Kelly Burnett Oral History Interview, May 30, 2017

SAM SCHMIEDING: Good afternoon, this is Dr. Samuel J. Schmieding, Oregon State University College of Forestry. I am here in the home of Kelly Burnett, Aquatic Ecologist/Fish Biologist, long-term United States Forest Service researcher, and former OSU Courtesy Faculty. We are going to be doing an oral history interview that is centered on Northwest Forest Plan, but not limited to her involvement in that. It will also include biographical elements of her whole career, and it's part of the Northwest Forest Plan Oral History Project Phase II. And so, I want to thank you, Kelly, for being willing to spend the time with me here in your home today to talk about this important subject.

KELLY BURNETT: Well, you're welcome, and thank you for having me as part of this research project.

SS: Well, it's one of the most influential, impactful and I think, novel land management document, and process [NWFP], at least in U.S. history certainly, so 00:01:00it's worthy of that. So, we will start off with your basic biographical question, where were you born and raised? And just kind of take me where you want to take me from there.

KB: I was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Grew up in northwest Georgia. Went to undergraduate at Berry College, a small liberal arts school in the hills of northwest Georgia. I got a degree in biology and chemistry, a dual major. Then, from there, worked at Emory University for a year in genetics, and decided I wanted to move out West. I had done a field course through the University of California at Santa Cruz, in Montana, and just fell in love with the West. I was 00:02:00working with a guy who had come out to Oregon to try out for the 1980 Olympics in track. He was a big birder. His name was Jeff Jefferson, and he told me they had burrowing owls in Oregon. I thought that was pretty cool, so I decided to apply for graduate school out here in chemical engineering.

SS: At Oregon State? [Olympic Trials-in Eugene at U. of Oregon.]

KB: At Oregon State I was accepted into the chemical engineering master's program, but had to take a bunch of undergraduate courses because I didn't have an engineering background. My interest in that, knowing very little about engineering, was a commitment to environmental protection and water quality that I developed back East. I thought chemical engineering would be the way to go, 00:03:00but quickly realized it was not.

SS: You didn't like all those chemistry classes?

KB: No, the chemistry classes were great because I had done that as an undergraduate.

SS: Okay.

KB: But the engineering classes, statics, dynamics and electrical engineering fundamentals, and all the undergraduate engineering classes I had to take to get to the point where I could enter the graduate program; my heart wasn't in it. It just wasn't fun. I looked for another graduate program and ended up in fisheries, bringing together my biology and interest in water quality. I had the 00:04:00good fortune and funding to work with Charles Warren and Bill Liss on a project looking at the effects of a toxicant on different organizational characteristics of ecosystems, and how the effects differed based on the structure and organization of the ecosystem.

SS: What was the toxicant?

KB: Dieldrin. It had been banned for widespread use, but as an organochlorine insecticide, people knew it was a serious toxicant that could produce an environmental effect. And there was an established LD-50 for it. But in this study we used a level well below any acute lethal limit. With long-term chronic ecosystem exposure to dieldren, we saw everything from population increases to extinction of target fish species, depending on how the ecosystem was organized. In other words, the amount of food available, whether or not another species was present to compete for the food, and the exploitation rate or fishing pressure on the target species. After finishing my master's degree in fisheries, I ended 00:05:00up working in the Bahamas for a year, working in Alaska for six months or so, and working out of John Day; just the life of an itinerant biologist. I guess home is where the storage locker is.

SS: You were a "Bohemian" biologist?

KB: Yeah. I ended up coming back to Corvallis because that's where my storage locker was. So, I did a little bit of everything, mostly on different aspects of research. For example, when I was working in the Bahamas, it was for the Caribbean Marine Research Station on a development project looking at the use of tilapia aquaculture in the Caribbean. Tilapia are a salt-tolerant freshwater 00:06:00fish, but we were studying the feasibility of raising them in ocean cages. In Alaska, I was doing a project related to a new hatchery they had developed. I was working at the hatchery, but because I had a research background, they had me doing some bioassays trying to figure out what their problems were up there, why the fish were not surviving in their incubators. So, anyway, that's all beside the point, but--

SS: These are long interviews, so they're not beside the point. (Laughs)

KB: Alright.

SS: A little joke, an oral historian's joke.

KB: So anyway, came back to Corvallis and was working in a position doing bird work with Kim Nelson on marbled murrelets. Realized I had to get up really early 00:07:00in the morning to study birds, and figured that fish were more to my liking. We confirmed that, and so --

SS: Besides, you've got to go up really high to get to those nests of the murrelet, right?

KB: Fortunately, I wasn't doing that. But I did find one of the first nest trees [for marbled murrelets] in the Cummins Creek drainage. That was pretty fun to locate that. But, I continued to apply for jobs in fisheries and was hired as a temporary person for the U.S. Forest Service in research.

SS: With the Forest Service?

KB: Yes.

SS: Was that here in Corvallis?

KB: In Corvallis, as I had come back to Corvallis. Kim was kind enough to let me skip out on her in the middle of the field season and train my replacement, and 00:08:00then, I started working for Gordie [Reeves] and Jim [Sedell] and Fred Everest [aquatics/fisheries scientists] at the Pacific Northwest Research Station.

SS: So, you go back with Gordon quite a long time then?

KB: Quite a long time, yeah. So, I guess that would have been 1988, maybe.

SS: Right during the height of the Forest Wars, leading up towards what became the whole process leading to the Northwest Forest Plan?

KB: That's right. In many ways my interests in biology had always been related to policy and how biology and chemistry could inform better decisions related to water quality and water. It really wasn't until after I started working for the Forest Service in the height of the timber wars, that I realized how important stream habitat was in the whole equation. Started working on field crews, 00:09:00running field crews for the summer, then a full-time permanent position came open after that first summer, and I was offered that. Hugely fortunate to be in the right place at the right time when that happened. So, I ran the field crews a couple of summers. Data gets collected, it's really fun during the field season, everything's exciting, and then, the storage and processing of the data 00:10:00comes along. I realized that we hadn't put a lot of thought toward how the data were going to be maintained over the long-term, so I took on that job. I set up a database."

Then, as Gordie and Jim got drawn into policy-related projects, my interest shifted to those. I was tangentially-involved during the Gang of Four [Scientific Panel on Late-Successional Forest Ecosystems], helping develop maps and a lot of background work. Then I decided to start working on a Ph.D. The Forest Service was again wonderfully supportive and funded my project. I was 00:11:00able to continuing working for Gordie and him while working on my Ph.D.

SS: So, you finished your Ph.D. right about when the forest plan [NWFP] was happening?

KB: Actually, I was still in the midst of my Ph.D. when it was happening. I remember really well, hearing that the President was going to come out and do this, you know.

SS: You're talking about Clinton's Forest Summit in Portland? Correct?

KB: Thank you, there you go. Yes.

SS: In 1993. Shortly after his inauguration, I believe.

KB: That's right. Everyone was so amazed he was going to hold this summit on such an important issue to us, but in the grand scheme of things a president has 00:12:00to worry about, it seemed just amazing that he would choose to focus his energies there. And as that started to unfold, who was going to be as part of the Summit, and how it was all going to happen? I found out that Jim was going to participate, Jim Sedell. That was really exciting. I can remember going with Gordie and a bunch of other folks down to Squirrels Tavern to watch the Forest Summit on television. And that was just such a novel, out-of-the-ordinary, something I would have never expected to even get that close to, something as important and as high-profile, I guess, as the President focusing on this issue.

SS: I'd like to return to that later. Now that you've given a really nice biographical sketch, I'd like to go back a little while, and the ecology and the environment in general of the South during your youth, in Georgia. How would you describe your childhood in relation to the natural world? And if you have any stories or places that were favorites, throw those in.

KB: I spent every moment I could outdoors as a kid. And I grew up in the '60s where there were roving packs of children who were turned out in the morning, and called in in the evening. We played and we built forts, and we rode bikes 00:14:00and we did everything in sort of an idyllic childhood in a subdivision in Georgia.

SS: How far outside of town were you?

KB: We lived in the town of Cartersville.

SS: Cartersville, which was about how big?

KB: Maybe 15,000 people.

SS: Okay.

KB: And at that point, it was a world away from Atlanta. Now, it's a suburb.

SS: That's why I thought, it was pretty close.

KB: But back then, it was just a completely different universe. So, I spent lots of time riding bikes and the distance that that would allow us to get from home. Then as I got older, probably 15 or 16, and hanging out with people in cars, we 00:15:00would go to the lake, a beautiful reservoir managed by the Army Corps of Engineers. We spent all our summers up there swimming and hiking, just enjoying being outside and someplace that was a little cooler than the city in the summer.

SS: Now, people have different favorite places when they play out in nature, whether it be in the city, or literally rural or wild lands. Were you especially attracted to the water back then?

KB: Oh, yeah. Uh-huh.

SS: In terms of like polliwogs and salamanders and crawfish, etc.

KB: Yeah, snapping turtles.

SS: Snapping turtles and all that, yeah.

KB: Yes. You know, any time being in the South in the summer, water is everything, because otherwise, you're just going to melt. So people just gravitate toward the water, and I was no different. It kept me outside and 00:16:00interested, focused and poking around. I didn't really know that much, but it just was, we were just fascinated. And most of the water courses back there were muddy, and you couldn't see into them.

SS: So, high turbidity?

KB: Yes.

SS: To say the least.

KB: Yes, to say the least. So, I have one story. I remember being at a family friend's house, and they had evidently thrown in a piece of chicken or something tied to a rope, and caught a huge snapping turtle, which we put in a laundry basket and dumped out onto their yard and watched it bite sticks in two, as of course, we were, as kids do, poking it with the sticks.

SS: Did you ever get snapped by one?

KB: No, no, no, fortunately.

SS: Lose a finger there.

KB: Yes, no, fortunately not. I was one of the younger ones in that escapade, so 00:17:00I didn't get very close to it. But, just spending a lot of time outside, listening to birds. And when I got old enough, I started backpacking and going out with friends. We would always backpack along rivers. So, it was more of an aesthetic, spiritual connection, more so than an intellectual kind of investigative connection.

SS: Which is often how it starts for people, as even the most intellectual folks in the world often started out with the pure sense of a child's wonder, which would you could call spiritual, emotional, or what have you.

KB: Yeah, and so the outdoors was just a place where there was freedom and comfort and curiosity as well. And because I felt so closely connected, I guess, 00:18:00when I started looking at careers, I wanted to pursue that.

SS: Did you have a favorite place, first of all, right around Cartersville, but certainly as you got around to camping and hiking, did you have like a favorite place in the southern Appalachians?

KB: Yeah, I would say the Etowah River, very close to our house, within bike-riding distance. The Etowah Indian Mounds were right along the river. We would go there and play, and knew that was a sacred site. There you could still 00:19:00see remnants of fish traps in the water. It was just really, I would say that place was probably my most connected place. And then later, the reservoir, Lake Allatoona.

SS: Now, how would you describe the ecology of the Etowah River and even the lake? Talking pollutants, what was the condition at that time? This is the pre-environmental age or right about the cusp of it. Right?

KB: Right. And then I'll say, as I got older, in the southern Appalachians, like the Nantahala River. That area was really close to us and someplace that I was able to get to. And having that comparison, I was able to realize the areas around my home were polluted. I mean, I really didn't know that the Etowah was 00:20:00full of agricultural runoff.

SS: You didn't know what an algae bloom was back then?

KB: No I didn't, and I had no basis of comparison until I began to move further afield and see the Nantahala River and some other rivers in the Smokey Mountains that were less affected. But the Etowah River is an amazingly diverse river. Aquatic diversity is just huge, a lot of endemic species, and there are tributaries that are relatively undeveloped and unpolluted. So, coming back as a trained aquatic ecologist looking at those areas now, I have a much different 00:21:00perspective and appreciation for really what gems they were in the South, but again from a more mature perspective.

SS: Critical perspective?

KB: Critical perspective.

SS: Now, they probably, even though you had the view of a child, I bet you were not very safe in terms of water quality, but they're probably better now? Yes or no?

KB: I really don't know.

SS: I'm assuming environmental age regulations, there might have been some cleanups, like for instance, when I was growing up in Eugene just down the road, my dad said, "You can't swim in the Willamette River." This is before the environmental age when it got cleaned up. A lot of the mills were closed and they weren't just dumping raw sewage into the rivers. But that's cleaned up, so 00:22:00you can maybe assume some of that, probably?

KB: Yeah, I think so, but I also think that that area was relatively undeveloped and that there wasn't a lot of heavy industry.

SS: So, it was mostly agricultural pollutants, just the runoff dynamic?

KB: Yeah. I mean, there were carpet mills.

SS: Dyes, etc.?

KB: Yeah, so, I really don't know. That's a very good question.

SS: Now, did you have a teacher in middle school or high school that was one of those science teachers or somebody that got you turned on to something about nature or studying nature?

KB: I guess in the sixth grade. I had a science teacher, that's really the first science I remember. We had to do an insect collection, and I remember making a weather vane. After that, I was always interested in biology. I was sort of less 00:23:00than a studious student (laughs) in high school. In junior high, probably up to mid-junior high, I was a very good student, and then after that, I was just having too much fun as a teenager.

SS: You and me both. (Laughs)

KB: Yeah, so.

SS: Anyway, continue on.

KB: So anyway, you know, academics was not my focus in high school.

SS: Were you athletic?

KB: No, I just really didn't have much of a focus in high school, I guess. I had 00:24:00a political science teacher in the eleventh grade, who I loved. I would get into all sorts of interesting debates with her. The rest of the class loved it because I could sidetrack her and we'd get into all sorts of interesting debates of the time. And then, my biology class, I also really appreciated, but I was also taking typing and shorthand and--

SS: You were kind of being tracked in the gender expectations of the day, a little bit? I mean, you sound more like a tomboy than a typical Southern Belle, but nonetheless, you get my drift in this query?

