Cindy Miner Oral History Interview, July 21, 2017

SAM SCHMIEDING : Good morning, this is Dr. Samuel Schmieding, Oregon State University, and College of Forestry. I am here in Portland, Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station Director's Office, with Cindy Miner, Assistant Station Director for Communications and Applications. Cindy is a career Forest Service person, as she likes to say, for thirty-five years. And she's done a whole variety of things from counting spruce budworms, as she just told me before the interview, to her present position. And today we are going to be doing an oral history interview which is part of the Northwest Forest Plan Oral History Project. And so, we're going to be talking about her career, but also the Forest Plan and other things that are related to that subject. So, good morning, Cindy.

CINDY MINER: Good morning.

Schmieding: Thank you for being willing to meet me today. I like to start these things out the same. I like to get some biographical information and just kind of have you set the table with how you would want to present your background, where you're from, and how you came to be?

Miner: Sure. I have been an employee of the PNW Research Station for about thirty years. I've worked for the Forest Service before that as a forester, a silviculturist. I've been, however, here in the Northwest for the bulk of my career now, the science piece behind the Northwest Forest Plan has really helped shape my career for the last few decades. I came into Oregon from Minnesota. Originally, I'm from the lake states. But I worked as a forester in New England on the Green Mountain National Forest, and I also was a forest extension specialist with the Peace Corps in Ecuador. So, I kind of have a diverse background a bit, geographically, but for a long time now, I've been here in the Northwest.

Schmieding: So, go back to your days in Minnesota. Tell me a little bit about where you grew up, and especially your relationship to the natural world.

Miner: I grew up in a family that was very much centered around the natural world, going camping and fishing. My grandparents were both members of the Izaak Walton League, my grandmother being the first woman member of the Izaak Walton League. They raised chickens, my grandfather raising them for the hackles for fly fishing, and did so as an avocation, with the notion that this really was what he wanted to do. He had a profession as an attorney, but he retired and then took no money for something of a "higher calling," as he dedicated his life to genetics related to chicken hackles for fly fishing. It was quite scientific, as he used genetic selection. Hackles that people use for fishing today under the brand of Whiting are from my grandfather's stock. Again, note that my grandfather thought this was a high calling, and that interacting with nature was something beyond the material world.

Schmieding: That's interesting because a lot of people today don't know what the Izaak Walton League is.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: It's one of the early conservation organizations in this country. Today, we think of the Sierra Club or Oregon Wild here locally, that kind of thing, but the Izaak Walton League was the old-school kind of conservation.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: You know, people that were out fishing and hunting and using nature, so to speak, but also had a preservation element in that.

Miner: Definitely, because my grandparents were involved with the preservation of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, and played a role in that.

Schmieding: That's right on the very border with Canada, isn't it?

Miner: Yeah. So, I spent much of my youth in the Boundary Waters canoeing and portaging.

Schmieding: So, when people say, the coldest place in the United States is International Falls, Minnesota, you understand?

Miner: Yeah, it's pretty cold, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is pretty cold.

Schmieding: What town did you actually grow up in?

Miner: Duluth, Minnesota. It's right on Lake Superior.

Schmieding: Another very cold place.

Miner: Yes, it was pretty cold. Yeah, minus-26 degrees. Schmieding: With all those parks up there, do you have a special affinity to Isle Royale, the Apostle Islands, and those "northern lakes" kinds of parks, monuments and reserves?

Miner: Right. So I have been on Isle Royale and know a lot of the lakes, where the Sawbill Trail is, someplace where I spent a lot of time.

Schmieding: The Boundary Waters; would you call this your first "sacred place" in that area?

Miner: I think it was just simply my back yard.

Schmieding: Well, okay.

Miner: The whole park. I can remember being very young and these special places just right outside my door. But yes, and then we had a cabin on the Black Hoof River which is a little trout stream in northern Minnesota. That was kind of the family gathering place, and that's where I heard a lot of the stories my grandparents told me. Like, they bought the property from a Swedish logger. And my grandmother's father was a logger and logged pine out of northern Minnesota. So, I grew up on stories about the forests and trees, and did meet the old Swedish logger that had logged the land around the cabin property. And he would tell stories of being able to look through the forest as far as you could see and there'd be big trees.

Schmieding: Stumps?

Miner: No, this was before, so there'd be just great big tree boles and not much underbrush. You could just walk, and the trees were very large. Growing up, I didn't see anything much like that in northern Minnesota. So, I had this real sense of there had been something in the past that had been lost. And there was, even by the Swedish logger, there was some sense of nostalgia for that time when "trees were big."

Schmieding: The upper Midwest and the "cut-and-run" railroad logging they did there, was one of the sources of the really early conservation movement in this country, when Fernow and Pinchot and all those people were reacting, indirectly or directly, to the real or perceived timber famine that people were seeing in the East, and you heard that word even out here in the Northwest. But so, that area where you grew up in was kind of the source of some early carnage [clear-cutting/not re-planting] before you were ever around, that led to the roots of everything that happened later on.

Miner: Right. And I think it very much impacted my grandparents, which in turn impacts my parents and myself. Schmieding: Yeah, that's why I was going to ask you about the lineage there.

Miner: So, there's definitely a legacy, a philosophy I carry with me.

Schmieding: Your family goes to back to 19th century Minnesota?

Miner: Yes.

Schmieding: So, they came there right after the logging thing happened?

Miner: No, they were part of the logging.

Schmieding: Oh, they were.

Miner: So, my grand--

Schmieding: Okay.

Miner: My grandmother's father. I have letters he wrote from the logging camps in northern Minnesota to his future wife, my grandmother's mother, my great-grandmother. I heard the stories of him going to those logging camps and working. He was just a young man when those large tracts of land were being clear-cut. And there were some big fires. Then I went to forestry school at the University of Minnesota School of Forestry [now-Dept. of Forests and Natural Resources]. There, I learned a lot of history, and the scientific perspective, political perspective, and land management perspective. But it was initially from first-hand accounts [as a youth].

Schmieding: Understanding the political and cultural context of today is obviously much different. How would you describe, I don't know if we can call it a learning curve, but an "awareness curve" centered on your family? You're talking about going from the grandparents to your parents to yourself in terms of the evolution of conservationism, and just the philosophy toward humans and the responsibility toward nature you saw and experienced.

Miner: In terms of conservation, I say that my grandparents were conservationists, very much so. They saw that people had a role in being good stewards to the land and leaving it for future generations. Tree planting, for instance, was an activity we did. This notion you're doing something that you will never receive benefit from was central. Even in my grandfather, and his hobby around fly fishing, was based in a sense of leaving a legacy for future generations. This was very, very ingrained in me in my upbringing.

Schmieding: Like fly fishermen, who have this very light impact on nature kind of perspective when they go out? Correct?

Miner: Right. So, if you're going to fish, you realize you want fish for perpetuity. That means you're going to take care of the streams, the habitat around the streams, the way that you interact with the streams, the way that you fish, the way that you just sort of your whole approach, is with a notion that you're going to leave a light impact, and also, that you might make things better. I think there's a notion, for instance, my grandmother having known that her dad was a logger and hearing stories from people like the old logger, Charlie, his name was Charlie Peterson, who lived right next to the cabin, and he was a bachelor. But he would talk about how it's a shame they cut all the trees. Couldn't they have left some of the trees? He had a few trees on the property, but he was very poor at this time, and he would have to cut a few trees every so often just to survive.

Schmieding: To stay warm.

Miner: To stay warm and to sell it. He would sell it for a little bit of cash, so that he could eat and this kind of thing. And my great-grandfather, very much knowing that he had to work. He was a young man, and his whole story is kind of as a business man, and he needed to make money. So, you have the whole big picture coming out of my growing up, and understanding that it's a little bit more complex.

Schmieding: Sounds to me like these awarenesses were being inculcated in you as you were growing up, not merely after you became a professional, looking through the lens of a conservation-centered career?

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: Yeah. I won't say unique, but that's not always the case when you go back that far in history, in terms of the U.S. and how history has evolved.

Miner: My grandparents visited the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in the '30s and '40s with their three sons, my uncle, and my dad. As I grew up, I in turn went with my dad. I have diaries and lists of supplies from those trips with my grandparents.

Schmieding: Now, when was the first time you traveled to the West?

Miner: We traveled a lot to Montana to go fly fishing, and Wyoming. My first trip actually was through South Dakota. We actually visited Mount Rushmore. I have a picture of me standing next to the son of Black Elk.

Schmieding: The actual son of Black Elk?

Miner: The actual son of Black Elk.

Schmieding: Very cool.

Miner: And then we went down into Wyoming. I was about nine or ten, at Kemmerer, Wyoming. We had some friends there, and we went fishing. We went every year from that time on.

Schmieding: So, you had an experience with, as I always call it, "big topography."

Miner: Big topography.

Schmieding: Not just the undulating plains of northern Minnesota?

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: And so, there was an attraction for mountains, perhaps, where you eventually ended up in the Northwest?

Miner: Yeah, I worked there when I just turned nineteen, on the Colville National Forest [Washington]. I was hired to do stand exams, marked timber, and spent a lot of time doing prescribed fires. I actually lit prescribed fires, and a number of them went out, maybe half of the six, and I also worked on a fire crew. So, that was another exposure to the West. That was big timber, a whole different kind of an experience than Montana.

Schmieding: Isn't that in the Okanagan Valley?

Miner: Well, I was on the Newport Ranger District, which was south of Sullivan Lake and north of Spokane [Pend Oreille River area, far NE Washington]

Schmieding: Okay.

Miner: Inland Empire, they call that.

Schmieding: Now, what do you remember about the national forests in Minnesota? I mean, they do have national forests in Minnesota.

Miner: Yeah, I spent a lot of time in Superior National Forest.

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: And did a lot of camping. That's the designated wilderness part of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. That is a special designation, but it's surrounded by national forest land that was harvested, and it had a lot of campgrounds and things like that.

Schmieding: So, this would have been in the '60s and '70s. What do you remember about the dialog and the discussions about land use at that early time in your life, and what were the debates in that context?

Miner: My memory in junior high, was all around wolves, because the listing of the wolves came about that time. And I would read the editorials.

Schmieding: The ESA [Endangered Species Act] when it first came on?

Miner: Yes. So, my mom's grandfather had a friend who worked for a telephone company. He helped lay the lines through the rural program to put telephone lines up. But he had a good friend, who had by this time retired, and I went out on his trap line. He was trapping wolves. And we were out in the snow on snowshoes, looking at his traps. So, it was kind of shocking to me, I guess, as I was kind of an animal lover.

Schmieding: Seeing a trapped wolf?

Miner: I didn't see a trapped wolf, but I saw the traps.

Schmieding: Oh, okay.

Miner: But on the other hand, I was like, well, okay, this is what people do. But that brought my attention to wolves, and then shortly after that, they were listed [ESA]. And so, there's a huge political debate in Minnesota about whether wolves should be protected or trapped or--

Schmieding: That's still going on today?

Miner: Well, yes. It's quite interesting. So, I would read the paper and read editorials. And so, that was my first kind of introduction.

Schmieding: What was your feeling? Did you feel that they should be trapped?

Miner: No, no.

Schmieding: Or not?

Miner: I accepted that this person, who was such a beloved member of the extended family in some ways, I accepted that he was a trapper and didn't really hold any animosity towards him. But I was thinking, "I don't think this is good, there are hardly any wolves left." So, that's how I thought.

Schmieding: So, what do you remember about the logging that did go on in the national forest back then? Obviously, you were still young and it was before you went to college. Miner: It was rather small-scale. I don't have much of an impression. I remember it going on, but had no impression one way or the other about it. Literally, across the lakes, there were very few big trees left. [Legacy of 19th cent. logging in Upper Midwest was early catalyst for U.S. conservation mvt.]

Schmieding: Yeah, I kind of figured.

Miner: They were just trying to figure out how to use the poplar from a vast expanse of spruce and poplar. There were some pines, white pine. Blister rust was coming through, so it was continued sadness and mourning about those trees dying off. Also red pine or Norway pine. They were doing well, and you could watch them grow. We planted those. And there were some big pines. They would harvest some of those, but it was all second, what you would call second-growth, in what I had seen.

Schmieding: Did you have a mentor or a teacher in junior high or high school that inspired you in science or about anything you did with your career, a particular person?

Miner: One thing was, I actually had a woman biology teacher, Mrs. DeGrazio. I can't say she mentored or did anything special, she just was there. And she was a woman, she understood science, and she was a specialist. I know that influenced me. Because my whole career, I have always been very cognizant that I am a woman working in a man's world. That has been something I have always had to kind of reconnoiter. But when I was young, I did not know that was about to come my way. Mrs. DeGrazio and other women I saw in high school might be in the sciences or the professions in general. Then my grandmother was an attorney, on one side, and my other grandmother worked her way up in banking, from a banking teller, and eventually became a bank officer. So, I had the sense that women had come through it. (Laughs) My grandmother voted in the first election that a woman could vote.

Schmieding: So, post-1920.

Miner: She was 21 years old in 1920, and she cast her ballot. I had a feeling that there was progress to be made, of course, but I had a feeling that we've come a long way, as the expression was in those days.

Schmieding: Remember the phrase back in the '70s, "We've come a long way, baby."

Miner: Way, baby, yeah, exactly. (Laughs)

Schmieding: Except you can't use the word "baby" any more. (Laughs) At least, I can't. So, you got out of high school. Did you know what you wanted to do?

Miner: Well, I was going to be a nurse. I graduated a little early and became certified as a nursing assistant. We didn't call it that, we just called it a nurse's aide, but now they call them CNAs. And I worked at a hospital for four or five months. I had already enrolled, but wasn't sure I was going to go to college, actually. But at some point during that time, I enrolled in the University of Minnesota-Duluth in biology, thinking I might go to nursing school. But, I was seventeen when I was doing that. I actually worked in situations where I was with people dying, and that was quite traumatic for me. I then decided I needed to do something different.

Schmieding: Were you like in a hospice ward?

Miner: I was in a coronary care unit. I was in an emergency room, and actually in a psych ward as well. So, I got to see a lot in a very short time.

Schmieding: You got all the traumatic stuff right away.

Miner: I got to see a lot in a very short time. I thought, I don't know if I wanted to be in the hospital environment, and I would love to work outdoors. You know, I would love to be outside in nature. I love nature.

Schmieding: But it's interesting, even with your early awarenesses in your family, shall we say, sharing experiences like your grandmother, you initially chose a gender-safe career path that first year.

Miner: I did. I kind of kept with that, I believe, in some regards. But yes, I did. And I don't know that I was quite aware of it, but I did.

Schmieding: Teachers and nurses [Categories "acceptable" for women in previous era].

Miner: Teachers and nurses, right. It was actually my dad, I have to say. I said, "Dad, I don't think I could do this." And he really did say, "Well, maybe you can look at forestry. Maybe that's something you'd like to do."

Schmieding: Being from the north woods, what do you remember about the old-school mythologies of Paul Bunyan and Babe, the blue ox, and all that? What do you remember about that kind of mythic background being in the culture?

Miner: I just remember the stories.

Schmieding: Yeah?

Miner: That the lakes came from the footprints of Paul Bunyan. I went through Bemidji where there was a big Paul Bunyan statue with Babe, the blue ox. But I guess, if I think about that, there is this man conquering nature sort of aspect to all of that. And that was just a general thing growing up was this, well, maybe that wasn't a good model. I think that my grandparents gave a sense that there was this notion that there could be more. We could be raised to a higher level than sort of this conquering notion, that there was more to it. It's a little more complicated.

Schmieding: Why was Babe blue?

Miner: I don't know.

Schmieding: I don't know, either. (Laughs) Okay, you're at Minnesota-Duluth, and you're taking biology. When did it transfer into a forestry career or track from there? Did you stay at Duluth or did you go to the main campus?

Miner: Well, I stayed in Duluth. And as I said, over the summer about the time I was going into college, my dad mentioned forestry. So, I pretty much right away got into the pre-forestry professional program that fall at University of Minnesota-Duluth, which would be, you go two years at University of Minnesota-Duluth, and then two years on the St. Paul campus at the University of Minnesota. So, I pretty much went in knowing that's what I wanted to do. And then I did it.

Schmieding: So, you did your undergraduate at Duluth. Tell me about a mentor, experiences, a class, or ones that were particularly impactful on you.

Miner: Well, I had a great botany teacher. I loved my chemistry teacher. And those two stand out. I had a wonderful geology teacher, and had wonderful teachers at University of Minnesota-Duluth. It's a small campus. The people truly loved what they were doing and teaching. And that really influenced me. I really liked the sciences. I really enjoyed learning about the natural world and about geology and biology. I did decide, though, I wanted to be a forester, in part so I could live in Montana. I wanted to get back to Montana. So, I applied for all the jobs at all the national forests in Montana that winter for a job. The summer of my freshman year, I got a job with the Intermountain Research Station on a spruce budworm project.

Schmieding: The one that you told me about before the interview started.

Miner: Yeah, so I worked on that. It was a very fun time, and hard work.

Schmieding: Where is that station actually, exactly?

