Embedded Files
This image comes from my page as an Emeritus Professor at Oregon State University.
I worked as a professor at OSU for 25 years, but as you can see, I was younger back then.
Secrecy and Bias
Secrecy and Bias
By Dave Sullivan
By Dave Sullivan
I am an emeritus OSU Business Professor, which is a fancy way of saying I worked at OSU for 25 years and retired honorably. I also am the current President of Oregon Websites and Watersheds, an educational non-profit described more thoroughly in the About Us page. Along with a talented and informal steering committee of Oregonians, we are working closely with Advocates for School Trust Lands, a national non-profit organization, whose motto is: "Working to ensure trust lands remain an endowment for today’s and future generations of schoolchildren as intended since the founding of our country."
Despite the last paragraph, this KeepTheChildrensForest.Org website shouldn't be about us, it should be about Oregon's school children and how to make their Trust Lands as profitable as possible. But any attempt to expose inconvenient facts will prompt attacks on our motives, so I need to explain why -- along with lots of help from others --I built this website.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
This page contains six sections:
How I Learned about the Elliot: This section describes how I slowly concluded the Elliott State Forest is being deliberately mismanaged by the State Land Board and the Department of State Lands.
Hidden Information: Just finding out basic information has required filing formal Public Records requests along with lots of journalistic investigation.
Secret Meetings: The public knew planning meetings were happening, but the public was kept from attending -- even as observers.
Biased Advisory Committees: People who care about active forest management were excluded or marginalized from the planning process while the DSL/OSU plan was created.
My Overall Conclusions: A summary of what I've learned.
My Promises: I conclude this page with promises about what I will do.
My first trip to the Elliott State Forest was in February 2020. I went with my wife and Bob Zybach to look at the Cougar Pass Fire Lookout tower. I used my trusty quadcopter to take this picture because the lookout tower was too rotten and dangerous to climb safely.
How I learned about the Elliott
How I learned about the Elliott
Unless you care about my life and background, you should skip this section.
Unless you care about my life and background, you should skip this section.
Why do I care about forestry?
Why do I care about forestry?
My interest in forestry began as a child while hiking and camping. Then, after initially flunking out of college, I spent a year planting and thinning trees on work crews. This was HARD work, and I promised myself to become a timberland owner rather than an hourly grunt who worked on other people’s property.
That promise took almost twenty years to meet, but eventually I was able to purchase cut-over timberland by maxing out my credit cards. I planted over 25,000 trees on my land, mostly working by myself on weekends because I had a full-time job at OSU and was seriously short of cash. Each seedling cost $0.22, and it felt like buying a long-term lottery ticket as each tree went in the ground.
Once I bought my timberland, I wanted to learn everything I could about forestry. So I became an active member of the Oregon Small Woodlands Association. In the past thirty years, I've visited hundreds of tree farms, mill sites, and research forests on forestry tours. I joined the Board of Directors of the Benton County chapter so I could rub shoulders with other board members; then I joined the state-wide OSWA Board of Directors. I also read forestry textbooks, academic journals and extension publications.
It's now thirty years later, and I live on my timberland in a home I designed and built myself. Those "lottery tickets" that I planted have become merchantable trees, and I've sold thousands of them as logs. My investment has paid off handsomely: I've harvested roughly three times more timber than the property cost me, and the timberland is worth at least ten times what it cost in 1989. Owning timberland is not a get-rich-quick scheme, but it is quite profitable.
Why do I care about fire lookout towers?
Why do I care about fire lookout towers?
I grew up in the 1950s and 60s in a family that liked to backpack. So as a kid, I visited a lot of fire towers when they were active and got to visit with the lonely folks who watched over Oregon's forests.
Now that I have my own timberland, I have the perfect location to build an awesome fire lookout tower of my own. So I've filled out lots of paperwork and received formal land use approval to build a fire lookout tower on my timberland in Polk County.
