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PANEL CONSISTING OF R. NEIL SAMPSON, EXECUTIVE VICE 

 PRESIDENT, AMERICAN FORESTS, WASHINGTON, DC; GREG- 

 ORY H. APLET, FOREST ECOLOGIST, THE WILDERNESS SOCI- 

 ETY, WASHINGTON, DC; MARTIN JACK DESMOND, DIRECTOR, 

 NORTHWEST REFORESTATION CONTRACTORS ASSOCIA- 

 TION, EUGENE, OR; AND FRANK GLADICS, VICE PRESIDENT, 

 WESTERN FOREST INDUSTRIES ASSOCIATION, PORTLAND, 

 OR 



STATEMENT OF R. NEIL SAMPSON 



Mr. Sampson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would like 

 to summarize and perhaps add a couple of points that aren't even 

 in the formal testimony. 



I tried to outline some of the challenges that we are facing, and 

 it seems to me that you have covered them ouite well this morning. 

 As we know now, change is inevitable in those forests. You have 

 either got to manage for what you want or get what you get, and 

 sometimes what you get isn't what you want, so we have got some 

 really significant challenges out there. 



I think there is an important point that you have brought up sev- 

 eral times this morning, and this is that forestry is not agriculture. 

 We are glad to hear the chief say that they are recognizing that, 

 getting away from some of the plantation approaches on some of 

 those lands that are pretty difficult. What you get when you try to 

 reforest a place is liable to be affected more by what happens right 

 around those years when you are trying to do it. We have got sev- 

 eral million acres out there where reforestation failures have oc- 

 curred simply because of the climate conditions, the weather condi- 

 tions of that year, or some aggressive competition or some other 

 things, and you have to recognize that those are going to continue. 



Our testimony today indicates that the work I have been doing 

 with the global change issue suggests that our problems will get 

 worse, not better. The variability that we are seeing in climate and 

 the trend toward drier, more difficult climate situations, while it 

 can't be predicted with any accuracy, is at least of a high enough 

 risk that it seems to me that we ought to look at our immediate 

 past this last couple of decades where, in the mountain region, we 

 have had about 15 years of hotter, drier than average conditions. 

 We maybe ought to look at that as the new norm and not as some- 

 thing that is outside of the norm, and that means really consider- 

 ably more of a challenge. 



We poked a little bit into the notion of ecosystem restoration. 

 One of the problems is that you had to put what can succeed there 

 now. Some of the soils and sites are so degraded and so changed 

 either by timber harvest or by some of the subsequent things that 

 happen that you simply can't go back to what was and you have 

 to go to what will work. 



I listed a few examples of our Heritage Forest Program, and I 

 want to mention a couple or three things in connection with that. 

 We are raising funds in the private sector and putting projects to- 

 gether in cooperation with public agencies, and we are doing them 

 for ecosystem restoration, not reforestation, and I think that is a 

 big difference that you need to sort of poke on a little bit when you 

 go for the additional data from the agencies. 



