Monday night’s planning meeting for the McDonald-Dunn was the fourth public session in OSU’s multi-year process to come up with a new management plan for these public forests. One would think by now that the leaders of the College of Forestry would have fine-tuned their process for public engagement, but the litany of complaints from frustrated citizens showed that they still have a lot to learn. The unwelcome involvement and comments by the dean of the College created further discontent with OSU’s planning process.
About 70 people, including more than 40 people on Zoom, took part in the two-hour meeting. The first half of the meeting was filled with a lengthy technical presentation about OSU’s latest round of forest modeling. Associate Dean Holly Ober, who has been leading OSU’s planning efforts, presented charts filled with percentages allocated to their five “management strategies” for the forests, along with the various “modeling scenarios” – which have now been expanded from five to twelve.
It is both alarming and telling that nearly all twelve of OSU’s scenarios still involve a significant amount of clearcutting, termed, “rotational forestry.” On average, OSU’s twelve scenarios dedicate roughly 40% of the McDonald-Dunn to clearcut forestry…