CORVALLIS, Ore. – The Oregon State University College of Forestry is hosting an input session Oct. 28 about the college’s development of a new plan to guide management of the OSU-owned McDonald-Dunn Research Forest in the Coast Range foothills northwest of Corvallis.
OSU students, faculty, staff and community members are invited to the meeting from 6 to 8 p.m.in Peavy Forest Science Center room 117 on the Oregon State campus. It can also be attended via Zoom (meeting ID 994 4534 4415). Accommodation requests related to a disability should be made by Oct. 25 to Ann Van Zee, [email protected].
The college has developed a suite of strategies that will serve as the foundation for forest management and now needs to make decisions regarding how these strategies will be overlaid across the 11,500-acre forest. College leaders will provide an overview of decisions made to date and request input on how land is allocated within the forest among the five different management strategies.
Since June the college has considered all feedback on the previously presented scenarios – received via the Stakeholder Advisory Committee and Faculty Planning Committee in addition to at an earlier input session – and revised them while maintaining alignment with the college’s already established vision, mission and goals for the forest.
The planning and advisory committees will take new public input into consideration and then finalize the management plan for approval by Tom DeLuca, the college’s Cheryl Ramberg-Ford and Allyn C. Ford Dean.
Responses to the questions posed at the June session, as well as a question and answer document regarding the management plan process, can be viewed online, as can a summary of public comments submitted electronically.
The forests enable experiential education for OSU students and support long- and short-term research projects for multiple scientists and institutions. The College of Forestry also provides public access to the forests for a range of recreational and educational purposes.
Management of the research forests is presently guided by a plan developed in 2005. A few months after starting as dean in 2020, DeLuca formed a College Research Forests Advisory Committee to create a draft vision, mission and goals statement and to build a process for creating a new forest management plan for McDonald-Dunn. The new plan is slated for implementation in 2025.
College officials note there will be a separate process to discuss forest recreation issues such as additional trails, more parking and lifting restrictions on electric bicycles. The process to develop a visitor use management plan will start once a new forest director is hired. In the meantime, people can direct their ideas regarding recreation and other topics to a webform the college has set up for collecting and archiving comments.
College of Forestry
About the OSU College of Forestry: For a century, the College of Forestry has been a world class center of teaching, learning and research. It offers graduate and undergraduate degree programs in sustaining ecosystems, managing forests and manufacturing wood products; conducts basic and applied research on the nature and use of forests; and operates more than 15,000 acres of college forests.
Steve Lundeberg, 541-737-4039
[email protected]
Ann Van Zee
[email protected]