KB: I do. And that's very accurate. Part of that was my choosing, but part of it was not. I think there were no expectations I would do anything. Even though 00:25:00academically, when I was younger, I was on a college-bound track. When I got old enough to make decisions about academics, then it became less important. Then I could just sort of escape, with taking accounting, and, like I said, shorthand and typing and those things. SS: How many brothers and sisters do you have?

KB: I have a younger sister.

SS: And your parents, what did they do?

KB: My dad owned and ran a truck stop, and my mom was a homemaker. So, neither one of them had been to college. My mom didn't graduate from high school.

SS: But they were encouraging of that, if you wanted to, or was it that they were indifferent to that?

KB: Pretty much indifferent. It was never something that was an expectation. I 00:26:00think if there was an expectation, it would have been that I would have married a banker, joined a country club, had children, and stayed in the South.

SS: As they used to say, you go to school to get your "Mrs." degree?

KB: Yeah.

SS: The joke they used to have about that dynamic.

KB: Yes. But when I turned sixteen, there was a student who was a year older than me. She had skipped her senior year in high school. I talked to the [school] counselor to see if I could do that because my senior year didn't really hold a lot for me that I could see. And so, I think she was happy. She said, "Sure, if you can find a school that's interested, I'll be glad to support you in getting out of high school."

SS: And this occurred when you went to Berry College?

KB: Actually, I went to Shorter College the first year.

SS: Okay.

KB: Which was an even smaller liberal arts school. It was in Rome, Georgia.

SS: Which I've heard of, Rome, yes.

KB: And Berry is actually in Rome, as well.

SS: Okay.

KB: The caveat was that I had to maintain a B average, or I would get to come back to high school. So, I learned study skills really quickly and I had a professor, a biology professor. And when I started at Shorter, I was going into accounting. That was my [first pick]. I could add numbers quickly, so I thought that seemed reasonable.

SS: Right.

KB: But I spent a term in his class, and he came up to me one day after class and said, "I've done everything that needs to happen to change your major to biology. Come to my class, or my office and we'll do that." So, I was like, 00:28:00okay, we can do that. And you know, I was pretty taken with him because he had been involved in the first Earth Day [1970], was just a very gentle soul, and very knowledgeable.

SS: What was his name?

KB: Phillip Greear. I just really liked his approach. So anyway, I'm not sure what your question was now.

SS: No, this is great. These interviews are spontaneous as well as scripted. I mean, they're free-flowing. I'd like to go back within the context of your coming-of-age, shall we say. You've already talked a little about your 00:29:00experiences in the outdoors when you started going hiking and things like that. Do you remember any experience or place in which you saw natural resource management dynamics, good or bad, that made an especially strong impact on you?

KB: I think going to Berry really was the first time that I realized that people managed natural resources.

SS: Okay.

KB: The Berry Campus in Rome is on about 30,000 acres of land [27,000 - largest contiguous college campus in world]. The story I had always heard was that it was sort of spoils of the Civil War, and Martha Berry, who started the school, saw these hillbilly kids, who could not read or write [and needed educational assistance].

SS: Were they carpetbaggers from the North?

KB: Pretty much. [Actually Berry was from Rome, and school was started in 1902 as a Christian-based liberal arts school to help poor folks in area].

SS: Okay, interesting.

KB: From my understanding. Now, I could have the history completely wrong.

SS: Well, now I have to look it up.

KB: But she [Berry] started a school. Because there was really no money, they had the land, but there was really no money to support the school.

SS: Well, economically the South was in ruins after the Civil War. I mean, Sherman's "March to the Sea} went right through where you were.

KB: Yes, that's right. Out of necessity, the school was self-sufficient. The students harvested timber. They built log cabins and made furniture for the cabins. They grew their grain, as there was a grist mill on campus, and they had their own dairy.

SS: It was kind of artisan guild-type training, if you will, at least initially?

KB: Yes. But there was an academic approach. They were trying to teach people 00:31:00how to read and write, but also how to support themselves and to support the school. They had to do this. So, I think up until the 1960s you basically had to work your way through. It's not like that now. It's really interesting because they'd sort of this farm-to-table thing before it was hip, and now, they're really taking advantage of that.

SS: In other words, the grow-your-own dynamic?

KB: Yeah. Yeah.

SS: And I don't mean it like in Oregon.

KB: Right, right.

SS: I mean, like, food.

KB: Yes, exactly. They had their own dairy cattle herd and their own beef cattle herd. It was just a pretty amazing place to be exposed to the natural world, just being there.

SS: In this the 30,000-acre tract? That's pretty big.

KB: Yes, it was pretty big.

SS: That's a wilderness.

KB: Yeah, and they managed it as a wildlife refuge.

SS: Is it still that today? [Now managed by Georgia Dept. of NRs].

KB: Yeah. At that point, there was a reservoir that we would hike up to that provided all the water for the campus. I was able to see timber harvest in a fairly sustainable way. I was able to see that, if you manage your watershed, you can provide clean water.

SS: So, they had plantation forestry or selective cutting?

KB: I think there's both.

SS: Well, it's mostly hardwoods, correct? Or did you have southern pine, too?

KB: There was southern pine.

SS: Oh, okay.

KB: Yeah. And so.

SS: Now, but going back a little further, did you see anything in the riparian dynamics when you were hiking up in the Southern Appalachians, of an especially egregious or offensive misuse of land that may have jolted you at the same time 00:33:00that you're going through this learning curve?

KB: I don't really recall that. I think it was more through the media of seeing, you know, rivers on fire and--

SS: The Cuyahoga [river in Ohio that caught fire in 1970s], in other words?

KB: So, probably more through the media and having some awareness during the establishment of the Clean Water Act and NEPA, and those early laws.

SS: Now, the professor that you brought up, or was the teacher was a high school teacher?

KB: A college professor.

SS: Greear was a college professor. So, you can say he would have been the most influential professor in your early college years? Correct?

KB: Yes.

SS: Okay. Now, you moved on to Emory. Same question for Emory, an especially influential mentor or professor, or class subject?

KB: At Berry, not so much. SS: I said Emory.

KB: Oh, okay, so I was at--

SS: You can talk about both in the transition, okay?

KB: I was at Shorter a year, and that's where I had Phillip Greear as a professor. Then, I went to Berry three years. At Berry, I was interested in environmental health and ecology; those were the primary courses that sparked my interest. Most students there at the time were pre-med or pre-vet, and because I was more interested in the natural world, there was not much for me to do there from that perspective. I never had chemistry classes in high school, but I 00:35:00needed to take chemistry to be a biology major. So, I decided after taking several chemistry classes that I would go ahead and do a dual degree. I could have gone through a biochemistry option, as most people did, but the Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences, Barbara Abels taught physical chemistry. I just really liked her, and she was one of the few women professors that I had during my college career.

SS: They were truly a minority back then [especially in physical sciences].

KB: Yes.

SS: I mean, the equity is much better today, but it was pretty sparse back then.

KB: That's right, yeah. So, I think that as much as anything influenced my decision to take physical chemistry. I did three terms of that and ended up 00:36:00getting degrees of Bachelor of Science in Chemistry as well as Biology. And then at Emory, I worked for about a year-and-a-half in their genetics department. That was more of just a stop-gap, and I'd say, a place for me to catch up, grow up emotionally, as much as it was professionally. Since I had skipped my senior year, I graduated from college when I was nineteen. And Emory was also a way for me to grow up a little bit professionally, emotionally, and just I guess, to mature. I was interested in the work that they were doing conceptually because 00:37:00we were looking at developing a system to test mutagens and carcinogens with fruit flies, so the day-to-day was incredibly boring, counting fruit flies, looking through a dissecting scope at fruit flies, managing fruit flies. But, from a perspective of coming up with a quick test for genetically-dangerous compounds that might be mutagenic, then that was a way, and interesting. And I also took this combination of the classes through the University of California [Taught at field location].

SS: Santa Barbara?

KB: Santa Cruz. SS: Through Santa Cruz? [UC-Santa Cruz].

KB: It was "History of Wilderness," "Natural History of the Beartooths," and something else I can't remember.

SS: Up in Montana, right?

KB: Yeah, it was all taught in Montana, and then having the interaction with the person that had gone to try out for the Olympics.

SS: Up here in Oregon?

KB: Yeah. So, I think those two really set me up to come to Oregon.

SS: What do you think the value and the effect was of having kind of a collective geographic experience from the Deep South, the Bahamas, Alaska, Montana, Oregon and California, in terms of your perspective on the natural world?

KB: I think just the diversity and the beauty. Yeah, I would guess that, just 00:39:00the diversity and the beauty, and how human use can really destroy those.

SS: Now, you're in Oregon, you're an Oregonian now, you can safely say that after thirty years.

KB: Yes.

SS: What was your impression when you first got here, and what were some of your favorite places? What made the biggest impact on you?

KB: I just thought Oregon was gorgeous. And I remember driving from Oak Creek over here, just part of the McDonald Forest, driving from there back into 00:40:00Corvallis one day and realizing that I could see the Cascades. It was a clear day and I could see the Three Sisters, these beautiful snow-capped mountains. And I was just in awe that I could live in a place like that, and live so close to the ocean. You know, go into the Cascades or go to the Coast Range, and then see these beautiful rivers. I was just awestruck.

SS: What were your favorite places early on, other than all?

KB: Yeah. All of them, I guess.

SS: I mean, that's what usually happens. I know when I move to places, that everything was fascinating. And then eventually, you'd start tracking in where you like to go. What were your places?

KB: I loved Drift Creek in the Coast Range. I loved going out to the McKenzie 00:41:00River. Elk River later became one of my favorite places down on the south coast. That's where I did my work for my Ph.D. I was really fortunate. When I started working with the Forest Service, I got to see some just amazing places, and people were paying me to see these amazing places. Working out in eastern Oregon, southern Oregon, the Coast Range, the Cascades, having the opportunity to work up at Mount St. Helens.

SS: So, did you do work in Mount St. Helens area after the big blast?

KB: Not until 1990, so ten years after [Major eruption of May 18, 1980]. (Break in Audio) I was able to work on the Clearwater [River] doing re-surveys ten years after the blast. I think that was when Nova did a segment on St. Helens. So, I have some recollection of being involved with that.

SS: This is a little bit of a segue, but since you brought it up -- what did 00:43:00being around that landscape, and the impact, or I should say recovery, less far along than it is now, what did that tell you about the power of nature, and even human limitations on what-have-you, managing, or other aspects of our relationship to the natural world?

KB: I think through that, and my experience with Charles Warren, who had a very "systems approach" to the natural world, professionally I've always seen disturbance as being part of nature. But, when St. Helens was happening, I had 00:44:00no such understanding, only that it was a catastrophe. Coming back and seeing it ten years later, and having the education I'd gotten in the meantime, I realized it was just part of the natural world, and we were very fortunate to be there to see this, to have seen it recover. And it had recovered a lot in ten years. Having that awareness and looking at it, contrasting the areas that had and hadn't been harvested for timber before and after the blast, just listening to 00:45:00people talk who had been there in the 1980s, looking at it from a scientific perspective, then coming back ten years later to see all the recovery that had happened, really cemented for me the idea that if we just move out of the way, most of the time things will recover. We may be able to help them along, but there are cycles of disturbance and recovery that have gone on long before humans were on the scene, and will go on long afterwards.

SS: One of the most striking answers during my Mount St. Helens oral history interviews was when I interviewed Jerry Franklin. He said one of the most stunning things ever in his career was they were on the pumice plain, this was 00:46:00days or weeks, might have been his second or third trip, but it was very near to the big May 18th blast, and there were already little shoots coming up through the tephra and the pyroclastic flows, evidence that had been super-heated and incinerated. Even that, at least in a moderate, ephemeral way, was recovering. It really struck him and everybody else that you don't get a chance to really see that so close to the actual event.

KB: Right, yeah. And I would definitely agree that that [Mt. St. Helens] certainly shaped how I looked at disturbance and recovery.

SS: You already had a masters, but you're transitioning to a Ph.D.; is that about where you were in your career?

KB: Yeah.

SS: Okay. Let's come up to your Oregon State experience in terms of your 00:47:00evolution as a young scientist and learning what you were going to learn that helped you become what you became, once you started as a Forest Service scientist those twenty-five years ago. Just tell me about key notes, key mentors, key information, key awarenesses, key epiphanies, that happened along that route that took you along and made you who you were intellectually as a scientist?

KB: As I said, Charles Warren and his conceptual framework. I think he influenced many OSU grads that have gone on, and let's see, how do I want to say this? When I was taking classes from him, his perspective was that humans are 00:48:00imbedded in nature, part of a natural socio-culture system, and that systems exhibits different stages. He was my first exposure to that sort of systems thinking, and it was very radical at the time. The Department of Fisheries and Wildlife [OSU] were sending people in to observe his classes, because he was radicalizing the students.

SS: Politically or scientifically?

KB: Both.

SS: Both. Taking the Thomas Kuhn scientific revolutions paradigm idea, how would you say that he was challenging normal science?

KB: By saying that systems change. That a static view of nature is not real. And 00:49:00that systems change and that humans are a part of nature, rather than apart from nature. And that our actions can have profound impacts.

SS: This was other faculty at OSU and his bosses that were concerned?

KB: Yes.

SS: About the direction he was going in?

KB: Yes. Yes. The things that he was saying then, now are just taken for granted. The way we view the natural world, and certainly, from an aquatic landscape perspective, is certainly true. I would say he really influenced me. 00:50:00And it would be interesting, I know, Gordie, on many occasions, has said that he [Warren] had--

SS: Gordie Reeves, correct?

KB: -- had an influence on him as well, so it would be interesting to check with him. Gordie and I have compared notes before. I don't know if he would have brought him up in this context [during interview], or not, but yes.

SS: I can't recall. It was a long interview, but now that you bring it up, when I'm transcribing this or getting somebody transcribe it, I will look for that.

