Jerry Franklin Oral History Interview, August 18, 2009

NOTE: [Technical problems resulted in the first several minutes of this interview not being recorded. Following the interview, Fred Swanson and Jerry Franklin compiled their notes on what had been said during this period of technical glitches, and these notes are presented at the beginning of the transcript that follows. The audio version of the interview begins with Jerry Franklin's tenth set of comments, as annotated below.]

FRED SWANSON: Our colleague historian Bill Robbins, asked if you have "papers" - that is, paper records of your work outside of publications and other very public sources.

JERRY FRANKLIN: No, I have not kept a good collection of such non-public papers in part out of the feeling that to do so would reflect conceit. But, in addition to publications and other rather obvious sources, information sources on my career include: Forest Service position descriptions; Videos of workshop performances and material for TV documentaries (both the final product and in some cases the raw material); Congressional testimony, which I have spent a great deal of effort to refine because of the potential impact. I have learned to not pull punches in this writing. For example, considering that my position on salvage logging would not sit well with Rep Brian Baird (D, WA), I realized that I would take heat regardless of my position, so I needed to be totally straight about my position; Written accounts of the "men's trips" - week-long, summer hikes by a group of like-minded men into remarkable places in the PNW mountains. 6-8 such accounts exist; Calendars. I have kept my calendars over the years. I need to develop a chronology of my work using them.

FS: What is the story behind your middle name "Forest"?

JFF: I think it is a family name. You need to check the birth certificate about the spelling. I've always spelled it with one "r", but the birth certificate may show the name with two. My mother was suspicious that the doctor had been drinking and he wrote down Jerry. Since they wanted me to be Gary, that is what they called me for the first 18 years of my life. The birth certificate said Jerry, however, so when I became an adult, I decided to use what was on my birth certificate. I should have just officially changed my name to Gary but I thought documents like birth certificates were not up for modification. I also thought at times of adopting J. Forest Franklin as my operational name, but that seemed way too pretentious. Wish I had done one of those two things!

Concerning my middle name, my mother said that it was a kind of intuitive thing for her - that I would go on and work so much with forests. Also, she said I was born as church bells rang to warn to evacuate Waldport, Oregon, where we lived, because a fire was approaching (that was the summer that Bandon burned).

FS: What was your first recollection of engaging with forests?

JFF: I remember being about 4 years old and my father taking me fishing. We walked about a mile from our house through young forest to Dead Lake (it was later renamed Fallen Leaf Lake - 20 acres in size). He told me to wait to feel a fish nibbling at the bait and then set the hook. When the nibble came, I jerked on the rod and the fish went flying over my head into the brush behind. A little while after that, maybe when I was 5, he took my sister and me for a walk along a forest trail and he had us lie down on our backs and look up at the canopy. He told us about how trees made different sounds in the wind.

Scouting (Boy Scouts) was very important in getting me out into forests. My dad was a scout master for a while, but then had to stop that when he began doing shift work in the pulp mill at Camas; the constantly changing schedule did not permit keeping a regular schedule of scout meetings. My uncle, though, had a management job at the mill and a schedule that permitted him to be a scout master for many years.

FS: Tell us a bit about your career ambitions.

JFF: I had rather conservative career ambitions. I do remember once saying to my buddy that I wanted to be a forest ranger and he said that we'd end up working in the mill like all the other guys.

I remember talking to trees when I was about 12. I was trying to be practical about my goals I set for myself about protecting trees. These are extraordinary forests; extraordinary trees.

FS: Did the trees talk back?

JFF: Not really, but saying things out loud makes them more real.

FS: Tell us something about student life.

JFF: After high school (where I was not a very good student) I went to Clark Community College for my first year. Then in the second year I went to Washington State U. - did some hell raising, learned to smoke and drink, and carouse. Joined a fraternity. But I also learned that was not the way to go. In 1956 at the end of the summer I remember being in the family car with my mother and father driving down to Oregon State University - they didn't say anything about it, but it seems like they knew I needed a change of scene and this was likely to be it. So, although it was right as fall term began, I got going at OSU and also got on a student traineeship with the Forest Service. Several people had a big impact on me: Bill Ferrell, of course, my parents, Bob Harris (PNW Station Asst. Director in '67-68) who said to me "go for it" right after the first meeting concerning possibly have Pacific Northwest participation in IBP (International Biological Programme) at Pack Forest in, I think it was, 1968. And I didn't think I was experienced and knowledgeable enough to take it on (I was 32). With that advice, I did.

FS: You told a great story during a field trip to Carpenter Mt. Lookout [on the Andrews Forest] a few years back with a group of students on a UW field trip. There we were at 5300 ft [elevation] looking out on the landscape below - Deer Creek, Upper Blue River and Lookout Creek - with the High Cascades right over there. You commented on how, when you first got there, one could not see any roads or clearcuts, which are now quite visible in many places in the landscape. Please retell the story.

JFF: I've always enjoyed getting to know properties - places. In summer 1957, I wanted to visit the back ridge of Andrews. Early that summer I was very uncomfortable about the idea of sleeping out in the forest by myself, but I pushed myself to do it. I remember passing the point of no return on the trail that day - the point beyond which there would not be enough light to return. Over the summer, I did that many times and got comfortable sleeping out alone.