Miner: Well, that has been merged now and is part of the Rocky Mountain Research Station. But they were working, I was working out of Ennis, Montana. And so, it wasn't necessarily part of their facilities. I was working where they had set up a kind of an outpost there. Schmieding: This is next to where now exactly?

Miner: Near Bozeman, Montana.

Schmieding: Ennis, it's in the south, okay.

Miner: Yeah. I worked there. Then there was a call for people out of the Colville National Forest to get people interested in working into the fall, which I thought was a great idea. So, I applied for that and got a job working at a stand exam crew. And so, I might mention that the first job I had, all the women were inside pulling these little worms out of needles, and the men were outside doing the field work. I kind of thought that was funny, but Scotty, the scientist there, told me that women were good at doing things that, you know, required small motor skills. And then, I thought I wanted to work in the woods. That's what I was about.

So I applied, saw this as a chance, and I got the job at the national forest at Colville, working on the district. I had a wonderful supervisor, his name was Darrel, last name was Magnus. He and his wife actually let me stay at their house, and he was extremely supportive of me, particularly as a young woman. He was a silviculturist and had hired a crew of four of us. One was from inner-city Los Angeles, Torrance, California. One was from Ohio, and there was me from Minnesota. Then there was one local fellow, Carl Wright, from Priest River. He put us together and we did these stand exams. Now, I had been working with a woman from Seattle. We shared a little tiny hotel room next, at the 5A's Hotel, and she was a runner. And, she was on a soccer team. She was going to Evergreen College [Olympia, Wash.]. And I had just met her. I hitchhiked from Bozeman to Ennis, and then I set up a little tent in a park and ran into her.

Schmieding: Remember when it was safe to hitchhike, (laughs) or we thought it was?

Miner: I know. And I rented that space. Then we just met there. But any rate, I'll get to why I'm telling you this story. She was a runner. So, I thought, "Well, I don't really like to run, but it was something to do." So, I would run with her twice a day. She was training for her soccer team. So when I got to the Colville, I was in pretty good shape. But Ennis is about a mile high, and I'd been doing running and working out with her a little bit. And so, I got there and I'm on this field crew. They really wanted to put me through the paces, but I was able to keep up. Then we were going to do the stand exam crew work, and then, they decided they have all this slash they needed to burn, huge, 100 to 200-acre clear-cuts on very steep slopes full of debris. And some of my work was doing regeneration surveys, actually going into that and looking for regeneration.

Schmieding: Natural regeneration? Miner: But they weren't getting good results. They needed to get rid of the slash, they decided. So, they'd have these prescribed fires. My boss said, "Well, she can do that. Even though she's woman, she can be on the fire crew." There was some component of that district that said we don't want women working on fire, but the direction was that everyone on district field crews was going to participate. There were two women on a different part of the district working for the survey crew, and there was myself. I never really ran into those two women, but I knew they were there. So, they gave me this step test. It was a man's step test. They gave it to me once, they gave it to me twice, they gave it to me three times. I passed every time.

Schmieding: They were trying to see if you would fail so they could give an excuse to not? [Have Miner to work on fires.]

Miner: I don't know. I won't presuppose why they made me take it three times, but the third time, they brought in the ranger to watch me take it. (Laughs) I passed it, and they're like, "Okay, I guess, she's going to fight fires." And then I got out there with a little bit of training, and was out. Even when I was going out into the field, I could hear this conversation between my boss and somebody else saying, "You've got to get her out of there." And him [the boss] arguing, "No!"

Schmieding: Well, they didn't even let women run the marathon in the Olympics back then. Remember?

Miner: Yeah.

Schmieding: Just kind of a parallel there.

Miner: And so, it was very interesting. I took it rather in stride at this point. And I enjoyed my crew. My crew was very good. We bonded and I never felt any judgment. We were kind of all equal, on equal terms, an equal basis.

Schmieding: Because firefighting, it's still kind of a macho culture, even today, maybe less so than back in the '70s. Wouldn't you characterize it that way?

Miner: This was really not a formal fire crew. You're going to get me talking here, but this is just the group from the district assigned to prescribed burning. Everyone from the district was there, including field crews. I remember some were from the Colville [Indian] Reservation, too. I could talk a long time about prescribed burning because of things that happened. This included my first fire, which jumped the line, and was very serious.

Schmieding: Did you almost get trapped?

Miner: I was trapped. They had to pull us out with a human chain, eventually. I really did see my life pass before me on the first fire I was on, because it jumped. It wasn't set properly. I learned that later when I went to forestry school. I know exactly what they did wrong. They didn't set it properly, and it created a situation where they set us up in a really bad spot.

Schmieding: Did the winds change or something?

Miner: The winds just went uphill. It was the shape of this clear-cut, and it was like an L-shape. I was in the elbow of the L. And there were trees on the L, like the lower part of that. When the wind came up from below, it jumped into the trees because that's the way wind goes, it goes up like that when you set a fire. They didn't time it right and set it right. At any rate.

Schmieding: That must have been a very powerful experience for you?

Miner: Yeah, it was, extremely so.

Schmieding: I mean, a grounding, "be grateful for every day" kind of a moment?

Miner: Yeah. Kind of a bit that way. But also, I was just happy to be alive. I had a great time after that. I actually enjoyed it, and the full fire thing was very exciting to me. I ended up on the night crew and various things.

Schmieding: So, when you see or read about disasters where people actually do die, it really has extra resonance for you, doesn't it?

Miner: Oh, it just kind of breaks my heart every time when I hear about young people, in particular, being out there on a fire and dying. It just breaks my heart. I really identify with that.

Schmieding: What do you remember about your early days in forestry school and when you're out in these big western national forests? What do you remember about the management paradigms and what you heard and saw, and your impressions about what was going on? Obviously, you've got the context of hindsight today of a lifetime-career in natural resource management, but what do you remember at the time? They're doing it this way or that way, or do you remember about the discussions that were going on within the local forests and districts?

Miner: I felt myself going into a real observation mode. I withheld [judgement], and was thinking, let's see how this all really works. I was there working in incredibly ugly clear-cuts at a time when people were protesting clear-cuts, and the environmental movement was just starting to get some teeth.

Schmieding: It was before the "Forest Wars" [1980s-1990s] here were really at their high point, but the momentum nationally was building. Correct?

Miner: Yes, it was. I would see publications where they would show clear-cuts that were part of packages people were putting together to fight these big clear-cuts.

Schmieding: How were you observing what was going on, and what conclusions, however early and nascent, were coming to you at that point? Or your perceptions, shall we say, that's a better way to characterize.

Miner: My perceptions were, when I was on the Colville, I really, truly, was just taking it in. I was seeing, how does this really work? How does this really work? I was going into forestry school. I was working on a stand exam crew. So it was like, gosh, we're measuring the trees, we're looking at how they're growing. I was working in these clear-cuts, and it just didn't feel right to me there are these big clear-cuts, and they have to do all this trouble with the prescribed burning. But it was clear to me they were trying to do that, so they could replant these trees, they were going to replant these clear-cuts. So, there was this sense that they were, that it was part of an effort to regenerate and bring back the forest. And I actually marked a shelterwood [alternative method to clear-cutting], spent weeks marking a shelterwood cut. I also had a sense, okay, they are clear-cutting here, they're looking at other methods, and there's a mix of ways they're doing this. I'd just turned nineteen and was sort of taking it all in.

Schmieding: Even at the H.J. Andrews, and I'm doing the project on all their archives; they start using shelterwood cuts in the '70s, just as the IBP [International Biological Program] and then later, the LTER [Long-Term Ecological Research] program was coming on, kind of a lighter-touch logging philosophy at that time. So yeah, it was in the '70s.

Miner: Then, I got on the coop-ed program and went on the Green Mountain National Forest, which is in New England. So there, there are lots of shelterwoods. And I had fun with doing prescriptions. We did patch cuts, and we were tapping, with special-use permits, maple trees. When I was out there, it was totally different than the Lake States, or definitely, the West. That is actually where I spent a lot of my formative time as a forester, because I did that after my junior year.

Schmieding: And the ecology was completely different. You had a much more mixed deciduous and some conifers mixed in, especially in the higher elevations?

Miner: Well, the conifers, you find red spruce at a little bit higher elevation, and then on the hillsides, you've got pine and maple. So, it kind of depends on the quality of the site, regarding the kind of trees you have. Schmieding: But it was the kind of a place you had to do some kind of selective management. Because it wasn't the big tree, I won't say monocultural, but where it's treated almost monoculturally out West, where you had that before the 1980s and 1990s with such a mixture of species and uses.

Miner: I'm not sure that is the driver, the number of species. But the hardwood component, I think, would be part of it. But there was a sense that Douglas-fir needed full sunlight, and that it was a tree that if you clear-cut and you plant it, that was the best way to grow it. That was true of some species as well in New England. We did use clear-cutting, for example, in trying to bring back birch for woodcock habitat. We were using clear-cuts for that. It kind of depends on what your end objective was. What I did learn was, it depends on what you wanted, and what you're trying to accomplish. And there are different things to be accomplished.

Schmieding: And clear-cuts are not always bad?

Miner: No, and if you want to bring back birch, if you want woodcock habitat, you really want birch, you're going to have to probably use a clear-cut to get that back. At least, where we were.

Schmieding: So, you're going through school. You're bouncing around the northern United States from east to west. You're in New England, you go back to graduate school, correct, in what year, '70? What was the year?

Miner: I graduated in '78.

Schmieding: '78.

Miner: With my forestry degree, and then, I went back and worked in Vermont for a few years as a forester.

Schmieding: Okay.

Miner: Working in silviculture and a variety of things. It was a small district so I got to do a variety of things.

Schmieding: Were you up in the White Mountains in the north?

Miner: I went to silviculture training in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Schmieding: Oh, okay.

Miner: I was in the Green Mountains of Vermont.

Schmieding: Green Mountains of Vermont, excuse me. I always get those mixed up. Miner: Yeah.

Schmieding: Vermont, New Hampshire, White Mountains, Green Mountains. Okay.

Miner: It's easy to get mixed up. The only reason I don't is because I was there.

Schmieding: And I'm a geography guy, and I still get it confused today. Anyway.

Miner: Yeah, yeah.

Schmieding: So, you graduated with a degree in forestry?

Miner: Yes.

Schmieding: With a minor in something else or just -- ?

Miner: No, just forestry.

Schmieding: And so.

Miner: I guess silviculture and ecology. Actually, I have a degree in silviculture and ecology.

Schmieding: You came out and went to work for the Forest Service, or private industry?

Miner: For the Forest Service. I went in and I got on what was called a coop-ed program, where I worked during the summers and then I took another term off and worked on the Green Mountain [NF]. When I graduated, they had an option to pick me up, if they wanted, and I had the option to join the Forest Service, which I did. So, I worked on different districts, working seasonally on the Rochester Ranger District and then the Manchester Ranger District, where I worked for two-and-a-half or three years.

Schmieding: What was your job description, and what did you do?

Miner: Well, I was initially a forest-what do you call it, a "forester in training." So, I did everything. But the interesting thing for me, I always had to mark timber. That was the first thing I always had to do, because I had to sort of prove myself. I really did feel that at some point I decided that this was a bit of a gender thing, that coming in, they'd go, "Oh well, but can she mark timber?" That's a very physical kind of thing. So, I marked timber over and over and over. I marked a lot of timber. So yes, I have marked trees that are to be cut. I've done it in clear-cuts, shelterwoods, and thinnings. I've done all kinds of that work.

Schmieding: Sounds like you really were destined to challenge gender stereotypes. I mean, going back to your family and your grandmother saying about the right to vote in 1920, and --

Miner: Right. So when I went to Vermont, that was where I started to feel like there was something going on with me being a woman, where I actually really didn't feel that way up to that point. But when I got on a rig with a forest technician after my second day on the job, and he drove me to the end of a dirt road, parked the car and looked at me, and said, "You should not be here. You are taking jobs away from men who have to support wives and children." He looked at me, and then, he turned around and went back to the district. He was supposed to be giving me a tour of the district. That was my tour. At that point, I was like, that was the sobering moment where I went, huh!

Schmieding: That's a very strong wakeup call. I mean, kind of scary, a little bit.

Miner: Yeah.

Schmieding: Were you angry? Shocked, I mean.

Miner: That was actually at a point in my life where I found it to be challenging. And I was shocked. I was not frightened. You know, I have a very strong sense of myself, in some regards. I just kind of laughed. Actually, I'm sure I laughed when he said that. It probably was a nervous laugh. But I also remember thinking it was idiotic that he said that. I thought it was really a ridiculous thing to say.

Schmieding: But it shows, I think, somebody that was raised with a very immature understanding of gender roles, and the evolution of men and women that was just completely unprepared for that.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: So.

Miner: From my standpoint, my grandmother was widowed and had to raise her boys. She was kicked out of her house because she was a woman, not expected to be able to pay her mortgage. I grew up on stories like this. So, I knew that things could be very tough for women. I just thought that that was over and done with. On the other hand, they kind of prepared me. And I know that I would not be where am I here without my grandmothers saying what they had said to me, how they were very influential in my life.

Schmieding: So, you didn't know it, but they were preparing you for that moment. So, you come back now, at that time, the whole - [society was changing] Miner: But this isn't about the Northwest Forest Plan, but I supposed we can get there.

Schmieding: Now, do you remember going back, this is a different culture and time, the methods and complaints weren't like you could today, an HR person or somebody you go to. You just basically internalized that, you didn't go complain to a district ranger.

Miner: Exactly, exactly.

Schmieding: You just kind of said, okay, that's interesting, and internalized it as part of your learning experience?

Miner: Exactly. That was just one of a variety of things that happened which I completely internalized. It was a mixed bag. There were some things that happened in that area. Those seasonal jobs weren't too bad because I came and I went, but there was one, this technician and another technician resented me because I was a college girl. They resented me because I was a girl. When I was working with them a little later, they would do things, would haze me continually. They would make me carry the chainsaw. They would make me carry all the equipment. They would do things, like say, "Go get the car," and throw the keys into the woods.

Schmieding: Stuff you could never do today.

Miner: No, no. So initially, they would tell me that women, I mean, it was a topic of conversation that women can't do what men can. They can't play baseball, they can't do this. I mean, everything, just everything. It was a continual conversation.

Schmieding: About, yeah.

Miner: It was total harassment. Now, I didn't even know that term. And let me tell you about that because, so I-

Schmieding: You didn't even know that was harassment?

Miner: I didn't know, it wasn't there [terminology/culture shift still in future].

Schmieding: Because it wasn't in the cultural lexicon at that time.

Miner: And so, let me tell you what happened then related to this. So, I worked the seasonal job and just put up with these guys.

Schmieding: This is in Vermont?

Miner: This is in Vermont. I went back, got my degree, then got a job with another district. The district ranger there, I just didn't feel warm and fuzzy about him. But I worked with some very nice technicians there, a couple of guys that were wonderful. Then there was a crew that was very, very....[cloistered]; they'd never been out of the valley. People literally did not leave their valleys in Vermont. I worked with them really well, marked a lot of timber with them. That's mostly what I did. But I went on to do other things, and another woman came in. She was unable to work with that group. It was so unfair what they did to her. She was Jewish.

Schmieding: She was female and Jewish. So, she got the double-hammer. Right?

Miner: And so, they actually--

Schmieding: That's too bad.

Miner: She had baked them cookies. She was trying so hard. I'm really good at ignoring bad behavior. But she couldn't, and she extended herself by baking cookies. They took her box of cookies and threw them in the trash. They had drawn swastikas all over the box. I was appalled, and went to my first civil rights meeting a couple days later at the forest supervisor's office. I brought this incident up. That was a mistake. Ever heard of the term "retaliation?" Next thing I knew, I literally had my back against the wall. While not pushed physically, the forest supervisor walked me into a wall. His face was one foot from my face, asking for details. I thought the meeting was in confidence and I was seeking advice. I was very naïve.

I asked the forest supervisor to not contact the district ranger until I could tell him myself. That afternoon, I went to the district office and talked to the ranger. His response was to throw everything on his desk at me. That was the only time I cried in my professional life. I sat down, tears came down from my eyes, and I walked out of the room. By the next day, I no longer reported to him. There were lots of conversations behind closed doors. The woman left within the month. I stayed. Maybe I thought, "By God, I want my three years." If you have three years of experience as a permanent employee, you have competitive status for rehires.

Schmieding: In terms of rehiring in another job position. So, you toughed it out.

Miner: Right. I just toughed it out.

Schmieding: For how much longer?

Miner: Probably a year-and-a-half or so. It was a long time, a long haul. But you know, there were a couple of technicians who treated me very well. One in particular, and he kind of knew what was going on. He would invite me to his family's home, and I would have holiday meals with them. He made it bearable. There were a couple other people that made it bearable. So, I just stuck it out. Then I decided, "I don't know if I'm going to stay with the Forest Service. I think I'm going to do something different." So, I quit and went to do a master's degree in journalism and communications. I did have in the back of my mind that I might be able to combine that with forestry, because I didn't think the Forest Service had very good communicators, and they needed help. I also truly sensed that that was a gender-okay thing for me to do. So, you asked that about nursing?