KB: Yeah. And so, having that as a foundation for all of the work that I did at OSU for my masters was really critical. And then I think moving into studying 00:51:00for my Ph.D., Gordie, certainly. Jim Sedell, he was amazing. He was just one of those people. A hundred people would look at a situation, and he would look at it and see it completely different, and put the pieces together in a novel way, and it would be interesting, fascinating. And he was a great storyteller. He was very supportive of me as well. Norm Johnson [OSU Forestry Prof.] was very much a mentor. So, at that time when I was coming up academically, and working on my Ph.D., the same people involved in the Northwest Forest Plan, were who I looked 00:52:00up to.

SS: So, you were destined to become involved with the whole process?

KB: Uh-huh.

SS: Because of your mentors. You had like a triumvirate of the big names.

KB: Yeah. I remember, the night or day before the Forest Summit, or somewhere right around the Forest Summit, there was a big concert in Portland. I don't know if anybody's talked about that?

SS: No, they haven't.

KB: But yeah, there was a benefit concert. I can't remember who the performers were, but I want to say Bonnie Raitt and Neil Young. Some really big-name performers had shown up. I say benefit, but it wasn't a benefit, but a free 00:53:00concert on Waterfront Park, just to celebrate the fact the President was actually going to do something about the spotted owl.

SS: Well, this is in the early '90s, in '92, '93?

KB: '93, yeah. Yeah, I would have to go back and see.

SS: I'd like to look that up. Bonnie Raitt was at the height of her fame right then. That's when she'd come out with Nick of Time and some other huge albums, a "second wave" of her career, after she sobered up, actually.

KB: Yeah, and I can't remember if it was her or who. Now, I want to stop and Google it, so. (Laughs)

SS: Kelly was looking for the details about the festival around the time of the Forest Summit, but we have not been able to find it. Investigation to continue. (Laughs)

KB: I really wanted to be involved, although I wasn't, other than just watching 00:54:00Jim on C-SPAN and having attended this conference. Not conference, excuse me, concert. It was clear that there was going to be something more than the Summit, that there was going to be the development of what ultimately was the Northwest Forest Plan, but the Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team [FEMAT] was going to be.

SS: Which is what was named later as FEMAT, the acronym?

KB: Yes. And so, once I realized that was going to be pulled together and that Jim Sedell was going to be part of it. Gordie was in. I think he was in the Virgin Islands at that time. Jim needed help, I knew he needed help, and so I 00:55:00called him. I think he had already talked to another one of his graduate students, Bruce MacIntosh, and Bruce didn't want to take time out of his Ph.D. to do this. So, I called Jim and said, "Look, I don't care if I have to come sharpen pencils, I want to be involved in this."

SS: So, you volunteered to jump into the whole thing?

KB: Yes. Because I knew Jim needed help and Gordie was gone. Gordie was coming back, but I just knew it was going to be a big thing.

SS: You knew this was a big thing?

KB: Yes, I knew it was going to be of historical significance, whatever came out of it.

SS: But you didn't know how and why, you just knew it was a big thing?

KB: Yes. And I had some idea about the Gang of Four [Group of four noted 00:56:00scientists central to NWFP process who wrote key 1991 report] and the importance that had in gelling people's thinking. And even if nothing really came out of the Northwest Forest Plan in terms of important policy, I knew it was going to be an interesting exercise.

SS: Now, I want us to remember at this point right here where you just got to, but I want to take you back. You got here in 1983, correct?

KB: Yes.

SS: This is really when the whole "Forest Wars" thing was kind of stirring up. The spotted owl had already become an issue, but it didn't become a lawsuit issue for a few more years. What do you remember about the cultural and political dynamics of that process in the '80s leading up into the early '90s, what you were talking about just a minute ago?

KB: I just remember so much animosity between different factions. Loggers 00:57:00wanting to eat spotted owls, and Earth First! That was a big deal.

SS: Weren't they spiking trees and things like that?

KB: Yes, they were spiking trees, and I remember sitting in a little café in downtown Corvallis watching log trucks go by with one log [large old-growth] on them. Having come from the Southeast where there weren't very many places where you still had native forest, or maybe no places where the forest was really native, I was strongly aware we were fighting over the last scraps here. I was 00:58:00very sympathetic and realized that --

SS: Sympathetic to the preservation aspect?

KB: Of the...yes, yes, yes. And sympathetic to the loggers' plight. But cutting down the last stick of old growth wasn't going to change their circumstance. It was just going to delay it for a little while.

SS: Which wasn't based just on the dynamics of scarcity here, it was also based on world economics and systems theories of economics and the flow of products, etc.?

KB: Right. Yes. So, I remember one of the questions that you asked me is when I first moved out here, what were some of the things that struck me. Just the clear-cuts, driving through the Oregon Coast Range and over to the coast within 00:59:00the first week of me arriving in Oregon, and just being mortified at the clear-cuts, not understanding anything about forest management or why someone would clear-cut, and seeing old forests next to this moonscape, and just not understanding it. And later coming to have a better understanding of why someone would manage in this way, the importance of riparian protection, and how all the pieces could fit together in a way that you could do this and have some sort of sustainable harvest, and not do it on every single acre.

SS: But your first reaction was aesthetic, the visceral reaction was about the aesthetics of it?

KB: Yeah.

SS: Not necessarily the aquatic, you know, trickle-down aspects?

KB: Right, not so much that. As you're asking me these questions, I remember my grandparents who lived in Arkansas, watching them watching someone with a backhoe digging up trees. They were clearing a lot to build a house, and watching that tree be ripped up, and the sap. I mean, I saw it as blood, and I know it wasn't. I know it wasn't red, but in my--

SS: Well, it was the blood of the tree, same thing.

KB: Tree, right, you know, in my six-year-old's understanding.

SS: So, you felt sad for that?

KB: Yeah. It was, and yes, I felt very sad. I could see that it was not, so I took that one tree and spread it across the landscape, saying that clearcutting, and it wasn't just aesthetic, it was sort of heart-wrenching.

SS: So, it was more than just purely aesthetic?

KB: Yeah, right. I knew that people harvested trees. I don't want to sound like I'm an idiot, but just the scale and the contrast. I knew that there was old-growth forest, and I knew this wasn't old-growth forest, and I knew that there was a big difference between what a healthy functioning forest looked 01:02:00like, and this moonscape following a clear-cut.

SS: When growing up in Eugene, even though I was very young and had little understanding of what we're talking about here, the Coast Range clear-cuts impacted me also, because they were more obvious and there were more of them. And because it was easier to access, they were often by riparian systems where you could do the old raft logging, as well as taking them out in log trucks. Yeah, I remember that. And I didn't really know what to do with the information. I just remember I could see it, and I don't even know if I could say it bothered me, but it made an impact on me.

KB: I think for me, coming from the South where I had the image of the South as being a landscape that had been used a lot longer and a lot heavier, with a lot heavier hand. And then moving out here, I had an image of this pristine 01:03:00wilderness, which clearly wasn't accurate, but this was right in your face, a demonstration of how inaccurate that was.

SS: Just the East-to-West geographic settlement-colonialization dynamic, and development of public lands in the territory/state formations, meant the whole management dynamic, in addition to the size of nature being bigger in the West, guaranteed a different historical vector of that whole process.

KB: Right. I later came to understand the history of land-use in the area. You mentioned the splash-damming and log rafting that had been done, and I was able to use part of one study I took on later, to look at the effects of that and to see the signature if the signature of those historic practices was apparent in 01:04:00modern-day monitoring. And you can -- you can still see it.

SS: Do you remember days in the Appalachians when you were growing up younger, anything similar, when there was industrial-scale logging on the periphery of any of the higher lands? Do you remember?

KB: Yes, I'm sure. Yeah.

SS: But nothing you recall right now? Okay.

KB: No.

SS: How would you characterize your environmental ethic and philosophy at this kind of nascent point in your professional career? We're in the '80s [timeline in interview], and how would you describe that?

KB: I was, as I said before, sympathetic to the need for preservation. And I was doing some volunteer work for different forest protection groups. Not so much 01:05:00with aquatics, writing some letters about forest planning. And my husband went on the "Ancient Forest Rescue Expedition," which was taking a huge old-growth log around the country to educate people about the issues surrounding old growth, and just showing people the standard approach of a timeline on a big Doug-fir log [using tree rings], and this is when Columbus was here [showing rings = when visiting the Americas].

SS: Do you recall the first time you ever heard the term old growth? Probably when you came up here, I would guess.

KB: Yeah, I'm sure it was after I came out here.

SS: Now, during your graduate studies you obviously were focused on biology, and aquatic biology, specifically. How much training or exposure did you get to 01:06:00management dynamics, planning, etc., or was it mostly just in the sciences at that time? KB: When I was working on my masters, yes, mostly just the sciences, other than exposure I had, as I said, through Charles Warren. That was early on in my coursework for my master's degree. You couldn't have been out here in that time going to school and not been aware of the role of science in management. I think it would have been really difficult to have been in a natural resources field and not really understood how they were linked.

SS: What other stories or experiences during the '80s up till the [Northwest] Forest Plan did you have in the Northwest that may have made an impact on how 01:07:00you developed, professionally and personally? You've already brought up several, but I'm just asking you to think a little more about it.

KB: Yeah, nothing else really comes to mind.

SS: Okay. That's good enough. Just talk to me a little bit more about any of your Oregon State training or experiences leading up to the Forest Plan, and then we'll get into the gist of the Forest Plan.

KB: You know, I think there's really nothing more to say.

SS: Okay.

KB: I was involved with the science solely, and then the science was blending in 01:08:00with the policy through the Gang of Four and the SAT Report, and I knew all that was going on.

SS: You're talking about the ISC Report? [Interagency Scientific Committee]

KB: No. Well, I knew about that, but the SAT, it's the Scientific Advisory Team. [ISC and SAT teams/reports key in NWFP process. 1990-92.]

SS: Exactly. There's so many acronyms sometimes, you get it all jumbled. I got you.

KB: Right.

SS: I was talking about Jack Ward Thomas of the ISC, the first one, pre-Gang of Four [Gang of Four also did a report - 1992].

KB: Right.

SS: The SAT is another one, correct.

KB: And so, from the point the aquatics really became important in any of these discussions I was involved in. I was working with these guys, so it was always sort of an undercurrent. It was always there, I guess. SS: And what do you remember about Gordie and Jim, Gordie Reeves and Jim Sedell, talking to you about as they're bringing you into the fold, about how the aquatic element of 01:09:00this whole planning dynamic became included? Because originally, it was off to the side, in fact, it was kind of almost forgotten, until some people said, "What about the fish?"

KB: Yes, right.

SS: And you probably heard variations on that story?

KB: Yes, I have heard that story from Gordie many, and from Jim, many times.

SS: And how would you describe how you heard that and recall that?

KB: Just that they were going to do the Gang of Four, and said they didn't want to be surprised by "some damn fish," and involved the people who needed to be involved. I guess Jim was called, and Jim brought Gordie along.

SS: Called to Congress, right?

KB: Yes. Miller from California, I think, was the senator [Congressman] from California [George Miller, D-Cal].

SS: George Mitchell?

KB: Yes.

SS: No, no, no. Not Mitchell, but Miller I believe.

KB: Okay. In my recollection it was Miller, and him saying he didn't want to be surprised by "some damn fish," which was very forward-thinking of him, because, given the listings that were starting to happen, particularly in California for salmon. He was wise to think that.

SS: Now, what do you remember about when you first heard about the Endangered Species Act, and then as you're seeing this whole thing unfold, what species, what dynamics, what events, do you recall? News reports, what have you.

KB: I was in Nash Hall [OSU] working on fishery stuff. Chuck Meslow and Bob Anthony and all those guys that had been involved with the northern spotted owl were there giving seminars about their work. Eric Forsman [spotted owl 01:11:00scientist] was there as well. So, I was hearing about it from a scientific perspective, then things would show up in the news. And the Endangered Species Act was motivating a lot of the science. I always thought that was interesting, looking back at the Northwest Forest Plan, how much science it motivated, and thinking about the northern spotted owl and science - policy motivating the science, and the science motivating the policy, and the two just being so intricately connected.

SS: Now, what species do you recall as being the most important species regarding the Endangered Species Act and fish? You obviously mentioned salmon, 01:12:00but what others?

KB: At that time, it was salmon, all salmon, all the time. Since then, and in the Northwest, it still probably is salmon. Of course, there have been snail darters and others [Species setting earlier precedents in ESA application.]

SS: The Tellico Dam controversy, the first one?

KB: Yes. Right, the first.

SS: Right.

KB: I was aware of that. But from a Northwest perspective, certainly salmon.

SS: Okay, now we're going back to where I said we were going to return to. You said before (NWFP process], "I want in." This is 1993, correct?

KB: Right.

SS: Tell me how that played out? You said, "I want in," how did you come in, and describe how you got involved in the whole process? This will lead you up to FEMAT and anything else at that initial phase.

KB: Right. I talked to Jim, and he said, "Yeah, I do need help, come." And so, I 01:13:00showed up at the 13th floor of the U.S. Bank Building.

SS: You got involved in the "Pink Tower" right from day one, pretty much?

KB: Yeah, day two or three anyway. They were still setting up computers and people were being assigned desks. I showed up and just started working trying to pull together information that we had, trying to pull together ideas, just at the very nascent stages of that. We didn't know what we were doing, where it was going to go, or how it was going to get there.

SS: How would you describe the 90-day schedule deadline that got extended to 120 01:14:00days because it couldn't be done [Actually 60 days, then 90 days.) How would you describe that process? Like a major cram session?

KB: Yeah, basically. I mean, it was like a bunch of people living in a dorm cramming for finals, staying up, and pulling all-nighters. SS: Were you still living in Corvallis?

KB: Yeah.

SS: Because some people had motels up there.

KB: Yeah, I stayed at some.

SS: You did also?

KB: I did too. But the principals had apartments up there, and the rest of us.....

SS: Because they had to be up there all the time?

KB: Well, I was up there all the time, too, but I wasn't a principal, so, the rest of us were staying in motels.

SS: Okay.

KB: Okay, but you know, other people had rented longer-term apartments. I was up there, basically for three months straight. And I don't think I had a day off in 01:15:00three months, until the extension happened. We were switching from hotel to hotel.

