Another Impassioned Plea for Forest Service R&D: from Phil Aune

The piece below is from Phil Aune, by way of Evergreen Magazine.  The Evergreen piece starts with a linked piece by Michael Rains called “Eliminating the Gold Standard in Conservation Science” The below is  Phil’s reply to Michael.

Since Phil and I were both involved in silviculture research, and he is much better at writing about it than I am… I thought I’d repost here. Plus I love the Heinrich Cotta quote.  At one time, part of my job in DC was defending the Experimental Forests.. currently the poor USG cousin of the  (to the Science Establishment) LTERs.

Phil doesn’t mention it, but I also remember the Elevational Transect Study that Tom Conkle did and published in 1973.  It made many of the geneticists of my generation leery of willy-nilly seed movement, and today I still look askance at folks who think they can predict which trees will grow where in 100-200 years based on down-scaled climate models. In fact, I tried to run down whether the elevational transect study is with us today, but had trouble finding anyone who knew.

Anyway, hat’s off to Phil!

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Side note

If you are confused about the budget bill vs. appropriations bills .. join the club.  Hopefully Andy or others will correct me if I get this wrong.. but here’s what the American Society for Cell Biology says..

If you’ve read recent news about Congress trying to pass “the budget,” you may have noticed that even Washington, D.C. reporters don’t always have a firm grasp on the details of what they’re covering.

The so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” (BBB) that’s been debated in Congress is not the federal budget. It’s actually a budget “reconciliation” bill. Reconciliation was originally designed to help Congress cut back when the federal checkbook exceeds the budget plan. But over time, this once-technical, green eyeshade tool has been used as a powerful way for the party in control to advance major policy priorities.

Reconciliation has been used to reshape significant federal programs. For example, President Clinton used it to “reform” the welfare system and President Biden used it to pass the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act—his two signature legislative achievements. It has also been used to deliver significant tax reductions.

This year, the BBB will use the Reconciliation process to make certain tax cuts permanent. Current versions of the bill suggest that lost federal revenue from these tax cuts will likely be offset by reductions in Medicaid and other safety net programs.

While the media focuses on the BBB, a separate and critical process is underway: the development of the actual Fiscal Year 2026 spending bills. Members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees are currently working on funding plans for all federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

If this is true, then R&D supporters can still work with Appropriators, particularly the Interior Environment and Related Agencies Subcommittee.

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Anyway, back to Phil.

The House version of the Big Beautiful Bill for the 2026 Appropriations basically zeros out both the State and Private and the Research and Development branches of the USFS.  Gone with a stroke of pen is over a 100 years of cooperative forestry efforts with the States and over a 100 years of Research and Development efforts.

We both spent a great part of our careers in R&D and the collective R&D efforts have led to the vast scientific knowledge base for management of federal, state, and private forest lands.  One of the key features of our R&D work was our abilities to establish long term data sets that most universities cannot do considering the shorter-term nature of their Masters and PhD efforts.

Some examples of long term research that I was personally involved with in our Redding, California silviculture sab’s efforts:

1. 50 year results of the Blacks Mtn. Experimental Forest Methods of Cutting Trials initiated in the late 30’s.
2. Blacks Mtn Interdisciplinary Biodiversity Study initiated in the early 1990’s involving large scale plots utilization two vastly different forest management treatments featuring high structural diversity and low structural diversity, subdivided by grazing/no grazing, and subdivided by prescribed fire/no fire.  These studies are now approaching 30 years of response measurements.
3. Garden of Eden fertilizer trials initialed in 1985 by Dr. Robert Powers where fertilizers, insect control, and brush/grass control were established on multiple sites throughout California.
4. Long Term Soil Productivity Studies.  The National Forest Management Act calls for the agency to do research and monitoring on the long-term productivity effects of their management practices (paraphrased).
5. In the late 80’s a group of soil scientists met with Chief F. Dale Robertson to express their concerns that nothing had been done about this mandate since the passage of FNMA.  The Chief agreed to a proposal they presented and found several million dollars to establish the National Long-Term Soil Productivity Research effort.
6. The same research design was established in just about every forested region of the U.S.  As an example, three loblolly pine locations were established including east Texas (dry sites), Louisiana (high sites), and South Carolina (coastal plains).  These were set up as 30 to 40 year efforts to determine short-rotation effects on soil productivity.
7. We had five major mixed conifer sites focusing on a 100 year rotation cycle.  All of the sites were established in the early 1990’s across the nation.  They are all approaching 25 to 30 years of age.  Publications have been presented posting results at age 5, 10, and 20 years.
8. Swain Mtn Experimental Forest Shelterwood regeneration experiments initiated in the 1960’s and 1980′.
9. Levels of Growing Stock studies for Ponderosa Pine and True Firs in the 1970’s.  The Ponderosa Pine LOGS study covered the entire ponderosa region.
10. Similar to all of these long term studies were other local efforts across every USFS Experimental Forest in the nation.  The Madison Forest Products Lab has developed studies in all aspects of wood and cellulose utilization.

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Last year I was at the Lab in Madison and as I approached the parking lots there were a couple of truck loads of Vaagen Timbers mass timber panels at the testing lab. As we move into nano technology and cell level wood technology, the national need for a large wood technology is needed more than ever.

The stupidity of canceling out the all R&D efforts of the USFS is staggering.  It reminds me of German Scientist Heinrich Cotta who said in 1816 (paraphrased):  “Amongst the problems in forestry are:

1. The many sites our crop grows on.
2. The long time it takes to grow our crop.
3. Those who practice much write little.
4. Those who practice little, write much.

Over 200 years later, those who practice little are writing much to destroy not only USFS Research and Development, but USFS efforts for continuing cooperative efforts with the States.

Those who have practiced much have collectively also written much, but after the Big Beautiful Bill, the USFS research and development effort will be silent if things stays the same in the final big but not so beautiful fill.