Interview with John Klungness

AP: Good afternoon, today is Tuesday April 15th, 2008. My name is Allison Page and I'm with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, Oral History Program, and today I will be interviewing John Klungness about his rememberances with the Forest Products Lab. Mr. Klungness if you would like to start off with just briefly describing your childhood, your academic background, and kind of what led you into the Forest Products Lab.

JK: I think I began to have an interest in forestry [and] the forest products industry, when I was fourteen years old back in 1947. I got to go logging with my grandfather in Norway. Both of my parents were Norwegian immigrants who met 00:01:00in this country and I was the first born. My mother took us back, me and my two younger brothers, to visit her parents in Norway after the second World War, I was there a whole winter, and went to school there. My grandfather was a logger and I got to go logging with him. That experience gave me a love for logging and forestry and the type of self-reliance, work ethic, [and a respect for the forest] that you develop when you're a logger.

And later, I enrolled in chemical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and got a bachelor's degree. After that, I went to work for the Northwest Paper Company, which subsequently became Potlatch. I worked for 00:02:00them because they were [connected] with forestry really and I wanted to have [that] connection. So I worked for a paper mill, I worked four years in Brainerd, Minnesota as a technical service engineer. Then I was transferred to Cloquet for three years and I worked in coating research. I was a coating research engineer. And after that I came to Madison and worked for a short while, less than two years for Ray-O-Vac and then I saw the opportunity to get a job at the Forest Products Laboratory in 1970, which I worked until I retired in [2006].

AP: Okay. And you said you came to FPL in 1970, was that correct?

JK: That's correct.

AP: Okay. Did you have any previous education? I may have missed that. What degrees you had?

JK: I had bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Wisconsin and then I worked for seven years in the paper industry, which was really an education as well. Then I came to work at the Forest Products Laboratory and they were glad to get me because I had industrial experience. Both hands on and in manufacturing and in research for a paper mill.

AP: How did you learn about the Forest Products Lab and what were your initial impressions?

JK: Well, I had to do a paper for one of my courses in chemical engineering and I did it on what direction the paper industry should take. The conclusion of my 00:04:00paper was that they should put more effort into using high yield pulp, which is essentially hundred percent yield versus chemical pulp which only gets fifty percent yield. But in order to [write] about the paper industry I had to go to the Forest Products Laboratory [for their] library there [where] I did most of my research for that little paper. That was my first contact with the Forest Products Laboratory and I was quite impressed because they were doing such basic and fundamental research and so my first impression was very favorable.

AP: Well I guess we could start with--when you came to the Forest Products Lab in 1970, could you describe maybe your first days on the job and the division that you worked in, the people that worked under?

JK: When I was hired and I was amazed at how quickly it went. I applied for the job and about within a month I was working. I guess there was a lot less paperwork then. At the time there was about four-hundred-twenty people, permanent full-time people, working at the Laboratory versus the one-hundred-twenty or so now and they had just built some new additions just two years prior to that and the mood at FPL was very upbeat. At that time, the Forest Service was cutting timber and selling it and giving money after all their expenses back to the U.S. Treasury so, money wasn't really a big problem. When I started, I only had one requirement which was that I should publish a 00:06:00single author paper once a year and that was more or less self directed. As long as I met the missions of the Laboratory, the missions of the work unit that I was working for. The Laboratory was broken down into three different areas. There was solid wood, panel products, and pulp and paper. I was in pulp and paper and I was in the process development portion of that I started working in recycling wastepaper and how to clean it up, how to bleach it, and how to make it stronger, et cetera.