SS: I'll bet you got to know what your favorite eating spots were in downtown Portland?

KB: Yes, most definitely, because we didn't have the facilities to cook. And even if you were going to cook, there wasn't much time to do it. But yeah, it was an amazing time. We didn't see the President, but Bruce Babbitt certainly showed up, and having that Secretary-level [Sec. of Interior] attention on what was happening there was pretty --

SS: So, Babbitt showed up periodically?

KB: I only remember him coming once.

SS: Did Mike Espy, who was the Ag Secretary, come?

KB: I don't remember that.

SS: Okay. Yeah, Babbitt was the Department of the Interior Secretary at the time. You were in the aquatic group which had a certain portion of the 13th 01:16:00floor. Correct?

KB: Uh-huh. SS: How did the leadership dynamic play out? Gordie was one, Jim Sedell was one, just tell me a little about them, their leadership, and just how the politics of people working together worked out, including your own role?

KB: I always felt with Jim and Gordie that I was given respect and an opportunity. Working with them, it was sink or swim, it always had been. And 01:17:00there wasn't a lot of hand-holding. Just, this is the job, make yourself useful. So, I was used to that. And that's basically when I got up there, that's what happened.

SS: Because you'd already known them for three or four years by that time. Correct?

KB: Yeah, I knew that was what the job was going to be. Get up there, figure out what needed to be done, and figure out how to do it. I helped a lot with the mapping. Throughout my coursework, I did a lot of landscape ecology, looking at larger scales and policy. Through my coursework, those were the issues or the courses that I was focused on; landscape ecology, GIS, looking at policy. I knew 01:18:00there was going to be the need for that and I could have a role to play. They [FEMAT] had an overall GIS team, but getting the information to the GIS team that would be involved with aquatics, then getting that information back to the aquatics folks to do the necessary analysis with--I knew was going to be a little work.

SS: Now, you had people bringing in information to the building, and then you guys would crunch the numbers or assess, and go back-and-forth from that point? Correct?

KB: Yes.

SS: What do you remember as an especially challenging problem or question that you were involved with, personally? You talked about mapping.

KB: A couple issues were even knowing where streams were [or their sizes], as there were no good maps. The scales on maps were too coarse. Collecting information on where the streams were had been done with air photos and on USGS topo maps, and streams were under forest cover. So, we really didn't know what the stream densities were. One of the main issues was the inadequate mapping of streams. This was a big hurdle for assessing the impact of policy in relation to various riparian reserve widths. Policy options in FEMAT were intended to vary based on the size of streams, if stream flow was year-round or seasonal, and whether or not fish were present. Before, riparian policies typically protected only the larger, fish-bearing streams. But some of the options we were proposing 01:20:00required protection for small, intermittent headwater streams. These streams were not even represented on USGS topo maps. Streams on these maps had been done with air photos. Wherever a stream was under forest cover and couldn't be seen on the photos, these were omitted from the topo maps. Because nobody knew where all the streams were, how big they were, or how many of them there were, we had to develop accurate maps for sample areas, and then use these to evaluate effects of the different riparian policies. I remember that as being particularly challenging. Another challenge regarded two graphs in FEMAT that I remember Fred Swanson and me sitting down one morning and developing.

SS: Kelly is looking up what she just referred to here in the FEMAT document.

KB: These.

SS: Aha, yes.

KB: So, what is that, Figure 5-12 and 5-13 in the FEMAT report. [Cumulative 01:21:00effectiveness of several functions of streamside vegetation as it affects stream ecosystems in relation to its distance from the stream.]

SS: Distance from channel, tree height, the stand's edge? Right?

KB: Yeah.

SS: And this also had to do with the idea of buffers and how far the buffers would be? Correct?

KB: Exactly. Yeah.

SS: And what do you remember about this process, as didn't Fred Swanson have some unique ideas about buffers that he brought into this?

KB: I think a lot of the work this is based on came from work that was going on at the Andrews [Forest]. Stan Gregory and Fred Swanson were really instrumental in thinking about buffers from that perspective, extending buffers to intermittent streams and defining buffers based on their functions. And that's 01:22:00what those graphs attempted to do, looking at different functions of riparian areas and understanding how far away from the stream those functions began to decline.

SS: Here's a specific question.

KB: Okay.

SS: What is the "riparian forest effect" and streams as a function of buffer width? KB: So, your question is, how does it affect streams, or what?

SS: Yeah, what is the riparian forest effect in terms of how it relates to buffer widths that were included the plan? [Restated poorly-worded question].

KB: Okay.

SS: That would be a more correct wording. We are in the conversation here.

KB: Okay. I think there was a fairly good understanding of the direct physical effects, like the distance large wood is likely to be delivered to a stream, and how far away from the channel root stability would play a role, and the 01:23:00stability provided to the stream channel itself from the tree roots. Also, looking at leaf litter inputs and overland flow in terms of delivering fine sediments to the stream. I think all those had been fairly well worked out. If not in forested land, certainly from agricultural land. That first graph [in FEMAT example], I think 5-12, dealt with those components. The other components were more sort of microclimatic - wind speed, temperature, and humidity -- some of those characteristics that were just starting to really be looked at the time.

SS: How were the respective widths of buffers determined? You had different 01:24:00stream sizes and classes, and different tree species that were dominant, etc. How was that determined for these differential areas in this massive area? Because you're taking certain things and extrapolating, and then scoping them down for application on this big area.

KB: Right. People looked at some of those characteristics as you said, stream size, whether or not it was fish-bearing, and whether it was permanently flowing or intermittent. And there was some assessment that if it had fish, was 01:25:00permanently flowing, and was of a certain size, that it deserved greater protection or warranted a wider buffer. There was an element there that also looked at the 100-year flood plain. If the channel had an opportunity to interact with its 100-year flood plain, and that extended out beyond the metric of tree height, one site-potential tree height [for smaller streams], or two site potential tree heights for the larger streams, then that functional element of a 100-year flood plain would be incorporated. And otherwise, it was using the metric of tree height to define the buffers. I don't know if that was unique, 01:26:00but it sort of--

SS: But it was unique to the forest plan, this one [NWFP].

KB: Right, yes.

SS: That's probably a better way of phrasing it.

KB: Yes, thank you. Based on that first set of graphs about the distance that large wood could be delivered, I think that is partially what drove that decision to use a site potential tree as a functional metric, rather than as just a fixed distance away from the channel. Prior to FEMAT, I think most buffers were defined in terms of just a fixed width away from the channel, and these curves allowed those widths to be interpreted in terms of the amount of 01:27:00function that would be provided by those distances. And by using tree height as a metric, you could scale it to a particular landscape. I don't know if that answers [the question].

SS: That's very good. That's a very complete answer. At that time, how would you describe how people determined water quality, acceptable turbidity and sedimentation levels, and just generally, the biogeochemistry of stream habitat and quality? How was that presented when you were coming into this, fairly new in your professional career, and how do you remember that being presented and what was the ideal? And what was the condition relative to either clearcutting 01:28:00or other disturbance events?

KB: I think with areas that hadn't been harvested, there was the assumption that all the criteria you mentioned related to water quality would be acceptable to fish. The temperature would be low enough, the dissolved oxygen would be high enough, and the turbidity would be low enough, that the salmonids could continue. They would have all the elements necessary to complete their life history. Logging, if done inappropriately, without consideration to providing those functions, could interfere with all those.

SS: How would you compare the disturbance of clearcutting on aquatic ecosystems, 01:29:00with large dam projects? How would you contrast or compare those two?

KB: I think there was an awareness that forest harvest had a different effect. You were basically allowing the system to function in an altered state, whereas with dam projects, you were basically changing the system completely, from a fluvial system to a lake system, or changing the downstream flow from one that was regulated by rainfall to one that was regulated by--

SS: Spillway release?

KB: Yes, spillway release, which was on a completely different temporal scale and demand for water.

SS: And no amount of fish ladders, no matter how effective, is going to make that natural?

KB: Right. SS: Or quasi-natural.

KB: Right. I think in some ways, people would contrast the vast changes that occurred with dam building, with forestry, and say, forestry's really not that big of an issue because we have a stream system that basically still looks like it did before we started, and that will recover, particularly if we take some actions to help recover it.

SS: How would you compare the work during the plan era, but even if you want to 01:31:00include afterwards, which was the bulk of your career really, the coastal area versus the Cascades, and how would you compare the two?

KB: In terms of?

SS: Fisheries, just ecosystem dynamics, the water quality, anything that you want to address.

KB: Studies of salmon fisheries were a really big deal in the Oregon Coast Range streams. And you could relate the effects of land management much more directly, because you didn't have the confounding effects of the dams. A lot of the serious work on commercially-important salmonids was done in the Coast Range. 01:32:00The Coast Range is a very dynamic place with lots of land-sliding and debris flows that made it a focus of research. Most of my experience is in the Coast Range, west side, as opposed to Cascades, the east side of the Willamette Valley. A lot of work was done in the Cascades. There was a lot of aquatic work in the Cascades, a lot done on understanding landslides and debris flows, modeling them, like the flume work at the Andrews [USGS Debris Flow Flume at H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest], and a lot of the assessment of riparian 01:33:00function was done in the Cascades. So, maybe the infrastructure was almost better there [Cascades], but a lot of the work and the working forest aspect was in the Coast Range. I don't know if that makes sense.

SS: No, that's clear. How did mixed ownership and management regimes, private, state, BLM, the Forest Service, etc., affect what you were doing? You're talking about mapping, as well as just the study in general of aquatics. How did you deal with that? Because a river is a continuum, but you cross all these boundaries.

KB: I think in the beginning people were aware of those issues as terrestrial 01:34:00forest issues. But it really became a much bigger deal, and heightened awareness, when the aquatics were brought into it.

SS: [Audio break.] Continue.

KB: Okay. So, I think with the drawing in of the aquatics that really brought home the mixed ownership issue for a lot of people. Going from the FEMAT report to the Northwest Forest Plan and the development of Option 9, I think that 01:35:00reflected the need to look across disciplines, look across ownerships, and try to concentrate protection in basins where the Forest Service had or the federal lands had the highest likelihood of actually contributing to conservation of the fish. So, that was really the first time in FEMAT that people really thought about bringing together measures for terrestrial and aquatic protection, and not just looking at the aquatic protections as buffers versus no buffers, but really bringing together the aquatics in more of a landscape perspective

SS: When you're dealing with hydrology in general, you have to think in continuum terms. You have to in terrestrial too, and it's understandable you 01:36:00would compartmentalize things there, but nature is not that simple. Nonetheless, you understand why it would be a differential way of looking at things, even if that may be not the way to go?

KB: Right, but I think that was definitely the contribution of the aquatic, by bringing the aquatics in, it really moved forward the notion that you had to take a whole landscape view. I think they might have been able to sort of skirt around that, if the aquatics had not been brought in when it was.

SS: What do you remember the biggest challenge was for either you personally, or for the aquatics team during this 90 to 120-day period? Other than just getting the massive amount of work, but I mean a particular vexing problem or a question that you weren't sure you were answering well enough, something like that.

KB: I think for me, understanding how it would be implemented, because I think that there was an idea that the Northwest Forest Plan [would be implemented]. These were scientists that were developing it.

SS: In other words, really no managers or administrators to speak of, it was mainly scientists, correct?

KB: Right. And certainly in the development of the FEMAT [report]. Then at some point people began to realize that there has to be a handoff to the agencies that are going to implement it, to the management branches of the federal 01:38:00government. And so, how that was going to happen, I think, was something that I was particularly interested in.

SS: The practicality of the idea translating to successful action and implementation?

KB: Right. And then, the aspect that I was just talking about that you brought up about the, sort of, the all-lands approach. How do you get the most efficient conservation network out of the need to protect these different elements? You certainly cannot combine the approaches and have a separate aquatic and a separate terrestrial [approach], as that's not going to be very efficient or 01:39:00effective. Option 9 [called "Alternatives" in FEMAT language] was really an intent to bring those together and say, how can we do this more effectively and more efficiently on the landscape?

SS: What do you remember about the various options? I mean, I believe there were ten, and then "9" was the preferred option. What do you remember about them, from more logging and less protection, all the way up to the, what did they call it, the Green Dream, which was, 8 or 10?

KB: I can't remember.

SS: I can't remember, either. But what do you remember about coming to grips with the various categories, the Matrix and the calculus of it all?

KB: I think they were incremental, and I think there had been enough efforts before the Northwest Forest Plan. People were familiar enough with NEPA to know 01:40:00that you're going to have to present alternatives, and that these alternatives are going vary incrementally in terms of the amount of protection. And that was basically what they did, except for Option 9, which was really the first attempt to bring these different elements together. My recollection was watching people really struggle with the likelihood that a lot of land was going to be set aside for conservation, and none of the options were really that suitable. And then, deciding that something else had to happen, and then, Option 9 emerged from that.

SS: Wasn't that also because Clinton sent you guys back to the drawing board to do one more round for the extra thirty days? Correct?

KB: That's how I remember it, yeah.

SS: Okay.

KB: They hadn't hit the mark. It was too much land and not enough protection. So, that [Option 9] was a way to increase the efficiency. That, I thought, was really a very fascinating, a challenging and fascinating time for me, watching that unfold. And Jerry Franklin was a genius putting an Adaptive Management Area in every congressional district. (Laughs)

SS: Even though the idea didn't always play out in reality, but it was a good concept? [AMAs - only 2 of 10 could be considered "successful."]

KB: That was a very good concept and it was very politically astute, because it 01:42:00was not by accident that there was one in each congressional district.

SS: How would you describe the zoning? You have the reserves, you have the Matrix, you have all these different concepts about different land use, the AMA's, and different tiering of the different riparian systems? Was it tier?

KB: Tier 1 and Tier 2 key watersheds.

SS: Tier 1 and Tier 2, yes. How would you describe the creativity, the completeness, of putting that zoning system upon a very complex political, ecological, cultural landscape?