Schmieding: Well, even though it was not as okay for women to be in journalism as early as it was in these other professions [teaching, nursing, etc.], but still, there were a lot of famous women journalists.

Miner: Exactly.

Schmieding: In the early 20th and late 19th centuries. I mean, you could look at, Ida Tarbell, the famous "muckraker - yellow journalist." She was one of the ones you'd hear in history class [early 20th century].

Miner: Right. Yeah, and there's Barbara Walters out there. I was watching Barbara Walters.

Schmieding: Baba-Wawa. (Laughs) [Saturday Night Live spoof by Gilda Radner]

Miner: Baba-Wawa. And so, I went back to school, journalism school.

Schmieding: At?

Miner: University of Minnesota.

Schmieding: The same or main campus?

Miner: The main campus [Minneapolis].

Schmieding: Okay.

Miner: That was great. I couldn't get in right away. So, I'm going to come back to harassment. I actually thought I could start and take undergraduate journalism courses at undergraduate cost. But, I took a year off and took literature classes, falling into this group of women's literature professors who were teaching women's literature. This was a whole introduction into feminism for me. And I took a law class from a visiting professor from Yale who was, she was, Catherine-it will come to me, but she actually coined the phrase "harassment." She was a law clerk, and one of the first sexual harassment cases she was involved with actually went to the Supreme Court. So, I actually learned about sexual harassment from the woman who actually helped coin that phrase, legally.

Schmieding: And this was about ten years before Anita Hill.

Miner: Yes, this was--

Schmieding: About ten years before that.

Miner: This was well before Anita Hill [1991 - Clarence Thomas Supreme Court Justice confirmation hearings, at which she was star witness].

Schmieding: So, but I mean, but Anita Hill was--

Miner: Catherine MacKinnon. Catherine MacKinnon from Yale.

Schmieding: Right, I know her name.

Miner: She taught this course with Andrea Dworkin, a radical feminist, from New York City. So, I went from the woods and this odd, strange situation, to this. By the way, I also waitressed at night [in Vt.], just to get around other women and get away from that whole thing. That was actually an out for me, as I had another job and moonlighted. I had a lot of energy.

Schmieding: Those guys back East are lucky you didn't take all these classes before-hand, or you would have responded stronger.

Miner: One nice thing that happened was that I got a call from an HR person in Milwaukee, and she interviewed me after the fact. I believe there was a sense something had happened, that they wanted to know why I left. That was interesting to me, and I appreciated that. I then started working for the North Central Forest Experiment Station, very wonderful people. I had a good experience there. I didn't want to work for the Forest Service. I always like to have a Plan B; my Plan B. I put in an application at the North Central Experiment Station, which was located in St. Paul. Then I went to work for the University of Minnesota with this soils professor. I did that while I was taking these literature classes. I was actually started out in "law communications," then switched to "science communications," because I really enjoyed working at North Central, and yeah, it was actually kind of a healing thing. I took Toastmasters also.

Schmieding: So, this [in New England] was a traumatic experience for you, wasn't it?

Miner: Oh, it was totally traumatic.

Schmieding: You're very good at playing down things, and like you said, letting it roll off your back. But just by you telling me your resume, I said to myself, "This was not a small thing."

Miner: This was incredible. It took me at least two years after I left that district to start to get my feet under me. It was very difficult, as a matter-of-fact, then I forgot it. When we started having conversations in our agency related to this, I can't really engage in those without feeling really emotional. I actually wasn't feeling emotional for decades. It just comes back. I guess you would call that a post-traumatic-stress kind of thing.

Schmieding: Yeah.

Miner: In some regards, I can tell. But I went a couple decades just ignoring all this. When I was working with the Northwest Forest Plan, this experience seemed way behind, you know, something that happened in the past, and I just took it in stride by then. I was able to do that, as after a couple years I was able to get on with what I wanted to do. I'm going to just say, by God, I wasn't going to let anybody keep me from doing what I wanted to do. If I wanted to work in the woods, I had every right to work in the woods. If I wanted to pursue a forestry degree, that's what I was going to do. When I thought, okay, this was a horrible experience, I felt so bad for that woman, still feel bad about that situation. And there were a few people that got pretty bad, and I was being sexually harassed, for sure.

But at some point, I was able to get healed, work through that, and that really helped me to take those courses, and take a step forward. I read a lot of women's literature. I took an intensive 16-credit women's literature class, read everything from Kate Chopin to Simone de Beauvoir, to Virginia Woolf. As I said, I actually studied with Andrea Dworkin. So, that was really illuminating, hugely illuminating, for the rest of my career.

Schmieding: During my master's program, I had extensive background in gender theory and women's history.

Miner: So you know [subject and issues], yeah.

Schmieding: I know all of these people, remember Dworkin. So, I'm not going to go on about that. I would say that you had a strong sense of yourself, but you were still kind of a young woman, naïve, and this little foray, that is not the word, the little break you took. You're regrouping.

Miner: Right, I regrouped.

Schmieding: Your regrouping era, and what you did with that, gave you a lot of emotional and intellectual vim and vigor. How is that? Miner: Yeah, that's the way, I think that's true.

Schmieding: Yeah, it attached with an already strong sense of healthy gender identity and your place in the world, with something that would take you and serve you well as you developed professionally later on.

Miner: Yeah.

Schmieding: So, it was probably a good thing.

Miner: Oh yeah, you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Schmieding: Okay, we're back on. And you're refinding your way in your career.

Miner: Yeah.

Schmieding: Tell me where you go from after your journalism. You start your communications work back in the Northern Lakes. How does that end up taking you to the Northwest?

Miner: Well, as I said, I really enjoyed my work. I was working with growth yield modeling and tech transfer, at that time, for the North Central Forest and Experimental Station. I actually did want to get on permanently, but there was a hiring freeze. And I decided that would be a good time to join the Peace Corps. So, I actually resigned again from the Forest Service, and I went into the Peace Corps, where I met my husband.

Schmieding: You met him in Ecuador. Correct?

Miner: And I met him in Ecuador.

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: He's originally from the Pacific Northwest. And so, he left before I did to go get a Master's of Forestry at the University of Washington in Seattle. So, that's how I landed in the Pacific Northwest. I got to Seattle and had thought about maybe being a social scientist. I had actually studied with a rural sociologist, who also was a media researcher out of the University of Minnesota. And I thought that sociology was really interesting. So, the first person I called was Roger Clark, the social scientist at the research station. [Pacific Northwest Research Station, or PNW].

Schmieding: The person who became the team leader in the FEMAT, correct?

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: Yes.

Miner: So, I called Roger and said, "Hey, I'm looking for a job," and told him a little bit about my background. He said, "Well, you'd make a good editor, I bet." He introduced me to Martha Brooks, Martha and I talked, and she wanted me to come down to Portland. Initially, I just wanted to be in Seattle. I really was looking around for other jobs. I went back to North Central, just to visit folks there and get some recommendations, and eventually, I got on with the research station. I did come to Portland about a year later, starting as an editor working with Martha, and doing editing and special assignments for scientists, including Roger. The editing was okay, but I was more interested in tech transfer, the kind of work I had been doing at North Central. He [Roger] was instrumental in moving me into that arena, which was shortly after I came to the station in '87. So, by 1993, I found myself working on the Northwest Forest Plan.

Schmieding: Now, you were in Ecuador in the early '80s?

Miner: Yeah, mid-'80s, or early '80s.

Schmieding: Then you went to Seattle, and eventually came back here. So, let's see, continue on that track you were talking about being an editor and coming into the PNW Station in Portland?

Miner: One of the very first papers I edited, I edited it pretty heavily. Then I talked to the fellow who wrote it, actually, it was a paper with many authors. It just lacked a single voice. That's what I was struggling with. I sent the paper to the author [primary], then he called me. That was Jack Ward Thomas. One of the first papers I edited was Jack Ward Thomas' paper. Through that job of editing, I got to know pretty much every scientist in the station. Then, I was a tech transfer specialist. First thing I did was I went to every scientist I could in a given amount of time, and interviewed them about why do they do what they do. What are the motivations around their work in assuring people adopt new concepts and new practices, new technologies, and new scientific information. That was my real interest. I spoke about the sociologists I worked with, who introduced me to Everett Rogers' work on diffusion and innovations. I was fascinated by that. And I was also fascinated by that when I was in Ecuador, because that's a lot of what I was doing. I was working with agro-forestry practices, and working with people in the community who valued trees, and then just looking at how could we get more trees on the land. I was working with alder, which is a nitrogen fixer. And so, that was a whole system. So, anyway, that was kind of the arena.

When FEMAT came along, wow! Here we are, bringing the latest science together and looking at its application on the ground. That is just where I am at. That is why I stayed with the station all this time. After moving around all over the place, when I got here and realized the kind of science that was being done, and right away I recognized that this place was just repeating the history that my grandparents had talked about in terms of clear-cutting and cutting old-growth forests. Well, this was just right. I just felt like I was just here, getting to witness this whole thing unfolding.

Schmieding: It was like you'd finally found a home, even though you didn't know where it would lead yet?

Miner: Right. And at that point, I still didn't think I was sure. You know, I resigned from this agency twice. I had quite an attitude about it; I might take it or leave it. But, I was completely fascinated. Just in intellectual terms, I found it extremely fascinating. I feel like I have kind of bore witness, right? I think it's very true, part of what I learned in my career, that probably my point in time being a woman, I can probably do the most good just having a presence, making sure there's a woman in the room. I realize if I would say something, often when I would speak, if I started speaking about natural resources, the science, I would be quickly cut off. But what I realized is I just needed for me, for who I am, I just wanted to be in the room and bear witness, and have a presence and connect with any other women that happened to be around. So, I think that because I took a lot of the feminism work, read a lot of history, and read a lot of literature, I took that in, in a particular way that gave me a sense of time and place. And I sure had an understanding about the agency at, you know, I'm going to say this very sarcastically, at "its finest," in terms of gender. I had, you know, I had gone down "the hole."

Schmieding: You'd seen, actually, the nastiest underbelly.

Miner: The nastiest underbelly, so I was very aware of that, but the thing about the Research and Development branch of the Forest Service, is it's a little more sophisticated. I'm not saying it isn't biased, gender-biased, but it's a little more sophisticated about it.

Schmieding: And of course, as the decades move long, society is becoming more progressive.

Miner: Yeah.

Schmieding: And the Northwest is generally more progressive, although not always in all places.

Miner: Yeah, and I have to say, I don't know what progress is any more, for some reason. I feel I don't know. I think we sometimes think we know what progress is, but if I reflect, I don't know exactly what progress is. I don't know what that means. I guess the older you get, the less you understand.

Schmieding: I remember one of the great moments of humility was when I was in the middle of my doctoral program. A lot of doctoral students, because you're reading all the time, think they know everything. One day, I remember stepping outside the building and looking around at all the buildings on campus, and I thought, you know what? On every floor of every one of these buildings, there are a bunch of people that know a lot more than me. I just remember, that was like a humbling moment, where I just go, okay, yeah, I'm learning a lot of stuff, and I'm kind of smart, but chill. (Laughs)

Miner: Yeah. Absolutely. You know, so I don't know, yeah.

Schmieding: But those are good moments to have, because you do meet people who never have those moments. (Laughs)

Miner: Yeah.

Schmieding: And they definitely think they know more than they actually know, and they let you know it.

Miner: Right, right, right. Yeah.

Schmieding: What was the first time you actually came to the Northwest? You told me you were in Montana, and you did come to-I'm talking about the western forests. When did you actually come to the "wet" forests? I know you were in Washington on the Colville NF [Western gradient-Rocky Mtns.]

Miner: I just have to say that on the Colville, I sat for four hours and tried to hitchhike my way out of Newport [NE Washington] to get to the West Coast, because I really wanted to see these forests, but nobody picked me up. (Laughs) So, it took me a while. Eventually--

Schmieding: You did actually come out in the '70s, briefly?

Miner: No, I was in Colville. I was at the Newport Ranger District on the road.

Schmieding: But you never made it out here, is what I'm saying.

Miner: Never got out here.

Schmieding: Okay. So, when was the first time you saw the big wet forests?

Miner: Well, my first real experience was because my father-in-law is a forester. I actually went out doing some inventory work with him and my husband, and I did some field work with him. And, wow, because that's I think how you really experience a forest, by just getting out in it and not being on a trail even, just taking a compass line and going for it, you know.

Schmieding: Yeah. This is up near Seattle?

Miner: No, this was here in Oregon.

Schmieding: Okay.

Miner: This was in Oregon. I can't even recall exactly where it was, but it was quite interesting. I couldn't believe there were so few species of conifer. I was thinking, there's got to be more. That was one thing, but the other was just the slopes. And I did notice the duff, this deep duff, and then [stinging] nettles, you know, going up the hill there were nettles about. There is a resemblance in these forests to what I was working in the Colville, because there were drainages with very similar species. I mean, there was Douglas-fir and hemlock, and cedar, there, as well.

Schmieding: But the climate regime was different there.

Miner: Very different.

Schmieding: You wouldn't get quite the density and the size of trees, either.

Miner: No, not the big, big trees.

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: And the big trees were not necessarily very old, you know, relatively. I mean, a big tree here, a 200-year-old tree in northern Minnesota is the same size of a 50-year-old tree in Oregon.

Schmieding: Exactly.

Miner: So.

Schmieding: So, you were impressed?

Miner: I was totally impressed. Oh, yeah.

Schmieding: What do you remember about the cultural and political context in the '80s and leading into the early '90s, as you really hit your stride in this long phase you've been in for quite some time. What do you remember about the "Forest Wars," and just the noise that was going on about big trees and the movement, and the owl was starting to be discussed? What do you remember about that, either out there in society, or inside the agency?

Miner: Outside, I felt we were on quite a continuum. What I had kind of heard in the external world while I was in the Colville, which was 1975, my sense was, it was just continuing. And I really realize it means a lot more out here because these trees are a lot more valuable. My impression was, there's a lot more money in these forests. I was in Vermont, but there wasn't a lot of money in those forests [national forests]. I mean, we cut, and the money factor was there for sure, but we would be having what, I guess you could call a gyppo logger from Canada, coming down with his horse and harness, cutting up spruce and putting them in piles, and we thought that was a really good sale. Of course, it was really important to that logger and it was important to that local community, but you get out here and I could see, ah, industrial forestry.

Schmieding: On a big scale.

Miner: On a big scale. I had a strong sense that the same players that were here now, were the same players that were in Wisconsin and Minnesota in my history. So, I did have the sense that, okay, things have just kind of moved from there to here, in terms of cutting big trees. And there was a lot of money to be made. I had that sense. And they were rolling off [the forests]. I mean, my jaw dropped when I saw how many log trucks, the big logs, were just continuously rolling down the highway. I was in Seattle when they were cutting those clear-cuts right along Snoqualmie Pass. I remember thinking, "This is stupid. I mean, if I were a forester working for one of these agencies, I would not put clear-cuts in that kind of visual pathway." I had actually taken landscape courses. I had worked with landscape people on the Green Mountain [NF]. And so, I had a real sensibility about if you're going to cut, you need to consider people's perceptions about what you're doing. And you need to consider beauty, the aesthetics of landscapes. That's something that I really had, a sense of aesthetics. Vermont was one place where there are a lot of people looking at what's going on in those mountains. So, I think there's a much more community-based sense than there seemed to be here when I arrived.

Schmieding: Also, you have the fact that Vermont and New Hampshire know that they are the "postcard" for fall colors in America.

Miner: Right, exactly.

Schmieding: For example, whether you're from Boston or New York or from the West, people go back there to see the fall colors and these classic New England towns, and they don't want to see clear-cuts.

Miner: Clear-cuts. Yeah, so we paid a lot of attention to how we laid out, and this was in the '70s.

Schmieding: You're going back to when you're in New England.

Miner: Yeah, in Vermont we paid a lot of attention. When I saw what was going on the industrial lands; the Forest Service had already limited their size of the clear-cuts by the time I got here. When on the Colville, I was amazed at the 200-acre clear-cuts. When you set those on fire in a prescribed burn that was pretty amazing. So, I was a little shocked to see the large clear-cuts being put in, in the view-sheds that were left, and the number of trucks. It was just like, well, they're mining it. That was my sense. This is a mining operation. They're going to get to the end of this fast.

Schmieding: One thing I reference when I'm talking about why environmentalists today have such a "take no prisoners" attitude, even though I think their political strategies and attitudes can really come off bad, I think they're reacting against the sins of the forefathers in the logging industry, where they didn't see anything wrong, and they were just rolling ahead like this. They're reacting viscerally, to something they see, and lack of a conscience.

Miner: Right. I'm going to back up. I'm going to tell you about some other experiences I've had.

Schmieding: No, that's fine. This is what we're doing here.

Miner: And so, related to this. The other thing I did when I was growing up, was I worked on a ranch in eastern Montana.

Schmieding: Oh, okay.

Miner: For summers.

Schmieding: By Havre?

Miner: Sand Springs and Jordan.

