CRESWELL – Dr. Bob Zybach, a Creswell resident, has recently completed a two-year project publishing four anthologies of his writings from 1980 to the present, collectively titled “Zybach Forestry Anthologies.”
These anthologies comprise a series of articles, editorials, interviews, and reports that focus on the history and management of forests and wildfires. They are available at the Creswell and Cottage Grove libraries.
“The books are centered on western Oregon, written in Creswell, and published in Cottage Grove through our family business,” said Zybach, who is a forest scientist with an extensive career in the Pacific Northwest. From the mid-1960s until the late 1980s, he owned a business whose Phoenix Reforestation crews successfully reforested over 85,000 acres of burned and logged land. He earned his PhD in Environmental Sciences from Oregon State University in 2003, with research primarily focused on the history of catastrophic wildfires in western Oregon.
“These collected writings contain significant scientific data in the form of maps, tables, historical and documentary photographs, and contributions from recognized experts,” Zybach stated. “However, they have not been ‘peer-reviewed’ in the traditional academic sense. Instead, the intended audience consists of my actual peers and reviewers: loggers, foresters, tree planters, road builders, hunters, hikers, and fishermen — rural businesses, residents, schoolchildren, and grandparents. These are the people who have always lived, worked, and enjoyed our western forests. This represents true indigenous knowledge.”
