Hubbard Brook Forest escapes President Trump’s ill-advised restructuring – Valley News

That the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in Grafton County is still in the midst of the Trump administration’s “reorganization” (clear-cutting?) of the U.S. Forest Service is welcome news, as is the possibility that the Bartlett Experimental Forest in Carroll County will be given a reprieve.

Both are essential resources, and their research benefits all New Englanders—virtually everyone—with a stake in the health and continued vitality of our forest landscapes.

As our colleague Alex Hanson pointed out in a recent article, Hubbard Brook was founded in 1955 as a hydrological research center. The effects of acid rain were first documented by scientists at Hubbard Brook University, leading to regulations to reduce harmful emissions from burning fossil fuels. Research conducted there includes studies of how invasive pests cause damage to New England forests and how flood and drought cycles affect forests.

Hanson’s report suggests that Hubbard Brook is exempt from restructuring thanks to support it has received from Dartmouth College and the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation, a private nonprofit with leadership primarily from the Upper Valley. This bipartisan political influence is exerted by Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte and Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who coincidentally does not sit on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The beneficiaries of the work done at Hubbard Brook include foresters, loggers, ski resorts, maple sugar manufacturers, and landowners who want sustainable forest management, as well as those who feel a deep and satisfying connection to the natural world while walking through the tranquil forest.

A “reorganization” of the Forest Service, which manages 193 million acres of 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands, threatens all these interests. Headquarters will be relocated from Washington, DC to Salt Lake City, Utah. Most of the research facilities housing records collected over decades have been decommissioned, and regional hubs have been dismantled. Losing that data or interrupting its collection could cause irreparable harm.

Among the facilities being closed is the Forest Service’s research and development office in Burlington, based at the University of Vermont’s George D. Aiken Forest Service Research Institute. VtDigger reports that the office has five full-time researchers and has conducted research on maple syrup production, forest health and the effects of acid rain for years.

The 2,600-acre Bartlett Experimental Forest in New Hampshire, which is said to play an important role in providing information to foresters and other researchers, has also been ticketed for closure, but that decision is said to be under consideration.

The closure of the research station is not surprising, given the regime’s overall hostility to science. As in other areas, the damage is lasting.

The ostensible reason for the reorganization is to bring the agency’s leadership closer to the “forests and communities it serves,” primarily in the West. Perhaps the announcement of the restructuring further down in the press release will be the key to unlocking the actual motivations. It discusses “advancing policies that promote timber production” and managing “healthy, productive forest systems that provide affordable, high-quality timber.”

Timber production has been in the Forest Service’s DNA since its founding in the early 20th century under President Teddy Roosevelt. In an illuminating article recently published in The New Yorker, noted Vermont-based environmental journalist Bill McKibben wrote that the service’s first director, Gifford Pinchot, believed in protecting natural resources and using them to promote economic growth. According to McKibben, Pinchot’s contemporary and occasional adversary, John Muir, represented a completely different spirit. “We save forests not for their industrial potential, but for their essential meaning and beauty.”

As this tension unfolded over the years, the Forest Service came to encompass many designated “wilderness” areas, along with timber production and recreational uses.

The Trump administration is taking a short-term strategy here, but the trees are taking a long-term strategy. The irony of closing research stations in the rush to harvest more timber is that future timber production may be jeopardized in ways that could have been avoided by the work of the currently organized U.S. Forest Service and its scientists.

That’s not the only thing that can be lost. McKibben quotes Aldo Leopold, the father of conservation biology, who long ago said, “There are benefits to be gained from slowing down and listening to nature. In today’s world, silence is a precious commodity. Taking the time to stop outdoors and listen to the minute details that weave a tapestry of stories around us can be a rewarding experience, just by stopping and paying attention.”