Featured Fellow: Thomas Sisk, 2001

Professor Thomas Sisk, a 2001 Leopold Leadership Fellow, says of the training he received through the program, "I think it had the most impact in terms of my work with policy makers, but I think that I learned the most... through the interview process with the media and interacting with journalists."

A core insight for Tom was the importance of providing a scientific perspective on environmental problems and synthesizing complex issues to make them easier for nonscientists to work with. He also came away appreciating the need for "an informed, collaborative environment so the science enables people to engage in  deeper deliberation about policy choices."

These insights have helped Tom to work more efficiently with policy makers and to further his research agenda. He sees a clearly defined role for scientists in the policy realm: to inform policy makers by providing accurate and easily accessible information to use in analyzing a range of possible solutions.  "Science can guide but it can't dictate decisions," he says.

Based on his experience, Tom believes that long-term engagement with policy makers is needed to build effective science policies. "It's less about giving testimony and being an expert or a talking head for me; it's much more about prolonged engagement and trying to move issues forward," he says. He seeks to use science to empower people, especially policy makers, to participate at a deeper level than that possible through "the polarized debates that often bog down progress in policy development and implementation."

In his view, the way science is communicated is important to the outcomes. He thinks the public has to own the science in order to trust and use it. Too often he sees scientists present information in an abstract way that people may agree with but don't know what to do with. However, he emphasizes that "science has to be transparent but not dumbed down...people need to be able to understand the science, where it came from, and possible uncertainties if they are to have confidence in what it means and how to use it."

One of Tom's areas of expertise is managing western forests, with a focus on the impacts of fire. He recently took part in a collaborative policy effort that tapped his skill in sharing his expertise, bringing people with differing viewpoints together, and engaging long term with policy makers. In 2006 Governor Janet Napolitano invited him to co-chair a group to develop a 20-year plan for managing Arizona's forests based on a collaborative framework that drew directly from his prior work. Members included scientists and policy experts from state and federal agencies, universities, tribes, industry, and conservation organizations.

Tom notes that the final plan contained a number of directives that "in reality the state government did not have the authority to implement, because most of our forests are on Federal lands, under the management of the U.S. Forest Service and to a lesser extent the Bureau of Land Management." The plan nonetheless resulted in a state policy for forest management based on ecological restoration. "It enabled the state to engage with federal forest managers on an equal footing, and I think that has had a tremendous influence on federal budgeting and management priorities," he says. "Now you see a lot of the recommendations in that document permeating other state and federal agencies, leading to better integration of desired future conditions and more agreement on how to get there."

One result of the Arizona strategy was that the regional office of the Forest Service contracted with Tom's research group to develop an innovative assessment of forest conditions and social agreement regarding a critical component of forest restoration: thinning small-diameter trees. Over the last 100 years, logging and the suppression of natural fire regimes has resulting in a dramatic increase in the density of small trees, which tends to stunt growth, degrade wildlife habitat, and allow destructive crown fires to spread over large areas. "We need to thin the number of trees, allow the bigger trees to grow, and get the forest back to a condition where fire serves its appropriate ecological role, burning more frequently, but under a less destructive regime," Tom explains.

Since thinning small-diameter trees is very expensive, the regional forester needed to know the structure of the forest so that he could develop a restoration plan that engaged the timber industry in an ecologically and economically viable role. As Tom notes, "Unless you can sell the small trees, it's just overwhelmingly expensive to hire someone to go in and thin over large areas, so not knowing what was out there made it difficult for the forest service to develop contracts, or to figure out what type of industry would be appropriate."

Tom's group designed an approach to address both the ecological and social questions. They used satellite imagery and ground plots to determine the volume of wood in the small trees that most people agreed should be removed as part of a comprehensive plan for forest restoration. In parallel, they convened a group of stakeholders including environmentalists, scientists, forest service staff, private citizens, and representatives from industry who worked collaboratively to create a "zone of agreement" about the nature of logging and thinning practices that would be socially acceptable. Broad agreement is essential for forest management on public lands, where appeals and litigation have stymied progress for years, and where ecological conditions are worsening. Under this decision-making model, participants work to find solutions where everyone can feel confident about moving forward on at least some issues.

The agreement appears to be a winning situation for everyone involved. Revenue from the small-diameter timber products will be used to defray the cost of the restoration treatment, and the forest will be restored to a condition where fire can be a natural component rather than an unnaturally destructive force.

"It's most rewarding to see this wide political spectrum agreeing on the next steps, and these steps are bold, potentially improving conditions across more than 2 million acres," Tom says. However, he also cautions that "we still have a long way to go even though there is social agreement ...with an economic solution.  We're talking about managing forests differently, and empowering a broader community in policy development and planning. That's quite a change from how things have been done for a long time... there are still some barriers that people need to be willing to crash through or jump over ...We are at the tipping point where we are either going to tip towards ecological restoration and a collaboration, or we are going to retreat to our fox holes and renew the old policy debates that can slow restoration efforts and prolong the conditions that fuel these destructive fires."

To learn more about Tom's work, see the ForestERA Project website.