DAN DONATO is enduring trial by fire. A graduate student at Oregon State University in Corvallis, he is under attack from academics and politicians with links to the logging industry. His offence? Suggesting that “salvage” logging to remove dead timber can slow forest regeneration after a fire.
This week Donato and his critics spar in Science, which in January published a paper by Donato on the recovery of a large expanse of Douglas fir hit by fire in 2002. He found that two years later there were fewer seedlings in areas that had been salvage logged.
Now Science is…
