Controversy erupts over OSU’s plan to cut older trees at its McDonald research forest. But are they old growth?

That operation, known as the Woodpecker Harvest, which encompasses over 60 acres of trees around Cronemiller Lake near a popular hiking trail, was slated to begin Monday. But so far no trees have been felled, according to Oregon State University officials at the College of Forestry, including the college’s dean, Tom DeLuca.

That’s because the college has tapped an ecologist and silviculturist from within the College of Forestry to conduct a review of the planned harvest site, DeLuca said, to ensure the operation aligns with the forest’s current management plan.

Pollock and others have repeatedly criticized the college’s latest push to update the management plan for the 11,500-acre McDonald-Dunn Forest, which they claim is happening largely behind closed doors — claims DeLuca has previously called unfounded.

But that’s not the only concern. Earlier this month, the college’s computer modeling of the impacts of proposed forest management approaches drew a slew of skeptical comments at a public meeting hosted by the College of Forestry, including from an OSU faculty member.

“We really take that feedback seriously,” Ober said by phone.

Activists like Pollock, however, remain concerned for the future of McDonald-Dunn’s old-growth trees.

The Woodpecker Harvest

Defining old-growth trees can be tricky, as the ages in which trees mature vary from species to species and depend on all sorts of factors, such as water and sunlight access.

According to DeLuca, tree stands within the planned Woodpecker Harvest are not considered old-growth.

For context, OSU oversees 15,000 acres of research forests across the state where students can study and gain practical work experience. McDonald-Dunn, about a 20-minute drive north of OSU’s main campus, is the university’s largest.

The harvest would help maintain overall health and vigor of the forest, she said, with thinning, for example, eliminating competition for larger dominant trees.

Woodpecker is one of 14 harvest operations scattered throughout McDonald-Dunn scheduled this year, Klumph said, and according to the College of Forestry’s resource page, which provides updates and closure notices for when operations occur, it’s also one of the largest by acreage so far this year.

The emotions ran high. One email addressed to President Murthy on June 24 is from Matt Trappe, a 2008 College of Forestry graduate, who argues OSU was embracing a forestry management philosophy “straight out of the 1950s.”

Those emails join more than 20 others, according to Pollock, who posted about the planned harvest on Facebook last weekend, urging people to call Murthy’s office and submit letters to Mid-Valley Media, to stop the cuts planned for June 24.

But by June 26, the operation had yet to gear up, though Ober said it’s a pause, not a halt.

Public concern around Woodpecker comes as the College of Forestry is also working on drafting a new management plan for McDonald-Dunn.

That process began two years ago, when DeLuca tapped two advisory committees to assist with the update: an external stakeholder advisory group consisting of different interests, including Tribes and timber companies, and an internal faculty planning group, largely consisting of forestry faculty.

Those committees began hosting a series of meetings, starting in the summer of 2022, and have so far hosted two community listening sessions and two input sessions, the most recent on June 5.

DeLuca has maintained the process has been more open than previous efforts, pointing to a partnership with Oregon Consensus, a state program that navigates differences on contentious subjects to oversee public outreach.

In the meantime, the forest is operating under its 2005 plan. But that wasn’t always the case.

That 2005 framework was suspended in 2009, leaving the forest without a formal plan for a decade. Then interim-dean Anthony Davis reinstated the 2005 plan in 2019 and issued a moratorium on cutting trees more than 160 years old. That move followed OSU’s controversial clear-cutting of nearly 16 acres of old-growth Douglas firs, including one tree that was over 400 years old.

Pollock, a frequent recreator at McDonald-Dunn, was the first person to raise the alarm about that harvest, which has fueled a deep distrust of OSU’s forest management. It also prompted him to form the local advocacy group Friends of OSU Old Growth.

He attended the June 5 public input to once again call out the planning process as biased toward timber interests. But he wasn’t the only one. Around 30 people attended the meeting, hosted on campus, in person, along with around 40 people who watched via Zoom.

Many voiced concerns about the first round of computer modeling done for the planning process. That modeling was conducted to evaluate the impacts of five proposed forest management strategies across a variety of measures at McDonald-Dunn: biodiversity, wildfire resistance, tree density and even revenue generated from harvests.

For many attendees, the modeling raised red flags, particularly when a scenario in which an increased percentage of the McDonald-Dunn Forest was held in protected reserves — increasing the habitat for certain species — led to a predicted decrease in biodiversity.

Additionally Beverely Law, an emeritus professor at the Department of Forest Ecosystems & Society who studies the impacts of climate change, fire and management on forests, also expressed concerns about the modeling.

“Your assumption on the carbon density metric appears to be, the more you cut out of these forests, the more resilient they will be. Where is the science that supports this assumption? Because increased thinning increases surface heat load, which would increase canopy heat load and make the remaining trees more vulnerable to heat stress,” she said, adding forests like McDonald-Dunn are vital in mitigating climate change.

Next steps?

According to Ober, the college is working on drafting responses to Law’s and others’ questions raised at the June 5 meeting, which she said will be posted later on the resource page’s website.

“And the second step is we’re looking into ways to potentially make adjustments to the model, according to suggestions that were provided at the listening session,” she said.

“And I’m glad to hear the concerns that were brought forward,” Ober added.

After both advisory committees give their feedback on the proposed scenarios, they’ll conduct a second round of modeling, with a yet-to-be scheduled additional public input session hosted afterward.

As for Pollock, any management scenario that means cutting century-old trees is a non-starter.

“They’re worth more standing,” he said.