Regrowth at OSU.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Taking a cue from a recent timber-salvage study by an Oregon State University College of Forestry graduate student, OSU has decided to allow the controversy-scorched school to recover on its own rather than to remove and replace the current leadership.

That could prove a wise decision - provided that Dean Hal Salwasser follows through on his promise to make the many changes recommended by an OSU panel that found "significant failures of leadership and narrowness of purpose" at the college, along with a disturbing readiness to advocate for timber industry interests.

It's an encouraging sign that Salwasser released a statement Tuesday saying he intends to make immediate changes at the college. Those changes include consulting with others in the college before giving testimony in Congress, adding new faculty members to the school's executive committee and increasing his contact with faculty, staff and students.

But it remains to be seen how far Salwasser will go in giving conservationists better representation in decision-making and on the school's advisory groups. The dean must also follow through on other substantive committee recommendations, including encouraging more rigorous scientific inquiry and debate, as well as establishing a code of conduct and an ombudsman position.

Just as importantly, the Oregon Legislature and the university must work together in the next session to end the School of Forestry's long-standing dependence on timber-industry funding - a dependence that helped forge an unseemly alliance between industry and acade- mia.

The controversy at the college arose when Salwasser and some senior faculty members attempted to delay publication of an article by graduate student Dan Donato in the eminent journal Science. The article reported on Donato's research indicating that logging after the 2002 Biscuit Fire in Southern Oregon had hindered forest recovery and increased the risk of future fires.

Those findings ran starkly counter to the timber industry's support for aggressively logging forests burned by wildfire to generate the money to plant new trees and control brush. They also infuriated industry and congressional supporters of a bill to speed up salvage logging after wildfires in national forests - a bill Salwasser had publicly endorsed in the name of the college.

Salwasser's reaction to the study was improper and unprofessional in a university setting, where academic freedom is supposed to be sacred. The dean actually coached timber industry officials on how to respond to Donato's findings, and stood by as six faculty members wrote to Science asking that publication of Donato's paper be delayed.

To his credit, Salwasser has done much to salvage the mess he helped create. He apologized for his conduct in the Donato matter and appointed the review panel that was harshly critical of his leadership.

Salwasser's contrition and commitment to rectify the school's - and his own - failings prompted nearly two-thirds of the College of Forestry's faculty, staff and students to vote in favor of the dean's continued leadership in a survey released this week.

Given those results, recent support voiced by both OSU's provost and president, and the signs of change and growth already emerging from the school's damaged landscape, it's time for Dean Salwasser and the College of Forestry to move forward into a new and different future.