Discussing for-profit management of public forests on his July 27 show, Newsradio 850 KOA host Mike Rosen failed to fully identify guest Thomas Bonnicksen -- whom Rosen introduced as “professor emeritus, the Department of Forest Science at Texas A&M University” and “a research scholar in residence at California Polytechnic [State University]” -- as a paid consultant to the logging industry. According to an October 21, 2006, article in the Los Angeles Times (accessed through the Nexis database), Bonnicksen is a member of the advisory board of “the pro-logging timber industry-funded” Forest Foundation. The newspaper also reported that Bonnicksen had “collected $109,000” from the foundation in recent years as “an independent contractor.”

Along with guest Mike Quinn, a former logging industry controller, Rosen and Bonnicksen were arguing in favor of private-sector initiatives to thin public forests in Colorado, ostensibly to prevent wildfires and pine beetle infestation. Responding to Rosen's question, "[F]rom the standpoint of forest management, what should be happening in Colorado?" Bonnicksen stated, "[Y]ou've got two options: One is to watch the fires sweep across mountainsides, because that's what's going to happen; or, two, you can start a biomass energy program that can utilize that dead wood and turn it into a renewable, clean, sustainable energy." He added, “The trouble is, with 660,000 acres, I don' t know how you're going to be able to invest enough money to do it on that scale, especially since the greatest amount of it's going to be temporary. But you could have a sustainable industry and start to remove trees in the most critical areas, and use them for at least some productive purpose -- which, by the way, would also pay the cost of removing the trees.” Rosen continued:

ROSEN: So let me see if I understand this. One remedy would be to have state or federal government come in and thin the forest by cutting down trees and that would cost us a lot of money -- the taxpayers. Another remedy --

BONNICKSEN: Yeah, and that's not an option because the taxpayers don't have the money.

ROSEN: Another remedy would be having loggers come in and pay for rights to cut down those trees, not costing the taxpayers anything, but generating revenue for taxpayers, thinning the forests and reducing the fire danger, and being able to use that land for productive purposes.

BONNICKSEN: Exactly.

ROSEN: What a wonderful idea. Why don't we do that? How do the environmentalists feel about that?

BONNICKSEN: They hate it.

ROSEN [laughs]: But it's so rational.

Bonnicksen later stated that environmentalists “don't want anybody making money in the forest,” adding, “I mean, wherever I go, when everyone believes the solution is obvious to everyone, these organizations come in and stop all activities with lawsuits and appeals and political pressure and ... I don't know how we solve this problem as long as they're unwilling to help solve the problem.”

While Quinn immediately disclosed his affiliation with the Sierra-Cascade Logging Conference, whose objective, according to the organization's website, is to "[r]epresent, advance and protect the interests and standards of the business and professions of logging and forestry," neither Rosen nor Bonnicksen disclosed Bonnicksen's ties to The Forest Foundation. According to that organization's website, “The Forest Foundation strives to foster public understanding of the role forests play in the environmental and economic health of the state and the necessity of managing a portion of California's private and public forests to provide wood products for a growing population.”

The Times article reported that while “Bonnicksen has commonly disclosed that he sits on the advisory board of the Auburn, Calif.-based Forest Foundation ... he hasn't divulged ... how lucrative his connection with the pro-logging timber industry-funded foundation has been. According to public tax documents, Bonnicksen collected $109,000 from the foundation in the last two years as an independent contractor," referring to payments disclosed in Forest Foundation tax filings for 2004 and 2005. The Times article further noted that other academics have accused Bonnicksen of “having misrepresented scientific facts, and advancing views that 'fall far outside the mainstream of scientific opinion' ”:

“He's always introduced as the leading expert on forest recovery, and he's just not. There's nothing in his record other than just talking and hand-waving,” said UCLA ecology professor Philip Rundel, one of several academics who issued an open letter to the media this week questioning Bonnicksen's credentials.

“I don't care if people print his stuff or not. But he needs to be identified for what he is ... a lobbyist.”

The letter, signed by two other UC faculty members and the founding dean of Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, accused Bonnicksen of having misrepresented scientific facts, and advancing views that “fall far outside the mainstream of scientific opinion.”