Naturally I've been exploring how fire towers are built as I've been designing my fire lookout tower. To make a long story short, this led me to establish Sandbox Designs, a nonprofit organization whose educational mission is simple: "To promote the open source development of timber framed towers."
Why save the Cougar Pass Lookout Tower?
Why save the Cougar Pass Lookout Tower?
Bob Zybach (PhD, Oregon State University, Environmental Sciences) has spent the last forty years researching and documenting the history of Oregon's forests. When he learned about my interest in fire lookout towers, he suggested I should visit the Cougar Pass Fire Lookout Tower in the heart of the Elliott State Forest. He explained the Cougar Pass lookout was the last remaining lookout in the Elliott State Forest and was in sad shape after decades of neglect.
In February 2020, Bob and I traveled to see Cougar Pass together, and we prepared a proposal for a Cougar Pass Lookout Education Center (available at www.cougarpass.org). When we presented the Cougar Pass proposal to the Department of State Lands, their formal response came quickly: Ryan Singleton, the DSL forester for the Elliott State Forest wrote:
"Because of the potential transfer of the Elliott to Oregon State University, the Department of State Lands is unable to dedicate time and resources to a potential project at this point in time."
Later, I chatted with Howard Verschoor, the Oregon chapter director of the Forest Fire Lookout Association, who made a continuing efforts to restore the Cougar Pass lookout from 1999 to 2003. He reports, "We kept getting put off and put off, so eventually we gave up."
Deliberate mismanagement
Deliberate mismanagement
The Department of State Lands has been letting the Cougar Pass lookout rot--and has rejected all outside efforts to help--so I began to wonder: Is the entire Elliott State Forest being managed in the same way?
It didn't take long to find out the Department of State Lands says it cannot make money -- and has been losing money -- on the Elliott State Forest. This made no sense to me, the Elliott is filled with mature trees on some of the most productive timberland in Oregon. But as I began trying to find out how this was possible, I ran into roadblocks while trying to collect information.
We received this highly redacted contact list when we filed our first Public Records so we could send information members of their Elliott Advisory Committee.
When we filed a similar request of OSU so we could communicate with their Science Advisory Council, we received this formal reply:
Under Oregon Public Records Law, these e-mail addresses are exempt from disclosure pursuant to ORS 192.355(40).
2. Hidden Information
2. Hidden Information
I spent my professional career collecting and organizing information to help people make better decisions: I started as a manufacturing accountant, became a corporate finance manager, went back to school to get a doctorate in information systems, and then spent 25 years researching and teaching about information systems at OSU. So in April 2020 as I began to learn about plans to give OSU control of the Elliott State Forest, my first step was to look for factual information, but I quickly began running into dead ends and roadblocks:
I couldn't find the basic financial statements necessary to understand how the Elliott is being managed.
I couldn't find written management plans (past or present) for the Elliott.
I couldn't find any professional cruises to learn in detail about timber on the Elliott.
I couldn't find out when and where people were meeting to discuss research or management possibilities.
I couldn't see the underlying data models and assumptions about research proposals.
My father, J. Wesley Sullivan, served on the State Board of Forestry and was the editor of the Statesman-Journal newspaper in Salem, Oregon. He died in 2008, but he taught me the first step in forming an informed opinion is to collect facts. Journalism 101 teaches to find out the Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. Only after you have the facts does it make sense to begin the process of deciding what to do. He also taught me how hard it can be to get public employees to willingly disclose information or follow Oregon's Public Records and Meetings Laws.
Here’s one of many possible examples that convinced me information was deliberately being hidden:
From: Bob Zybach <ZybachB@ORWW.org>
Subject: Elliott Forest: Budget
Date: December 10, 2019 at 9:05:44 PM PST
To: Meliah Masiba <Meliah.M.Masiba@state.or.us>
Hi Meliah:
Thanks for the discussion today. The one thing I was hoping to find out was the budget for OSU planning and the HCP. How much has been spent in the past 12 months on these costs and where is the money coming from? [Emphasis added]
I have been trying to get these numbers for the article I am writing with a December 16 deadline.