Schmieding: Okay.

Miner: South of Havre.

Schmieding: Okay.

Miner: I got to know a ranching family really well. And these folks, they did things that I just would never do. Right? They did things, like killing wildlife, that I felt was so wrong. I also realized they didn't see it that way. They just did not. They had a whole different sensibility. So, when I came here, and I also know my own grandfather and great-grandfather were loggers, and so I have to say, I also was quite uncomfortable with the notion that it's "this side" against "that side."

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: For me, it was about "we're in this together." I thought so at any rate, this sort of dichotomy of perceptions of the natural world, and our interactions with them. That's a human constraint, that's a dichotomy, that's only as real as we make it. It doesn't say that one is right and one is wrong, and why I think that's why it is important to think for a while there was so much noise. I would tell no one that I was working for the Forest Service, and if I told my neighbors who I worked for, we immediately got in an owl debate, and they immediately pegged me in a certain category as having a certain point-of-view. But you know what? If I was with one group, it would be one way, if it was another group, it would be a different category. And it was very interesting. So, if you had a neighbor with environmental leanings, you were the bad guy. If you had neighbors or my father-in-law, who was pro-timber industry, you were the bad guy. So, there was no winning in terms of this kind of thinking. Right?

Schmieding: For instance, when I was in my doctoral program and studying all over the Colorado Plateau during the debates over saving the canyon lands [greater region] and all that stuff, and I would say, "I am studying environmental history." Well, they would only hear the word "environmental."

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: I was an "environmentalist" in their eyes. I would try to explain that scholars are not political activists. I'd try to explain that, but I think I just sounded like another urban-educated elitist to them.

Miner: Right, right.

Schmieding: And it kind of was a lost cause from that point. But I tried.

Miner: Right. But you know, it affected my life. I pretty much stay away from those topics, and I really just didn't talk about for the reasons you're talking about. Because, I could not have an intelligent conversation, as they all become visceral discussions.

Schmieding: Down on the [Colorado] Plateau, it was right after the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument controversy, when Clinton withdrew that huge area that sent southern Utah into a big tizzy. The BLM and Park Service people I worked with, and I knew them well, as soon as they left work, they would take off their work clothes, because they were afraid of getting hurt. They also did not like driving company vehicles around.

Miner: Right. Well, no, I wouldn't drive a government rig. Yeah.

Schmieding: And you have to remember something else. This was during the Edward Abbey era when "monkey-wrenching" [environmental sabotage against equipment, trees, etc.] was culturally inculcated through a book that was literally placed on the Colorado Plateau, The Monkey Wrench Gang.

Miner: Yeah.

Schmieding: So, there were people with very strong opinions. There was minor violence, but nothing like you might think, a real horrible situation.

Miner: Yeah. Well, I don't know.

Schmieding: So, anyway, going back to cultural context, and you're seeing this go on. You're in your position, you're editing and then you're moving into your technical support position, right?

Miner: Yeah, tech transfer trying to get our science applied and used.

Schmieding: And what do you remember the atmosphere and the dialogue in the agency?

Miner: In the agency.

Schmieding: About clear-cutting, the owl, Endangered Species Act, all the elements that would come together and create what happened in the '90s?

Miner: Yeah, the agency was a microcosm of the rest of the outer world. There were people whose careers were tied to the way things were, in terms of operations. The whole system and National Forest System was set up in a particular way. There were some people who felt one way about the situation, other people, another way. There were younger people coming in, and I associated with those people, who felt some responsibility for future generations and the course being taken, and saying, let's think about this. What do we really want from these lands? Is it timber? Maybe it's more? We have this law, the Endangered Species Act, and the Forest Service itself had a mandate for multiple-use and a lot of different policies that came into play in the '70s. By the '80s, they were being adopted, and policies were implemented, and you had regulatory agencies coming into play. The world had gotten quite complicated, particularly here. And so, the culture within the organization was kind of broiling a little bit.

Schmieding: Was there a lot of frustration?

Miner: A lot of frustration. A lot of frustration. I think that in this, but again, there's quite a difference between the National Forest System and Research and Development [USFS]. Very different cultures. Very different things going on in terms of looking at this.

Schmieding: Now, the '80s would have been kind of the time when you'd call, it would be "the rise of the -ologists" [short-hand for scientists in govt. agencies].

Miner: Yes.

Schmieding: Within the agency. What I mean by that is there was a time when science, for the most part with some exceptions, an Aldo Leopold here and there, and voices for other things. But the science was generally in the service of the main mandate, which was utilitarian forestry, for a long time.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: And to take the rougher edges off, you know, hydrological damage and things like that. But this was still the accepted paradigm, and that was being challenged in the '80s by society-at-large, but also within the agency by the -ologists who were having more and more power. Correct?

Miner: Yes, absolutely.

Schmieding: How would you characterize the dynamic between the research and the regular folks that were used to getting their way? How did that play out, and what do you remember about that? And we're leading right up to the [NWFP] Forest Plan now.

Miner: You had biologists way back in the '70s. We were starting to hire more biologists, soil scientists, hydrologists. I was a forester, and it was fun. It was fun to interact with those folks. But I knew that was going on there; I supposed it was the same out here because I didn't work for the National Forest System. But there was a bit of tension between timber and other functions. And I know how you moved ahead in the organization at that time; you had much better chance of moving ahead if you were a forester than an -ologist. That is to say, most of leadership were traditional people making decisions about budget, policies and various things within the agency, and they generally came from more of a traditional function of timber as being the predominant use, noting that we had these other uses, but particularly in this part of the country, it was timber. It struck me when I came in and saw paved roads all over the place. They were all gravel roads back the lake states. And I went, "Money," you know.

Schmieding: Well, it's timber receipts.

Miner: The timber and the timber receipts, not only benefitted the communities, they benefitted the whole structure, the whole way money flowed through that structure. That all was in place in a way that people benefitted from timber being cut within the agency, not just external to the agency.

Schmieding: But in the '80s, the -ologists who were hired the decade before, but they actually started to gain some power.

Miner: Exactly.

Schmieding: And a voice. And it wasn't just because dynamics in the agency, it was the legal dynamics that were forcing the hand, where you had to ask, well, what does the science say?

Miner: Yeah, and it's interesting to me because the PNW Research Station has been around for a long time, and all along the way our science has been informing things, including clear-cutting. It was our research that, for a while there, it looked like Douglas-fir really was considered a pioneer kind of species, and it needed all the sun to grow. It was kind of interesting. But then in the '70s, the station did start to look at the effects of logging in other ways, particularly on stream quality, water quality and fisheries. Already in the '70s, the results were coming out saying that the current practices are having adverse effects. We were also looking at herbicides. So the use of herbicides is another huge issue. It's still an issue.

Schmieding: A lot of these studies were peripheral to what I am doing with the H.J. Andrews' [exp. for.] history papers, and integrated in with those, a lot of the studies in the '60s, actually after the DDT scandal, but 2,4,5-T and other things, and there's a bunch of common names and chemical names I can't remember right now, but they were asking questions about things that today we say, "Well, yeah," but back then, they didn't know.

Miner: They didn't know. They just didn't know.

Schmieding: It was like, if we spray this stuff everywhere, how is that going to affect forest workers who work there for months at a time? Questions like that.

Miner: Right. I know, it's mind-boggling. And that's the whole thing. I know in terms of judging the past, is people didn't know. People really didn't know things we know today. So, when we look at how we make decisions, that's because we're in a really interesting time right now, because of the whole notion of truth, at the moment. We're living in a very, interesting time, in terms of facts. But in the science community, you know, that's our bread-and-butter. During that time, we had studies set up that were looking at a variety of things. And then we just things happen, like Eric Forsman did his master's degree on this little owl [northern spotted owl], and I know you've talked to Eric, but I'm not sure that he knew quite what the ramifications of that study would be when he started it.

Schmieding: He was a phenomenal interview, almost four hours. And he told me how he first got fascinated with birds when he was in high school along the Willamette River. He went to Sheldon High School, one of our rivals. And it was interesting that many in his family were loggers.

Miner: Yeah, so there you go.

Schmieding: He just said, "I just like birds," and it led to the northern spotted owl. And no, he had no idea. He just loved studying birds and got into the science thing. Society and the forces of nature, so to speak, took care of the rest.

Miner: Right. I had a sense of that when I started looking. I was like, wow, there's all these moving parts. I found it quite overwhelming. I felt the Northwest to be overwhelming. I was used to small trees, and politics not being so huge. I was a bit overwhelmed. I would go to Carson, to the Wind River [Exp. For]. I spent a lot of time at Wind River when I first came for a variety of reasons. There were signs with a spotted owl and a slash through it, and "eat spotted owls" signs. And they had yellow ribbons. And there was really a sense of so much animosity towards the agency in that town. I was going there in part because I lived nearby and would recreate there. I would never tell anybody who I worked for.

I found that really overwhelming, really sad. I was saddened. I felt sad about that because I didn't think all the conflict would end well. I didn't know where it was all going to end. It was a sense of how is this all going to end? Then, when I actually found myself suddenly in the mix, I went from being overwhelmed to being really fascinated with the moment, "Okay, wow, how is this going to unfold?" Because I was worried. You sit there and you worry and you're watching this, you're close enough to it, but suddenly, there was an opportunity to actually be part of something.

Schmieding: And this would be the early 1990s, correct?

Miner: This was when the FEMAT was starting, when we started to put the science together.

Schmieding: And what do you remember about the things leading up to FEMAT? Obviously, you knew Jack Ward Thomas. You edited something for him early on. He was the primary author of the ISC Report, for instance,

Miner: Right, right. Schmieding: You had environmental impact studies on the owl in the '80s.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: You had all these things coming together, scientifically and politically.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: Let's take the early '90s, and you asked earlier, when are we going to get to the Forest Plan? Well, now we're there. Jump into the middle of it from when you said, okay, now I'm involved. How did that involvement start?

Miner: Well, specifically, there were all those studies. Are you talking about PACFISH and there were all these things happening?

Schmieding: Well, there were many different things.

Miner: I was just trying to keep track of them.

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: I mean, I was observing that and I was editing some things.

Schmieding: That's what I mean, you were in a perfect place to see kind of the flow of stuff coming through, scientifically.

Miner: Right, I was very aware of everything that was happening. I wasn't involved myself, but I knew what was going on. But I do remember, actually, the very day that the administration made the call, that our research station got the call. Charlie Philpott got the call from the President. They were going to have this meeting here in Portland.

Schmieding: From Bill Clinton?

Miner: It was not Clinton himself, but someone from the administration. It was unusual for an administration to directly call a station director. Soon, there was an intense amount of activity around assembling a group of scientists and getting something out based on science. There was a notion by the administration that you could put some science together, and then, come up with some options and that we could bring some peace to this region. Because it really was, as I said, an overwhelming amount of conflict. I mean, we were all overwhelmed. It was just this, wow, how can things be so conflicted, how can there be this much conflict?

Schmieding: Well, you'd had a year or two since the Dwyer decision, which basically shut down almost all the logging on the federal land. Miner: Right.

Schmieding: Not all, but a lot.

Miner: A lot.

Schmieding: And people were freaking out.

Miner: They were completely freaking out. You know, the communities, you'd go into Carson [Washington], people weren't working. They weren't getting pay checks, so, of course, they were upset. And I could say more on that. That county never recovered. That county has yet to recover from this. They had a really good reason to be [upset]. They saw what was coming, I guess in some regards, or they were afraid that it could go to a point where they wouldn't have jobs.

Schmieding: So, you can see how people from traditional extractive industries, the towns, these perspectives, traditional, not with the "urban perspective," would feel great resentment and anger?

Miner: Oh, absolutely.

Schmieding: Yeah.

Miner: Yes, I could empathize with them very much. I really did understand what the gravity of this situation was. It became very politicized when President Clinton entered the picture, of course. And also, very, very interesting.

Schmieding: So, what do you remember about the time you mentioned just a minute ago, when Clinton called for the Forest Summit?

Miner: Yeah.

Schmieding: And it was just a couple, three months after he got inaugurated, I believe.

Miner: Oh, it was just so quick.

Schmieding: Two months, I think.

Miner: It was two months.

Schmieding: It was April, correct?

Miner: It was April when the call came in. I remember all of a sudden, I saw the station director [PNW] come out, and he just looked kind of pale. Schmieding: Like?

Miner: Yeah.

Schmieding: Like, hold on to your "you-know-what"?

Miner: I don't know that he said a lot, but I remember shortly after, finding out why he appeared that way.

Schmieding: This was Charlie Philpott. Right?

Miner: Yeah, why he appeared like that, and then, he had Roger Clark come immediately down from Seattle. It was Jim Sedell, and then, Jack [Ward Thomas], who came over. Now that was a big discussion, you know. But anyway, they brought those players together, really, really quickly. And there were discussions about doing things in a particular way. But I have to say, the administration, said, well, this is what we're looking for.

Schmieding: How long did you all have did you all have to prepare for the Summit, from the phone call till the actual Summit?

Miner: The Summit. There were a lot of people involved. Tom Tuchman may have come in at that point, but also other people from Washington, D.C. I didn't see much of that. I just knew that they were assembling all these people. I remember little things, like we had to get a transcriber, as it was all going to be recorded. And there was a notion that what was about to happen had to be recorded and preserved, so we knew what was going to be stated there was important, and it was known, from this event, this Summit, there would be activity [intense] at the station [PNW]. There was already a sense of that. I wasn't privy to the conversations around that, I just knew that there was something of large magnitude was going on.

Schmieding: So, the Summit happened. Where were you? Did you see it on TV?

Miner: Yeah, I watched it on TV.

Schmieding: What do you remember about the energy in the agency, but also the whole dynamic?

Miner: Well, the President, he just gets elected and he's out to Portland. For one thing, I guess people see that this is such a high priority that the President is making. It's one of the things he's addressing in the first few months of his administration, giving it a lot of gravity and, wow, like somebody's paying attention to what's going out here! I remember thinking that.

Schmieding: In retrospect, it makes you wonder how much Al Gore had to do with that. [Based on reputation as environmental advocate.]

Miner: And Al Gore was there. I believe he actually came to the Pink Tower. So, he definitely was a presence. And I think there were people he associated with that would come by, some very well-known biologists and world-class kind of biologists, would just stop by and see what was happening.

Schmieding: Now you're talking about at the Pink Tower?

Miner: Yeah. Pink Tower.

Schmieding: So, the Summit happens, you're given the charge, basically, 60 days.

Miner: Panic.

Schmieding: I can't even imagine. It ended up being a 90-day mission (30 days added), but to people I interview, I jokingly call it a "90-day slumber party."

Miner: Yeah.

Schmieding: Or however you want to characterize it.

Miner: No, it was. [Very long hours, people sleeping on floor, under desks, etc.]

Schmieding: And so, you're given how long between the Summit and when the FEMAT/Pink Tower session actually started? Was it one month?

Miner: I don't even think it was a month, but maybe three weeks? Let's see. I could figure that out, because I was pregnant at the time. My son was born, July 22, 1993. He's 24 tomorrow. We finished up about a month before he was born. So, we finished [FEMAT/Pink Tower] in mid-June.

Schmieding: You were busy.

Miner: Yeah.

Schmieding: Physiologically.

Miner: I was busy. (Laughs)

Schmieding: That must have been an especially intense summer for you?

Miner: Yeah, that was a little crazy.

Schmieding: Now, we're in your office, and we can see the Pink Tower. Correct? There it is. Isn't that it right there? [North/Northwest out Miner's window]

Miner: Yeah, that's it.

Schmieding: Is it still the United Bank Building, or has it changed?

Miner: I think so, yeah. I think the U.S. Bank is still there.

Schmieding: It's kind of interesting that you have this direct-line view from your office.

Miner: Right, and I always think, you know.

Schmieding: Where were you [PNW] at the time? Where was your office at the time?

Miner: Well, even closer.

Schmieding: Oh, really?

Miner: But I didn't have a view of it because I was so close. We were in the old Multnomah Hotel, which is on Third and Oak.

Schmieding: What was your role in that process, first of all? Were you support staff?

Miner: I was. Roger asked me to help with writing the social science assessment. Social scientists, I have to say, sometimes are notorious for not necessarily writing so people can understand what they're saying.

Schmieding: I fully understand.

Miner: So, I think that's what he had hoped that I would help with.

Schmieding: Well, you mean, your journalism training and perspective is very helpful for that, because that's a style that is more accessible to the non-specialist.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: Were you actually involved in a lot of the sessions, or were you mostly kind of out editing stuff and that kind of thing?

Miner: Well, the thing was, pen did not get set to paper for weeks. And I was actually quite frustrated with that. I wanted to get to work. I spent a lot of time in those sessions. I was like a little mouse in the corner. We would have the evening sessions every night, and I would attend those. I don't think anyone noticed I was there, particularly. They would have the biological people quite separate from the social science people. I think that there were actually separate sessions, but then, I think Jack brought everybody together in the evening, and they could be working quite late. Now, because I was pregnant, I kept to eight hours a day.

Schmieding: You had limits, for sure.