KB: I thought it provided for learning. The Adaptive Management Areas, although 01:43:00they weren't implemented as intended, they certainly provided for the understanding that we don't know everything right now, that there's more to learn, and we can go about that in a very systematic way. I thought that was, as I said, a brilliant addition to the whole approach. And the idea that we're going to shift the burden of proof from one that is focused on proving that you're not going to harm something, or proving that you are going to harm something to one that says, no, we're going to take a pause, and you've got to demonstrate that you're not going to harm. I thought that was a huge leap 01:44:00forward. And we gave the opportunity to do watershed analysis to demonstrate that you can look at the landscape in a way that reads it to show you can successfully harvest in a way that's not going to compromise the ecosystem in the short or the long-term, particularly the long-term. Then you can move forward. So, I thought it was a just a very comprehensive way to approach the problem, that we didn't just take one element or another, but brought many elements together. I think that that's one of the reasons it's endured, because 01:45:00we did provide the opportunity to adapt and learn.

SS: Any memories or anecdotes or experiences, funny, stressful, about what I like to call it a "scientific slumber party"?

KB: Oh, that's a good description of it, yeah.

SS: Anything that you haven't mentioned, stories, instances, blow-ups, humorous times, camaraderie, etc., that was special? Anything like that.

KB: Yeah, it was an amazing time. I remember something with Jim when we were almost through. I had to come back to Corvallis for something, and I took the disk that had the master draft of the aquatics chapter on it, and I hid it. Because I didn't want him to get ahold of it because he was liable to insert 01:46:00something that would be quite surprising that none of us would find until the final draft was done, as happened when we were reviewing comments on the peer review draft. Gordie Reeves, myself, Lisa Brown and another person there who was working on the project; it was probably 1:00 in the morning, we are going through peer reviews, and we find this statement we blamed on Jim. I don't know, but for some reason we just thought it was hilarious we just found that. Nobody in our group that night admitted to having seen the passage before it had gotten this far in the process. The peer review commenter wrote, "What are you trying to say. What is this?" Jim said something like, "The site potential tree is tall. The Olympic National Forest increased thirty percent, clearly indicating the need for more research." Total non-sequitur. I think he was trying to say 01:47:00was a site potential tree is tall, so riparian protection on the Olympic National Forest would be thirty percent greater than previously.

SS: But Jim was known for statements like that.

KB: Like that, yes, exactly.

SS: He was a creative, ad-hoc genius, correct?

KB: That's, exactly.

SS: That's what I've heard about Jim.

KB: He certainly was. And so, I spent a good part of my career sweeping up after 01:48:00him. So, that was one time when I realized that I was going to be proactive, hide the disk from him, and then, when I got back, he definitely realized that I'd hidden the disk from him. He was none too happy with me, but I think we all explained to him it was for his own good.

SS: That's funny, because everybody described Jim as he was kind of an ideas guy, with stories like that, but always with love. (Laughs) Would that be a correct way of characterizing him?

KB: Oh yeah, most definitely. I remember one other point when, I don't know, it's 3:00 in the morning and we're standing on Burnside Street [Portland] getting ready to cross over onto the other side of Burnside. There was some convenience store, me and Gordie and a couple of other people, and all the 01:49:00homeless people on Burnside ["skid row" of city].

SS: All you guys are wondering if you're going to become the winos of the future, right?

KB: That's right. So, that was sort of interesting, the realization that it's just us and them out at this hour of the night.

SS: Yeah, Burnside, that's the place down there, and probably still is. KB: And just looking at the world go by during that time, there was a lot that happened. I remember getting in an elevator with Jack Ward Thomas and the incident at Waco [David Koresh/Branch Davidians, FBI/ATF] had just happened. He was very, you know, moved.

SS: You're talking about when they tried to raid the compound and everybody burnt up?

KB: Yeah, if I remember correctly. Another time we were trying to order a pizza, and no one could decide what they wanted. This was toward the very end, and 01:50:00Bruce McCammon, who was really supportive -- he was in the regional office of the Forest Service. I think he was the regional hydrologist. He happened to be there that day, and he's looking at us, like, you're developing the Northwest Forest Plan and you can't even decide what you want on a pizza?

SS: Here is my little throw-in joke, is, the fisheries people, should of course get anchovies. (Laughs)

KB: Yeah.

SS: Even though I don't like it. I don't.

KB: I'm not an anchovies fan. But, just silly little things like that always come to mind.

SS: But that's what makes those things endearing memories.

KB: Yeah.

SS: Is all the non-scientific stuff, in addition to the other accomplishments?

KB: Then, after Option 9 was selected, there was some calming down of the frenzy 01:51:00that happened when we were all in the Pink Tower nonstop.

SS: The first 90 days? [60 days actually, 30 days added later to deadline]

KB: Well, actually.

SS: But then you had a sort of break, right? Or did you have a break?

KB: You know, I don't think we had much of a break.

SS: Okay. Anyway, continue the story.

KB: But after that, there was a realization that it had to be handed off to develop a plan, so the Record of Decision had to be developed. And a lot of the scientists who had been involved they went on to other things, and that was one of the roles that I played in that hand-off.

SS: So, you were involved with the Record of Decision.

KB: Yes.

SS: Transfer and basically taking, well, that's just a publication. I'm pointing 01:52:00to the FEMAT book on the table, that that big thing into something more concise, (slapping desk) one, two, three, four, five [documents], here it is.

KB: Right.

SS: Here's what it means. How it's going to be implemented. Correct?

KB: Yeah. And so, there was a period, I can't really remember, but I know that Option 9 had been selected. And this was around Christmas.

SS: Of '93?

KB: Of '93, yeah. Option 9 ["Alternative"] had been selected. The federal government had been sued by environmental groups, been sued by the logging industry, and if I recall correctly, there was an attempt to modify Option 9 so 01:53:00it would be more protective because the Clinton administration was concerned it wouldn't meet environmental laws. At that point, that's when the interim riparian reserves on intermittent streams went from half a site potential tree to a full site potential tree. Those meetings were, I don't know if it was intentional or why they were held around Christmas, it was just timing, but there was a lot of-I think it sort of slipped under the radar that that was happening.

SS: Which part?

KB: The part where interim riparian reserves on the intermittent streams went from half to a full site potential tree.

SS: Right.

KB: In FEMAT, it had offered that up as one of the approaches for mitigation, if 01:54:00you wanted to increase the likelihood that it's okay.

SS: We are interrupting, Rio, the Jack Russell terrier's [family dog in room] attempt to eat the crumbs from my cookie. I pulled it up because there's chocolate in it, and dogs are not supposed to eat chocolate, so, excuse me, for the record there. Here, just let me.

KB: Half to a full site potential tree.

SS: Right.

KB: As I said, I don't know if it was intentional to reduce the focus, it was just the timing that reduced the focus on that decision, or if it was just the way it happened to play out. But I was involved in those meetings, and the 01:55:00terrestrial folks were very supportive of that approach. They could get rid of the 50-11-40 rule by doing that.

SS: What, remind me about the 50-11-40 rule?

KB: I can't remember exactly. It was like you had to keep fifty percent of trees over eleven inches [diameter at breast height]. [Definition: Fifty percent of land in each quarter township under each federal agency's jurisdiction should be dominated by trees at least eleven inches in diameter at breast height, with at least a forty-percent canopy cover].

SS: Okay, it was a calculus [formula] used in the land portion of it [NWFP].

KB: Right, into the terrestrial.

SS: Okay, got you.

KB: So, the rule was for spotted owls and dispersal habitat. They looked at the riparian buffers and said, "If we have these extended riparian buffers, then we could drop the 50-11-40 rule." There was the decision to go that route. I don't 01:56:00know that it would have happened that way if Jim Sedell had been there. I kind of doubt it would have [been agreed to]. As far as him looking at it later, I think that there were a lot of disparaging comments about "spaghetti" on the landscape, and riparian buffers taking up [so much area], they were called riparian reserves, so they were attributed to the aquatics, or the aquatics were held accountable for all that extra land.

SS: Being withdrawn?

KB: And being withdrawn, yes.

SS: From potential use?

KB: Right. I think that was always frustrating because the interim riparian reserves were serving multiple purposes, but the aquatics always got blamed for 01:57:00it. I think it would have happened differently if Jim had been in the room instead of me. SS: What do you remember about the political pressures at the time, during the Pink Tower or right after, from agency people? In other words, the managers, who weren't in the room, the public and interest groups, whether it be environmentalists or timber lobby? What do you remember, just anything you can remember about those different elements, starting with the agency people, but maybe working up from there?

KB: The agency people were an interesting mix of perspectives. The Scientific Advisory Group team they pulled together, the intermediate team that came up 01:58:00with the revised Option 9. I was on that. And I had also been on the team, and maybe it was the same team, I don't remember, but there was a hand-off to the agencies to implement it and to come up with an implementable NEPA document, the Record of Decision. I worked with them, and I think that came out in '94, didn't it? The Record of Decision?

SS: In '94, yes.

KB: Yeah.

SS: The final report to Congress and President in '95.

KB: Okay.

SS: Like the end of '94, beginning of '95, when it was published.

KB: Okay. And so, I think for that period is when I was [involved]. That year, I was working on it with them. And you know, I said it was ninety-I can't remember 01:59:00when we were.

SS: Kelly is picking up the Record of Decision publication.

KB: Okay, so this is the Record of Decision, it's April '94, yeah.

SS: Okay.

KB: It must have been Christmas of '93 when those decisions were being tossed about to extend the riparian buffers on intermittent streams. Once this was turned over to managers to implement, the agency folks who had been working on the plan, invested in the plan and that approach, going from FEMAT to the Record of Decision; those folks were all on board about how to implement it. They were supportive of the approach, supportive of the philosophy of "let's start 02:00:00managing these forests again," and not have them tied up. But once it got beyond that group, then you ran into a lot of resistance. You were just as likely to run into resistance from managers as you were acceptance by the managers, of this new approach to doing their business.

SS: Did you feel a lot of pressure? I mean, they weren't allowed in the room in the Pink Tower, but they probably tried to influence things perhaps?

KB: I don't know so much in going from FEMAT to the Record of Decision, but after the Record of Decision, I just got this feeling that the people who were resisting it felt like - we were here before this President came along, and 02:01:00we're going to be here long after this President leaves. If we drag our feet long enough, then we won't really have to deal with the implications of this forest plan.

SS: In other words, people that were of the old school, the traditional.

KB: Right.

SS: For the perspective of Forest Service people, you mean the "get out the cut" people. Right?

KB: Yes, with people that had been rewarded their entire career for "getting out the cut," when this new approach came along, there was a lot of resistance, understandably. But I feel like, being in an agency where you survive multiple presidential administrations, then that's the way people were looking at this. They just said, "If we drag our heels long enough, then this too, shall pass." 02:02:00But it didn't. You just had to find the people that were more supportive and forward-thinking to work with. And look for allies among the different agencies, whether the Fish and Wildlife Service, NMFS [National Marine Fisheries Service], or Forest Service, to begin to implement this in a way that they could stay out of court.

SS: How do you remember it being presented to you, and how do you remember 02:03:00conceptualizing the fact that, I won't say for the first time in history, but first time in recent history in my memory, that scientists, free from typical political and administrative considerations, were allowed to run with it? How would you describe that? How was it presented? How did people like Gordie and Jim and other senior people, Jerry Franklin, and even you, perceived how novel this was?

KB: I had watched the log jam, you know, develop and--

SS: You're talking about the political "log jam"? ["Forest Wars," injunction stopping logging on federal lands in NW over spotted owl/ESA.]

KB: Log jam, yes.

SS: Just to be clear there. There were other kinds of log jams [physical logs/rafts - timber industry/transport/storage methods] on the rivers.

KB: I had watched the political log jam develop, and seen the distrust, the 02:04:00public distrust of the managers and politicians, and everybody involved up until that point. The only people that really hadn't been in the room and still had a relatively untarnished reputation, were the scientists. And so, having it handed off to them seemed in some ways a really logical step, but a novel step. It was interesting because so few of the scientists had any real understanding of NEPA or the laws. I mean, the Endangered Species Act, yes, but nobody knew about FACA [Federal Advisory Committee Act] or these other laws. It was just like, let's get in a room and do this thing, knowing that it was in some says a logical 02:05:00step. In other ways it was an unprecedented, just as you said, an unprecedented step to turn this over to the scientists to try to figure it out. But I guess it's the adage of not using the same approach that got you into this situation to get you out, you know, and this was trying something different anyway, too.

SS: The idea being objective science would be relatively free of typical biases?

KB: Yeah, and they were the only people left with an untarnished reputation.

SS: How successful do you think the teams were at doing that?

KB: About keeping their biases out, or -- ?

SS: Well, nobody is filter-free [cultural/psychological].

KB: No.

SS: Now you could do a survey of who votes for whom and that kind of stuff, but in terms of understanding that nothing is perfect, how well do you think the objectivist paradigm was dominant in the whole process?

KB: I think scientists have the advantage of being trained to be aware of their biases, and so are aware at least a little bit more. Bias can creep in, and their job is to try to keep it out as much as possible. From that perspective, I think the effort was relatively unaffected by people's biases. There really was an attempt to look at the science objectively, and ask, "What do we know. What 02:07:00are the data gaps? What's necessary to move forward?" And make an effort to have outside reviewers look at the approach and evaluate it. So, I think we did the best job we could.

SS: Well, 120 days is not very long.

KB: No, no.

SS: If you think about how long it takes to write great books and research studies, I mean, horizons of years and decades. But really, what you guys did is you synthesized, which is a form of original research [work], because synthesis is taking what was brought in from wherever before, and not compiling or presenting it in the same way. So, it is a form of original research or interpretation. Correct?

KB: Yeah.

SS: Okay.

KB: And we certainly weren't doing experimental research.

SS: You weren't out tromping the streams while you were running out from the Pink Tower?

