Oregon State University announced plans Monday to immediately reinstitute an abandoned 2005 management plan for its McDonald-Dunn research forest outside Corvallis, in a sign of continued fallout from national scorn the school earned for clearcutting a stand of ancient trees that included a 420-year-old giant.

The leader of the university’s college of forestry also said he would add 36 acres of nearby old growth to protected reserves. Those trees were going to be cut until the furor erupted this summer over the old-growth clearcut, a 16-acre harvest known as the No Vacancy cut. The university had already temporarily paused logging of trees older than 160 years.

In his Monday letter to the forestry school’s community, Anthony Davis, the interim dean, said the college’s decision-making around management of the McDonald-Dunn “has impaired our ability to lead by example, something that is a reasonable expectation of us, and we should expect of ourselves.”

“We cannot go back to change the past, but we can choose our path forward,” Davis wrote.

His letter comes just more than a month before top state leaders are scheduled to discuss what role Oregon State’s forestry school should have in controlling the 82,500-acre Elliott State Forest, a transfer that would quintuple Oregon State’s forest holdings.

Davis told The Oregonian/OregonLive this summer that the school was following its 2005 plan even though it was suspended. But Debora Johnson, a former Oregon State forestry information manager, provided satellite photographs of university land where clearcuts were supposed to be limited to one to four acres. She found some clearcuts that were far larger.

Doug Pollock walks through a grove with old-growth trees that had been slated to be clearcut. Oregon State announced Monday that it would protect the trees in its reserves. (Rob Davis/The Oregonian)

Davis subsequently clarified his statement about the school’s management plan. “We use it as the basis for our decision-making,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we follow it to a T.”

In his Monday letter, Davis said the school’s temporary pause on old-growth logging would be replaced by guidelines being developed to ensure that trees of “significant age, condition, structure, or habitat value remain standing” following any harvest.

Doug Pollock, an activist who drew attention to the clearcutting of the 420-year-old tree, praised the dean’s Monday announcement.

“It’s quite a monumental development,” he said.

— Rob Davis

rdavis@oregonian.com

503.294.7657; @robwdavis

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