Thanks for any help on this.
Bob
Dr. Bob Zybach never received a reply. My early requests for basic factual information fell on similarly deaf ears.
In contrast, both the Department of State Lands and the OSU College of Forestry had web pages about the Elliott State Forest that explained how inclusive they wanted the planning process to be. For example, the Department of State Lands Elliott page said:
Public engagement opportunities are planned for later in 2020. To date, public informational meetings have been held in Coos Bay, Portland, Salem, and Roseburg.
Similarly, the College of Forestry Elliott page said:
Broad involvement and transparency will be vital throughout this process ...
The disconnect between public statements and actual actions really bothered me, so I began filing formal Freedom of Information -- Public Records Requests, and this allowed me to find out basic facts about what was being done. For example, I asked about recent and expected timber sales, and after a month, I received an answer:
... no timber sale or harvests have been completed since ODF management of the forest ended in June 2017. No timber sales are expected in the next two years.
I also asked about how much was being paid to consultants for planning, and after a month:
HCP work: The multi-year ICF, Inc. contract is for a total of $885,000. $240,000 has been expended to-date.
Decoupling work: Oregon Consensus was contracted with in 2018 to produce a report on decoupling potential. Payments totaled $132,000.
Research forest work: Oregon Consensus is facilitating the advisory committee and other workgroups. Their multi-year IGA is for $289,000. $184,000 has been expended to-date. OSU’s multi-year IGA is for $1 million. $660,000 has been expended to-date.
These formal requests were effective at forcing public disclosure: the Department of State Lands began posting the same information on their website that our Public Records requests forced them reveal to us.
This screen-capture shows the Home page for the Elliottpedia, a mockup of how the OSU College of Forestry could use a Media-Wiki engine to conduct its Elliott Forest planning in the public -- rather than in secret meetings and discussions as has been done until recently. To view this Elliottpedia mock-up in more detail, please visit www.Elliottpedia.Org for a few minutes.
This screen-capture shows the Home page for the ElliottArchive, available at www.ElliottArchive.Org.
While substantial progress at disclosing basic information has been made in the last few months, lots of important information about the Elliott State Forest remains hidden and unorganized. I’ve proposed two simple ways to begin making information public:
Create an Elliottpedia to organize general information about the Elliott State Forest. A mock-up Elliottpedia is available at www.elliottpedia.org. I made this mock-up for the OSU College of Forestry, and it took less than a day for the idea to be formally rejected. Michael Collins, the College of Forestry’s Director of Marketing and Communications, wrote:
Right now, I think everyone involved in the process is primarily concerned with sharing work products associated with the potential transition of the Elliott into a research forest. All Elliott work product documents to date can be found on either OSU’s or DSL’s websites devoted to the process (and in most cases, both). I think providing updates on the process is the maximum amount of bandwidth we can handle at this time.
What really bothered me was this response's dishonesty about the OSU and DSL websites: they didn't list a single upcoming meeting date or time for any committee or subcommittee (and if someone somehow found out about these meetings’ time and location, none of them were open to the public), subcommittee memberships were completely hidden, and the only materials that had been released were summaries of what was being done ... all the raw data was kept hidden which effectively precluded anyone else from preparing alternative research scenarios or participating in the process.
Create an ElliottArchive to organize historical information about the Elliott State Forest. A mock-up ElliottArchive is available at www.ElliottArchive.org. Although this proposal has been studiously ignored, the importance of an ElliottArchive to preserve its history is illustrated by what I learned through a Freedom of Information -- Public Records request. Historical records are scattered all over, have been thrown away though “retention policies” or are stored in poorly labeled boxes. Ali Hansen, DSL Communications Manager wrote:
"DSL has approximately 75 boxes of documents related to the Elliott, as well as one file cabinet containing Elliott files. Many of these records were transferred from ODF when management of the Elliott was transferred to DSL. The records have been cataloged at a high level – please see attached list. Records have not been indexed; most have not been digitized."