FS: I remember when you told that story at Carpenter Lookout my reaction was, "You SOB, you did that with our research group, too. You got us out on an uncomfortable limb and there was no going back. Things like "New Forestry," which of course turned out to be damned important. Say a bit more about that approach to dealing with tough issues.

JFF: When it comes to facing something that makes you feel uncomfortable, I've always felt you just had to face it and overcome it. When opportunities arise, take the initiative. I've had lots of positive feedback for taking risks. But it is important to be adjustable; to be able to evolve.

This brings up leadership issues. I remember having a revelation participating in a National Academy of Sciences meeting about IBP and being surprised at how few people would stand up and exercise some leadership, even when the next step seemed obvious. It was partly a matter of personality and partly of not taking the big picture.

FS: Say some more about leadership. Describe key leadership skills. You're so good at bringing diverse people together and getting them working in significant harmony.

JFF: Some important leadership skills are: A personality willing to get out there, to get exposed. I think lots of leaders have a fear of being exposed for not knowing all that some folks might expect them to know; The ability to listen and get a sense of what the group is willing to do. My dad modeled that skill - that instinct - for me. He would have made a great sergeant. It's not good to impose your will on others (like a guy like Tilman does) [Dave Tilman, U. of Minnesota and long-time leader of the Cedar Creek Long-Term Ecological Research program] - a form of leadership to which people subscribe as inferiors; The ability to evolve, change, grow.

FS: It is interesting that a big part of your job, your role, over past decades is to lead public discussion of the past, present, and future of forests.

[beginning of audio record]

I was wondering about your mother and your father and what their work was? And about your father being an outstanding example of the leadership skills of listening and sensing the will and capacity of group to move forward. How about talking about their backgrounds and their influence on you, including the nature of their work?

JFF: Sure, well, basically most of the time when I was growing up, my dad worked in the paper mill and eventually he worked his way up as a foreman. The thing I remember most about my dad during my formative years was, first of all, he was a laborer; he was a worker in the paper mill and he worked shift work. He basically rotated between days and swing shift and graveyard shifts; and that was a very significant influence on our household. Because it was changing essentially on a weekly or bi-weekly kind of basis. But it was because of that that he was not able to continue to do the scout leadership work that he had 00:01:00done. My uncle on the other hand. Let me just say this about my dad too, when I was born he and another fella had a grocery store in Waldport, Oregon, and those were the depression years and in the end they couldn't make it. He came back to Camus and worked for a period of time driving a bakery truck; that was something he had done right after he left high school.

FS: Did he graduate from high school?

JFF: I don't think he did. My uncle, on the other hand, was in the management part of the paper mill and was the individual that was involved with a lot of 00:02:00the scheduling processes of the activities. The amount of pulp of different kinds that was going to be necessary to operate the machines. He was one of those sorts of human computational, human computers that, you know, have that incredible ability to manage very complex, multi-dimensional kinds of systems, and for that reason he was extremely valued by the paper mill. Since he was in management, he was able to carry on scout leadership activity and I ultimately was in his troop which was Troop 312 which was associated with the Presbyterian 00:03:00church. Each troop tended to be associated with some organization usually some church. And he ultimately got the Silver Beaver [award] from the Scouts for a lifetime of scout leadership activities. My oldest son, actually, has that now. We passed it on to him, he does a lot of cub scout activities. So, anyway, life was very, very difficult for a period of time there till he got the job in the paper mill. That probably got employment at the paper mill around 1940. I am 00:04:00sure I could find a record of it, but the other thing was he didn't only work shift work, but most of those formative years it was also WWII, and he had to work a lot of extra hours during that time. And another aspect of our living was that very distinctive was we couldn't afford a car, so the family walked everywhere pretty much. Mom went shopping for groceries on foot with a basket with wheels on it, and Dad walked to work. It wasn't until right until the end 00:05:00of the war that they accumulated enough money to afford a car. And that was right when we started camping.

FS: So how did camping fit into your engagement with forests?

JFF: Well that was really uh, that, really, I think locked in things in terms of my love of the forest. And the first year we went camping as a family we came to Government Mineral Springs and we camped with my uncle and his family, and I just loved it. And, you know, I played cars amidst this big ole trees, and I swung from vine maples. Vine maples were like a jungle gym. Then, the next year 00:06:001946, we went to La Wis Wis campground which is another beautiful old-growth camp ground on the then Columbia National Forest. And, then, the next year after that we camped at Longmire and Mount Rainier National Park, and so I had a whole string of years and uh it was at La Wis Wis that they had a guard station there and somebody they were growing tree seedlings in a cold frame; and it was a really at that time that I realized at the first time, you know, you could make a career out this stuff! And uh I think this was the first conscious time that I said, "Hey, that would be cool."

FS: So, how old were you at that point?

JFF: I was 8. That right? 1946, no I was 9. So, I was 8 when we went on our 00:07:00first big camping trip at Government Springs, and I was 9 when I went to La Wis Wis. Then I started decided right then, you know how kids start talking about what they're gonna do, and I remember talking with my buddy Gary Betts about how I'm gonna go into forestry, and he said, "Ahhh, no you're not," he said, "you're gonna be like the all rest of us and work in a paper mill and work in a paper mill the rest our lives." Well neither of us did.