Miner: I had limits. So, I wasn't out there late into the evening, with just a few exceptions. Once they started writing, I was there later more often.

Schmieding: And since you were pregnant, you don't have any good drinking stories.

Miner: No. (Laughter) No, I didn't go to the bars.

Schmieding: The carousing, but I'm sure there was a lot.

Miner: I don't know. I'm sure. I don't even know about that.

Schmieding: People didn't generally talk about that in the interviews too much.

Miner: I don't know that there was a lot. [People were very focused/fatigued]

Schmieding: I don't know if they had any energy.

Miner: I don't really remember any of that. It's possible some folks did, but you know, it was very intense. People in the room, these were all very serious people, and there was a sense this was a pivotal moment in their careers. Everybody felt that, and in hindsight, that was true. Everybody didn't agree with things, and there were boisterous discussions, as scientists always have, but particularly some at that time. There were discussions about methodologies and approaches, and then there were arguments. There were big egos in the room. There were big egos. And so, that was fascinating. Science is a process of human concoction and human nature. So, that all came out during that time, and more than you would normally see, I think, because of the pressure on everybody.

Schmieding: And of course, it was obvious sixty days wasn't going to be quite enough.

Miner: Right. Right.

Schmieding: They were given another thirty [To find option White House would accept].

Miner: Yeah, yeah.

Schmieding: It's really incredible to think about the intensity and that big of a charge in terms of what you were supposed to do in a short a period of time.

Miner: Yeah, and I have to say, Jack Ward Thomas, he was up to the task, but Marty Raphael also played a big role. He was kind of his assistant, more or less, kind of making things go. So, between them and the other leads, and people thinking, let's just roll up our sleeves and let's get this done, and we're going to work hard. And they did. While there were reporters in the hallway, there were occasionally guards. There was--

Schmieding: Did you have any protestors try to come in?

Miner: I don't remember that happening.

Schmieding: Or outside the building?

Miner: Well, no, not there. I think there were things happening, as there had been for a long time. I mean, demonstrations were just common. I'd walk out of the building where I worked and there were often demonstrations, and when we were over in the Multnomah Building. Now, the U.S. Bank building, it actually took people a while to even know we were there. We were on the-I think it was actually the 13th floor, but I think it was maybe the 14th. We called it the 14th floor or something.

Schmieding: Now, it was only science people.

Miner: Well, this was the thing, and this was the point.

Schmieding: There weren't managers. I understand why they tried that, but I have a few doubts or questions about the wisdom of that in the long-term.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: Concerning that, what do you have to say?

Miner: I can remember a discussion with Charlie Philpott and Roger Clark about the necessity of bringing managers into the room. This was something, as a social scientist, Roger thought was important. He understood that, as social science on the diffusion of innovations show, the best way to have things applied well is to have users, in this case the managers, involved in the process of developing new concepts or practices. This aligns with my lengthy experience in working with technology transfer. However, despite an intent to do this, that did not happen during the original NW Forest Plan process in the Northwest, or by those in Washington D.C. later on.

Schmieding: Knowing what the scientists were going to unleash upon the management class?

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: Might not be received with as much openness.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: As it could if they were at least partially involved.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: Is that a good way --

Miner: The administration, frankly, didn't trust the agency.

Schmieding: You're talking about the Clinton administration?

Miner: The National Forest System portion of our agency was not particularly trusted by the Clinton administration. And so, I think that it was a trust issue that kept that from happening.

Schmieding: Any experience, person or memory that is particularly poignant from that process, something you haven't brought up so far, a funny story, an anecdote, a brouhaha? Anything interesting that would tell us something.

Miner: I have more quiet memories. I had no reason of talking to Jack about his career, but there was down time, and I remember him going through his whole career with me, which was very interesting. He had been a forester himself. That's where he started, and then he'd gone into wildlife biology. He was a very good communicator, and he was from east Texas. I don't know what it is about east Texas, but many singers and orators come out of east Texas. He had a way of speaking about things that were quite complex, but cutting to the chase. He would do that at the meetings, too. What normally happened is, he would let different scientists go at it a little bit. They would argue about things, and I have to state again, this is the scientific process. You're pitting ideas against each other in order to make an informed decision about the path you're going on. Jack would let that take place, which it needed to, because this was an intellectual endeavor.

People, through conversation were talking about new concepts, what ramifications were for different approaches, the integrity of information, the lack of information, and the risks associated with making different assumptions. There was a lot of discussion about all this. But we had to wrap up every night. Right? And the other thing, scientists can go on and on like this. They get a lot of energy from it, actually. They can be quite introverts, but get them in this kind of milieu, this group of people at any rate, they're all competitive. There were egos. They had to foster that, hype that and turn the energy up a little bit. But Jack would weigh in at the end [of a day] and he could be a sense-maker, saying, "Here's what we've been looking at, where we are tonight. This is where we're at now at the end of the day. This is where we'll jump off of tomorrow." So that was a way of organizing. It was quite organized in this regard.

Schmieding: What do you feel the balance was between the terrestrial, the aquatic, the social science, and the economics people?

Miner: It was totally biological. I mean, just there's such a biological bias to the whole thing.

Schmieding: That's what I thought. Just reading the documents and the energy of the policy, you can see that in the documents.

Miner: And that greatly frustrated my team, the social science assessment team.

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: Greatly frustrated that team. You know, economics had a little bit more, a little bit more standing. The biological, the terrestrial and aquatic, were pretty much stealing the show in some regards, you could say.

Schmieding: You guys are studying that "squishy stuff;" culture and ethics and values.

Miner: It wasn't considered in quite high regard. I mean, there was this notion at that time about the "hard" sciences and "soft" sciences. And the hard sciences had a little bit more macho. I do think probably part of that came from what you were talking about earlier, that for a long time, while the agency was dominated by forestry [people], and sort of the terrestrial, but not terrestrial in a broad concept of it; we're talking about trees and timber.

Schmieding: Right, crops.

Miner: And crops, or, maybe ecology, but forest ecology, looking at trees, tree-centered forest ecology.

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: Then you have like Jerry Franklin, who had expanded that to more of an ecological view, looking at things like the process and function of forests. That was big. Here's an opportunity to really look at that, which it hadn't been up to then. Here was a way to really get those concepts across. To actually put on the ground these concepts that scientists had been coming up with in their studies over decades. How does a forest really function? And how does that relate to wildlife habitat? And then, how does that all relate to aquatics? That was sort of the cutting edge at that time.

So, I think there was some part of it that isn't just hard versus soft science. I think it was the state of science at that time. There was a lot going on in those arenas. There were a lot of scientists, who by then had a body of work that said something worth taking a look at in terms of implications for the forests and their management. In terms of current regulations, there was a complex array of regulations and objectives that were being discussed. The social side, not so much. In many ways, it was a bit in its infancy, I think, just in the last decade. The social sciences.

Schmieding: Especially within the agency, too, though.

Miner: Oh, yeah, for sure.

Schmieding: Back then, I mean.

Miner: Or, in the agency, they were much that way, yeah.

Schmieding: Now, Jerry Franklin may have been very controversial to the traditional forestry people, but he was still talking about trees.

Miner: He still spoke the same language. He spoke the same language.

Schmieding: Right, and New Forestry was maybe not liked by some people because it made them have to work harder or think harder or change their paradigms, but it was still tree-centered.

Miner: Right, and people could understand it. I think any forester understood what Jerry was saying. But, whether they agreed with some of the assumptions? That was quite another matter.

Schmieding: In terms of the balance factor, what do you mean when you say that the aquatics people also had to fight for equal air time with the terrestrial?

Miner: I think they felt they had to have a little bit more.

Schmieding: Okay.

Miner: I think there was some sense of that. So, they were pretty aggressive in this regard. And I think, yes, but they had to work hard at it.

Schmieding: Because of the story about how the aquatic thing even got entered into the dialogue at the time of the congressional hearings a couple years before. And Gordon Reeves and Jim Sedell were part of that process. Miner: Right.

Schmieding: The Forest Service Chief was not very happy that another monkey wrench was thrown into the gears, so to speak. And that wasn't even them trying. They just basically spoke what they thought was the truth, and they were small fry at that time. But it made things more complicated. I mean, whether it has to do with egos and power and traditional terrestrial versus this or that, this was just another story that came out of this whole thing.

Miner: The aquatics folks were the -ologists, whereas the terrestrial people were more traditional, although there were more and more ecologists at that time. There was a real shift around this time from traditional silvicultural Scientists [to something new]. What was happening in the Pink Tower had ramifications for who we hired, and how our money was spent at the PNW Station afterwards. It was a pivotal moment because we suddenly had to support implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan [NWFP].

Schmieding: And the whole monitoring network that would develop after a while. [To support and test various aspects of the NWFP - especially monitoring.]

Miner: The monitoring.

Schmieding: We'll talk about that here in just--

Miner: And the "Survey and Manage" program. Suddenly, the station had to make dramatic choices related to the follow-up work from the NWFP, including for Survey and Manage. This resulted in jobs being eliminated in some fields within the PNW, such as in Forest Operations, for example.

Schmieding: You mean, traditional forestry people?

Miner: Yeah, like some entomologists. Positions weren't filled, things like that.

Schmieding: When you look at this big book [referencing FEMAT report], what does that tell you today? I mean, you were a part, you wrote a lot, and you wrote at least some of the social science part. Right?

Miner: Uh-huh.

Schmieding: When you look at it today, what does it make you think about?

Miner: I think about so many things, but especially a couple. One is how nothing like this has ever happened since, and probably won't again, where you bring a group of scientists together. That the outcome of this, I often look at this and think, it's too bad we weren't able to work a little better with the National Forest System on this in terms of implementation. The scientists were so burned out. I see a lot of the scientists kind of went their way, and the Record of Decision was developed by another group of people, and there wasn't a lot of interplay. So, when I look at this [FEMAT], I think that's kind of a stand-alone document, and from an era and important point-in-time. And I think we're better off for it having happened, from a science perspective. But, I think there were ramifications economically, and things that could have been handled a little better.

Schmieding: In terms of weighting the things we're talking about within the dynamic of the planning itself, reflected in the problems with implementation over time in terms of how it was thought through or not thought through; do you think that was because there was a focus on this and not on that? And I'm speaking mainly about the terrestrial and the aquatic, the ecology, the non-human ecology, or largely non-human ecology, but the other was not prioritized enough, and therefore, the plan was implemented. And some problems that were already there, they got worse or maybe weren't addressed quickly enough in certain areas. I'm talking about traditional communities and economics, obviously, but there's other things that you might want to think about, too, in regard to that train of thought.

Miner: Well, what this plan says in Option 9 is 1 billion board-feet [harvest per annum]. That never got implemented. So, in this plan was a recognition of the importance of the timber industry to communities.

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: That never happened, and that's a pretty complicated story. Others could talk to that probably better than I could. There were a lot of lawsuits. A lot of things happened that the National Forest System had to deal with. Again, it probably would have been better if they'd been involved. Now, there's a synthesis being developed and we're not using this as a model. When I look at this now, I think, "This is a good learning opportunity." We want to bear in mind things that we thought were shortcomings here, [NWFP] and not repeat those. That's something I actually deal with now. But there are people who say, well, this was a good model, why can't scientists do this again? So, we have to explain that.

Schmieding: Well, actually, the interviewees, most of them have said, this is probably not a good model in the sense of it being able to be used again because of many different factors. It was like a one-time thing.

Miner: It was a one-time thing, yeah.

Schmieding: It was a really phenomenal thing that happened. It was a synergy and a paradigm-shifting moment. It gave science a voice it never had before.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: But it was maybe a little too isolated from the rest of the world, and therefore, some of those problems maybe grew out of that. Now, speaking to that, now, Alternative 9, how well do you think that got it right, as best as you can in a zoning scheme that you're laying over this incredibly complex tableau of society and ecology and geography and economic systems? I mean, how well do you think that got it as right as it could, versus other options? I think there were ten final candidates? [NWFP]

Miner: I wrote silviculture prescriptions which look at all factors, and you determine how you're going to cut forest. But, the real point for me of being a silviculturist is not to do it to cut trees, it's to manage your forest, to look at the objectives that you are trying to accomplish, and you're taking action that will help people attain those. Pieces of this do that with Option [Alternative] 9. The reserve system has some value. The Matrix has some value, to learn from. But did we get it right? I don't think there is a "getting it right," but it's something you're working towards, figuring it out. I think part of the dynamic nature of forests is such that, if you're going to put a set of reserves across the landscape, you need to be thinking about what we've found. We did that when we didn't know about climate change. Being that, reserves were set aside in a time when maybe they were needed. I think a piece of it was related to social acceptability of various practices that are behind the scenes. So, I think the social pieces in Option 9 are there, they're just aren't explicit. Right? One billion board-feet, that's a social thing. Reserves? Yes. That was the social nod to people who wanted to preserve forests. Matrix lands, that's a bit of a nod to people who wanted something kind of in-between things.

Schmieding: And the AMA's? [Adaptive Management Areas]

Miner: Well, the AMA's did not work at all. And that was--

Schmieding: Except for the Central Cascades [and Applegate AMA, South. Ore.], and that was because of a certain group of people that were more invested?

Miner: They were already kind of in place before hand.

Schmieding: Yeah.

Miner: The Adaptive Management Areas [AMAs] probably were the biggest failure in terms of actual implementation. I actually at one point was helping with the Adaptive Management Areas. We had a number of them, and I was here when the station director took that funding [AMAs] and shifted it somewhere else. The little bit of money there was to support those. There was money from the region and there was money from the station. First, the region decided not to spend money on those anymore, and then the station. You know, if you're not going to have support? Schmieding: How long did it take to get to that point?

Miner: Not very long.

Schmieding: It was '95 was when the official report to the President and Congress was published, and everything goes into practice in '95-'96, and you start developing your monitoring plans.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: How long did it take for them to say, wow, the AMA idea is not going to work? By the late '90s?

Miner: They were just not a success at the level envisioned during FEMAT. I believe successes of the two AMAs mentioned had less to do with the NFWP, but a continuum of work done by scientists and managers already dedicated to adaptive management as a concept. The AMAs also did not get the focus at the regional level as reserves and other ideas in the NWFP did. Good work did occur in some AMAs and adaptive management remained a key concept, but they were not central to the implementation of the NWFP, nor where they taken up to the regional level like reserves and other concepts in the NWFP did.

Schmieding: Whose idea was that?

Miner: Adaptive Management Areas? George Stankey and Roger Clark came up with that concept as part of FEMAT, although it was informed by others, and it had roots in British Columbia forestry practices before FEMAT. It was quite interesting that the biological sciences really took hold of concept, although it was more social in nature.

Schmieding: Okay.

Miner: This is around tech, you know, around the notion that people have to demonstrate and then learn [AMAs/adaptive management).

Schmieding: Okay, got you.

Miner: The other piece was experimentation; the idea that you take management actions, work with the community, and learn together. Then you would make changes and shifts. That's why it was so uncomfortable when you asked about Option 9, and why did this work, or not.

Schmieding: Oh, I wasn't trying to put it in an absolute sense. I was just trying to compare it to all the options to be considered.

Miner: Oh, I knew you weren't. Yeah, all the options. But part of my hemming and hawing, is around that fact you need to be able to implement things and learn from them, adjust and move forward. There really hasn't been any of that. The reserves have been kind of set in stone. The Matrix lands, they're almost done with their thinning, up to 80-year-old stands. So, we're now at a point where the scientists and Jerry Franklin are asking, okay, what does this say about the whole forest that you want into the future and age classes, and the complexity of forests across the landscape?

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: You've got more of it with Option 9. Is it enough? Does it have enough flexibility, enough ability, to have varied stands and conditions to function as habitat for these species? And of course, the spotted owl, but I think we're kind of at a point where the spotted owl is, well....The station for a long time has talked about collections of species, not just one, trying to keep the whole collection of species. I am sure Bruce Marcot understands the whole biodiversity aspect of it. We know more about that. We know a lot more about these systems now than we did just a short 24 years ago.

Schmieding: Many questions must have been asked. This is interesting, earth-shaking, in how habitat for the spotted owl, became the pivotal thing in this plan. The murrelet, I won't say it was an outlier, but it was secondary. Then of course, the whole deal was expanded to include more species, especially under Survey and Manage, and what does that all mean in practice?

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: What do you remember about when you first heard about the spotted owl, the ESA, this building "thing," and then, the centrality of that in terms of the zoning and reserve system, and how they came up with that scheme?

Miner: Well, there was a notion that the owl was kind of a surrogate, for--

Schmieding: The whole forest?

Miner: Well, from the environmental community, they use it as a symbol. And the goal was to stop cutting those big, old trees.

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: And then, from a scientific perspective, maybe there's a notion that it's kind of a keystone species, or a species that's emblematic of a whole suite of species that are important for an ecosystem to function.

