Fuel Treatments and the Northern Spotted Owl

This post is related to Foto’s comment below. Here is an interesting piece by Scott Learn in the Oregonian on twenty years of efforts to protect the Northern Spotted Owl.

But as you know, I find the topic of science and fuel treatments fascinating from a science policy wonk point of view.

So here’s a quote from that article:

Forsman and other scientists agree that the relatively dry forests on the east side and in southern Oregon could use measures such as thinning and clear-cut corridors to act as fire breaks. There’s much more debate when it comes to wetter westside forests.

If everywhere east of Eastern Oregon is dry or drier than Oregon, then are we really all in agreement? Why does it seem to be “scientifically” controversial in some places like Colorado and less “scientifically” controversial in other places (if we believe this story, the east side or Oregon and Washington? Is it due to different disciplines, different scientific tools to look at the problem, different framings of the problem, just random scientist to scientist variation, or due to real differences of the behavior of fuels or fires?

It might be interesting to ask firefighters and incident commanders, who may have experiences throughout the west, how they perceive the differences among these places.