Conclusion: Public shaming combined with formal Public Records requests and the threat of legal follow-up was required to break through the DSL’s stonewalling about financial, management and planning information. Powerful tools exist to organize and present information about the Elliott State Forest, but it appears neither DSL nor OSU want to use collaborative tools because they want to retain control and selectively release carefully curated information.
3. Secret Meetings
3. Secret Meetings
Until the last couple of months, OSU's College of Forestry has held nearly all research planning meetings outside the public view. For example, until summer 2020 when I began publicly shaming the College of Forestry, to the best of my knowledge, all meetings of the Science Advisory Panel were secret, and all materials that Panel received, discussed or produced were secret. Similarly, until recently, meetings of the DSL’s Elliott State Research Forest Advisory Committee haven’t been open for public observation or comment.
For example, I received the following email message from the College of Forestry's acting dean:
From: Davis, Anthony S <anthony.davis@oregonstate.edu>
Date: Wed, May 27, 2020 at 8:28 AM
Subject: Re: Deciding how to manage the Elliott State Forest
To: Dave and Barb Sullivan <drdavesullivan@gmail.com>
Cc: Collins, Michael <Michael.Collins@oregonstate.edu>
Hi Dave,
Thanks again for reaching out and sharing your ideas about how to collaborate with the Science Advisory Panel. As you know, I recently charged the OSU-led Science Advisory Panel to support “the development of an inclusive vision for the Elliott State Research Forest that emphasizes long-term discovery and transformation of research capacity in forest ecosystems.”
Our next meeting with the Science Advisory Panel is scheduled for Friday, May 29, and we will be discussing the process that the panel will use to receive and share comments, questions, and information from the public. We will also discuss how we want to share updates about our progress, work, and the data we utilized to make decisions.
If you have additional thoughts, questions, or ideas, please email elliott.research@oregonstate.edu to ensure they will be reviewed by me, the Science Advisory Panel, and my team. Following the meeting on May 29, I’ll send you an update and will post a recap of the meeting on our website.
Sincerely,
Anthony
ANTHONY S. DAVIS, PhD
Interim Dean
To put this email message in context, I’d made a variety of recommendations about how the College of Forestry should begin making information publicly available. So the Dean of the College of Forestry wrote to say my ideas would be discussed in a meeting that I was not allowed to attend. Because this meeting was held with Zoom, it would have only taken a few mouse clicks to allow me to observe. Instead, weeks later I received an abbreviated written meeting recap. This meeting’s purpose was ironic: to discuss in secret how and when to begin sharing information with the public.
So for the first year and a half, a critical period of time while the College of Forestry spent over $800,000 of Department of State Lands funds to create the Elliott State Research Forest Proposal, no one from the public could attend or provide any ideas during the College of Forestry's secret meetings. Today, now that a highly polished Research Forest Proposal has been publicly released, the College of Forestry has begun allowing outside observation of its Science Advisory Panel's activity.
Conclusion: Nearly all of the Elliott State Research Forest Proposal was developed in secret meetings the public could not attend. Only now that over $1,000,000 has been spent by OSU and Oregon Consensus preparing the proposal is the public being allowed to participate. This hypocrisy is best described as “public engagement theater.”
This link will take you to the list of people who were selected to be on the Elliott State Forest Advisory Committee. Despite inquiries, we have been unable to find out who selected these people, what criteria were used in the selection process, or whether anyone outside the Department of State Lands was consulted about the selection process.
4. Biased Advisory Committees
4. Biased Advisory Committees
The Department of State Lands says the Elliott State Research Forest Advisory Committee (ESRFAC) “represents a variety of perspectives on the forest.” Certainly, nearly every environmental organization -- from the Oregon Outdoor Council, Nature Conservancy, Oregon Hunter’s Society, Audubon Society and Wild Salmon Center -- all have their representatives on the Advisory Committee.
So who was excluded? Nearly everyone with actual forestry experience or an interest in active forest management.