FS: What did Gary Betts go do?

JFF: I don't remember what Gary Betts did. He died young. He died in his 40s I think. Uh, but, you know, my friendship with him turned out to be kind of a, 00:08:00very significant. And not only because he was my best friend when I was 5 and 6 and 7. But, also, he didn't want to be my best friend anymore when I got along to fourth and fifth and sixth grade. He was much more popular; he was a really slick kid; he was a nice kid, good looking and socially very adept, so I lost him as my best friend. And the loss of his friendship was obviously a traumatic event for me. I think it was significant.

FS: In what ways?

JFF: Well, I think was maybe was one of my first experiences with loss. And, certainly, was part of my experience of being a social - not necessarily social outcast - but, marginalized socially. It was a number of really tough years for a kid growing up. Which, in fact, lead me to do things pretty much solitary.

FS: Well, that could lead off to another set of topics, but one thing that was 00:10:00interesting during our walk yesterday was some of the aspects of the progression of your sense of what you wanted to be when you grew up; and you mentioned a few of them in this discussion, but you mentioned others yesterday, so can you think back and sort of...?

JFF: Well, we talked about what sort of ambitions I had for myself and I think you know that, for me, maybe for a lot of people, you know, your ambition and where you think you could go evolve over time, and for me, you know, I think I was always relatively modest in terms of my expectations for myself, because I 00:11:00wasn't sure of what I could do. And I didn't ever like to set up goals for myself I didn't think I could achieve. I didn't like to run at brick walls. Anyways, so, when I went into forestry I really didn't have any vision other than maybe going to work for the Forest Service and becoming a ranger, maybe it was about that sophisticated. And then when I went into research, you know, there was one point in my career where my assignment was actually upper slope forests; and I love the upper slope forests; and, in fact, I was really glad that I had that assignment rather than Douglas-fir, because everybody was 00:12:00working in Douglas-fir. The alpine montane and sub-alpine was where the neat country was.

FS: You said at one point you wanted to be the world authority...

JFF: I was absolutely, you know, going to become the world authority on the alpine forests, various people have different names for it, but basically the high elevation, true firs, spruce, hemlock forest and I worked at that very aggressively and that was one of the reasons I went to Japan in 1966, which lead me to ultimately to go there for a year in 1970. That was because Japan had a lot of sub-alpine forests that had a lot of the same species that ours did. And 00:13:00I could have maybe thought about the Himalayan or the Chinese, but the Chinese was not accessible at that point and there really wasn't any opportunity for me to get into the Himalayan. So, anyways, certainly, in the early '60s that's where my focus was.

FS: Why did you look to Asia rather than Europe?

JFF: Well, I'm not sure what it all was. I have always had a certain distaste for Europe. You know, I can't really, I guess, I really can't explain why. Certainly, one of the reasons I looked to Asia was that we had a lot more affinities to Asia in terms of our floras and the kinds of forests that were 00:14:00there. Certainly, the sub-alpine forests of Asia are much more diverse than Europe, but I've also never really been attracted by the culture, the history of Europe. Maybe some of it reflects, you know, the orientation that came out of WWII, and, uh, I don't know. Anyways, it turned out to be a good choice, because the majority of the academics that I was associated with, like Dick Waring, 00:15:00chose Europe as the place to go. And again, you know, it's a little bit like avoiding Douglas-fir, go to some area where there aren't a lot of people going on, less competition, maybe there's more to be creamed off, maybe it's just a better opportunity. I don't know what all of the psychology of it was. It was explicit.

FS: This relates to some things I've wondering about and that has to do with 00:16:00East Coast U.S culture and European culture and that relates to questions to key points in your personal history when you left Corvallis. You went to Harvard Forest for a year and you seemed to know that you were at a key juncture in your personal life and your professional life where you were probably going to leave the Forest Service. One impression that I had was that you were shopping around on the East Coast. And, you know, there are the Ivy's [Ivy League schools] and big name places back there. And, I'm someone who did grow up in the east, but 00:17:00find myself much more comfortable on the West [Coast] by temperament and also attracted to think more across the Pacific from Tasmania all the way up through Japan and China and Harbin [China]. I can't articulate exactly what the feelings are, but I think there are some things where the nature of the academic traditions and sense of elitism expressed out of the East Coast and European cultures; whereas just by the social lore, you know, the Asians tend to be much more, to honor us, perhaps excessively, as visitors - just out of the way they 00:18:00conduct themselves regardless of us in standing in their home ground or ours. Anyway, can you talk a bit about things you considered options at that time?

JFF: Yeah, there's a lot there to talk about. Certainly, one of the things that drove me professionally, as I began to get more and more engaged with the broader world - of the ecological world - was an intense irritation of the way the western forests were ignored in the development of ecological theory and one 00:19:00stimulus to my energy and aggressiveness was by having those people in the East and in Europe take account of our forest. We are not going to have any theory that does not accommodate what we see in our forest, so there was a strong element of that at some point in my career. But, absolutely, when I went to Harvard Forest I was thinking about what I was going to do next. I was thinking there was some prospect of ... I think they were looking for a dean at Duke University and I went down there, I think, and visited, because I had some 00:20:00connection with Norm Christianson when I went down there to the Osteen lecture. Anyways, I was trying to decide whether or not I wanted to be a dean or not.