At that time, as I said, the only requirement was that we publish one paper, but subsequently the cutting on federal lands was greatly curtailed and due to the 00:07:00environmental problems. So, the Forest Service had to ask the government for money. Then our budget became sort of static and because of inflation there had to be reduction in the workforce and we had to do more. Then we were allowed to work [in] teams so that we could publish more papers. The aggregate went up when you worked as a team because it's much more effective. [Innitially], we were not encouraged to go after soft money because if you'd hire people they would work just temporarily, and they usually worked out to be very good workers. Then you'd have to let them go [after the soft money dried up], which was very traumatic. But because our budget was being curtailed we were allowed to hire people, you know post-docs and [people] like that, to help us with our research. 00:08:00My job began to change from writing a study plan and performing the experiements and writing a paper and publishing it and presenting it at a conference say and then starting all over again with the next project. Now I began to write for grants, and then hiring people to do the work, and then writing up [and publishing] the results. So I began getting a team and being a leader of a team that just worked together. I would apply for the grants and write up the results and I'd hire people to do the experiments. That seemed to be the most efficient way for me to keep going and that's the way I eventually ended up. I was a team leader and the money for the team I got from writing grants. I would hire people 00:09:00just on a sort of temporary basis. And they came on board and they hoped that they would become full-time employees, which a lot of them did, they just had to wait around a lot longer than they did when I started [Pause].

There was some travel. My first paper was written and I had to present that at a conference, and I did that in the early '70s in Boston, I can remember it very clearly. Then I began presenting papers two or three times a year and going to conferences and not only going to conferences in this country but in Canada and Mexico and many countries in Europe. [This] was very exciting for me at first but after about fifteen or twenty years it became routine and I was amazed at 00:10:00how blasé I became about visiting foreign countries.

AP: In general, what was the reception like when you went to these meetings?

JK: We were required to give a paper if we were going to a conference and giving a paper was such a good way to introduce yourself to the attendees and you know if I could give a paper early in the conference then all the attendees felt like they knew me because the people who had attended my session would [know] about what I was doing and my work. And it was very friendly. It was a way to network. They'd tell me what they were doing and some people would even collaborate with me or fund some of my research. So it was a really positive experience and [I 00:11:00became] a little bit [of] a star you know, when you get people who come every chance they can to see what you've done recently. So it was a lot fun for me.

AP: So would you say that most of your work at the Forest Products Lab was mostly research based, like in-lab kind of work, or writing?

JK: Well the type of work that I was doing was process development, and typically we would do some [lab experiments], some [pilot plant experiments] and after we presented at a conference we'd publish it in a peer reviewed journal. 00:12:00Then we'd go onto the next project. [FPL scientists] as they approached retirement I'd ask how did you like your career and did you have any regrets about anything. And they'd all give me about the same answer. They said they really loved the mission of the Lab, they liked the freedom of being self-directed, that was very much a plus for them. So they could utilize their own strengths. But one thing they all complained about was that there was never any technology transfer. What they had worked on was never picked up by the industry and that was really a regret to almost everybody.

But a couple of my projects were really picked up by the industry and I felt 00:13:00really especially good [about that]. There was one enzyme enhanced de-inking, where we used enzymes to enhance the removal of toners and also stickies, which were a real big problem in recycled paper. [The process] was very environmentally friendly and very effective and it resulted in the startup of a company--G.D.T., Enzyme De-inking Technologies. They [are] a growing concern and they employed 20 or 30 people. They freely admitted that they owed their success 00:14:00to the technology that we developed. Of course they changed that technology as they became more knowledgeable and as they did more work, but it was something that was transferred from the Laboratory and it did help recycling wastepaper and it was a very effective de-inking [process]. Initially it was to [remove] toners from copy paper. Toners were a real problem for recyclers initially, but they overcame that and we did part of that.

But a bigger process that I worked on [called fiber loading] is being [implemented] by a German company now. You know, papermaking hasn't really 00:15:00changed in the last 50, 75 years. If you divide up the paper industry into pulping and papermaking, pulping has [seen] a lot of changes in the type of pulping, how they pulp, and how they recover the [chemicals]. But in papermaking there really hasn't been that many changes. In the papermaking you form a pulp slurry and then you form a web on the paper machine and then you've got to [remove the] water. First you drain it, which is very economical, and [then] it costs a little more to press it mechanically and the most expensive thing is to dry the paper. Now typically, a paper machine will have a hundred steam filled 00:16:00steel drums to dry the paper and that's [epensive]. This process will do several different things. It could reduce the number of drums that are required from about a hundred down to about thirty so that there's a big savings there. Not only do you save energy but you save construction costs and you save on the size of the building that you need for it. Also it uses more filler than fiber and filler only costs [about] 20 percent of what the fiber does. So typically for a thousand ton per day mill, if you can go up one percent in calcium carbonate versus pulp fiber, you'll save a million dollars a year. And fiber loading, you 00:17:00can go up several percentage points higher. So that's the second way you can [save by using] more low-cost raw materials, and the third way is that you can make these fillers--calcium carbonate--more cheaply in this process than the most economical processes that's used today.

