Steve Strauss is quoted in the Washington Post article titled "Environmentalists are urging the USDA to reject this genetically engineered eucalyptus tree". He said it was difficult to predict the trees’ environmental impact without having a better idea of the scale of plantings. Strauss runs a research consortium that ArborGen once belonged to, and the company has funded some of his research in the past, although the relationship has since ended. “If I were USDA, I would probably make a decision to have a provisional deregulation,” he said, allowing some years to go — perhaps a decade — before conducting another evaluation.