FS: Did you interview there or was it more of re-con?

JFF: No, I don't think I did, I think it was just a rec-con. And as I thought about it seriously, consciously for the first time I realized that deans deal with money and personnel issues, and that was not likely to, as I put it to myself, that isn't likely to make you smile when you get up in the morning. So, I very clearly thought about that and I thought about things like assistant director at stations [Forest Service Research Stations] or going into Washington D.C. [office of the Forest Service] because I was getting a lot of pressure from 00:21:00Bob Buckman [Associate Chief of the Forest Service for Research] to do a cycle in the Washington office, so they could spin us out to a potential station director position or something like that. And both Jack Thomas and I simply told him were not going to do that, you want to make us a station director that's fine. I think either of us would have accepted that, but neither of us were about to go through some sort of Washington office cycle in order to facilitate that. Bob Buckman struck back in his own way by refusing to give us 16s [GS grade 16 - the "super scientist" level], but anyways. So, no, in general, you're quite right [that] I had a prejudice against the eastern establishment and a sense that they were sort of the elite of ecological science, and I was 00:22:00irritated by the fact that they didn't take account of our western forest. But, I think by the time I went to Harvard Forest I had sort of overcome that. In fact, I had even thought about going east for a degree, I thought about going to Duke, I thought about going to Yale, but, in the end, I didn't want to leave the West to do that.

FS: It is interesting that you have become personal, close friends with Gene Likens who's probably the eastern guru [of ecology], and then you had a what looked to me like wonderful collaboration with Richard Forman at Harvard. So, these are guys who are in very different ways leaders back there. So, it seems 00:23:00you caught the sense of the East; in spite of the institutions having elitist characteristics to them, you really connected to individuals.

JFF: You know I had several possibilities. You know, John Gordon, when he was dean of Yale said, you know, we have a Chair [at Yale] for you anytime you are prepared to take it. And Gene Likens, when he was looking for an associate at Cary [Institute, Millbrook, NY], made it very clear that he would be very pleased to have me there. So, you know there were several possibilities I could 00:24:00have taken, and I just realized that my history was all here on the West Coast and I would give up way too much, you know, ultimately, I would not be able to do as much to make enough difference in the forest, if I was, in fact, to go back there.

FS: What was your thinking about going to the University of Washington. That was quite interesting to me, given the struggles during the IBP era between the 00:25:00Corvallis and the Seattle camps, and you were a major wieldier of swords; and the same guys you had done combat within the context with of IBP were still there and in power positons. So, what was your thinking, I take it to be some sort of balancing act, you know, wanting to stay with your beloved big old forests of the Northwest and wanting a platform to help the forests and uh you wanted to, you had a whole bunch of things you were playing off there and getting far enough away from Corvallis and the Andrews but not too far, you didn't carry any of the old baggage. So, how'd you do that?

JFF: I don't know that I really thought about it that much. It seemed to me the University of Washington seemed like a logical place to go. Especially, because I had a lot of conflict with Dale Cole and I think the previous year I had actually said something to perhaps the Dean who was Thorud, or I think I actually said something to somebody that I was, in fact, costing them a lot of money. Because you know basically Corvallis had eaten their lunch in the Olympics [National Park], eaten their lunch in Mount Rainer [National Park], it had eaten their lunch in Mount St. Helens. And, so, you know, our group at 00:27:00Corvallis had really moved into territory that was rightfully in the domain of the University of Washington. And I think I said something to them along the lines of you ought of just hire me. There were a whole lot of factors that related to this too. I was burned out, I had been working at Corvallis for ten years leading the group. You know, basically, my marital situation was in shambles and I knew unconsciously, if not consciously, I had to end that and move on. So, it was just an opportune time to do it, and it seemed like an 00:28:00appropriate place. So, when Thorud called me up and said we need a mid-career forest ecosystem scientist and they say that you're the best, it was kind of a no brainer. But, as you know, I tried to use it as a leverage a change in status in Corvallis. We went to Stoltenberg [dean of the College of Forestry at Oregon State Univ.] and said I'd like to stay. Stoltenberg couldn't have been happier to get rid of me, so there was no prospect of staying there. And, if I stayed, anyways it wouldn't have dealt with some of the personal issues. So, anyways, it was just a circumstance that was ideal. And I didn't worry a whole lot about the fact that there was some people there that were pretty angry at me. Dale Cole 00:29:00was certainly one, Stan Gessel was another one, because of my involvement with old-growth forest. [Cole and Gessel were senior faculty in soils and leaders of the UW IBP program.] He became increasingly angry after I went up there. I think if we'd been further along on the old-growth and all the crisis at that time - '85 and '86 - it might not have happened, because there would have been some people sufficiently angry at that point, that they would not have wanted me there. Stan became increasingly bitter about the environmental movement after he 00:30:00had worked so hard for so long to increase the productivity of the Northwestern forest.