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: We call it resilience now. We didn't use that term back then, but the idea is that you have a resilient forest that can withstand change and shifts. Now with climate change, it's very important to be thinking about that. We thought we were on a trajectory. You asked this notion of progress, of being on a trajectory towards a future. For a forester, it's like we're going to have sustained-yields. These notions are all very directional, as is this notion there's a state we can get to that is "idyllic." But that's not really the way, realizing that given the dynamics of what you're looking for is no one state. You're looking more at resilience [perspective] that can kind of weather the change, and that resilience probably comes with people. We've got to try some new things, see what works and what doesn't work.

Schmieding: I think progress, not perfection, a phrase you'll hear in a lot of different contexts, is kind of what you're saying. And although I would say that a lot of people in their minds, will often take an ideal or a perfect ideal and they'll put it out as what should be.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: Rather than, this synergistic progression. And I think those things are always in collision, including now, what we're talking about right here.

Miner: Yeah, so it's kind of a balancing out. You've got to do something, right? I mean, there's going to be activity, whether you do something actually or not, there's going to be a consequence in terms of forests. So, you've got this whole spectrum, a philosophy around how to move that forward. In terms of the science, what our role is to bring the information that we have about these systems to bear? And we know that the complexity is such that it's not straightforward. It's not straightforward so there's one kind of set of activities such as they are outlined here. That reserve system in Option 9; we wouldn't come up with that today.

Schmieding: You can always look at things in the rearview mirror and say, well, would have, should have, could have, and--

Miner: But, would we be doing the science we're doing today to get to where we did without FEMAT? No. This was highly influential, I mean, what people assembled, and the information and the way they looked at it.

Schmieding: Take off on that thought, Cindy. Miner: Yeah.

Schmieding: Okay, say something about what you just said?

Miner: Yeah, so, I'm getting a little tired. Can we take a break?

[Break].

Schmieding: We were talking about the aftermath, and that's probably an incorrect word, because it's kind of a negative one, but how things unfolded after FEMAT. The FEMAT was done. It was this incredible "cram session" and synergy of the sciences, and it did something never done before, at least in the American context. Then, a different set of people took over. Jerry Franklin called them "the second team." He basically expressed the opinion of other key people. Even Jack [Ward Thomas] was unhappy with a few things in here. I didn't have a chance to interview him, but he thought that Survey and Manage didn't help implementation [NWFP].

Miner: Yes.

Schmieding: Maybe you can talk about that a little bit? I'm talking about the Record of Decision, Standards and Guidelines that came out, basically, right after FEMAT; the guide to how this was going to be implemented.

Miner: I probably have a little different viewpoint of this. I believe that we were remiss in the science community because we simply handed it off. And we did not work with the land managers.

Schmieding: Okay.

Miner: I think they did the best that they could.

Schmieding: Okay.

Miner: We were not with them. I believe it's probably complicated, and I don't know the reason for that. I know there was, because of this attitude, we were the "first team" and they were the "second," there's a lot there, the distinctions were, I think, more than just distinctions. I think walls were put up. The land managers felt locked out of the room by the scientists.

Schmieding: I wasn't making a judgment.

Miner: Oh no, I know.

Schmieding: I was trying to make a comment about how certain people in high places viewed what happened afterwards. Miner: No, but I think--

Schmieding: But you're explaining more context, and thank you.

Miner: I think there was a bit of conflict because of the Pink Tower, everybody being put in a room, and certain people left out. The very people who were left out [managers] were the ones that were going to have to move forward with this. I think there were some individuals who might have crossed over, a few people that had their foot in both places [science and management]. I remember thinking after FEMAT, where are the scientists? I was in the building where this was developed, and I didn't see scientists anywhere for months. [USFS PNW and Region 6 offices], mostly managers at that time, charged with implementing NWFP.

Schmieding: But just to play devil's advocate about why maybe that happened, and this is just something I'm thinking out loud right now as we're doing this interview, perhaps the science people who had to drop everything.

Miner: They were tired.

Schmieding: For three months. They were exhausted.

Miner: They were exhausted [Extremely long work hours for months].

Schmieding: And they had a huge backlog with their regular work, so when they left this, they went back and said, "Wow, I've got to go back and get my regular stuff going again," keep it going, or whatever.

Miner: Absolutely.

Schmieding: I'm just playing devil's advocate about why maybe there was a disconnect between FEMAT, "whew, that's over," and then, "here, take it away."

Miner: Oh, no, no, no. That, I think, is an accurate description.

Schmieding: Okay.

Miner: But as a result, there was this kind of wall between these two documents [FEMAT and Record of Decision]. They should have been a bit more [of a connection]. They're based on each other, but there's some disconnect. Right? I think you used the word disconnect. People were very tired. [post-FEMAT]. And hey, I wasn't around. I had the baby, and took six months maternity leave after that. My baby came two months early, too.

Schmieding: There's always an excuse, Cindy. (Laughs)

Miner: Right, so I was not around.

Schmieding: I know.

Miner: So, I don't really know what happened. All I know is that when I came back, I knew that our scientists had been burned out and they were trying to get their lives back together. I mean, it was hard on people's personal lives and their academic ones. They had papers and going to panels. And, this FEMAT report was out of the realm of normal work.

Schmieding: Their normal flow of work, and they had to scramble to put everything back together.

Miner: And it was field season, so a lot of them were doing field work or had crews and things like that and things to think about. And then the managers did the best they could.

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: That's what this [became], I think the Record of Decision.

Schmieding: Now, where do you think the problems were? If you were going to say, let's compare the good, bad or whatever [Various aspects of NWFP].

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: But if you were going to say, in retrospect, this would have been better if -- ? And also talk about the Record of Decision/Standards and Guidelines.

Miner: Gosh, I haven't looked at this for so long.

Schmieding: The main thing I think about, and I know Jack Ward Thomas was not happy with it, the "Survey and Manage" concept. It seems unrealistic in terms of labor, time and energy in the field. [Orig. application of ESA in NWFP was for two species, spotted owl and marbled murrelet, some fish were added; "survey and manage" potentially added hundreds of species.]

Miner: Absolutely.

Schmieding: It being a kind of a "paralysis through analysis" kind of thing, because you increase the potential species list or ecosystem impact list to almost everything. All of a sudden, you're in trouble [in management calculus].

Miner: Right, absolutely.

Schmieding: That's the one, personally, that just glares at me. Miner: Yeah, and the other is the aquatic conservation strategy. The notion was that we had this system of streams, they were going to be assessed, and through that assessment, portions of that landscape would be subject to management. You can manage them, right? Instead, it became almost like there was an inability to do anything. Watershed analysis is systematic procedure for characterizing watershed and ecological processes to meet specific management and social objectives. They anticipated that watershed analysis would occur, they'd look at the headwaters, and so, these headwater streams all of a sudden had buffers around them and it was very difficult to manage those lands because of that. That's another factor. And I don't know the intent of the Record of Decision. I don't know enough about it to have an opinion.

Schmieding: Well, it's an infinitely complex thing. And you can easily take an easy phrase out of something that people toss around and throw it against the wall, because the life is much more complicated than that, institutions are much more complicated, politics are much more complicated.

Miner: Yeah. Well.

Schmieding: Now, when you come back from your six months maternity leave, what was the feeling around the Station? This giant thing had happened, and I know people realized that. But what was the spirit of the agency or this entity? Even the Forest Service in general, mainly through your window here. [PNW Station].

Miner: Well, on the whole, I think people felt good about it. There was a lot of satisfaction in having risen to the challenge, and having produced something that was being implemented through the Record of Decision.

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: I think there was a sense there was some disconnect, but overall, people were getting back to their work they were doing. But they also were recognizing that from a research perspective, managing a research station, there was a sense of, "ah," we're going to have to make some shifts. And we've got a limited budget; we didn't get a big increase in budget with this [Staff from ranger districts often helped with gathering data].

Schmieding: To do the monitoring?

Miner: Monitoring.

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: There were some monies for monitoring, and so, working with Region 5 and Region 6 [NWFP-mostly Region 6, plus No. Cal., Region 5], plans for monitoring had to be set up. There tension around the thinking that the research station should do the monitoring. Our managers said, "We'll do the protocols. But we don't have the money or staff to do the monitoring. That's your job." We did the development of protocols for the monitoring. And then there was some monitoring, the northern spotted owl monitoring.

Schmieding: This is one of the early documents here, right?

Miner: Yes, that was what the purpose of that document was.

Schmieding: This is from 1999, "The Strategy and Design of the Effectiveness Monitoring Program for the Northwest Forest Plan," what I'm holding right now, which is PNW-GTR 437, January 1999.

Miner: Yes, so that was big. The people that it took, the scientists that we needed to hire, the grad students and that kind of thing, they started to need different kinds of backgrounds than what we had previously had.

Schmieding: How so?

Miner: Well, from what I remember, we made decisions to decrease the size of our entomology and pathology expertise, because we had to have forest ecology. We hired a lot of ecologists. They could have been foresters, but we hired a lot of research ecologists.

Schmieding: In other words, people that could--

Miner: Broader.

Schmieding: People that could do less atomistic, but more general, holistic studies, which may fit better with the needs of the monitoring plan? Is that why?

Miner: Well, no, I think, people that had more understanding of function and process of ecosystems, and how to study them.

Schmieding: Okay.

Miner: Versus people who studied --

Schmieding: Bugs, or what have you?

Miner: Bugs, or disease, or trees. That was one outcome. I'm trying to come up with one more. One nice thing was we got a positive reputation for this work, within the agency and scientific community. These people, our folks, everyone wanted to talk to them. There was a lot of demand on the scientists to consult or to give papers. The Yale Forestry Department, one of the professors there, started studying the whole process [NWFP]. Our scientists and the work we did, all of this was being studied.

Schmieding: So, now you were in the "petri dish."

Miner: And it became internationally influential. I remember Jerry Franklin bringing the head forester from China to visit station leadership. He laid out this plan for China, which he implemented, had a reserve system, had places where they were going to do afforestation [putting trees where they had not ever been, or for some time]. It was definitely influenced by some of the approaches. Maybe it's taking a leap there, but I suspect that's true.

Schmieding: I've also heard Australia actually took aspects of the model from FEMAT. One of the interviewees mentioned that. I'm not sure if that's true.

Miner: Yeah, and --

Schmieding: I think one idea that's attractive is that you get a bunch of experts together. This has been true for a lot of governments, technocratic aspects, economists, and the time to address big questions. What we really need is a bunch of super-smart people to start making decisions, and for the politicians to stay out of the way. I think that's part of the attractiveness. You come up with an objective, an analytical construct, to make good, sound policy, that isn't waving in the political winds, if you will.

Miner: Right. And I think that was the intent. But I also believe it wasn't really in a political framework. I think the framework needed to come up with some options. There was this notion that the scientists had to come up with an option. I think that created kind of a difficult situation, as it was hard to extricate the science from politics in some regards, because there was a president [Clinton] putting folks in the room, keeping others out of the room, and also weighing in. I believe they weighed in on Option 9.

Schmieding: How well do you think the group performed the social assessment analysis your group was charged with, and how do you think the analysis has held the test of time?

Miner: One problem with the social assessment was a lack of data. One of the things we found out right away was that all the data the different districts and forests had, wasn't compatible. They didn't collect the same data in the same way. So, that was a really big challenge.

Schmieding: Well, one problem I saw with the 90-day thing, or 60 days, that it was impossible to do original research. Everything is a synthesis and you're depending completely on what is already out there.

Miner: And there wasn't much social science out there. I think, given what there was available, it covered the various aspects of social science that it could.

Schmieding: For instance, at the Andrews LTER, and the social science component in forest governance, they're trying to develop a plan that will study the Willamette National Forest, or the Andrews, centered on that. There's basically three riparian corridors, Santiam, McKenzie and Willamette. That is kind of the main construct. But there's not really good data.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: They're finding out that they've got to do serious research to find the data.

Miner: Roger [Clark] brought in a bunch of people to try to get that information.

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: There was a huge effort. They brought in people from all the districts and elsewhere. They brought them into a room, asked them for particular kinds of information, and asked them to gather whatever they could [census records, county records, timber receipts, etc.] They were doing the best they could with what they had.

Schmieding: That's kind of what Roger decided to do as the leader of the group?

Miner: Yeah.

Schmieding: And he recognized the limitations.

Miner: Absolutely, he recognized them.

Schmieding: And he says, well, this is what we've got and we're going to go from here.

Miner: Yes. They then worked with this knowledge set, which in part illustrates the notion of adaptive management. From a science perspective, you work with the information you have, and as you get more information, it's going to inform you. For instance, I mentioned Douglas-fir and clear-cutting. In the '40s, they thought Douglas-fir needed total light. The same scientist who did the studies in the '40s still works at the station, Bob Curtis. He is still around, took these studies all the way, and he found Douglas-fir can grow in the shade. You can do these different kinds of more complicated cutting systems, and you're not going to completely shade out Douglas-fir. He [Curtis] has long-term data on this. In 1940, the world looked very different than it looks today, from a scientific perspective; simply based on data over time, and collecting data long enough to actually learn what's what, what you want to get at, and what you can do and what would happen if you do "X"? In terms of social science, wow, is it complicated! People are a little bit more complicated, although, a tree has more genes in its DNA than people.

Schmieding: But trees are less easily confused.

Miner: But in terms of -- (Laughs). Right.

Schmieding: That just came out. (Laughs)

Miner: But people are so complicated. To study people, we do it with big data. You even hear about social science on NPR, now. A lot of it's because people are using big data, and they have computing power to start getting at causalities in the social sciences. But, they [FEMAT] didn't have that data then, probably the biggest barrier they faced from where I was sitting.

The Social Science Assessment Team; it was challenging and we just had so much more information [to process]. But another aspect of that was, by working together in FEMAT, it did bring social scientists together. There were relationships that came from that and carried on after that, and work that carried on. The whole FEMAT experience, those of us that were part of that, we just appreciated each other. I have such an appreciation for everyone I worked with during that experience. You had a sense that everybody was learning; the way they were thinking scientifically, the way they were thinking, just as human beings and social creatures with careers and lives. It was like a high bar was set and everyone was striving for that higher bar. And it was under some difficult circumstances. You came out of that forming bonds with people. And gosh, they were smart. What a brilliant group of people! For me, it was such an honor. I would go away from a day of work feeling like, wow, I just learned so much.

I just felt like I had the opportunity to work today with some incredible people. How did I get so lucky? And then to have continued some of those relationships, even as people went on to other things. Jim Sedell went on to being a Station Director for the Pacific Southwest Research Station. I worked with him a lot after FEMAT, and helped him out there. Richard Haynes [Forest Economist] really is a mentor. We worked a lot afterwards with the Northwest Forest Plan and the monitoring reports, and with publishing, and he really helped me understand scientific publishing as much as anybody did. Roger Clark and George Stankey, I considered them to be friends, and they were very good to work with, and I still am in contact with them, even after they've retired. I feel really good about that. I actually have a deep respect for [Station Director] Charlie Philpott as an administrator, under the circumstances of the Northwest Forest Plan. I think he may have been in one of the toughest positions, in terms of assembling everyone, dealing with all the conflict, having the pressure from the administration. And then, having to really manage the aftermath.

Schmieding: He was the Station Director from what year to what year?

Miner: Oh, shoot.

Schmieding: The only reason I'm asking-[to frame NWFP process]

Miner: '88 or '87 to '96, something like that?

Schmieding: So, basically, the whole--

Miner: The whole time.

Schmieding: From basically the buildup of the political war, the legal issues and the Dwyer Decision, the ISC Report and Congress, everything through until after the report? [FEMAT/Record of Decision/NWFP/etc.]

Miner: Right, and he's another brilliant person.

Schmieding: That's a lot to go through. Yeah.

Miner: And he has a brilliant mind as well. Another piece of it [NWFP] that was difficult to see, is it really was a grinding thing. People did suffer from burnout. Also, some of them went into the Interior Columbia River Basin project, which was supposed to be a bit like FEMAT, only over a longer amount of time. That just went on for years and years. So, between this effort [NWFP] and the Interior Columbia River Basin, we really burned some people out. And they weren't able to tend to their science.

Schmieding: Rise again, so to speak?

Miner: Sufficiently, and they weren't publishing. They were going to panels, and these efforts were not really being considered for paneling processes for them to advance in their career. There was that piece, but a lot of them overcame that and went on to be very influential, and I think, the whole thing, after sort of sputtering a while, was a catalyst for great careers.

Schmieding: Well, a lot of them said, a good percentage of the people I've interviewed, have said that this was the highlight of their career.

Miner: Right, right. Schmieding: And these are successful people and that have done a lot of publishing. They have names in their fields. But like this was like the high point. I won't say names necessarily, but early their careers, they never thought this was going to be the pinnacle, or something analogous to that.

Miner: Right. We had actually somebody who came in afterwards as a manager, Steve McDonald, and he was here during that time and he kept saying, "Well, these are the good-old days, you know." I think that's what he was saying. What we're going through here, we're going to look back and we're going to say those were the "good-old days," the sense that this is really something.

Schmieding: How did this whole process affect your view about ethics and humanity's responsibility toward nature and the world? You obviously already had a background that would be considered "conservationist," but you evolved as a person, and how did the whole Northwest Forest Plan either cement something you already had, or alter it? How would you describe it as affecting your world view in terms of morality, ethics and nature?