And I'll just now back up and tell you a little bit about the process. In the most efficient way for making calcium carbonate for a paper mill is to have a satellite calcium carbonate [plant]. [Such plants] have two tanks typically. [First], they'll ship in a calcium oxide and they'll [add] it into a tank filled with water and they'll call that slacking quicklime and so it goes from calcium oxide then to calcium hydroxide. Then they'll pump that calcium hydroxide into a 00:18:00second tank and add CO2, and that CO2 typically will be captured from stack gas at the paper mill and they'll mix that CO2 and the calcium hydroxide in a water solution [to] form calcium carbonate. And that calcium carbonate is pumped over to the mill and used as a filler. [CO2 is] a very bright chemical--it's got a hundred brightness and [papermakers] like it very much. It is [easier] to de-water, because calcium carbonate does not [hold] water like fiber does. So everybody would like to use more of it. Well we've come up with a process that 00:19:00can be used in the stock [prep] system and [to] create calcium carbonate but you do it in a pressurized refiner.

Now a pressurized refiner is just a mechanical device typically with two common rotating discs under pressure, typically under steam pressure, but you can add calcium hydroxide, step one, and you mix it with the pulp, and step two you put it through a conventional pressurized refiner, which are very common in paper mills. So instead of that we steam, you have CO2 and that creates calcium carbonate in the process itself and the beautiful thing about that is the calcium hydroxide is so attracted to the fiber that it goes within the cell wall and into the lumen and when you mix it with calcium, when you mix it with CO2 in 00:20:00the pressurized refiner, the calcium carbonate is formed partially within the fiber. Now that's very important, you can get to five percentage points of filler in the fiber. Now that filler is not on the outside and that's a very key thing because as you start to add filler to paper, it gets weaker and weaker because the calcium carbonate doesn't bond very well to the fiber and it prevents, it makes a much weaker [paper]. But if you put that within the fiber, you can get those fiber-to-fiber bonds which maintains the paper strength while still having filler in the paper. Another thing is that this de-waters so much better, it de-waters better than a similar conventionally loaded or direct loaded paper at the same filler level, so that you can [use] more.

We've had some indications, and I retired before we were able really to pin it 00:21:00down, but what it looks like is that this displaces some very difficult to remove water. Now for example, if you take a very, very efficient centrifuge and take a pulp slurry and you centrifuge until you can't get anymore water out, this is what they call the fiber saturation point. Now [there is only bound water left. Typically this is at like 71 percent solids. The rest of it is bound water. Now the bound water is divided into two different types. There's the freezing bound water and the non-freezing bound water. The surface area inside of a pulp is 98 percent [inside] tiny pores that are four nanometers or less in 00:22:00diameter and those water molecules are bound chemically to carboxyl groups and hydroxyl groups in the pulp itself and there's so little room for movement for the water, this water will not freeze. And also, [non-freezing bound water] has a higher specific heat. You can't drain it out, you can't really press it out very well because it's so tightly bound inside the fiber and also it takes more [energy] to dry it.