So, anyway, it just seemed to one of those situations where everything fell into place. It was very logical. I think the key was having gone to Harvard Forest and sort of weakened some of the ties and gotten away for a while. I went by myself rather than taking Carol along and it was very clear to me I lived a very different lifestyle when I was by myself than when I was with her and that was certainly one of the goals I had in mind. I wanted to know how I behaved when I was just on my own. It was almost monastic period. Basically, everything came 00:31:00together and it was also a time I worked through the issues the personal issues, and I really come out in very different place than I was in for the first half of my career. For the first twenty years of my life I'd operated a lot from a position of inferiority, I was often a pretty aggressive individual. I was not 00:32:00confident; and in the mid-life period I became very centered. Basically, I became much more self-affirming, not requiring strong reinforcement, constant reinforcement from others about my adequacy. So, anyways, you look at it and say, oh my god, how could all of these things come together in this way.

FS: So, that was really transformative. Stuff that was probably developing over 00:33:00time, but that break made it look more like a step function?

JFF: Absolutely.

FS: That was time when you busted your ass to have the Andrews Forest have a future. And that was part of a test period to see if it could have a future after Jerry Franklin. So, you left [to see] if I and we could live on after you.

JFF: Actually, no, if there was some of that, it was unconscious, because the group had matured. And, you know, the perspective I had, I didn't have any 00:34:00doubts of the ability of that group to carry on without me anymore. In fact, my sense was, the time for my kind of leadership was over, I'd been in many senses a benevolent dictator. I pretty much ran things making decisions myself. The group matured to a point where they weren't going to let any individual make a decision. It was more of a collective.

FS: One thing that intrigued me. Oh man, I've got so many questions! [Chuckles] But, one of them is that you commented that deans don't get up in the morning 00:35:00and smile. I remember being on pulses [team building field gathering he organized] and you'd get up and yodel. And, partly, that's because you've kept close to the forest. You spend a lot of time in the forest. That's happened throughout your career and, whether your teaching or doing research or you're in your cabin, you're immersed in the forest. I picture a lot of people, academics, Forest Service scientists getting progressively more inside and less in contact with the muse.

JFF: I think that's true. But, you know, one of the other aspects of it is one 00:36:00of the reasons I'd get up on a pulse and yodel is because all of these people were people that had self-selected ourselves. And these were people that I cared about and knew cared about me. So, it wasn't the sort of thing were you're a dean and you got to take what's out there. So, I was out there with a bunch of people I enjoying being with and cared about. And who were there voluntarily, pretty much. And I knew who cared about me and what we're doing. So, that was in many ways a happy band. You know, a band of brothers, so to speak. So, that was 00:37:00another reason I could be happy. I was grateful to that group of people that I was with that they were willing to do this; that they were willing to follow me.

FS: Another thing about your career that is interesting and I think incredibly important in terms of making possible some of the huge changes that have occurred in management policy in this region and, therefore, a big chunk of the globe, was that you had one foot in the ecology world and one foot in the 00:38:00forestry world. You were the president of the Ecological Society of America and were given a major award of the Society of American Foresters. These are very different cultures, different ways of doing business, and then, when things come up, with things like the Forest Wars, people from the two cultures tended to be on two sides. And, yet, you had a foot in both camps. How do you view that? How do you think about that? Is there design there, happenstance? And how do you think of the impacts of that?

JFF: Well, it was where I was. And, so, you know, it's the place I chose to be. And the ecological side gave me a number of things. It gave me knowledge and, 00:39:00certainly, you know, there was the tendency toward being more environmentally oriented that went with the ecological [side] and it was also where the source of money was to do what I wanted to do. And at the same time, my goal was to really do good for forests, so, ultimately, that meant affecting forest policy and practice. So, it's just simply where I had to be. And it had disadvantages and it still does! In that your never fully accepted by either culture. You got 00:40:00no mama you got no papa. But given what I saw as my mission, it was the place I needed to be. And I was very aware that's what it was, but we end up that same sort of place today where the environmentalists know I won't carry their water for them, and the timber people know I won't carry their water for them. On the other hand, that's what gives you credibility in policy. I think most people accept that I'm really going to represent the interest of the forest as I best understand it.

FS: One thing I was curious about, as you moved into new arenas, how do you view the triggers of transitions? I remember, boy, must have been 20 years ago that I asked you to give a talk on the 9 lives of Jerry Franklin [1991 retirement talk]. And I remember at that time you could not fit all the major themes that 00:42:00were substantial into 9, and lots has happened since then. So, anyways, I'm wondering how you view your personal history and the major themes that you've worked on and how many were opportunities presented to you that you jumped on. How many of these things you created sort of de novo? I mean I'm thinking of things like Research Natural Areas and that whole program and Mount St. Helens and old growth and canopy/crane research. You know, pretty incredible portfolio that numbers a dozen or two where most of mortals feel really great if we have 00:43:00three or four in our career. (Chuckles)

JFF: Well, part of that had to do with opportunities. Part of it had to do with escalating vision with what could be done. You know I've always tended to opt where I can have the most impact. So those are typically where I'll make the decisions. But those decisions usually reflect an opportunity that comes on. You know, the Natural Areas thing, I dearly loved working on Natural Areas and that was an era, particularly in the '60s, where I didn't think we were ever going to set aside any large areas. The large set asides at that time were wilderness, 00:44:00and I couldn't influence that process. But, something I could do was really work hard to get some postage size samples of the ecosystem set aside, and there were a lot of other things you could accomplished at the same time by doing that in terms of research opportunities. So that's what I did. First, it started with just proposing a few Natural Areas, and then, working with the Northwest Natural Areas Committee, I realized there was an opportunity to do this more broadly and one of the keys was that we needed to have a plan! So that we didn't need to, 00:45:00every time we proposed a natural area, argue again the whole case, well why do 00:46:00you need this one? We needed a plan that laid it all out to say this one is to meet this need. In a matter of about a decade we were able to meet that point. And everybody accepts it, amazing! This is too easy; I can't believe it! You know you laid it out in a very logical fashion and the agencies and scientific community was prepared to accept it. And, you knew, I knew at the time that these were interim kinds of achievement.