KB: I don't know that people looked at it as a research project. I mean, there was certainly analysis, you know, analytical efforts that went on as part of it, but I don't think anybody really looked at the development of the plan as a research project or FEMAT itself, although it certainly could have been turned into a hugely interesting sociological study. Just putting that many people in a room under high pressure for 120 days. I think what's come from it has certainly generated a lot of research and been the subject of research and the motivator for a lot of research. So, just for example, if you do a Google scholar search 02:09:00on headwater streams and you look at the period before 1993 and the period after 1993, it's was just an exponential increase in the amount of studies that has been done on intermittent streams or headwater streams. Part of that, I think, is just that there's been an explosion of research in general, but on that topic in particular, FEMAT drove it. We had some understanding that intermittent streams were important and are connected to permanently flowing streams, but what those connections were and to what extent and how far they extended, I think that's been a whole area of research that's developed since then.

SS: How would you compare the differential valuations of species that were 02:10:00listed as endangered or considered endangered or almost, between the charismatic fauna, such as the spotted owl and fish, which unless you're a fisherman, it's not a sexy connection. How would you compare the differential valuations of that?

KB: I think by that point fish had an advocacy group. There's a commercial fishing group, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman's Associations. By that point the commercial fishermen had gotten on board, saying, we need fish and they're connected to the landscape and how forests are managed. You had that advocacy. But you also had fish as being iconic for the Northwest. Salmon are as 02:11:00much a part of the Northwest as any other species, as much or more so. Although they're not warm and fuzzy, they are emblematic of the Northwest.

SS: My point also was about differential valuations in culture groups where most fishermen are not generally what you'd consider as liberal environmentalists.

KB: No, no.

SS: But your owl people are your typical, urban-based environmentalist groups from the Sierra Club to the Oregon Wild, and all the different things in between, and Wilderness Society and Earth First!. So, you see what I'm saying about differential valuations and how that plays out in society-at-large, but also within the sciences and how you sell the science?

KB: Yeah, and good question. There are definitely environmental groups that are 02:12:00river-based. Then, the Pacific Rivers Council, and they were very influential. You had other, as you described them as more urban-based, typical environmental groups.

SS: Granted, I'm throwing around simplistic concepts, and there's a lot more complexity and cross-pollination, but still, you get the direction of what I'm saying?

KB: I think so. I'm not 100 percent sure I do. And maybe the valuation, I think, 02:13:00that word is throwing me off, so maybe you could kind of --?

SS: Just how society values these different things, and the different interest groups and perspectives that find value in these things that are connected to endangered species, ecosystem health, etc.

KB: This is probably my bias, but I think from an aquatics perspective, people innately understand the value of clean water, clean drinking water, and understand the value of fish because there is an economic component. The spotted owl doesn't have an economic base.

SS: Unless you're a photographer and sell pictures of birds.

KB: Yeah, so I think in some ways adding the fisheries component made the whole package more saleable.

SS: It did balance it out between your typical economic interests, and, shall we say, nature lovers, per se?

KB: Yes.

SS: That's a simplistic dualism, but you get my point.

KB: Yes, definitely. At that point, it became less about esoteric environmental protection and more about weaving the economics and the environment together, and how it allowed to tell the story that there is no separation. Environmental viability is necessary for economic viability and social viability. By including the aquatics, it allowed you to do that very clearly.

SS: Now, I've heard different stories, but mostly that there wasn't a lot of 02:15:00Native American involvement during the planning process. But how did you take into account Native American interests, and fishing is central to my obvious question. I'm not going to go back to pre-Celilo Falls kind of stuff, but you understand where I'm going with this?

KB: Yeah. I don't know that there was a real effort to take it into account, not certainly proactively.

SS: During the original process. Most Native American involvement or taking their interests into account was in the monitoring phase. Am I correct?

KB: Yes, in the public involvement part of the monitoring phase, right..

SS: Got you. Now, what do you think the most successful components of, first of all, FEMAT, were as a whole, and the aquatic component, specifically? And where 02:16:00do you think its shortcomings were, for both sets?

KB: I think the advantages, one of them is the shifting of the burden of proof. I think that was a huge leap forward. I also think the attempt to integrate the terrestrial and the aquatic was a leap forward. And I think the protection of intermittent streams or recognition of those, as being critical, The watershed analysis had the potential to really alter the way federal land management is done. It never lived up to that potential. I think there's a lot of benefit in 02:17:00the way it was being implemented in the State of Washington, by the state directly, which coupled it with planning. But the federal approach to watershed analysis wanted to ensure it was decoupled from planning, because the land management agencies didn't want to introduce another NEPA level. They wanted to make sure you had decisions subject to NEPA, only at the project and forest planning levels. They were concerned that by linking project planning at a watershed-scale based on watershed analysis, you would introduce another level of NEPA decision-making.

SS: Which is one level. It's already hard enough.

KB: Right.

SS: And you'd enter into the dynamic of "paralysis through too much analysis" along with political stuff.

KB: Right. I think that's why they were so resistant to it. But the watershed 02:18:00analysis sort of lost its reason for being by decoupling it from planning.

SS: Okay.

KB: So, it just became this hoop you had to jump through in order to move forward. It never played the role of allowing people to really reduce the width of interim riparian reserves, a key part of its intended role. One of its intended roles was,, here's a landscape and we're being conservative in terms of our protection or what you allow to happen on the landscape until you do a watershed analysis. After you do a watershed analysis, if you can document through the information that you've collected, that the buffers are too wide as they were initially proposed, you can adjust them. I think people were really concerned that NEPA was going to have to be invoked to do that. So, they avoided 02:19:00that whole approach of adjusting the buffer widths, and began trying to manage within the buffers and try to craft their arguments in terms of benefitting aquatic resources, because that's what the standards and guidelines required for harvest in riparian reserves, and it has to be for the benefit of aquatic resources. That was the approach they took to try to justify the activity. But I 02:20:00think the Forest Service might have been better served if they hadn't resisted it so fervently. And this showed up again and again, in terms of not just the Northwest Forest Plan, but in attempts to revise the National Forest Management Act planning regulations.

SS: You're talking about 1976 Act, correct?

KB: I'm talking about the '76 Act and the subsequent attempts to revise those 02:21:00planning regulations.

SS: Well, and to write forest plans before all these things happened. Correct? I mean, a lot of the forests tried to write plans up until '88, '89, '90.

KB: Right.

SS: And they [pre-NWFP forest planning efforts based on 1976 NFMA] were largely successful [based on previous expectations/laws], but eventually, they weren't accepted because they fell short in certain areas. Correct?

KB: That's right. They fell short in terms of their ability to handle these more complex issues. And so, looking at the implementing regulations for the National Forest Management Act, Norm Johnson led the "Committee of Scientists" that attempted a revision of those planning regulations that would have allowed different approaches than planning just at the site and the forest levels. And 02:22:00the management agencies' hesitancy to introduce any other layers of NEPA, I think kept watershed analysis from playing a functional role. It also impacted the ability to later modify implementation of regulations for the National Forest Management Act. It's all the same root, just manifested in different ways.

SS: Would you characterize the FEMAT process as a gigantic, intense "NEPA" process?

KB: Yeah, and I think that's what people had envisioned, more of a regional scale NEPA process, looking at and bringing issues together that were driving beyond just an individual forest, to try and look at them more comprehensively in the landscape the federal forest lands were embedded in, and bring multiple 02:23:00federal forests together. That's what the Northwest Forest Plan did. I think that was the model in most scientists' minds going forward that really needed to happen to bring national forest planning into the 21st century. And the National Forest Management Act planning regulations have been modified now. They were finally able to modify them [2012] after a few false starts. Although there was more of a recognition of the need to plan, to do analysis and planning on a larger scale, I do not think it was ever fully realized in the regulations.

SS: Now, the '80s have often been described as the rise of the "-ologists" in 02:24:00the Forest Service, but also other agencies, BLM and Park Service, too, especially the Forest Service. And you, the scientists or -ologists, were essential to this big plan. What do you recall about their stature within the agency and the dynamics within the agency after the Northwest Forest Plan, in terms of the science versus the administrative, and how was it a continuation of the old, or was it a rebalancing of the scales, if you will?

KB: I would say it was somewhat of a rebalancing of the scales. I would think that, at least in the Pacific Northwest, research in some ways had been operating on a completely parallel track. After the Northwest Forest Plan, research was much more heavily involved in the implementation and the direction 02:25:00the National Forest System and the BLM headed. And within the management branches of those agencies, the -ologists, I think they continued to play a very important role, maybe more so as time went on.

SS: Some of them even became, like the chief of the Forest Service.

KB: I know.

SS: We're talking about Jack, right? [Jack Ward Thomas] KB: Uh-huh, well, Jack and--

SS: And then a couple more other people, too, correct.

KB: Yeah, and Mike Dombeck and--

SS: Wasn't he the first, though?

KB: Jack, yeah.

SS: He was the first -ologist/scientist [as Forest Service Chief]. That's what I thought. I'd like to talk more about the Northwest Forest Plan and its implementation; its shortcomings, its problems, its successes, and your role 02:26:00specifically in aquatic monitoring. What was the feeling amongst your colleagues, and we can stay in the aquatic area, or in general, within the Forest Service. What was the feeling about accomplishment when this big event had happened, the FEMAT and the Record of Decision, and then the official report goes out to the Congress and the President?

KB: I think there was a lot of relief and optimism it would be implemented in a way that allowed sustainable forest harvest to move forward. I think that's ultimately what scientists I'm most familiar with had in mind. And relief that, as I said earlier, the "log jam" [political/legal] had broken, and that our role 02:27:00in it, our primary role in it, was over and that we could hand it off. Also implementing it through the monitoring aspect. There was a lot of struggle in developing a monitoring strategy for the aquatics that people could support. The EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] provided an approach they'd been using a long time, and had that in mind as a way to go forward. Then, the approach of the "watershed condition index" and use of the decision-support framework that 02:28:00was adopted, were definitely new and different. I think regardless of how they decided to move forward, whether using a watershed approach or an individual site approach like the EPA had done, sort of a random selection of sites, and I think ultimately....

SS: It's a big subject.

KB: They came to a compromise in the approach. In any regard, I think that 02:29:00calling it "effectiveness monitoring" was misguided. I think calling it effectiveness monitoring was somewhat misleading because it never was designed to monitor the effectiveness of the Northwest Forest Plan in a way people expected. I think people had more of a notion that it was going to be true effectiveness monitoring - if you do "X," then "Y" happens. But, there was no way to really identify or tease out the different elements that people wanted to assess the effectiveness of the forest plan.

SS: And you're speaking of both the terrestrial and aquatic, too?

KB: Mostly the aquatics.

SS: Because that's what you were involved in.

KB: Yes, that's what I was most familiar with.

SS: And it seemed like it would be harder to do aquatic.

KB: Yes.

SS: Than terrestrial, because you have more of a physical thing you can look at and see.

KB: Right.

SS: Rather than a flowing, dynamic hydrological system.

KB: Right. And so, from a terrestrial perspective, I think you can.

SS: You can do bird counts, you can do murrelet counts, you can do recovery/vegetation analysis, etc.

KB: Right. And from an aquatics perspective, being able to say, if the Forest Service implements riparian reserve design "X," are you going to get "Y" response in the fish or the habitat? The fish are so far removed, they're literally removed from the habitat by going out into the ocean, and the activities on Forest Service land are often influenced by activities off the Forest Service land.

SS: On private lands or state lands, etc.

KB: Right. And so, I think calling it effectiveness monitoring left a lot of 02:31:00people disappointed, and they're still trying to figure out what to do with the data.

SS: If you wanted to characterize the difference in the data sets between before the Northwest Forest Plan, then immediately after 1995; how would you characterize that, and what were the strengths and weaknesses in terms of foundations, data-sets that could hold muster scientifically, going forward?

KB: I think from the aquatics perspective, as I said earlier, the data just weren't there to do large-scale analyses. I mean, we didn't have stream data.

SS: Especially the small streams. KB: Especially the small streams. We didn't have information on where the roads were. We may have better information now, but the road layers and road densities on federal lands appeared to be much 02:32:00higher than on private lands. But we knew that's not the case, because roads were much better mapped on federal lands. The roads were probably much better mapped on private lands, but the privately-held databases for their road systems were not available to the public. That may have changed, but at the time, that was the case. Then you had a whole legacy of forest roads that were no longer being maintained, but they were still [out there on the land].

SS: Or they were closed because of planning and regulations that were implemented?

KB: Right. Still functioning as conduits of water and sediment. That was a huge data gap. And from the aquatics side, there were just a lot of issues like that, that we didn't have the data to really do regional-scale planning and maybe a 02:33:00little bit better forest or site level. And then the next ten years, fifteen years, was really spent in trying to improve those databases. The Forest Service now has a very large data set for stream habitat inventory and water quality, and they were just starting to pull that together [at that time].

SS: How were you able to cross boundaries, per se, into non-Forest Service land, and include other data sets, from BLM or what-have-you?

KB: It's still there.

SS: So, there's still a certain incomplete, ad hoc element to it, even now, even 02:34:00though it's been approved?

KB: Yes.

SS: And that's problematic because of just the continuum and the flow dynamic of any hydrological system.

KB: Right.

SS: Which makes it intrinsically harder?

KB: Right.

SS: How did you determine where you're going to go and start monitoring? We need a calculus where we need so many main stems and so many this and so many that, to be different tier streams? How did you go about that, and knowing that when not all the lands were Forest Service? And how were those decisions determined? KB: I think it evolved over time. I was not as intimately involved in the monitoring framework. I participated somewhat, and certainly not in the monitoring itself, but in the development of the decision-support framework. 02:35:00That was more my contribution. But I think that there was some focus on the amount of public lands in a watershed, and there was a focus on doing a random selection of stream reaches within those watersheds. And I don't really know if there was a lot of monitoring of non-federal lands through that program. Certainly through the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, there was a stream monitoring program.

SS: When you're talking about sharing of data, even though you wouldn't maybe be the primary monitoring agency, entity or scientist, I am asking about however that sharing process was done or not done.