Miner: It was a step. A group of people came together in the interest of nature and conservation. A set of science information was collected and key questions asked related to complexity of forests and how humans interact with nature. It was a pivotal moment because it substantially shifted how forests are managed. Some of the most valuable forests, economically, went into reserve status. The process for managing forests included new concepts from the scientific community. Scientists were to be objective through use the scientific process. This change did quell the conflict from the perspective of those who viewed old-growth harvesting as mining a resource that cannot be realistically replaced, and is thus, irreplaceable. Action was taken to preserve the system of forests for future generations.

Having said that, there were unintended consequences like with anything we undergo. Just today, I am hearing we're facing climate change, another kind of issue. Society will have society reconcile, for whatever reasons, the system we operate in now. It's very difficult to reconcile greater goods for future generations, versus jobs for today. I heard that on the radio today. And I think we can describe that better in this part of the country because of FEMAT, and the tension between those two. My perception of the National Forest System is we've come out of a period where socially, there was a huge discord after FEMAT came out. It affected the whole Northwest. In some towns, it really affected them. In Skamania County [Wash.], 98 percent of its lands are federal lands. It was hugely impacted by the Northwest Forest Plan. Other places were able to diversify their economies and actually do quite well. We did some work around community viability. Some communities were more viable than others. This dichotomy between nature and humans is something that goes way back to Thoreau and Emerson in our history. We continue to struggle with this notion, yet we are part of things.

Schmieding: And way before that.

Miner: But, I think there is this trying to understand how we interact with nature and how we come together. They're saying, if we don't at least somehow recognize human nature in terms of short-term need, versus the long-term greater good, that is a problem. Deal with that then, and that is, to me, the moral issue. There's a lot of questions of morality in that. So, I think we need to figure that out better. We're trying, as a society. And I believe the National Forest System, in this region, is actually grappling with that.

Schmieding: Now, you talked about the monitoring and having to adjust things to be able to budget for that. How was the monitoring plan, network, and personnel determined, and how did it shake out over the first five, six years? And how do you feel it's played out over the last 20 years?

Miner: That would be a good question for Becky Gravenmier, because she was a little closer to the region [6] than I. What I can say is that we developed more protocols. We've been monitoring the marbled murrelet and the spotted owl for some time now. The Survey and Manage program went on its own kind of trajectory. It's very hard to think of us continuing to monitor the spotted owl and the marbled murrelet the way we're doing it, forever. So, we probably need to take a look at that. We are looking at different methods, methodologies and this kind of thing, but there's a question there of how to move forward. And we're doing a new forest synthesis. So, part of what I'm involved with right now, and why we're doing this history, probably why you want to do this, is we brought all the authors together about a year ago. They were meeting in the Portland lab.

Schmieding: The authors of?

Miner: Some of them were with FEMAT, and some of them are with the new forest synthesis.

Schmieding: Okay.

Miner: Which is a synthesis of science from the Northwest Forest Plan geography looking at the science that's come out since the FEMAT report.

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: And so, we were all-I've lost my thought. We were all there.

Schmieding: You were at some meeting or? Miner: Yeah, the point is that we're looking at the most current science, and that's going to probably set a new course. There's going to be a bioregional assessment that's then going to take information from the new synthesis. And then there's really going to be a public process to work through that.

Schmieding: Do you think now that we're at 20-plus years, and you've had enough time to reflect on this independently of the political maelstrom of the moment, and science needs a decade or two to figure stuff out, that maybe there's going to be a new assessment where you'll see where this was right, where this was wrong, where it needs to be adjusted, amended, etc.? Do you feel that going forward?

Miner: I think it's a little hard to know exactly because I don't work with that side of the Forest Service. What I do know is we are putting the information together, and there is new understanding of how systems are working. We're putting much more emphasis on the socio-economic piece. We recognized the shortcomings of FEMAT. That has got more attention, and the region [6] is taking the next step of doing an assessment. We are doing a synthesis of the science called the "Forest Ecosystem Management and Ecological, Economic and Social Assessment." The region is actually going to do the assessment part, looking at the whole region, which is going to look at other things besides science. Right? But we're putting together the new science related to the Northwest Forest Plan.

Schmieding: It's just science synthesis.

Miner: We're looking at old-growth forests and vegetation. We're looking at biodiversity. We are going to consider climate change. We're going to look at where the forest has been going the last twenty years, which, by the way, is a short time for a forest. Twenty years is just not--

Schmieding: That's my point about twenty years, it's just twenty years.

Miner: It's just not that long. But there are some things we can see. Is it working in terms of old growth? Yes. The old growth; we're not losing old growth. Is there less loss of the old-growth forest type in these forests? Yes. That's working. Those are some of the things that, if it's important to have old growth across this landscape, then we have information about that and what the trend is. Where are the losses and for what reasons, and how does that relate to habitat, because that's the important piece, and those around the habitat of the marbled murrelet and the spotted owl. We've got a lot of new information on that. From the monitoring all this time, we do have information that can lead to some conclusions.

Schmieding: Now that the new wild card is the barred owl. What does that tell you about the focus on a single species that became a symbol, but also a real biological indicator in terms of the ephemeral nature of human plans for managing nature?

Miner: Right, if you go down that primrose path, if you think that you're going to figure it out at any given time, just when you think you have it figured out, a barred owl lands on the scene. Right? That complicates it. Does it mean what you've done up until the barred owl showed up, was wrong? You want to make a judgment. I think we should look forward. What does this mean? What are we trying to get out of these forests in terms of resiliency? For me personally, what are we going to hand future generations? How can we act today in a way that future generations will reap the same benefits we do from forests, or more? We don't want to degrade these forests. I know what degraded forests look like.

Schmieding: Well, you grew up around one of the earliest examples in the U.S. context.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: We were talking about that at the beginning of the interview.

Miner: I go back and there are no seed trees. There were such expansive cuts, what came up were poplars, and what can come back is nothing like what the old logger saw who sold us our land for our cabin, forests 200 years old. If you work in tropical forests, when we were dealing with issues of degraded forest, it's going to be 200 years before you see forests come back anything like what was there. For me, that is where the moral issue comes in. That's what we need to look at. I think pretty much everyone shares that same idea, if you sit down at a table and talk with folks.

Schmieding: After this process [NWFP] happened, especially the big events, how many other regions, or elsewhere in the Northwest, how many people wanted to learn from this, or asked if they could take it and apply to other regions? Obviously, there's different ecologies, different politics, but the rest of the Forest Service, how did they react to this? I mean nationally, at meetings, in communiques, reports; this is interesting, this could apply to us, we don't like this, or it's just a Northwest thing.

Miner: I'm not sure, but I know some of the other stations did. There was a Southern Forest Assessment done, maybe a decade ago, that maybe was a big influence. This notion of doing assessments across great landscapes; that's been done in the Lake States. And I think it's informed forest planning in those situations. But some of those regions, like the Southern Research Station, doesn't have a lot of federal lands, so they were looking broadly across lands. I know that internationally, it's had maybe more impact, that it is possible. It's hard to separate FEMAT from the science in FEMAT, so you put this information together in a report. It's also out in the scientific literature. Right? So, people have been building on that. And I think that people look at forests differently. But this "daylighted" a lot of the science for people and policy-makers, in particular. I know, in the international community and here, this interplay between science and policy has been a subject of a lot of thinking and discussion. What is the role of science? What is the role of land management?

Schmieding: What were Forest Service, BLM, even Fish and Wildlife, interactions, before, during, and how did the whole process from the beginning of the Forest Wars through the big events affect things afterwards in terms of collaboration and interagency dynamics, in general?

Miner: Well, there was effort when everybody was in the Pink Tower, those were a lot of different federal agencies, the ones that you just mentioned.

Schmieding: I didn't really get to that when we were talking, as we were focusing on what you were saying, so I want to make sure I didn't forget that.

Miner: Afterwards, there was a Regional Ecosystem Office set up with the goal of keeping us working together more closely as federal agencies. That continues today, as our PNW Station Director serves on committees of federal executives. Today, executives are getting together to talk about the Northwest Forest Plan synthesis and bio-assessment. I really wasn't at a level where I knew quite what was going on. It was like pre-FEMAT, but I can tell you, I watched it improve. It's very noteworthy, how closely we worked together, and I know my counterparts in the other agencies.

Schmieding: Were Native American communities' interests properly addressed? If not, was there not the time to do it, and, if so, how has that been addressed after-the-fact in terms of their interests? There have been publications and studies on how this has affected their lands and resources, but maybe you can fill in a few blanks on that?

Miner: I would say it wasn't addressed sufficiently at the time. There's efforts now to better consider the American Indian tribes as sovereign nations. It's not just a matter of the land practices, but sovereign rights, and we're making progress on that.

Schmieding: What lands would have been most affected by the whole dynamic with the Northwest Forest Plan? Obviously, there are sovereign lands, but still, there's watersheds and the relationships among them and things like that.

Miner: Yeah, right.

Schmieding: I mean, can you think of a couple examples of tribes that would be more affected by what happened in the [Northwest] Forest Plan, whether it's because of hydrological dynamics, or what have you?

Miner: Well, for many of the tribes their first foods come from the rivers, the Columbia River Basin.

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: Large streams play a big, important role. FEMAT really did try to address that. There are so many factors that come into play with fish populations, but I think American Indians have a great deal of interest and a lot at stake with "first foods" [traditional foods/diet/nutrition]. The national forests are where they are derived from. This effort with the science synthesis addressed that a bit more than in the past. I think we've become a lot more cognizant of the importance of first foods and culture, and just recognizing the rights of certain tribes. It's very complicated. You asked me a particular tribe, but there are so many and they're all a little bit unique.

Schmieding: Well, every tribe is quite different, as they will be the first to tell you.

Miner: Yeah. Do they have lands or land holdings? Are those lands adjacent to national forests? Are they downstream from national forests? Do they have hunting rights? There are some tribes that have rights associated with timber harvest. So, I know that some of them really did have a presence when, at the President's Summit, when he put together the conference. There were some tribal leaders at that conference.

Schmieding: You're talking about at the Clinton Summit?

Miner: Yes.

Schmieding: Okay, so there was tribal representation there. But there wasn't at the FEMAT, or was there some?

Miner: I just don't recall that.

Schmieding: Yeah, and I'm not sure. I haven't gotten a clear picture of that yet.

Miner: I'm not just sure because there were a lot of people in the building.

Schmieding: What has surprised you or your colleagues, from what you know about monitoring, reviews, and evidence since the forest plan was implemented? And you're coming up on the synthesis thing. What has surprised you?

Miner: Oh, surprised me since in terms of? Schmieding: The recovery of the lands? Just anything that is affected out there.

Miner: Well, I used to fly over and look down and see a lot of fragmentation. And I do see across the landscape things being less fragmented. I don't know if I would have thought that would happen in twenty years.

Schmieding: In other words, the infill of succession.

Miner: Yes.

Schmieding: Making the "overhead geography map" more green again?

Miner: More green, yes. Then when you drive about and look at the forests, it's just amazing how they went, so quickly, the forest has been growing back.

Schmieding: What is for you the most important?

Miner: Well, part of that is, it's not just there's a lack of cutting and clear-cutting, but the use of different kinds of silvicultural systems resulting in a rather quick change across the landscape, so using variable thinning. Actually, that's another piece that the station really started to do, trying to look at silvicultural systems to more quickly bring old-growth characteristics on the land. A lot of that's happening on state lands. It's not just the federal lands, but state lands were also influenced by what the science was on FEMAT, how they managed their lands.

Schmieding: Extending off something I didn't follow up on when we talked about the BLM, Fish and Wildlife, and other agencies, what has been the relationships since this time with the Oregon State Board of Forestry or Oregon forest lands? Same question for Washington. I mean, they're different states, they've got different dynamics. There are different lands, but how has it affected the dialogue over forestry in general?

Miner: Oh, I don't know. I don't know.

Schmieding: You've got the thing about the O&C lands and this stuff going on, but it still changed the tenor of everything, and also changed the supply and demand scarcity dynamic regarding the resource. It's affected the whole.

Miner: It has affected all of the lands. I guess, that was point about flying over.

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: I realized that this effort probably affected all lands. Now, unintended consequences, probably Richard [Haynes] could have predicted this, but there was a quick cutoff of private lands afterwards. And then, that actually created huge inventories in mills, and the price of timber, which first went up, went down. And so, if you were a small woodland owner who was banking on retiring because you were going to cut some timber, you may have decided to cut that much sooner than you would have, because there was a sense, there was a fear that this was going to happen on private lands, as well. And so, there was a quick-cut effort.

Schmieding: They were afraid because there was the big government phobia kind of thing, that big government was going to come and, it's not going to be your guns, it's going to be your trees.

Miner: Yeah, I think there was some of that. If you look at land cover, there were shifts, major shifts, because of this across all lands, whether it was private, state, federal, small woodland owners. That surprised me, I didn't see that coming.

Schmieding: Now, twenty years later now, in retrospect, the original plan, what do you think were its strongest components and what do you think were its weakest components?

Miner: Of the plan?

Schmieding: Yeah.

Miner: I can't really comment on the current implementation of the plan. In thinking over the past decades, a weak component would be the Adaptive Management Areas and adaptive management in general, which were both never fully implemented, and that is unfortunate.

Schmieding: It's a great conceptual idea.

Miner: It's a great idea.

Schmieding: Yeah.

Miner: And it isn't a dead idea. There's an interesting thing, I told George Stankey this, there's always interest in it in all the publications we've done on adaptive management. The strength [in NWFP] I think was the protection of old-growth forests.

Schmieding: What is the most important value of an old-growth forest to you?

Miner: I can tell you personally, the value of an old-growth forest.

Schmieding: Yeah, for you, what is the most important value or values, plural?

Miner: When I go into an old forest, I get a different sense of time and of my place in the world, and how ephemeral life is. You have these big trees that are, 400 or 500 years old. There is a reason why cathedrals were built the way they are, to mimic forests. There's something spiritual about that, to be in a forest, and the life all around you. I think also, just to be among big, big trees, and to be a small person, gives you a sense of your place in the world. There's nothing like going into a forest, an old forest, for solitude and solace. From my standpoint, there is an ethical, a moral dimension. As a civil servant, there are ethics related to making sure that people in the future get to experience that. That's part of why I've come to have spent all this time in this career. That's one piece, but I guess there's a lot more. But what a unique thing that this Northwest, that Oregon and Washington, and California, have in these old forests. It's just amazing.

Schmieding: What if they had been lost for all time? Motivations for American conservationism can be found in George Perkins Marsh's Man and Nature, a study of environmental degradation in the ancient world.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: He described the Mediterranean, Eastern European, and Western Asian ecologies as having been denuded by thousands of years of over-use, to a point where none of the great forests were left. Regional economies and societies were negatively impacted by that. That book [pub. 1864] had an enormous impact on Americans at the time when it was in the last throes of the Civil War, would soon experience the cut-and-run logging in the Upper Midwest. And then you could read Thoreau or Cullen Bryant's poems on the prairies or the forests, or you read Emerson's Meditations on Nature, John Muir's works, who often referred to them as the cathedrals.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: And you would see that. It's always a mix between utilitarian and economic survival aspects, and the spiritual and emotional ones. I think it's a balance.

Miner: Yeah, it's a balance perhaps. Another interesting thing that's happening is we're doing a lot of research on human health and nature. And speaking utilitarian, I suppose, if you look at humans in terms of spirit, but also health, this is influenced by spiritual considerations. Interestingly, I was just talking to someone from PSU [Portland State University] who is looking at air pollution, forests and tall trees, and the role of really tall trees in catching contaminants and holding them above a city so that they don't fall on people. They're pursuing that scientifically. That was a surprising thing somebody just told me that I had never heard of before.

Schmieding: Pandora; did you see Avatar?

Miner: Oh, yeah.

Schmieding: The big tree? (Laughs)

Miner: Yeah, I don't know. But yeah, we are finding more and more that nature plays a role in human health. If you go in hospitals now, they have pictures of trees and forests and nature. They have windows. So, there is a whole sort of medical field with a whole lot of interest in forests.

Schmieding: You talked about a negative example of a local economy, I think it was up in Washington, that 98 percent -- the Wind River area, right?

Miner: Skamania County [South-Cent. Wash.] is 98 percent federal lands.

Schmieding: What's an example or two of a society that has adapted and proved more resilient in the Northwest Forest Plan area? I can think of some.

Miner: More did well than didn't. I think of Ashland and that area, including Medford, as kind of a mixed bag. But places did well where they had a little more diversity in their economy. There also seems to be something on some of the initial science we looked at, leadership in towns, and whether they had strong people that would come together and that try to help diversify the economy or take a look at alternatives.

Schmieding: I think there would also be a critical mass aspect, like you're talking about Ashland and Medford. There's a pretty large urban area, to be able to retrofit and retrain, and there's even schools and stuff like that.

Miner: Schools, yeah.

