Northwest
Forestry Association in Portland, Ore. "We felt we had nominated some
very, very sound and reasonable and well-credentialed scientists and
it doesn't look like our recommendations were given a fair shake."
West said only one of the members announced Friday -- James Kent Agee,
a University of Washington forest ecology professor -- had been backed
by his trade group. Johnson served with Thomas and others in 1992 on a
team that provided Congress with a wide range of management strategies
for the Pacific Northwest. Their research showed reductions in logging
were necessary to save threatened fish and wildlife from extinction.
Johnson was also a member of the Forest Ecosystem Management
Assessment Team that provided the underpinnings for President
Clinton's Northwest forest plan in 1993. That plan projected annual
logging on national forests in Oregon, Washington and Northern
California at only one-fourth the level of the 1980s.
Another member named Friday, Barry Noon of Colorado State University,
helped draft a groundbreaking strategy in 1990 to protect the northern
spotted owl, with Jack Ward Thomas, who later served as Forest Service
chief.
Glickman said the team would hold its first meeting in Chicago Dec. 19
to consider changes in the laws protecting fish, wildlife and water
quality on national forests.
He said the panel's recommendations would be a significant step toward
developing a new forest planning process "that will be more consistent
with the public's expectations of how our national forests should be
managed in the 21st century."
"We cannot make management decisions that maintain healthy ecosystems
without a fundamentally sound planning structure in place," Forest
Service Chief Mike Dombeck said.