Willamette Industries’ motto, “Timber Today. Forests Forever,” often travels around on bumper stickers affixed to its log trucks, bearing a relevant message of industrial foresters: modern forestry safely can harvest timber from forests without endangering the forest’s ability to regrow.

The forest industry contends that its silviculturists are able to give nature a boost in regenerating forests, particularly when it comes to the judicious use of salvage logging of fire-damaged stands.

But when it came to logging 5 percent of the some 500,000 federal forest acres singed in the 2002 Biscuit burn on the Siskiyou National Forest, the largest federal timber sales planned in recent years, environmentalists went to court contending that salvage logging would damage the forest. Those in favor of the logging said waiting would damage the timber.

Well, it turns out that both may have been right.

A new Oregon State University College of Forestry study about the effects of salvage logging vs. natural regeneration on fire-damaged forests has some conclusions that even its authors found surprising: Nature does a better job of reforestation after fire if there is no logging to disrupt the growing seedlings. Plots that were logged and replanted did not grow trees as readily as plots that regenerated naturally.

The study also found that logging fire-damaged lands actually leaves more downed, dry debris to act as fuel for future fires. That sets up the scenario for “super-hot” fires in the future that sterilize the soil.

Overall, the study bolsters the argument for taking the slow approach to salvage logging at a time when some politicians — including Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., had argued for changing federal forest policy to speed up such logging.

It now appears that the fire-damaged snags left after the fire have lost much of their commercial value after three years. That takes the impetus off wanting to harvest the snags, which could take the heat off this debate over the Biscuit trees while the study casts more light on the benefits of taking the slower approach to managing fire-damaged forest lands. Knowing the contentious nature of this debate, we’re not taking any bets on that.

We are handing kudos to OSU’s College of Forestry, however: Over the past century, its scientists have been guiding both public policy and the industry in matters of sound forest management and answering fundamental questions, as it did so ably with this latest study.