FS: You said that these are interim effort and I wonder what you mean by that?

JFF: Well, by that I mean the plan isn't forever. And that basically, at some point in time your...if the environment, the social environment, policy environment continues to be sympathetic to this kind of thing, you'll revise it and probably enrich it more, but basically, hey, we got a plan now and other people can go from here. By that time, I was really into the ecosystem stuff, IBP, I was well into that, and I was actually with National Science Foundation by that time. That was sort of ok, that's done and I'm going to move onto 00:48:00something else. Other people can do this now. My worldviews and ambitions had escalated. We're going to do this old-growth stuff. And then congruent with that the opportunity was to really build the Andrews as a field station.

FS: What was the date on that?

JFF: Well, what I'm taking you know. We finished the plan for the RNA's [Research Natural Areas] in about 1974, something like that. Basically, I remember Ted Dyrness [Forest Service Research soil scientist] and Glanda Faxon 00:49:00[administrative assistant] coming back or me coming here. Anyway, we got together some place and did the finishing touches on the plan. Like on so many things, Ted ended up cleaning up the loose ends on things. So, that work had really been completed 1971 or 1972, so it was really just about tying a ribbon it.

FS: I'm interested in the general phenomenon and part of your M.O. [method of operation] which is to pass things on. And I was wondering if you could comment 00:50:00on that. How conscious is that? In this case, it seems like it was quite conscious. And it seems like there are a couple of elements of doing that, at least looking back at how you've done it. You're cultivating a project, a program, an experiment, like log decomp. [the 200-year log decomposition experiment implemented by Mark Harmon in 1985], and cultivating an individual, a community, such as the RNA's to do the carry-on work. It's not just build it and they will come. You've got to do some of the building it with some people who will help be the carry-on people. So, how do you view that?

JFF: Well, I think it has to do, again, in a way with, putting my time, my effort where I can have the greatest impact. And, basically, there are a whole 00:51:00bunch of elements to that. I also don't feel I'm the best scientist in the world. But I know I'm good at opening up new possibilities, creating new opportunities for things. And, so, I haven't thought a whole lot about it, because I just assumed that when you open up a new horizon, that, you know, there are going to be folks coming along that will be prepared to participate and ultimately take the leadership in those areas. And, so, you know in a sense what you see is a progression of horizons and there not just single, it's not 00:52:00like there [are things] all lined up in a progression. In fact, they tend to proliferate, to become branches.

FS: Well they do or they don't. In the case of the RNAs, that's sort of an uphill battle because it isn't a really well-funded program, but you had Sarah [Greene, Forest Service ecologist in charge of RNA for many years]. She was really a flag carrier and she had her friends and her communities, which include 00:53:00TNC [The Nature Conservancy] and BLM and so forth. So, the social network is really quite interesting. And the significance of RNA's has of course shifted tremendously, because, in the old days we could imagine them being these little postage stamps in a sea of plantations, but now that's not the case anymore. So, there's a community that continues to advocate, and I think they have some challenges in what they do, but there is action on much of them. But then there are some other places where there hasn't been, as far as I can see, the same kind of thing going, like the canopy crane. That doesn't have the...

JFF: No. For me, it isn't the canopy crane, it's Wind River [Experimental Forest]. And, so, if you look at what happened, now I got involved there in the early 70s with ecosystem stuff, and we really got great programs going and old-growth and natural forest and natural streams. Once we broke through and began to do that, the group did a tremendous job in the post-IBP period and then the critical thing was to get the LTER [Long-Term Ecological Research], to make sure we got that, so that for the large measure the future was assured. And you 00:55:00had a critical mass of financial resources and of people to continue that program, that's exactly what's happened.

FS: So, NEON will be the LTER for Wind River? [National Ecological Observatory Network]

JFF: Absolutely. It's going to assure that that site will continue to be a significant location for forest ecosystem research. And maybe the [canopy] crane goes down tomorrow, well it isn't just about the crane, it isn't just about canopy science. It's about a place that's accumulating a body of scientific information, and I've viewed it as being absolutely critical to have some other locations. You know, I tried to argue this with Barbara Bond [OSU professor and Principal Investigator of Andrews Forest LTER] ineffectively, you know, you need 00:56:00multiple centers of the science. We tried to create an alternative center to the science in the Olympic Peninsula and that was a failure.

FS: It still exists as a place, right? The Olympic Natural Resources Center?

JFF: Yeah.

FS: And it's cruising along, limping along, whatever the right verb is...(chuckles) ...with some earmark funding and a little bit more. What is the shortcoming? Why has that place not taken off and been self-sustaining and vibrant?