So you've got at least fifteen percent of the water that is very, very difficult 00:23:00to remove. There's methods for measuring freezing and non-freezing water and the fiber loaded pulps, these experiments have to be repeated, but we have indication that the calcium hydroxide, because of its chemical [charges and] structure, is very attracted to the carboxyl groups and the OH groups inside the fiber and displace that water. [The calcium hydroxide forms bonds] with the carboxyl groups and hydroxyl groups inside the fiber. And that makes the fiber much easier to drain, much easier to press, and much easier to dry, so you have a tremendous savings in energy. This would be a real fundamental change in papermaking and the equipment is being manufactured by [the] Voith company in 00:24:00Germany, and should be installed by about June 1, [2008], and if that is successful, even partially successful, if that meets even part of what our expectations are, this will surely be adopted by mills worldwide [in some form] and will be a big thing for the Laboratory.

Now I know it's a truism that inventors do not get rich over their inventions 00:25:00and I didn't really expect that, we have a patent which has been licensed to Voith. That patent was taken out in 1993, so there's only a couple years remaining and I'm sure that there will be no profit on this until the patent expires. But the second thing which is also sort of a truism is that the inventors don't really get credit for what they've done, but the Laboratory and the team that I worked with has published so many papers, we've published at least you know forty papers and presented this over the years and so I think that it's going to be inevitable that the Laboratory will get credit for what we've done. I hope so because it's a good thing for the Laboratory. It gives a leg up on when we ask for funds from Congress because they [ask] what have you done for us and we can say well we've really--we've been a big help to the Forest Service. And we could really help the--the paper industry, [which] is dying in this country mainly because we haven't really invested in the most modern equipment like we should. Scandinavia on the other hand, has a worse climate for growing trees than we do up in the upper Midwest here, but yet their 00:26:00paper industry is thriving. The paper industry is a much bigger part of their economy than it is the United States and so they've been very careful to keep their paper equipment, their paper and pulp mills very modernized and so even though pulp is more expensive over there, they're able to make it much more profitably than we are because they have kept up. But if we adopt this, I think that there's a chance we could save a good portion of our industry.

A healthy forest in my opinion depends on a healthy forest products industry. In other words, if the forest owners can sell, if their trees become valuable, then they can take better care and they can afford to do more intensive forestry like they do in Europe. The European and Scandinavian forests are beautiful and ours should be too, but they're not really managed like they do over in Europe and I 00:27:00think there should be more of that done over here. So I think if we can keep the paper mills alive and well in the United States I think it will help our forests. I strongly believe the forest should not just be something you never touch so that the trees fall over and decay and become a fire hazard and promote disease and insects and things you don't want. They should be routinely harvested and replanted and I think that makes a healthier forest.

AP: Well just to clarify, around what year was this project kind of started?

JK: Well, this began about I would say in the late '80s, in 1989 or so, and a 00:28:00man came from Liquid Carbonics, a Chicago company, and they were looking for a method to use CO2 because they sold CO2. They interviewed a number of scientists at the Laboratory and they interviewed me, I told them about this idea, what we could do with that and they saw immediately the benefit of it and they funded us for many, many years. Then we got funding from the D.O.E., et cetera. Finally, I got in collaboration with Voith and we applied for a grant from the D.O.E. and 00:29:00we got that to build a prototype and subsequently they sent a doctorial candidate to work with me at the Laboratory, Klaus Dotte Doelle. He got his PhD on that topic and he went over to Voith and educated the people at Voith the benefits of this and eventually they licensed this. If you look up in the U.S. Patent Office the Laboratory's name or my name, its been cited by 48 patents on fiber loading. Probably equally or a greater number worldwide. So this has been a seminal patent and a lot of people have done a lot of research on this topic, 00:30:00so its opened up a lot of opportunities. I'll be overjoyed to see this used and I hope the Laboratory gets some credit. I can imagine Voith has had a lot of problems with this, because when you're sitting in the lab it's one thing, but when you're out in a paper mill it's quite another. So they have some very real technical challenges and I'm sure the technology has been somewhat changed in order to meet the problems that have arisen. But nevertheless, the original idea came from the Laboratory and I do hope that we get some credit for that.

AP: Well it certainly sounds as though you got a lot of satisfaction from this one particular job. I was wondering if there was another job or grouping of jobs that gave a lot of satisfaction?