KB: I think there was the willingness to share data, but the formats were often 02:36:00very different, as well as the setups [studies, criteria, scale, etc.]

SS: Describe to me exactly what "decision support" means in the context of what you did? Just so I'm clear for myself, but also for the record.

KB: The decision-support model basically allowed the data describing different aspects of streams to be brought together and to identify different criteria that would suggest that a watershed was in good, medium or poor health.

SS: Okay, I see.

KB: It just was a way to do this transparently. So, the data were brought together in a sort of a decision-tree. You could tell at each stage of the tree 02:37:00which attributes were most influencing the aggregate watershed condition or health score. If it was roads, the amount of roads in the watershed, the amount of harvest done, the water quality, or just where in this tree the most weight was coming in terms of how the final score shook out.

SS: Before the Northwest Forest Plan, and then going forward, give me some examples of problems before, successes after, and/or little or no impact scenarios. Or different examples [range, good to bad] you can give about 02:38:00ecological restoration health, better stream quality, etc. Or just talk about it in a regional sense, or a sense between areas [within NWFP zone], like Washington, Oregon, Northern California, etc.

KB: The monitoring suggests, at least from the perspective of restoration that watershed condition is recovering in the Northwest Forest Plan area, just in general. The Forest Service made a lot of investments in road removal, timber 02:39:00harvest levels have definitely decreased, and there has been definitely a decrease in harvest levels, and thinning in riparian zones has occurred. So, the idea that forests are more quickly aging in riparian areas, growing bigger trees faster, I think there's some of that. That's not the major contribution to the watershed condition scores improving, but in general, I think that's had some effect [impact].

SS: Now, the problems with salmon and other fish were more involved with over-fishing in the ocean, or dynamics out in the ocean. Correct or not?

KB: I think a combination. People talk about the four-H's: harvest, hatcheries, habitat and hydropower. I think it depends on the run of salmon, which one of 02:40:00those is the biggest contributors to the decline of the fish. And in some cases, it's all four combined. Trying to pin problems on] one responsible factor is really difficult. I think fish harvest has definitely played a role, but harvest levels have been greatly reduced, recently. Back then, I think harvest levels were a lot higher [bigger factor], but not so much anymore.

SS: Now, can you give an especially poignant example of restoration, either a main stem or a headwaters stream, or something else that would be a good example? On the other end [negative], where maybe there hasn't been as much as 02:41:00you might expect in terms of recovery, whether it be water quality or fish habitat and numbers?

KB: I think the Forest Service has undertaken a lot of restoration. There's a project called ked "Fivemile Bell Watershed Restoration Project" over by Florence on the coast. That project has been really effective in restoring some meadow, riparian, upland and stream habitats, and establishing stream and floodplain connections. It is a whole watershed active restoration project. With other active restoration, it's often difficult to assess at what scale you're actually having an effect. And how important are our efforts are at recovery 02:42:00versus just letting nature take its course, as you were talking about?

SS: In other words, proactive recovery and restoration versus au natural?

KB: Passive. Yeah, more passive approaches. I know now there's more of a focus there. In the Northwest Forest Plan and FEMAT, at the time that those plans were coming up, there was an interest in using what we called pre-mitigation, where you would harvest timber, either from riparian or upslope areas, put it in the stream, and say that would mitigate negative impacts of forest harvest. We rejected that idea in FEMAT, that this was not an appropriate approach. But, the 02:43:00pendulum has swung back the other way, and now people are once again starting to propose pre-mitigation. Even Gordie's [Reeves] has proposed it. They're calling it "tree tipping" now [cut/put trees in streams to modify streambed or water flow]. There's more of a context for it in terms of allowing some short-term impact for longer-term gains. The hope is that in restoring riparian areas, doing thinning in riparian areas, if you put some of the trees in the channels, you'll offset shorter-term impacts. Neither the date nor research fully supports the practice yet. It is interesting to see how the pendulum has swung back in 02:44:00that direction. But I'm not sure that it swung back based on a lot of scientific support. So, that jury is still out. Some of my work has been used to develop approaches for allowing more harvest along headwater streams.

SS: To allow higher runoff, in part, or -- ?

KB: More so related to debris flows. So identifying areas on the landscape that are more or less likely to initiate a debris flow. If you can identify those areas that either are very unlikely to, then doing timber harvest on those, may make more sense. You may be able to relax protections. Or areas that are really 02:45:00prone to failure if you allow timber harvest on those areas, but provide for sources of large wood along their runout path. Then, when a debris flow happens, it will deliver large wood to streams downslope.

SS: Now, tell me about large wood and why it's important.

KB: I think large wood is important. There's a long history of focusing on large wood in streams from pulling all the large wood out of streams to putting lots of large wood in streams. But the understanding that wood, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, is such a huge structural element of streams, provides habitat and structural elements, geomorphic elements, to form and maintain 02:46:00pools. It provides habitat complexity, including spaces for migrating adults and rearing juvenile salmon to hide from predators.

SS: Well, it creates a more eclectic fluvial system.

KB: Yeah, it just does.

SS: And it also affects the bio-geochemistry and the flow?

KB: Right.

SS: Rather than just have a chute for water? Correct?

KB: Right, exactly. Large wood can reduce the distance debris flows travel and can trap fine sediment that are particularly harmful to salmon. It stabilizes stream banks and slows stream flow to store food and nutrients for aquatic insects that are prey to salmon. It also helps store the gravels salmon use for spawning. Large trees are such an important, conspicuous element in stream channels. Historically people understood that trees have to have some role, and it's just been trying to tease out what roles large wood played. And whether putting too much large wood in streams was bad, or not having enough was bad, and just trying to figure out where along that continuum our interaction with 02:47:00large wood should lie.

SS: One of the more controversial aspects of the post-FEMAT process in the implementation of the plan was addition of "Survey and Manage." I 've often heard the critique that it was putting a "fine filter" in place where a "coarse filter" would have been better suited. Now, how does Survey and Manage, and the critique I just mentioned, play into the aquatic aspect of monitoring, and the success of the plan and its implementation over time?

KB: From an aquatic perspective, no fish species were includes in Survey and 02:48:00Manage. For other aquatic-affiliated species, I think there's a couple of ways to gauge things. For some amphibians, Survey and Manage did allow for some learning to occur. People didn't know where they were, what habitats they were using, what their distribution was, and how sensitive they were to management. Some of these efforts identified species that were less of a concern. Some were taken off the Survey and Manage list because after enough surveys were done, they found a species should not have been there in the first place. I have heard the criticisms, that it [policy] was a "scalpel" when a "chainsaw" would have worked, but in many respects it seems like it has been a useful tool. [On Matrix and AMA lands, "Survey and Manage" required managers to identify a suite of species, their presence, vulnerability to management, etc.]

SS: The main thing I have heard is that it hamstrung managers, because the 02:49:00reality in terms of time and energy to manage for a potentially large number of species, is almost impossible.

KB: Right.

SS: And that it led to paralysis in allowing the concepts of the forest plan to play out, maybe as they were intended originally.

KB: I'm not as familiar with that, because most of the species that it applies to are terrestrial species [Matrix and AMAs - mostly terrestrial concerns].

SS: That's why I'm asking you from a more aquatic perspective, but I still would like your comment on the whole because most of the problem has been on terrestrial systems and landscapes, if you will.

KB: Yes. And as I said, for some amphibians that allowed learning to occur about those. Some of the species I think have been taken off the Survey and Manage list because after enough surveys were done, they found that they really 02:50:00shouldn't have been on there in the first place. It shifted the burden of proof. They were able to figure out that we really don't need to worry about these species, so we can pull back some of our concerns. I know there's been a lot of concern about the Survey and Manage, but in many respects it's been a useful tool. But again, I think that was one of the pieces inserted between the draft and final Record of Decision. I don't recall Survey and Manage having been in the FEMAT report.

SS: It was not. It was added by people afterwards [Within the implementation 02:51:00guideline documents].

KB: Doesn't surprise me.

SS: Why do you think that Adaptive Management Areas have struggled in their implementation with a couple of exceptions?

KB: I think people have been reluctant to take the risks that were envisioned for those areas, to actually experiment and come up with different approaches for management. And it was just a lot easier to follow the standards and guidelines in the Northwest Forest Plan than to try to --

SS: Take chances?

KB: To take chances, with the exceptions being where you had strong science support and advocacy.

SS: A classic example is the Central Cascades AMA when it happens to be right by the Andrews [And the Applegate AMA in southern Oregon].

KB: Right.

SS: And you've got this group of super-committed, super-smart science people right there wanting it to work. That's an exception to the rule, though.

KB: Yes.

SS: How would you characterize the whole process between regions, with let's take states. Washington, Oregon, California, in terms of ecology, but also the politics of it in your experience, from what you did in aquatics?

KB: I don't know that there's much difference between Washington and Oregon related to aquatics on the federal side. California [is different] because it's 02:53:00smaller area in California [the NWFP area in California is small fraction of state], and the fish there were already so threatened. They were already so far at risk that it really [was a critical case]. I don't know the answer.

SS: It's a very complicated question.

KB: It is, I don't know the answer. It's one I haven't thought about a lot. I know [that] in terms of the state approaches, there are very big differences. The State of Oregon has been very proactive in collecting data and they have a strong research department for fisheries, whereas, I think California and Washington have data sets that are nowhere near as complete and extensive as the 02:54:00State of Oregon's. But from a federal side, because the Northwest Forest Plan is this overarching plan, I don't know that there were that many differences. I just don't know.

SS: Now, after completion of the original Northwest Forest Plan, what do you feel were its strongest components, its weakest components, and biggest unanswered questions? And how have those initial assessments been confirmed, challenged or modified in your sense?

KB: I think the strongest elements from an aquatic perspective are the recognition of the importance of intermittent streams, the shift in the burden 02:55:00of proof, and, I guess, those two elements, and combining with the terrestrial to gain efficiencies in implementing conservation. And looking at streams from more of a landscape perspective, I guess.

SS: How do you define a "landscape"?

KB: Looking at streams from beyond just a small reach, and looking at streams with consideration of the watershed through which the stream flows.

SS: Because I hear many different definitions, depending on discipline, etc.

KB: Right, yeah.

SS: Like, your husband, an artist, would think of a landscape differently than - 02:56:00[other people/disciplines].

KB: Yes.

SS: A fairly obvious example.

KB: Thank you for clarifying, or allowing me to clarify. I think those are some of the strengths. Some of the weaknesses have been related to better understanding the tradeoffs between short-term risk, assuming short-term risk, and longer-term benefits to aquatics. For regulatory agencies, that's been difficult for them. I don't know if it's their mission or personnel, or just why that has been a stumbling block for them as much as it seems to have been. That 02:57:00may just be because sufficient guidance wasn't provided, or the connection in the plan wasn't well enough articulated to focus on acknowledging the short-term risk for long-term benefits, particularly with restoration. So, I think that's something that there's been a struggle with. Understanding which of the components of the Northwest Forest Plan really contributed the most to any recovery that's gone on has been a very thorny issue. Part of that has been because of the way the monitoring was set up, and it really wasn't designed to answer those questions.

SS: It was designed to gather data, correct?

KB: Yes, right.

SS: Then the questions will be answered later?

KB: Yes. It was designed to collect data on status and trends in aquatic 02:58:00conditions, rather than validate the effectiveness of the plan's components. What people probably wanted was more validation monitoring or research, to really take these different elements and examine them in much more detailed and much more systematic way, to really know, what are they buying us? And I think the work with some of the Adaptive Management Areas could have allowed that to happen in a much more rigorous way.

SS: What has surprised you the most about aquatic habitat conditions in the last twenty years? Recovery or otherwise?

KB: The question I thought you were going to ask me is about the plan. And the answer to that is that it's still around.

SS: Well, you can answer about the plan, also. Answer both questions.

KB: Yeah, okay.

SS: I mean, we're not stuck on a script, so you can go ahead.

KB: From an aquatics perspective, stream habitat seems to be recovering in some watersheds. And I am not-as I say that, evaluating my answer, or my reason for 03:00:00answering that way. I'm not. I think the decline in the amount of timber harvest has probably contributed as much as any other factor, that and the restoration related to roads, for recovering habitat conditions on federal lands.

SS: Are you talking about the fact there are fewer roads that are being cut across the landscape with all the commensurate erosion and sedimentation problems they produce? Is that what you're talking about?

KB: I think that there's been a very active effort by the Forest Service to remove roads that are no longer essential or which are harmful.

SS: Or close them? KB: Remove or close roads. Not just close them, but actually pull them back, revegetate them, restore them. So, an active program of road 03:01:00restoration. That's one issue, and I think that the overall decline in timber harvest from the 1980's to now, has contributed as much as anything to the recovery of aquatic habitat. I think we've done some active in-stream restoration that has probably benefitted habitat, but again, I think it's just the reduced level of activity. Coming back to the roads, I know there's been federal timber programs focused on thinning and longer-term multiple entries into stands, and I think that's the direction people are proposing some of these areas be managed in that regard. But keeping those roads on the landscape for 03:02:00multiple entries has its own set of concerns and possible detrimental effects that aren't well-worked out. So, the ability to close a road after a harvest, you have to continue to maintain this road for many, many years following, to allow multiple entries into the stand.

SS: Even though you were involved in the aquatics, and actually, you could say that this has improved the economics of fishing, indirectly or directly, even though we've had other problems we talked about earlier. What do you say to the logging communities which have been decimated? Not just because of longer-term trends of which this is a part. That's one of the chief criticisms of the Northwest Forest Plan is that it didn't properly account for that, whether it be 03:03:00because of things like Survey and Manage and how that would affect projected lesser harvest levels, which were even much lesser than anticipated. How would you answer that to logging communities that have either been decimated or in some cases destroyed?

KB: On a personal basis?

SS: Personal or professional, either way, Kelly.