JFF: Well, because, of the community and the people in charge, basically. The 00:57:00vision that I had for the Olympic Natural Resource Center was a world class scientific institution. And that's not the vision that the folks on the Olympic Peninsula had. And, you know, they got control of it. And, there were a number of factors that contributed, but one of the things that Thorud was determined that it was going to be a user-pays kind of facility. Well, nobody can afford to use the facility. So, in any case, it's strictly, well it's nothing, but kind of 00:58:00a very local. It has not achieved any kind of regional status, let alone national status.

FS: Right, it's sort of interesting, there was sort of a period there when centers were being defined. Olympic National Resource Center, Blue Mountain Natural Resource Institute, and the Andrews scene. We called ourselves the Cascade Center for Ecosystem Management and then that morphed into a learning center and a New Perspectives center [short-lived Forest Service designations] and an Adaptive Management Area [under the Northwest Forest Plan] and now, against my better judgment, we call ourselves the Central Cascades Adaptive Management Partnership. It's fascinating how the names keep changing, but at 00:59:00least at the Andrews the core relationships and projects and so forth do move forward. It sort of relates to some bigger issues about the inability of institutions to stick with adaptive management. Long-term studies that ends up being dominantly grassroots efforts, except NSF's continued funding is critical.

There is an area that I'm curious about which isn't so much historical, but hopefully someday we can view it from a historical perspective, and that is connecting the cities with these wildland sites, and, so, now we have Wind River incipiently in NEON and Andrews for 29 years an LTER site. And, can we connect them with Portland and Eugene, Springfield? Especially, Portland probably, if it were to be an ULTRA or ULTRA-light. [Urban Long-Term Research Area -a short-lived NSF/Forest Service funded program] And there is good energy in Portland, whether it's successful in ULTRA planning grant or ultimately if there are to be any ULTRA grants. I'm curious what the connections can be between the cities and these kinds of places. How explicitly and publically known should the connections be? Ways that might lead to a lot more traffic of citizens into these kinds of places. Or are the connections going to end up being more virtual and in the science realm where there's, say, common big forest plots between the wildlands and city sites, and we actually are extending our forest-dynamics 01:00:00thinking of studies into urban parks settings where different, some different kinds of things are occurring. Both in the social realm of public learning and also ecologically, you know, where you've got English ivy issues [invasive plants] and simple forest or invaded forests in places like Forest Park in Portland. Do you have any thoughts?

JFF: Not really, because I don't really have a passion for that. I tend to only look at that from a couple of perspectives. One is, what can that mean to the places I really care about like the Wind River or the Andrews? And, from a 01:01:00strictly, very standing-back, philosophical perspectives of understanding the need for the urban communities to support their natural resources, I'm supportive of that urban and wildland linkage to the degree it can improve, the degree the urban populations relate to it. But, I have no personal passions for it. And there may not be any horizons left for me, in the sense to go back to where we were. I was talking about how horizons have opened up, the IBP, 01:02:00ecosystem science, the old-growth, big horizon opened up within LTER. In terms of creating a context for a lot of people to do a lot of good stuff on the systems that I love.

Obviously, the Northwest Forest plan was an incredible horizon that opened up in terms of influencing policy, not so much providing for opportunity for people to learn more about these systems, but very directly influencing how they're going to be managed. NEON is another example of opening up another horizon and always, for me, the whole point of NEON was that, dammit, NEON was going to provide some resources for my backyard. And, you know, the only reason I hung in there with 01:03:00NEON was because I wanted to do everything I could do make sure it was a distributed system. You know these Northwestern forests profited very much from our knowledge of this biome. So, you know, in a sense, part of what I see in what I've done is, as my opportunities have escalated in terms of creating an environment and context for other people to work on these forests. That was fine with me, it wasn't really critical that I did, what was critical was to create the circumstances which would continue to expand our scientific knowledge and improve our policy regarding these forests.

FS: That's cool. So, is there any other forest biome and, maybe biome isn't quite the right word, that has achieved a place in the social consciousness that 01:04:00this Pacific Northwest conifer biome has? You commented that a motivation for you and a perspective for you relative to Europe and Eastern U.S was well, dammit, we're going to have the Western forest, the Northwest forest have a place in ecological theory. But, not only did it get to be a big player in ecological theory, it seems like, it's hard to say because we're so immersed in it, but how would you assess its place in public perceptions of forest. One way to look for that might be to look at all the books that have been written about forests in the last 20 years, and how many of them sort of them came out of this setting? And, granted a lot of them had to do with conflict, but it also had a hell of a lot of science-sourced stories that were pivotal in the conflict and 01:05:00in public perception beyond the conflict. So, anyways, my question is, is that some kind of fair characterization? That a lot has happened here? And are there any other places in the world where the forests have gained such notoriety and what is the nature of that notoriety and what is the nature of that perception? I'm trying to step back from where we might think things were in 1970 and where are we 40 years later, but what's going on in other parts of the world in the 01:06:00public view of forestry?