JK: As I mentioned before, I started working at the Laboratory in recycling and then it was disbanded after about 10 years or so. But because we had sort of a freedom I stuck with it and I was able to develop this enzyme de-inking technology, which was a very sort of a nonchemical way to de-ink and it was very effective and very economical and it was used, used by the paper industry. Now that was, I thought, a real good study. This was done with a team, there were 00:32:00five or six of us that worked on it, and we never did get any outside funding for that, but the Laboratory funded it itself. Fiber loading was mainly done with outside funding. So both projects I thought were very good but fiber loading was by far the best project that I worked on.

AP: Well I guess in contrast to this, was there on job or project that you feel was a particular challenge or drew concerns?

JK: Well, I always felt that basically, papermaking and stock preparation you know really depends on a separation processes and I always thought that we needed to develop a process that depended on different fundamentals [than 00:33:00separation] based on size and shape. We would separate based on wet ability by a flotation separation unit, which is really the most effective separation unit in recycling wastepaper because it takes out the nonwetables. But this is a very slow and very touchy process. I thought that we could have done this by high shear field separation and we could have had a much faster through put and a much more effective separation process. We began this as disc separation although I think the disc geometry, although it worked very effectively, was not easy to scale up to a large scale and we needed to change the geometry of that. 00:34:00I think someday somebody will do that but that was not a successful process. We published a lot of papers, there was intense interest in what we were doing, but we never got it to be practical. I still think it could be practical but it would just need some more effort. So that's something you [that] came before the other two. I had probably three projects in my life and disc separation was the first one. I probably would have focused on a different geometry much earlier while the interest was so strong.

AP: And that was a project that you worked on in the '70s?

JK: Yeah, I think that was the first real big project. I would say, the late '70s, early '80s. I had worked on several--many small projects before that but 00:35:00that was my first big project. So you know I'd say I worked on disc seperation, I worked on enzyme de-inking, and also worked on fiber loading. Each one was a bigger project then the last. They kept getting bigger and the last one I worked on of course was the biggest and I think the best project that I worked on.

AP: Well, switching gears a little bit. Are there colleagues or people Forest Products Lab about whom you strong memories? If so, who are they?

JK: Well, you know the man that hired me was Richard Auchter, he's no longer living, but he came to the Forest Products Laboratory after a career with Kimberly Clarke. And I particularly liked him because he insisted that every 00:36:00research project have a practical aspect to it and I thought that was so important. He also stressed the need for persistence. He said we don't get anywhere unless we persist in our studies and in our projects and I really think that if you're in research you really have to be, have to learn patience. You [must] be persistent and that's the only way you get through because you're going to run into technical challenges. There's no question about that. But you just have to, have to keep going. For example, you know there's a lot of stress on higher degrees, you know master's degree and PhD degrees in the sciences and I know they're important for every person who has a master's degree [or higher], 00:37:00there's probably at least 10 others, that are as intelligent and as capable as the people who have the higher degrees. But, the people with the higher degrees have demonstrated persistence, that they have perseverance and that they will take a hard job to conclusion, because after all, you know many of the subjects that you have to take [for a higher degree] are a little bit on the boring side. You have to have determination to get through them. So people with higher degrees have demonstrated persistence and I think that's a real key attribute of any researcher, really. They have to have persistence. So Dick Auchter recognized that and he's a person who I really admired and thought he had quite 00:38:00an influence on me [pause].

The other things is that when John Erickson was director, back in the late '80s he decided that every scientist should be able to visit a laboratory and you could pick whatever pulp and paper laboratory you wanted. So I picked Paprican, the paper research institute of Canada in Montreal and talked to the researchers there. And the person that really struck me having the best project was Tony Scallan. He was working on a project and he called it luman loading and they just took titanium dioxide and just mechanically mixed it in a slurry with pulp 00:39:00and then washed away the excess and made paper that was much stronger at a given level of filler. Now that was the early fiber loading thing, but they didn't have a chemical reaction, they didn't displace any of that non-freezing water, they used a filler that was much more expensive than calcium carbonate, and they had no way to reuse the filler that they screened out. The excess filler became contaminated with very fine fibers. So it was a very non-efficient and not economical process, but the theory of putting filler inside the fiber was what caught my eye and subsequently I built on that and said that we should have a chemical reaction that would occur within the fiber. And we wouldn't have 00:40:00any--you could require much less fillers so we wouldn't have an excess of filler we'd have to screen out and there would be no byproducts and it would be able to release non-freezing water, which is so difficult to remove from paper. So Tony Scanlan really was an inspiration to me way back in the early '80s. So those two people I think were really influential in my life, in my professional life.