Perhaps the most blatant exclusion is everyone from the Oregon Department of Forestry: this group of forestry experts managed the Elliott State Forest for many decades until the Department of State Lands summarily fired them about three years ago.
The next most blatant exclusion: all industrial landowning timber companies! No one from companies like Weyerhaeuser, Georgia-Pacific, Lone Rock, Plum Creek, Menasha, Roseburg Forest Products is on the committee. These companies own the majority of the land surrounding the Elliott State Forest, and yet they weren’t allowed to have anyone represent their perspective on the ESRFAC.
In April 2020, I took these concerns to Vicki Walker, Director, Oregon Department of State Lands, by writing:
I'd like to learn more about how the Elliott State Research Forest Advisory Committee was selected. For example, why isn't anyone listed as representing the Oregon Small Woodland Association (OSWA), the Society of American Foresters (SAF), or the Associated Oregon Loggers (AOL)? These are the three largest and most influential groups associated with forestry in Oregon, so they should have a seat at the table. Also, no one is listed from any industrial companies like Weyerhaeuser, Longview Fiber, Simpsons or Hull-Oakes. Finally, no one represents the Oregon Department of Forestry, but for a long time they managed the forest and obviously would have a valuable historical perspective to add to any discussions. Given the size of the committee, I find these exclusions really strange and I'd like to understand how those choices were made.
Also, I'm hoping to be added to the committee as an OSWA representative. What would be the process to make that happen? I've been an OSWA member for over twenty years and I've served on their statewide Board of Directors as well as serving on the Benton County OSWA Chapter's board of directors.
Vicki Walker's response was brief. She declined to offer any ideas about how people were selected for the Advisory Council, so that process remains completely hidden. Instead, she wrote:
I regret it is not possible to add parties to the Advisory Committee as that committee has been functioning for over a year now and is well underway in its work.
At least one person resigned from the Advisory Committee ... and he had actual forestry experience. It's my second-hand understanding he resigned because his voice was having no effect. So his departure left the committee even more unbalanced but his name still appears on the committee's roster.
I have similar concerns about the membership of the College of Forestry’s Research Advisory Committee, but this page is already too long, so I won't describe them in detail.
These committees are biased in another way: they have managers who carefully filter information and access to the committees. DSL has contracted with Oregon Consensus to manage these committees and encourage them to arrive at a group consensus. I wanted to know more about how much money these committees cost to operate, so I after my initial inquiries were rebuffed, I filed a formal Freedom of Information -- Public Records request. After a month delay, Ali Hansen, the DSL Communications Manager wrote that DSL had paid Oregon Consensus $316,000 as of June 2020. That figure doesn’t include travel costs, facility rentals or other fees. So a lot of money has been spent to carefully manage what information gets to these committees and insulate them from outside influence.
Conclusion: A lot of money and time has been spent on advisory committees to ensure they arrive at a foregone conclusion: to support the State Land Board’s plan to transfer the Elliott State Forest to Oregon State University. Given the biased committee membership and costly methods used to shield these committees from public involvement, these committees should not be viewed as independent or representative of public opinion.
Unlike a school boy, a Trustee can't wear two hats and provide undivided loyalty to the Trust's beneficiaries.
Politicians are especially susceptible: they make promises to voters in order to get elected, and then if their political office puts them in charge of a Trust, they naturally will have divided loyalties.
5. My Overall Conclusions
5. My Overall Conclusions
State Land Board
State Land Board
The overall situation is fairly simple: harvesting trees on the Elliott State Forest is politically inconvenient, so the State Land Board decided to:
Stop all active forestry on the Elliott. This involved firing the Oregon Department of Forestry and stopping all logging, The DSL forester who oversees the Elliott works out of the Bend office, four-and-a-half hours away. He has been told not to harvest anything commercially from the Elliott State Forest, and he has taken these instructions literally, so along with not harvesting trees, he denies requests to harvest things like mistletoe, mushrooms or huckleberries.