The letter also disputed Bonnicksen's claim of an affiliation with the University of California. Although he has identified himself repeatedly as a visiting professor at UC Davis, officials there say that although Bonnicksen was once offered that title, he was never formally named a visiting professor.

Bonnicksen, who lives in Florida but frequently gives talks in California, said the letter writers were acting unethically and trying to silence him.

Conversely, a group of 10 academicians issued a Business Wire news release on October 30, 2006 (accessed through Nexis), defending Bonnicksen against the allegations in the letter reported by the Times.

From the July 27 broadcast of Newsradio 850 KOA's The Mike Rosen Show:

ROSEN: Well, if you've driven around the Colorado mountains, or even some portions of the Front Range, you'll see all of this brown where you ought to see green, if you're looking at the sea of pine trees; and the reason you're seeing brown is they're dying. In some places the, the beetle kill from pine beetles is 30, 40 percent of what you would expect the tree -- see if the trees were all healthy. And, of course, this can create fire danger. Those trees are obviously more flammatory and more brittle than the healthy trees. In Tahoe, we've had these fires that have caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage, destroyed people's homes. And maybe you're wondering, what's the fire danger in Colorado? I was contacted the other day by Mike Quinn, who's in the studio with us right now, who is -- he's a California resident now and associated with the radio station KLXR in California, but his family has had property in the Grand Lake area for years and he comes back to Colorado frequently. He called me -- has some knowledge of what's going on in Tahoe and in other places in California and Nevada -- and wondered whether we'd like to hear what's happening there, and how it relates to us, and what the danger is, and how it might affect us, and what might be done about it.

We'll also be talking in a few minutes to Thomas Bonnicksen, who had a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle recently under the headline “A preventable tragedy: Blazes just latest lesson in forest management.” Dr. Bonnicksen is professor emeritus, the Department of Forest Science at Texas A&M University, a research scholar in residence at California Polytechnic. And he's going to be our expert, along with Mike. Mike, good to have you join us today. Glad you called me, and I imagine a lot of people as they drive around Colorado and are heartbroken to see all of those dead pine trees are wondering what the fire danger is. Give us a little background.

QUINN: OK, I work with the Sierra-Cascade Logging Conference, also as their publicity chairman. And have worked in the forestry industry prior to getting into radio, which is, is a good jump. I'm glad I did it because it gives me the chance to do things like this. And was a, a controller for the largest logging outfit, and therefore got involved with forestry. I stayed on as a publicity chairman for the conference, and as the problem proceeds because, you know, they are not allowing logging any more, forests are getting thick, you're having major problems here now that are cropping up with fires encroaching into areas because people have encroached into the forest and don't really understand it. This, this whole perspective here comes back to protecting communities and saving forests at the same time. How dangerous is it out here? Well, in 2004 Dr. Bonnicksen put on a talk in Reno and it was “Is Tahoe Next?” He predicted what was going to happen in Lake Tahoe. That was after the 2003 disastrous fires in Southern California. He said you've got the same scenario sitting here in Lake Tahoe. Out here you've got 10 times that problem.

ROSEN: Ten times that problem in Colorado.

QUINN: Absolutely. In that, in the Grand Valley area there, that -- those forests are so thick and, and dying so quickly, and I see people -- I went up there this week and saw private parties taking care of the problem. Private parties cutting trees, thinning, doing what they're supposed to do. But the hundreds of thousands of acres around them that belong to the government are not being touched. And that, I believe, is a major problem.

ROSEN: We have Dr. Thomas Bonnicksen on the line with us, as I said. And I gave you just a, a brief account of some of his credentials. Dr. Bonnicksen, are you there now?

BONNICKSEN: I certainly am.

ROSEN: You heard what Mike had to say. Why don't you expand on this.

BONNICKSEN: Well, I certainly agree with Mike. The problem we had in Southern California in 2003 in the San Bernardino Mountains was very similar. We lost 40 to 50 percent of the trees there. And then that was followed by the Old Fire, which burned down a significant part of the forest because it was half dead. And 33 percent of the forest in the Tahoe Basin has been killed by beetles as well. And it's just inconceivable to me that you could have what I understand is 660,000 acres of beetle-killed forests in Colorado and the mammoth problem that really creates -- it's almost inconceivable.