JFF: Well, first of all, these forests are exceptional. We've been writing about it, talking about, they define a boundary condition of [what] forests can be and what forests can do. And, because they are exceptional and because we have done so much science on them, they really have had a tremendous impact on both the science and the public perception about forests. So, at the same time, they have 01:07:00had a very broad, general impact on the perception of forests, and I talk about natural forests being these incredible, complex systems and, more than anything, the lessons for human beings should be humility for such richness and complexity, humility. So, I would say that our research on these forests has had 01:08:00impacts on human perception throughout the world in terms of really providing an appreciation and examples of richness and complexity of natural forests. I think that the consequences of what we've done here, and very broad, much broader than the specifics of our forests. That said, I think we have had an exceptional collection of people doing science in these forests. And I don't mean just our group. I mean even the people like the Steve Silletts of the world. [tree 01:09:00climbing forest ecologist at Humboldt State U. who did his PhD in part in Andrews Forest] So, once we begin to get the resources and build the cadres of scientists and students, it's really built on itself. It's fed back on itself. I don't know if I could or should, but I would argue that we probably know more about these forests than we know about any other forest in the world. So, no longer is it a matter of them simply being recognized by ecological theory, they've defined the boundary theories of a lot of ecological theories.

FS: So, maybe we know more about these forests than any other forests in the world. I would venture to say that the public, that's sort of the science part of the deal, and maybe increasingly the humanities, and there are all the coffee table books, all this kind of stuff. So, there's a rich science and there's a rich bunch of communicating by many parties, including environmentalists, and industry folks, who are advocating for the forest from their different points of 01:11:00view. So, those are other dimensions of public communications and discourse about the forest. So, it sort of makes me wonder how one might characterize the profile of public knowledge and feeling about forests in different biomes of the world? And, like you know, every forest type has its advocates and eloquent spokespersons. I'm just trying to think of what that profile might look like in other regions like the northeast. You know there's the historical work, of course, of our buddy, David Foster, and others there at Harvard Forest. There the people like, you know, Thoreau, and others who...it's interesting that, in his case, part of his work is about forests, course when he was wandering the 01:12:00landscape, it was mostly agriculture, but he did find a warm spot in his heart for forests. Anyway, I'm just trying to step back and think about what we have here, and how to think about it. Is there writing that you know of yet, about this kind of stuff? I mean there was the collection of books, mostly in the '90s, like [William] Dietrich [The Final Forest] and [Alston] Chase [In a Dark Wood,] and others. You know, Jon Luoma of The Hidden Forest, which happens to be about the Andrews, but I don't think he said much about the larger public perception. But maybe we have to get into the 21st century a ways before we can 01:13:00see that.

JFF: I don't know. I'd say, one measure you could look at, and it's hard to see, it'd be hard to trace quantitatively the connection, but the general sense that nobody supports cutting old-growth forests anymore. I mean you don't have support for that in western Oregon for god's sake. So, it's got to be part of a general education and appreciation. So, by that measure, something's happened, something's changed. It's more than an awareness; it's an appreciation as well. 01:14:00So, it would be very hard for us to go back to our old policies at this point.

FS: Right, in fact, I would see, I could imagine a book on your personal history, which is then a book about forests, a major theme is this whole topic of societal engagement with forests. Shifting the social engagement from the era of, you know, the old-time logging, and then the industrial, highly mechanized logging to, this entirely different engagement, and it's really amazing the dimensions that it has.

JFF: It's really changed. No, I agree. Yep. And, you know, one other aspect of this, is we began by focusing on old growth and our appreciation really has, I think, expanded to have incorporated the [whole] sere.

FS: So, comment on that a little bit more. Why don't you run through the history of your perception of how some of our, how our focus has shifted, concerning different stages of forest development. Sort of run through that chronology as best as you can recollect.

JFF: You know, we started out by focusing on the most spectacular and the most 01:16:00awesome forest condition, which was that of our old-growth forest. And from there we began to think more and more about how they evolved. How do these forests develop? Then, of course, a variety of circumstances, but certainly included St. Helens, shifted our focus very sharply on disturbances, severe disturbances and the kinds of conditions they create, something we've gotten very far from because, the really, the great forest disturbances of the late 01:17:0019th and early 20th centuries have faded. But, we did shift back to look at disturbances, then, ultimately, we were prepared to, oh yeah, let's look at the entire sere. Including that period following the disturbance. And, look at it not as a transition of getting back to forest cover, but rather looking at it for what it is within itself. So, for me, it was a full circle, because, there were two forest conditions, particularly that I experienced as a youngster 01:18:00growing up. One was the old-growth forest that we camped in, and the other was the Yacolt burn that we hunted deer in. And, so, I had an appreciation and an affection for both; and I appreciated both. But, it hasn't really been until the last few years that I could bring that all together. And, interestingly, it turns out, that the thing that the foresters, the production foresters love the most probably turns out to be the least interesting out of all the stages in the sere, because it's the most simple, the most singular, the most focused, the least diverse. So, anyways, it's really interesting, but it's taken a long time 01:19:00to develop the very holistic view of forest development and understand how all of it is important. So, we started with the most spectacular and, I guess, in a sense we ended with the second most spectacular. (Laughter) In a sense.

FS: Well, we've been going for a couple hours, so maybe we should call it quits for now. Thank you very much; and I look forward to the next conversation and there are lots of holes to be plugged, lots of gaps ... (both laugh).

JFF: It's been fun to think about these things.