Schmieding: The places that are truly rural, especially that do not have a sexy tourist aesthetic component to it, struggle. The McKenzie River Valley, for instance, well, everybody wants to go up to the Three Sisters. But, it's quickly becoming a different kind of economy. It may not be what it used to be, but it's still a strong economy on its own level.

Miner: A lot of that would happen regardless of what happened. But if you have somewhere like Skamania County, which just does not have a tax base, it's just so sparsely populated.

Schmieding: And the southern Oregon counties. Is Jackson County on there?

Miner: Yeah.

Schmieding: They're having horrible problems. They don't even have a jail in, or is it Curry County, that doesn't even have a jail? Miner: Yeah.

Schmieding: Or something ridiculous like that.

Miner: Yeah, some of the counties are going to lay off their law enforcement.

Schmieding: That is serious. Can you talk about any experiences during this whole process that we haven't talked about, or people that you would like to highlight? I wanted to ask you about Jack Ward Thomas, for instance, you met him early on. He led this through. In fact, why don't you talk about him first?

Miner: Well, just to say that he was the right person at the right time. And he, as I said, he did have a forestry background. He understood how to bridge the gap between -ologists and the forestry folks, and he had a very strong understanding of the dynamic nature of the Forest Service and what was happening with the institution. And he also just had leadership qualities that really helped bring people together, and he could communicate with the political folks and communicate with the scientists.

Schmieding: And he also had a big personality from what I hear.

Miner: He was charismatic.

Schmieding: Yeah.

Miner: You know, you don't see that so often. But both he and Jerry Franklin, I would say, were very charismatic personalities.

Schmieding: And talk about Jerry now, too. I would say, more than anybody, it was his science and ideas that would have been the intellectual driving force behind a good portion of that [NWFP]. Would you say that's correct?

Miner: Right, right. And you know, Jerry's career started with the PNW Research Station. If you go back into these photo files, you'll see during the '50s, he was walking all over these forests and taking photos. So, he literally understood these forests. You know, he grew up, I believe, in--

Schmieding: Camas. [Washington, east of Vancouver, North side Columbia River]

Miner: In Camas. While he was doing that, he was looking at the ecology and learning to understand the forests. By the time FEMAT came along, he'd had a career in the Forest Service, a career at OSU, he had worked and then he had gone up to the University of Washington. So, he also knew a lot of people. And he knew how--

Schmieding: And he also knew Washington.

Miner: Yeah, the University of Washington is where.

Schmieding: No, Washington, D.C.

Miner: Oh, and he was very much--

Schmieding: Because he went back to work at the National Science Foundation office.

Miner: He also was very politically connected, even more than Jack, much more so, I believe. And Jack was pretty connected, too. They were the elder statesmen, both of them. The younger folks, the generation below them were Jim Sedell and Marty Raphael and Gordie Reeves, and so on. But they had studied or worked with them. Tom Spies, I believe, really was a protégé of Jerry Franklin. The same with Fred Swanson. Fred Swanson had worked side-by-side with Jerry Franklin.

Schmieding: Well, an analogy to Jerry would be like if you look at great coaches in sports, and they will often be-

[End Audio, Part 1]

[Start Audio, Part 2]

Schmieding: --trainers for a generation of coaches [after break in digital file].

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: You look at coaching trees, like in college football or what-have-you, and you can almost always see three or four origins for a lot of them.

Miner: For a lot of people. Yeah.

Schmieding: I mean, it has to do with brilliance, inspiration, charisma, being at the right place at the right time, a whole variety of things.

Miner: Yes, right. So, you have to understand that from where I was sitting, I was in a room of all men. There were very few women. I think there were maybe, in the social assessment team, [Margaret "Maggie]" Shannon was brought in, and there were more women in the social assessment team. And I know that was actually purposeful, that was recognized by Roger Clark. So, he made attempts to be sure that we had women rangers. For instance, he brought in Renata McNair. I know that was a bit on his mind. That was not the case for things, generally. If you look at Jack and Jerry; there were no women proteges. There were a few women, there's a fisheries biologist, I've forgotten her name [Kelly Burnett], but there were a few others. But generally, there was a lot of testosterone in the "Pink Building." (Laughs) A lot of guys.

Schmieding: This was what I was going to ask you, a follow-up on that subject. You've mentioned the experiences you had when you were younger, and when you were, still early career, but more mid-early, when you dealt with the Pink Tower and became, a "PNW lifer" from that point on.

Miner: Right.

Schmieding: What do you remember about that in terms of a lot of testosterone, but being treated with respect, or not, and then how you've seen gender dynamics evolve from that point on, independent of the Northwest Forest Plan? You can talk about it in both contexts.

Miner: You know, I have always been treated with a lot of respect. I always felt valued. People extended friendship and I really appreciated that. I've actually felt that more in research than I did when I worked in the National Forest System. But the irony of that is that there are many more women in the National Forest System than there are in research.

Schmieding: Really? Interesting.

Miner: Gender diversity, I believe has to do with networking and mentoring. One of the first things I noticed when I came to the station, was that everyone who worked at the H.J.A, had beards. They all looked kind of alike.

Schmieding: At the HJA? [H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest]

Miner: At the H.J. Andrews. Fred and Tom Spies had beards at the time.

Schmieding: Even Jim Sedell had a beard early-on.

Miner: Jim Sedell and Mark Harmon. You'd walk in to that forest and I'd go, "Whoa, I guess, you've got to have a beard to work here." And the other thing was height. The agency actually truly thought that leaders needed to be tall. That was actually written in, I've seen that in writing. This was quite some time ago when this was the case, so everybody was tall.

Schmieding: Do you know that H.J. Andrews the man, was not tall?

Miner: And Jim Sedell was not tall, but it seems like these physical traits are a factor, and I don't think it's a coincidence that people look alike. And there was also no diversity whatsoever. These are all white males.

Schmieding: And unfortunately, the racial dynamic is still a gigantic problem, in the Park Service, the Forest Service, and the BLM. There's been a lot of efforts to turn that around, but it's still very slow progress.

Miner: I also think that being an editor, being in communications, it was very clear to me that this was safe ground for me to have a career in. I was not competing with these people. It's very competitive. Scientists can be very competitive. I was never deemed a competitor. And I've seen women that are trying to have science careers. That's a little different situation.

Schmieding: But even down at the Forest Sciences Lab where I work in Corvallis, a lot of the writer/editor personnel are women.

Miner: We're permitted. I just read something that just seems spot-on. Actually, I heard it on the radio, but a woman just wrote a book very recently about why there's disparity in gender. I think she's a social scientist, I'm not sure, or a gender studies person, but men give permission to have careers. And not as individuals, but collectively. They will make room, and they are making room. She's in academia at a university, so she was talking about that, and hi-tech. There are these places where it's very hard for women to get toe-holds. But you're seeing more women lawyers, more women doctors. In the National Forest System, there are lots of women. It's kind of interesting, and this is all in terms of pay. The study was looking at the gender gap related to pay, getting equal pay for equal work.

Schmieding: And that's still a problem.

Miner: That's still a problem. And I think that was her point, that higher paying jobs are still held by men. Women are probably getting more into the medium kind of jobs.

Schmieding: I say part of that is the lag effect of history and generational building over time. Part of it has to do with discrimination. It's a little of both.

Miner: Well, and I don't think anyone sets out to be discriminatory. I think women, within my realm, I never feel like someone is going to keep women out. I don't think any, really. But, I think it really is very subtle, and they don't know, people don't know it. They don't realize it. They gravitate to people that look like them. That would be my conclusion.

Schmieding: And also, where it feels safe, too.

Miner: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Schmieding: And you were talking about that, as well.

Miner: Yeah.

Schmieding: How would you rank the Northwest Forest Plan in terms of your career, the original experience of going through the planning process, its aftermath, and just dealing with communications over all these things?

Miner: Well, I have to make the distinction that I was part of the Forest Ecosystem Management and Assessment Team, so I really wasn't involved with the plan itself, just the science behind the plan.

Schmieding: But you were still a part of it.

Miner: The actual implementation of the plan has not shaped my career, but the intersection of forest planning and science has very much shaped my career. Since my involvement with FEMAT, I've seen the science and management communities deal with this interface as they realized the uses of science for management. This is particularly challenging when social issues form lenses for looking at how the world works. In such situations, it is not always appreciated that scientific methodologies were designed with the purpose of helping people make sound plans and/or take certain actions. Something that interests me is how people with different political views come at complex issues from different places. Although they have subjective interests and views, together they can look at a set of data and agree on the best available science and consider it in decision-making.

It was a privilege to be part of the FEMAT process early in my career with the PNW Station, as it shaped this notion that we have something to offer as a research organization. People have opinions, feelings, and points-of-view, but if you can bring into "the room" information based on scientific methods on which they can agree upon as sound; including good data and hypothesis testing, and work that can withstand peer review, critical analysis and replication, then you have something very valuable. This scientific interface with management and policy is an onerous process, but when you take knowledge from now, that has been building for decades or centuries, this accrued information, the value of which really came to light during the Northwest Forest Plan process, and continues today. I think there was some naivete in thinking this could drive the whole "kit and caboodle" but the lessons learned overall were good.

Schmieding: In other words, that it was a "silver bullet" thinking of some kind?

Miner: That it was a silver bullet. Schmieding: Right.

Miner: We all know it's not a silver bullet, but does that diminishes its value? No. It drives things that make human beings have a much better life than we did a couple centuries ago. Our children live longer. Our women do not die in childbirth. That's at the very human level, because of science. In terms of forest management, which is not nearly as dramatic, but it is for some people, these forests mean that much to people for various reasons. But, if we can all agree, based on science, that if we look into the future, that different outcomes might occur for people, and for the planet as a whole. That was kind of an illumination with FEMAT, and that experience, that notion, transcended my career.

Schmieding: That's a great answer. It would have been the last answer, but during your answer, I realized then that I have to ask one more question based on your job description.

Miner: Okay.

Schmieding: What do you do as Communications Director?

Miner: Just a second because I know that-[break in audio].

Schmieding: Going back to the start of the question, and for the transcriptionist, you might want to interrupt that half-phrase above. Based on what you hear about the polarization of the United States and societies in the West, and about the learned elite and science not adequately communicating ideas or rationale to "the people," and I extend that to forestry, forest planning, and the Northwest Forest Plan, what strategy was used to communicate its [NWFP] benefits, what could have been done better, and what were examples of good public outreach and communications? In other words, how has that dynamic unfolded over twenty years, and how have you sought to undertake communicating to everybody?

Minder: Right.

Schmieding: What we do here, and what this plan is and what forest management is and is trying to do, I don't want to call it a big public relations campaign, because that sounds like an intentional deception, but trying to communicate the "goods" [qualities] of this to all the people.

Miner: I think since FEMAT, and at that time, it was very public, people knew what was happening. The reporters weren't in the room, but people were being interviewed, there was national and international press. But I don't actually think there was much thought on planning for that, and managing that. There was some, but it was mostly done at quite a high level. At that time, my job was not related to that. Since then, there has been a really big shift in terms of communicating about science. Part of it is engaging people up front and helping them be more engaged and involved. For instance, with the new science synthesis we're developing, we actually put online the literature we were going to consider, and then, invited people to add to that basis of scientific literature. Now, this actually came out of the OMB -- Office of Management and Budget - which has guidelines now for something called "Highly Influential Science." So, I do believe that FEMAT and other similar assessments led to this kind of direction.

The other piece is that we have an open peer-review process. And people are starting to actually understand what peer review is. I was thinking about this the other day because we were looking at a website and trying to distinguish different kinds of publications, scientific publications, peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed. And I think that's actually becoming a little bit part of the vernacular now. The new synthesis is actually being reviewed now, the draft went out. The draft that went to peer reviewers, was made public so that people could give comments to the peer reviewers to consider as they do their review and give information to the authors. I think this would be in-line with concept of adaptive management.

Schmieding: In other words, but doing this on the local levels, correct?

Miner: It could be at various levels.

Schmieding: Okay.

Miner: If we're talking federal lands, it's always local and national. Right?

Schmieding: Right.

Miner: It's hard to say its level. But adaptive management was about taking action, but it was also about involving people from the beginning.

Schmieding: That's what I mean, but it was in the local context.

Miner: But at any rate, taking part in that learning process. Now, the notion is that various publics have an ability to make sure that all science is being considered, because there has been since FEMAT, kind of this notion that some people have some science over here, and some people have some science over there, and that there's "dueling science." That has been a powerful concept, for better or worse. I think the ability for people to weigh in on different science literature and provide their viewpoint on what is important literature and give that to peer reviews, the peer reviewers then have to sort that out. And all science is not equal. Some has valid methodology. And that's why the peer reviewers look at it.

At any rate, we are having to talk about this now. We didn't have to talk about it before. So, we're having to explain this and the actual scientific process. We're being very, I guess the word would be transparent, about that; letting people know ahead of time and giving them updates on what we're doing. We had a public meeting where we had the peer reviewers listen to public comments. This document [FEMAT] is pretty rough. This did not go through an editor. There is not much done with this thing. This is pretty raw. The next synthesis, twenty years later, it's going to be at least this lengthy, likely two volumes. There will be graphs and figures.

Schmieding: More polish.

Miner: Polish and just plain English, as we're going to try to make it more readable. We have a science writer that's going to be going through it to make sure it's understandable for the public. So, we're really trying to make sure that we're not writing for other scientists. We're not even writing for land managers, which is what we were doing here, but we're writing for land managers, regulators, the public, and specialists that work for NGOs. You're probably going to have to be pretty interested to read it, nonetheless. But our concept of who we're communicating with has changed. And I think that FEMAT had something to do with that.

Schmieding: And you, as a person with a journalism background, understand the difference between esoteric science writing and what the people would read, whoever "the people" are?

Miner: Right, and we are also working on a short publication that we're struggling with that, like a twelve-pager that we're going to try to encapsulate the science. We're going to have executive summaries. We're going to have a volume of executive summaries for each of the chapters.

Schmieding: For most people, that's all they would read.

Miner: Most anybody will want to read.

Schmieding: Sometimes that's all that I want to read. (Laughs)

Miner: So, we're going to have various types of products, probably three main products. But I'm exploring some other things too, plus, the opportunity to engage. So many people want to engage with our scientists. And of course, they did that after FEMAT. All of the scientists were deluged where they could have not done a drop of science for twenty years.

Schmieding: And just have talked to people.

Miner: To talk to people. People that were at the end of career, like Jerry, although he worked much longer after that, they could afford that. But we had young scientists who really were needing to get published. I'll just make the point that this is how science works. You publish and you have your methodology, and you learn more, you learn from others, and your expertise and stature grows. Then you're asked to be a reviewer. You review more and more. Can you imagine how many publications, how many times, Jerry Franklin had to turn down people who wanted him to be a peer reviewer? So, it's a very social process, actually.

Schmieding: Yeah it is, you're right.

Miner: Sometimes it's a little bit difficult to be working in science at this point in time, but you have these hopes. One of my hopes is that by people will be understanding the process better, and we also need to be more inspiring. And I think, if anything, what to note on FEMAT, was that we had inspired people. People were inspired and they were inspiring. And you know, I continue to think of inspiration coming from those people. Jack Ward Thomas was a consummate communicator. If I were going to have a communication workshop for my colleagues, I would ask Jack to be there to talk about how you communicate science. And then, if there were scientists who would tell me, oh, you shouldn't do tech transfer or science communication, it takes away from your career. I'm have them talk to Jack Ward Thomas or Jerry Franklin about that. These people were incredible communicators, and Jerry continues to be.

Jim Sedell, one of the most inspiring people; he could get me and Gordie Reeves and a whole variety of people to do something if he called us up and asked us. I don't know how he did it, but I could never say no to Jim Sedell. A lot of it, what he wanted to do, was because it was inspiring. You know, it was about history. It was about communicating better. And he was such a champion of me, in terms of the products that I would come up with. So, monthly science findings that he published, and became supported by this, I had to have support from the station for these kinds of things. And the people from FEMAT, they offered me support. And I was able to talk with them really in-depth about different issues that you deal with as a communicator.

We talked a lot about policy. With Richard Haynes, a lot of conversation about what's the interplay between science and policy. And when, in these interviews, I keep getting this little twinge now because I'm talking from my personal opinions, which is important as an individual to do. As a scientist, what we have to offer is not opinions, so much as information that people can trust, and information that's gone through the scientific process and has been rigorously reviewed. That's what we are, that's how we show up, that's why we show up to the table. How do we protect the integrity of that and in communicating? How do we assure that we maintain our reputations and integrity as scientists, without having such a strong point-of-view that it starts to overshadow the science and message as scientists. I do a lot of counseling work with folks on that. So, this interview has been somewhat uncomfortable for me, because I had stepped across the line in terms of sharing, kind of personal information, points-of-view and opinions. But it's just that I'm not used to that, that's why it's not comfortable.

Schmieding: Well, I hope it's been cathartic, in a positive way.

Miner: Okay. (Laughs)

Schmieding: But, anyway, that's a great last answer. Thank you for going one step further with me, and I thank you very much for a wonderful interview. And say goodbye to the Pink Tower over there across the way, our set piece as I described in one email to you. Thank you very much, Cindy.