ROSEN: Beetle kill runs in cycles. Why are we going through an epidemic of it now?

BONNICKSEN: Well, just like in Southern California in 2003 -- and it preceded that fire season, the beetles started to expand a couple of years before that -- it's always the same thing wherever it occurs. Whenever you have a forest that is overcrowded with trees, each tree is limited in the amount of water it can take up because it has to share it with all the other trees. If each tree does not get enough water, it can't produce the sap it needs to pitch out the beetles.

ROSEN: It's like an immune system in people.

BONNICKSEN: Exactly. So, it all boils down to the sickness of the forest that hasn't been managed for so many years. Now, obviously, a drought is going to trigger an infestation because it makes the problem worse. But the fact of the matter is, that if the forest was properly managed and the trees more widely spaced, even a drought, even though it may increase the mortality, would never create the situation you're in now.

ROSEN: I've been told that cold temperatures, sustained cold temperatures during the winter can kill a lot of the beetle population. Have we been having warmer winters here, and has that not been the case recently?

BONNICKSEN: Right. And that does contribute to the problem. You have a, a massive outbreak because the trees are overcrowded, then they overwinter and you can't reduce the beetle population the next summer or spring. And, as a result, the infestation just grows worse. But the drought and the warmer winters are contributing factors -- the cause is the overcrowded forest.

ROSEN: So, from the standpoint of forest management, what should be happening in Colorado?

BONNICKSEN: Boy, you've got yourself a real tough problem. Whoever has -- whatever groups have been involved have pretty well decimated your timber industry, so you have no place to take the logs. I know there's a blue stain fungus in those logs, but that does not reduce the strength of the wood and it can still be used in construction; but you have no place to take it, so that probably isn't going to be an option. Frankly, the only option you've got is -- well, you've got two options: One is to watch the fires sweep across mountainsides, because that's what's going to happen; or, two, you can start a biomass energy program that can utilize that dead wood and turn it into a renewable, clean, sustainable energy. The trouble is, with 660,000 acres, I don' t know how you're going to be able to invest enough money to do it on that scale, especially since the greatest amount of it's going to be temporary. But you could have a sustainable industry and start to remove trees in the most critical areas, and use them for at least some productive purpose -- which, by the way, would also pay the cost of removing the trees.

ROSEN: So let me see if I understand this. One remedy would be to have state or federal government come in and thin the forest by cutting down trees and that would cost us a lot of money -- the taxpayers. Another remedy --

BONNICKSEN: Yeah, and that's not an option because the taxpayers don't have the money.

ROSEN: Another remedy would be having loggers come in and pay for rights to cut down those trees, not costing the taxpayers anything, but generating revenue for taxpayers, thinning the forests and reducing the fire danger, and being able to use that land for productive purposes.

BONNICKSEN: Exactly.

ROSEN: What a wonderful idea. Why don't we do that? How do the environmentalists feel about that?

BONNICKSEN: They hate it.

ROSEN [laughs]: But it's so rational.

BONNICKSEN: Yes, well, they, they hate it because, first of all, we don't belong in the forest --

ROSEN: Mmm.

BONNICKSEN: -- philosophically, I guess. Second of all, they don't want anybody making money in the forest. And this is, you know, universal. I mean, wherever I go, when everyone believes the solution is obvious to everyone, these organizations come in and stop all activities with lawsuits and appeals and political pressure and -- I don't, I don't know how we solve this problem as long as they're unwilling to help solve the problem.

ROSEN: Now, if, if we opened it up to regulated logging you'd have to build roads where there are not now roads in order to get the equipment in and take the logs out, right?

BONNICKSEN: In those areas that are less than 40 percent slope -- that's generally operable ground -- in those cases probably. But you can also use helicopter logging, which is far more expensive.

ROSEN: And I imagine the enviros don't want us to put roads here either.

BONNICKSEN: No.

ROSEN: So that would be one of their objections. If we do nothing at all, which is what we're doing right now, then sooner or later we're going to have a massive fire that kills all of these trees, at least for now. And we'll have no revenue benefit from it.

BONNICKSEN: Exactly. The -- and, and, and that's just irrefutable. That's what's happened wherever these problems have occurred.