The Search for Forest Facts: A History of the Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, 1926–2000
Introduction
The history of the Pacific Southwest (PSW) Research Station nominally began on
July 1, 1926, when the California Forest Experiment Station was dedicated. On that
day, it occupied a modest four rooms in Hilgard Hall on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. For the next 33 years, the California campus would be
its home. But the Station’s roots stretch back in time more than a century when the
seed of forestry science first blew ashore from Europe and found fertile ground in
America.
Chapters 1 and 2 recount the significant national and California events that led
in 1926 to the founding of the California Forest Experiment Station. Intertwined
within their pages are the key scientific ideas, principles, and people who appreciably contributed to the growth of forestry science within the branches of federal and
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California state government from the late 18 and early 19 century to 1926.
From that point, chapters 3 through 5 carry the story from 1926 to the end of
World War II. These chapters discuss the coming of age of forestry research at the
California Forest Experiment Station as it transformed in 1932 into the California
Forest and Range Experiment Station (CFRES). The passage of the McSweeneyMcNary Research Act (1928) helped fund, focus, and direct CFRES research
projects along six lines, or functional divisions, of research: forest management,
utilization of wood and other forest products, forest protection, forest influences,
range research, and forest economics. By 1932, CFRES personnel had grown to
26 permanent staff, along with many clerks and cooperating personnel from other
U.S. Department of Agriculture agencies. Additionally at that time, CFRES drew
upon University of California students, or other short-term assistants to meet the
station’s research demands. During the remainder of the 1930s, the station continued to grow as it took advantage of the labor and funding provided by Franklin
Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, like the Civilian Conservation Corps,
Public Works Administration, and Works Progress Administration. At this time,
CRFES also increased its forestry research program into genetics—a seventh line
of research—when in 1935 it acquired the Institute of Forest Genetics, a private
research institution located at Placerville, California. The station also acquired
several new experimental forests and ranges in California for various research purposes during the New Deal years, such as the Blacks Mountain (1934), San Dimas
(1934), and Redwood (1940) Experimental Forests, and the Burgess Spring (1935)
Experimental Range. By 1939 and the approach of world war, CFRES had the
personnel, funding, facilities, and experimental forests and ranges to match most
of its research needs. However, during World War II, the CRFES research program
diverted resources to the war effort, and retrenchment nibbled the station’s domestic
research program to the bone.
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general technical report psw-gtr-233
From 1946 to 1962, a postwar boom in California energized CFRES, and it
eventually regained its former investigative abilities and capacities. By the early
1960s, the station entered into a “golden state” of research. As described in chapter
6, CFRES broke away from traditional ways of doing things through an administrative reorganization that moved the government agency off the University of
California campus. At the same time, CFRES sought and acquired significant
contributions of cooperative funding. In the 1950s, fundamental forestry knowledge took a back seat as the Forest Service sought to solve intensive management
problems through applied science. Additionally, by 1959, as a consequence of the
administrative boundary of the station being extended to Hawaii, the station was
renamed the Pacific Southwest Forest Research Station. The PSW Research Station
had by this time a corps of more than 100 research specialists who had acquired
their scientific skills from the country’s finest universities—including the University of California. In addition to the station’s six experimental forests (Blacks
Mountain, Yurok, Swain Mountain, Challenge, Stanislaus, and San Dimas), there
were four experimental ranges (Burgess Springs, Harvey Valley, San Joaquin, and
Teakettle Creek), three insect laboratories (Hat Creek, Miami, and Orleans), a fire
laboratory (Pilgrim Creek), two experimental watershed research areas (Sagehen
and Big Creek), and the Institute of Forest Genetics. However, while station scientists busied themselves in their research and field laboratories trying to meet
California and Hawaii’s practical forestry research needs, national research shifted
direction toward university-based forestry that pertained to the public’s growing
environmental awareness following the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
(1962).
During the years 1963 to 1979, as told in chapter 7, the PSW Research Station
eventually fell in line with the nascent environmental movement, but first had
to undergo critical administrative changes. The PSW scientists were given more
opportunity to pursue their interests, and the station improved communication
between research scientists and the people who used the station’s research results
with articles in Forestry Research: What’s New in the West. They now worked in
research work units (RWUs) instead of the old functional divisions of a long-term
national research program, whereby individual RWU project leaders decided
independently what aspects of the research to prioritize. At the same time, equal
employment opportunity issues arose, and station directors were confronted with
calls for an employee union, followed by charges of discrimination against minorities and women in hiring and promotion—particularly the class action lawsuit
Gene Bernardi et al. v. Earl Butz. Despite management reform issues, station
investigations pursued critical research in the environmental era in several ways.
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The Search for Forest Facts: A History of the Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, 1926–2000
Interdisciplinary RWUs investigated forest insect control strategies that did not use
toxic insecticides that disrupted biological systems. Other RWUs investigated the
effect of air pollution on California’s forests, while yet other PSW scientists studied
water management and snowpack density in the Sierra Mountains and the ability
to provide adequate supplies to dependent urban areas below. Fire research was
as complex as watershed research. Projects such as FIRESCOPE improved communication between agencies fighting fires and developed fire management plans
for the wild lands of southern California. Recreation and urban forestry were also
new research assignments for the PSW Research Station. Finally, forestry research
at PSW included environmental studies in Hawaii, Guam, and elsewhere in the
Pacific Islands. They studied how fires, insects, diseases, feral animals, and aggressive noxious and exotic plants damaged native forests. All the above research work
was conducted alongside continued research in more traditional areas in California,
such as pine and redwood management, genetics, range management, and similar
research pursuits. By 1979, the PSW Forest and Range Experiment Station had
reached the apex of its growth as an institution. The station’s investigations during
the environmental era from 1963 to 1979 continued to reflect an applied science
philosophical preference.
Starting a year later, faced with high inflation, even higher interest rates and
other economic problems, the Reagan administration worked for and achieved
unprecedented tax and budget cuts. They seriously affected the PSW Research
Station at a time when the public called for ecosystem management of the Nation’s
resources. By the end of the decade, this new ethos exhibited a concern for a common natural world, and spanned class, region, gender, ethnicity, and political lines
in the state. This same movement developed among the Forest Service scientific
community as well, resulting in ecosystem management. Naturally, it took time for
the station to evolve from a problem-organized institution to an interdisciplinary
ecosystem research organization. Chapter 8, the final chapter, explains how this
transition in research goals took place in an era of shrinking budgets, retirements,
competitive grants, and a relocation to new headquarters. Nonetheless, achievements were made in forest environmental research in California and Hawaii, and
the station tackled diverse problems in both regions from the spotted owl controversy in California to saving Hawaii’s native rain forests from invasive nonindigenous species.
An epilogue follows that overviews how Forest Service reorganization plans
at the end of the 20th century affected the revitalization of the Pacific Southwest
Research Station in the 21st century.
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