AP: I guess one thing that I had a question about was whether or not you had a chance to work with any students or faculty from the University of Wisconsin campus?

JK: Oh yes, I did. Ray Youngs over in the forestry department, I took some [graduate level] courses from him and I became fast friends with him and he was 00:41:00very much, was very helpful to me. We collaborated on some joint projects together and he did send students to work with me so it was a very productive relationship.

AP: Now did you see this relationship between the Forest Products Lab and the University campus? Was that prevalent throughout the Forest Products Lab?

JK: Well you know initially when I came to work, the Laboratory had money to give out and then our collaboration with the University was much [stronger] than perhaps it is now because we had money. But as soon as our funds began to dry up, then the collaboration wasn't as strong with the University because we had 00:42:00no money to give them. We were looking for money and the University was looking for money. So at times we would collaborate jointly, but it wasn't as much as when we could give the University money. So that was a question of money and when our funds dried up some of our projects did too.

AP: Now how many years did you spend at the Forest Products Lab?

JK: How many years?

AP: Yes.

JK: I started in 1970, so it was 36 years at the Laboratory.

AP: Okay. Over the span of 36 years did you notice any changes in the Lab, 00:43:00corporate culture, or general research strategies, or anything like that?

JK: Well, as I said we we're not encouraged to work in teams when I first came there because they didn't know how to give credit for the publications, so they [said] you should have the sole author publication, then we know who to give credit to. The other thing was they didn't want us to go after grants, soft money, because we would hire on temporary people and it was so traumatic to have to let them go. But that all changed when we began to have a shortage of funds; they allowed us to work in teams because after all, teams are more productive. If you publish one paper per year, and every scientist does. [One gets one 00:44:00publication per scientist] to publish, [but if you have a team of three scientists] you're going to probably publish five or six at least, if not more. So it's more productive to work in teams. If you get the right type of teams when there isn't too much of an overlap in specialties. It depends on the team, but most people would form teams where they would compliment each other. For example, one person would be strong in statistics, one would be very good at hands-on doing experiments, one would be good at writing it up or writing for grants. So you know that's the way you have a strong team. Then writing for grants, was discouraged, but in the end it was very much encouraged and if you could get grant money you were sitting pretty and your project was in no danger of being cut.

So those two things you know, working in teams and writing for soft money, that 00:45:00was a tremendous change. It was a one hundred-eighty degree change you know, discouraged when I came and very much encouraged when I left. And when I first came there, there was a more emphasis was more on applied research and when I left, we were getting more into fundamental research. Not totally, but you know there was a stronger emphasis on fundamental research, which is good but it always should be connected to some practical aspect, some applied aspect. You know the best projects have both an applied and fundamental aspects to them, in my opinion.

AP: Well, here's an interesting question about the relationship or how you 00:46:00perceived the Forest Service. How do you feel about having worked for an agency that's part of the U.S. Forest Service?

JK: I loved working for the Forest Service and the Forest Service is a part of the U.S.D.A. [United States Department of Agriculture] and I believe that that's the proper place for us, a good place for the Forest Service to be. I think the U.S.D.A. has a good record of research and I think the Laboratory does as well. You know, you probably say well, why did you retire--I was 74 years old when I retired and I think I broke the record for age [as] a permanent full-time researcher at retirement age. I don't think anybody's retired at a higher age at the Laboratory, but you know that's not going to stand very long because it takes so long now to get a permanent job at the Laboratory to get a decent 00:47:00retirement. I think the young guys are going to have to be working a lot longer than 74. I think we're going to have people working up into 80. If they're still productive, there's no reason why they shouldn't. But I thought it was a very good place to work and if I had to do it again I would.