Attempt to sell the Elliott State Forest in 2016 for the low-ball figure of $220.8 million dollars ... and that attempted sale was first reversed by the State Land Board and also subsequently ruled illegal by the courts.
Give the Elliott State Forest to the College of Forestry at OSU, but OSU refused to put up any money to finance the sale or even to write a management plan for free. So the Department of State Lands signed an intergovernmental agreement to pay OSU $1,000,000 to put together a plan for a research forest, and it gave OSU more than 2 years to write the plan.
Create a false "public involvement" cover story by appointing a biased advisory council, making their meetings secret, and spending hundreds of thousands on professional facilitators whose stated goal is to arrive at "consensus."
Hide as many facts about this process as possible until people began forcing them to respond through formal Public Records requests. Then pretend the information had been available all along.
Now that OSU has finally (after more than two years) written a plan for a research forest, the State Lands Board has a problem: the Elliott State Forest is worth a lot of money, and OSU doesn't want to pay for it. The Elliott State Forest is some of the best timberland in the world and is filled with Douglas Fir trees of harvestable age, so it's easily worth more than a billion dollars ... we estimate it to be worth $1.2 to $1.5 billion.
This presents a huge problem: the general public and the state legislature won't want to pay full value for this forest. So I’ve concluded the State Land Board has no intention of following its fiduciary responsibility to the Common School Fund and will attempt to give the Elliott Forest to OSU for pennies on the dollar.
I also expect they will delay indefinitely. For example, at their December 8, 2020 meeting, they announced a new schedule through the end of 2022. Obviously, if they delay long enough, someone else will inherit this problem. In the meantime, the Elliott State Forest remains completely shut down -- no harvesting whatsoever -- so the radical environmentalists continue to win by default. The real losers are our children, and of course, the rural communities near the Elliott State Forest. Ultimately, this is hardball politics between urban environmentalists who want to shut down all logging and rural people who don't understand why people so far away should be making these decisions.
Confusion about OSU
Confusion about OSU
I worked at OSU over 25 years, and I love the place. That's why I'm so sad and confused about OSU's role in this process. The OSU that I know and love would never try to steal from Oregon's K-12 children, and the College of Forestry that I know and love would never willingly convert productive timberland into a de facto wilderness area.
So I personally suspect OSU was mislead when they volunteered to get involved in this process. I expect the then-OSU-President, Ed Ray, was told the Department of State Lands would select a well-balanced Elliott State Forest Advisory Committee that would create a consensus plan for running a research forest. Why would he suspect the committee would be so lopsided and biased? Why would he suspect OSU's "ownership" of the research forest would be controlled by rules written primarily by environmental groups who view logging as evil. If this is what happened, it's not too dissimilar from how a drug addict gets hooked: The first steps seem innocent enough: a dealer (the State Land Board/Department of State Lands) suggests trying things and offers stuff for free. The initial experience seems positive, and it's only later -- after it's difficult to back out -- that downsides become apparent.
Because all important decisions about the DSL/OSU Elliott State Research Forest plan have been made behind closed doors, we probably never will know how such an unbalanced plan came to be written.
Because OSU's role in this planning process is so perplexing, this website has a Questions for OSU page. If we get answers from OSU, we will update the website accordingly.
Wearing two hats: Divided loyalty
Wearing two hats: Divided loyalty
I've come to the conclusion the biggest problems with the Elliott State Forest come from a fundamental flaw in Oregon's Constitution: Putting political leaders in charge of managing the Common School Trust Lands.
This problem is well described by Portland Attorney, Kathryn Walter, in a Cascade Policy Institute article titled: "Legal Analysis Finds Land Board in Breach of Trust over Elliott State Forest":
The appointment of the State Land Board as trustee in Oregon’s constitution likely violated trust principles from the trust’s beginning. A trustee has a duty to act honestly and with undivided loyalty to the interests of the trust and its beneficiaries. By virtue of the Board members’ political roles, the Board members cannot offer undivided loyalty to the beneficiaries because they are beholden to so many competing interests.