KB: On a personal level, I have a lot of empathy. People's careers, their sense of purpose, how they see themselves in the world; I certainly understand when you take those drivers away, it causes them, their families, and their communities to suffer. So, on a personal level, it's very difficult to see that. 03:04:00On a professional, more objective level, this is just an evolution of an economy that loggers were caught in the middle of, and they were paying the price for society's changing values. I guess what I'm trying to say is that society made different choices, and society has not necessarily stepped up to compensate 03:05:00those communities in a way that would value their contributions. Taking away their livelihood without offering up something else for their sacrifices seems like a cost that society should bear, and that the logging communities alone should not have to try to struggle through that on their own.

SS: Taking it from a dispassionate historical and geographic perspective, I say that extractive industries have been victim to the pendulum swings of politics and economics for thousands of years. That's not a dispassionate, non-caring statement, just an objective analysis of how they've been vulnerable because 03:06:00they don't have the value-added capital usually valued in centers of political and economic power, beyond what things [natural resources] they bring to the table. Then, when that's over, it's over.

KB: Right. I would like to think that where we are in our cultural evolution would provide more of a support net for those communities when the pendulum does swing. Maybe 150 years ago, when the timber barons were sweeping across [the country], we didn't have the capacity for any sort of social safety net for those communities. But in the 1980's and 1990's, we had more opportunity to support those communities, and I'm not sure that we did fully. But that gets on 03:07:00to a whole other conversation.

SS: No, that's okay. Now, the northern spotted owl came under attack in the recent years, not by excessive clearcutting but from another invasive competitor in the same family, the barred owl. How do we reconcile the Endangered Species Act and human causation with such a natural Darwinian process? You can extrapolate that to your aquatics expertise or just comment because it's obviously something we know about.

KB: I think that just because those natural Darwinian processes happen, does not let humans off the hook for their contribution to maintaining habitats for 03:08:00species we co-exist with. I think it presents an interesting quandary and interesting science, an interesting quandary for policy and an interesting scientific question, but I think it speaks nothing about the law itself. The law itself is a valuable tool for holding society accountable.

SS: It's a checkpoint on human excess.

KB: Yes, exactly, yes. Thank you for saying that.

SS: I understand the reality and the symbolism of it. Just like an indicator species, it may not be exactly scientific for all places and all times, but it tells us a story.

KB: Right. And it doesn't mean that I have to throw out the law and its 03:09:00implementation just because there's a case in which it's being challenged by nature.

SS: Do you think the pendulum swing [of culture and politics] may take the Northwest Forest Plan away, the political one?

KB: That's my concern, yeah. And I don't know that the next plan will be nearly as science-based. I don't know that it will be based on the learning that's occurred in the twenty, almost twenty-five years since the Northwest Forest Plan. If it is firmly rooted in our increased understanding of these ecosystems, then having the Northwest Forest Plan be replaced by something else, makes 03:10:00sense. But replacing it based on the need for or the short-term perceived need for just getting more wood out of the forest, I think that would be a very sad commentary on where we are today in terms of a political lens.

SS: Are there any memorable experiences or stories about any aspect of your involvement with the Northwest Forest Plan that we have not mentioned? Anything that you would like to talk about? Any personal anecdotes, experiences with people, friendships, anything that you want to talk about?

KB: Certainly, lasting friendships as a result of that. Mike Furness [U.S. Forest Service] was just a gem of a person to meet and continue a long-term 03:11:00friendship with. And I don't know if you've interviewed him or -- ?

SS: I know who Mike is.

KB: Yeah.

SS: But I haven't interviewed him yet.

KB: Just to have that experience was in many ways the height of my career. And to have it happen so early, it just made such a lasting impression and just was a wonderful experience.

SS: It's almost like having a platinum record your first record.

KB: That's right. Yes, how do you top it? You don't, so...

SS: It's like putting out Thriller as your first album or what-have-you. Right?

KB: Yeah, exactly. I don't know how many of the people you've interviewed have been women? I would assume not very many of them, because there weren't that many women involved in the Northwest Forest Plan development. That was certainly 03:12:00an interesting perspective for me.

SS: I was going to ask you that too, next. So, if you want to elaborate.

KB: Okay.

SS: I was going to ask you about gender equity, how it felt to enter the "boy's club," and how you were treated, if you want to elaborate on that?

KB: Certainly. There was definitely a lot of respect. I never felt disrespected because I was a woman. There's was being younger in my career and not having the same standing, and sorting that out. Is that because I'm younger in my career? Is it because I'm not male, a dominant silverback male? That was always sort of 03:13:00in the background. Maggie Shannon and Liz Garr definitely played prominent roles, nowhere near the role the other principals played. Maggie Shannon is a political scientist. Liz Garr worked for NOAA Fisheries. She is an attorney and had a somewhat prominent role. But it was definitely a boy's club. There's just no two ways around that.

SS: Did you ever or was there ever times where the guys maybe, they told jokes 03:14:00that probably wouldn't be told today?

KB: No, I never really heard that.

SS: Everybody was pretty appropriate?

KB: Yeah. I never really felt that at all. As I said, I think part of it was age. Many of the guys were in a similar age cohort. They knew each other, they were friends with each other, they had similar experiences, they'd been through previous wars together. Some you know - the Gang of Four. That I think created a bond that was difficult to move into, you know, to become one of the boys.

SS: Because time and bonding is what it is?

KB: Yeah, it is what it is. And then, being a woman, there's always that. Is it 03:15:00appropriate to be with a group of guys at 2:00 in the morning? It's just sort of an odd situation, situations can arise that can be odd that it's not that--

SS: I understand where you're going.

KB: I think just the gender difference. Not that anything untoward ever happened. But, just the fact that people are working so intensely together, keeping long hours. Looking from the outside, it was important to make sure no misperception of anything untoward was happening.

SS: This is a broader question, but I am interested in this. How do you feel that gender politics have changed since you first entered the Forest Service 03:16:00until you retired?

KB: Definitely changed. I think part of it is my field, fisheries. Even Fish and Wildlife [U.S. Dept. of], and wildlife [as discipline] started being infiltrated by women much earlier than fisheries, I think, as a result of an interest in fuzzy, feathery, friendly things. Ecology, the study of ecology, started bringing women into wildlife much earlier than women started being involved in fisheries, because fisheries was drawing not just from wildlife. People are often drawn to fisheries and wildlife because they liked to fish and hunt. Back then, it was pretty much all hook and bullet [fishing/hunting]. The bullet was 03:17:00being replaced by other concerns. But when I got into fisheries, it was still hook. You got into fisheries because you'd been a fisherman all your life.

SS: Like Gordie Reeves?

KB: Yeah, exactly.

SS: I mean, he was fishing from the time he was a kid up in Canada, and he told med all about that. And that's still his thing.

KB: He loves to fish.

SS: He goes up to Montana and Alaska and that's his thing, yeah.

KB: And so, there was a cultural thing, a boy's club, from that bonding over fisheries. Being a woman coming into that, it was very difficult, particularly a woman from the South, where expectations are not very high that you're going to do anything professionally. And if you are going to do something professionally, you are going to be a teacher or a nurse.

SS: What do your friends and family down South think about what you've done with your career based on that whole cultural norm?

KB: They have no idea. I mean, they just think I'm just like this weirdo who 03:18:00lives out in Oregon. And my dad, he introduced me once as, here's my daughter, he was quite proud of me. "Here's my daughter, who's in the environmental end of things." That was how he introduced me. So, that's about as much as he understood about my career and what I was doing.

SS: Well, I guess that's better than it could have been.

KB: Yeah, he usually referred to people he considered environmentalists in much less kind terms. But going back to your question about evolution in the Forest Service, I would go to meetings early on and there would be twenty-five men and me. It was an environment that just presented a lot of challenges. And although the men were always very kind and respectful and willing to be supportive, I 03:19:00don't think they really understood the challenges. Having a very close mentor was not something that I ever really had. Gordie was always a mentor. Jim was always a mentor, but not in the way you can have a mentor of the same gender - the ease that comes with that. And because there weren't female role models for me, that was another [matter]. The number of female role models I could count on one hand.

SS: In your field?

KB: Not in my field.

SS: In general?

KB: Just in general.

SS: Professional, high-powered women role models.

KB: That were in hydrology or geomorphology or fisheries. So, those circles I ran in. I think there were a lot more women botanists. Botany has always been a field that men weren't as interested in. It was pansies and posies, and women were able to take leadership roles in a much earlier stage and academic development. And so, now you have a lot of women who are in primary roles in academia. But I never had a women professor at OSU in fisheries and wildlife. Just from that perspective, and then once I got into fisheries professionally, 03:21:00there was no difference. I certainly wasn't in the "first wave," but the "second wave" of women in fisheries. Looking at the Forest Service and efforts that the Forest Service and all federal agencies, really have made to counter that made it a lot more welcoming. And the challenges, even though they're not overt, have taken away some of the more subtle difficulties of being a woman in a predominately male field.

SS: Well, you can see the differences even down at the Forestry Sciences Laboratory.

KB: Oh, yeah.

SS: Even from when I've started to become a professional in a different industry, to now, but yeah, it's pretty much everywhere.

KB: Yeah, I think much to their credit, Jim, Gordie and Fred Everest, as well. He [Fred] is often overlooked in these conversations because he was not directly involved in the Northwest Forest Plan, but he was in some of the other science/policy efforts. But concerning his role in the science and importance in the pioneering science of fisheries, he was a giant. He was always very supportive as well. Now look at the Forest Service research program, and there are a lot of women.

[End of Audio Part 1]

[Start of Audio Part 2]

KB: And the gender changes in that program that I came up through, were because of the efforts of those three when they were in leadership roles.

SS: Now, I don't want to get essentialist about gender, but I do want to ask 03:23:00this question. And you've often seen it represented in good ways and bad ways in the past about, is there an intrinsically maternalistic view of the world in nature, do you think? And do you think that's just a cultural creation, versus paternalism? Do you think that that makes a difference, or do you think that's a cultural construction that does not apply?

KB: I think it's a little of both. I question whether or not if women had been involved in these natural resource issues sooner, if we might not have come to different points more quickly. Just sort of utilitarian, non-systems thinking 03:24:00about mechanism in science, in natural resource management, particularly. I think we may have had a little bit different perspective, and that's certainly come more into play more recently in how we look at ecosystems. I don't know if that's just because our science has evolved, or science evolved because women got more involved. Who knows?

SS: We'll never know.

KB: Yes, but you can't deconstruct the maternalism.

SS: You can't restart history.

KB: Regarding maternalism, I definitely think that in general, women look at the world in a fundamentally different way, and how we do science is very different. We tend to be more collaborative and interdisciplinary. I think how problems are 03:25:00looked at is changing. People are more open to the nature of problems requiring much more interdisciplinary views and more collaborative approaches than they did thirty years ago. I think women's more collaborative style has influenced, and certainly has benefitted the way science is approached in natural resource management, more collaborative decision-making processes, etc.

SS: Talk to me a little about Gordie Reeves and then Jim Sedell. I'd like you to just give me a little one or two paragraphs, a bit, about each one of those people who kind are the closest senior people that you worked with, especially on the forest plan itself.

KB: Okay. They couldn't have been more different, and they complemented each 03:26:00other so well. Jim was a big idea guy, knew everybody, difficult to go from A to B, didn't want to go from A to B. You couldn't understand what he said half the time, but you knew it had to be brilliant, because Jim Sedell said it. He was charmed that were dedicated to him and just thought the world of him, me included.

And Gordie, one of the least "whoo-whoo" people I ever knew. Just very--

SS: Define "woo-woo"?

KB: Well, Jim was interested in spirituality and in different ways of knowing. 03:27:00Interested in personal development, getting together and having conversations. Gordie's just not that way. He wants to get together and have conversations about things, but not so much about feelings, and Jim was much more interested in relating to people. I certainly wouldn't want anybody to think that Gordie's not a feeling person, because he is very much so, but I think the level that he interacts in general with the world is very different than the way Jim did. Jim wore his heart on his sleeve, and Gordie's not like that. And Gordie, very much, takes a project from conception to finish, a much more linear person. He and Jim 03:28:00just made an awesome team. Gordie had the scientific chops to back up Jim's arm-waving [an "idea-man."]. In many ways, having the two of them to work with was just a gift that I could never have-I'm going to start crying. A gift that I could have never --

SS: Now, just so you know, when I asked Gordie to talk about Jim, he cried.

KB: Okay, yeah.

SS: I mean, because, you know, he was very close. Fred [Swanson] was, too, but yeah, he [Jim Sedell] was very loved.

KB: Yeah.

SS: So, that's very okay. Even a tough guy like Gordie cried.

KB: Yeah, okay. And you know, I feel very close to Gordie and he's always been 03:29:00sort of like a big brother.

SS: I get it.

KB: Yeah.

SS: One of my big regrets since I came on to the project with the Andrews, and now with all these oral histories and other work I'm doing, is I started right after Jim got sick. It was before he died, but I just never got a chance to meet him because he got sick, and it was, it was pancreatic cancer, so it was so fast. [Sedell was stricken with the cancer and died in 2013].

KB: Yeah. Well, for all of us, it was.

SS: So, anyway, it's okay. [Break in audio] And you did say that being involved with the forest plan was the highlight of your career. Just elaborate a little more on that as kind of a last answer?

KB: Just having the opportunity to feel like I really contributed something that 03:30:00was meaningful, lasting, and I think that's the main thing. I think the research that I've done has all been very incremental. I enjoyed it. It was good work. It's not paradigm-shifting by any means. But, in some ways, I feel like this was.

SS: The forest plan [NWFP] in a way was at least an attempt to shift paradigms.

KB: Right, and having the opportunity to be involved with that just provided so much purpose, and then shaped my career; how I looked at science, how I looked at research, and how I looked at the role of science in society. So, it didn't 03:31:00necessarily form those opinions, but it certainly shaped those opinions as I went forward.

SS: Very good. I think that wraps it up, Kelly. And I want to thank you for spending the whole afternoon with me in your home here in Corvallis, and enlightened me on your role in the Northwest Forest Plan. Thank you.

KB: Well, you're welcome. Thank you, it's been quite a journey.

SS: All right, thank you.