AP: Do you feel that your work has left a mark on the Forest Products Lab, the U.S.D.A. Forest Service, or beyond?

JK: Yes I think so, I think it has. Especially the fiber loading. If it is successful in Germany this summer, I think there's going to be a tremendous effect on papermaking. Papermaking hasn't changed much in the last fifty, seventy-five years and this would be a dramatic change and all paper mills will adopt this. They'll either retro-fit it for this or the new paper machines will be made so much small, more efficient. It will be a tremendous change, a very 00:48:00positive change. [It may change into making the raw materials smaller, and thus not need any equipment change.]

AP: Well I would like to just open it up for if you have any stories, memories, or general comments about your time at Forest Products Lab that you would like to record, that kind of thing.

JK: Well you know just to sum up, I thought it was a very good place to work, I would work there again. The Laboratory has several strengths, but one of the strengths is that they allow you to publish. If you were working for research in the private sector they wouldn't encourage you to publish at all. [The private sector] they might allow you to [publish] or they might not but [publishing] would not be a big factor. And allowing a researcher to publish his results is a 00:49:00real big thing. The mission of the Laboratory is just an excellent, excellent mission. You know it's to extend our forest resource and then they give you such flexibility and you're able to direct your own research. [This] is just a wonderful, wonderful job. I have nothing bad to say about it, it was a very good place to work.

AP: Well those are all the questions that I have. If there is not anything else that you would like to add?

JK: No I can't think of anything.

AP: Okay

JK: I think that pretty much covers it.

AP: I would love to thank you for taking an hour of your time to talk with me.

JK: You know, just thinking about this, you know, you would think that --this is a little bit of a criticism--you would think that the Forest Service would have a very clear idea about how to manage the forests. They get a lot of input from every sector: from the public sector, from universities, from the industries, from everybody, the environmentalists, the industrialists, and they're pulled in 00:51:00so many directions and they all have some logic behind them. But its very, very difficult for the Forest Service to have a clear idea, especially in the last ten years or so, there's no real clear idea of how our forests should be managed. You know, they said for a while there will be no more cutting and then we ended up with these terrible forest fires. We didn't harvest and therefore we had so much fuel on the floor, that when we did get a fire, it would burn intensely hot. So that wasn't a good idea. So, you [must] treat the forests as, at least parts of them, as a, just like a crop: they should be harvested when they get to a certain age, the mature trees, the next stage would be for them to fall over and die and rot and you know, not do anybody any good being a source 00:52:00of, a fire hazard, of insects, disease and give off CO2 from decay. Mature trees should be harvested and young trees planted one way or another, behind them. And yet, the Forest Service doesn't really have a clear plan for how to manage our forests and they are trying to be all things to all people and I don't think that is really the answer. But it's a tough problem, seemingly a simple one, but it's a really difficult one and I hope will be able to come up with a clear plan soon.

AP: Where do you think the Forest Products Lab fits in with the future of forestry in this country?

JK: Well, I think there's a real big push now to produce bio-fuels, ethanol from 00:53:00the [wood sugars] and I think that's something that should continue to be worked on. I think biofuels are going to be a big, a big thing for the future. But on the other hand, even processes that are mature processes [can be improved]. For example, a little story, say a grandfather and his little daughter are crossing the street in the winter or the spring, like it is now, and its all slushy and the granddaughter says to her grandfather, Grandfather, I see a twenty dollar bill sticking up from the slush in the street. And the grandfather says no, its must be counterfeit because if its real, somebody would have picked it up long ago. You can say some of these industries, like the paper making process--it's a 00:54:00very old process--that there's nothing new to invent. We shouldn't give up on them, there's a lot of twenty dollar bills laying around all we have to do is pick them up. I'm not saying that we shouldn't get into new things like bio-fuels, but we should look at the existing industry and keep developing that as well.

AP: Okay, well that's all I had so,

JK: Thank you very much for interviewing me.