Now consider how politicians get elected: they make promises to voters, and the voters expect the politicians to follow through while in office. For example, KateBrownForOregon.Com says:
[Kate Brown] is standing up to Washington politicians who have walked away from America’s commitment to combat climate change and is working to make Oregon a national leader in clean energy, reducing emissions, and conservation. ... Climate change threatens Oregon’s economy, contributes to raging wildfires, and threatens our Oregon way of life.
If someone makes this sort of promise to voters in order to get elected, it's hard to imagine this person will have an "undivided loyalty to the beneficiaries" when it comes to managing the Elliott State Forest within the Common School Trust Lands. Instead, it should be no surprise to find all logging on the Elliott State Forest is permanently stopped in the name of climate change. Meanwhile, Oregon's schoolchildren get shortchanged: their Trustees are more interested in their political agendas than in making the Trust's property profitable.
A pinky promise is a traditional gesture practiced among children involving the locking of the pinkies to seal a promise.
6. My Promises
6. My Promises
No one wants to work with an unreliable or inconsistent partner, and we will need to build an ever-growing team of supporters if we want Oregon's Common School Land Trust to once again be managed for our schoolchildren rather than for political purposes. So this section contains solemn pinkie promises that I will not break.
Promise #1: I will work to maximize the profit from Common School Trust Lands because I believe that is the right thing to do for Oregon's schoolchildren. I have no real objection if other people want to sequester carbon, pay OSU professors consulting fees, conduct forestry research or any other political agendas as long as those agendas are paid in other ways -- not by raiding the Common School Fund.
Promise #2: I won't accept money for working on this project. I'm comfortably retired and can afford to volunteer my time. So unlike virtually everyone else on the other side of the fence, I won't be tapping into government funds.
Promise #3: I will work to amend Oregon's Constitution so the Trustees of the Common School Fund no longer have divided loyalties. It's just too tempting for politicians to divert Common School Funds toward other uses than our schools. Other states have successfully made this important transition; Oregon can do it too.
Promise #4: I won't quit if people attack my character or motives. One of the real advantages of growing older is I no longer look to others to validate my self worth. Also, I not in this fight for fame or glory ... I'd much prefer to remain in the background.
Promise #5: I will be open and honest about what I am doing. I'm the son of a newspaper editor, so I believe, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." A corollary to this promise is: I will work to reveal what Oregon's government is actually doing with its School Trust Lands and Common School Funds.
Promise #6: I will do my best to reach a wide audience and communicate in clear, understandable English. Here's a counterexample lifted from the final version of the OSU Elliott State Research Proposal:
In the future, forestry must conserve biological diversity, minimize fragmentation and enhance habitat for species of concern, optimize carbon storage, and provide for recreation activities while still meeting fiber demands of a growing population. Forestry and its science should draw upon the wisdom, knowledge and history of indigenous partners to learn how to ethically approach and apply management so that nature and people may thrive. Forestry needs to support and sustain rural economies with skilled jobs that support families and livelihoods. Forestry needs to protect and promote the health and well-being of rural communities through ecosystem services and places to recreate. The practice of forestry must maximize its contributions to societies to offset global warming. Forestry can accomplish this by yielding sustainable, renewable and value-added timber for homes and cost-effective mass timber products for commercial wood buildings that displace carbon-emitting steel and concrete construction with carbon sequestering wood products. To ensure we practice forestry in a manner that provides these multiple values on a sustainable basis will require operational scale research in representative settings that can seed enhanced methods and practices that can be implemented on forest lands across the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
Promise #7: I will promote the super job foresters are currently doing in Oregon's private forests. Oregon's cut-and-run forestry days are long gone, and Oregon has one of the strongest forest practice acts in the nation. Private forests are not all managed the same, so they have a lot of diversity, but one thing is constant: private landowners care deeply about their land, and collectively, their lands are managed well. Active forest management has a MUCH lighter touch on the land than other types of agricultural farming, and our forests produce needed products.
Cross my heart and hope to die,
-- Dave Sullivan
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse